A measurement of the photonuclear interactions of 180 GeV muons with the TILECAL Module and prototypes

The energy spectrum and the cross section of photonuclear interactions of 180 GeV muons in iron has been measured with the setup of the Module 0 and prototypes of the ATLAS hadron calorimeter in the H8 beam of the CERN SPS. The differential cross section $(N_{A}/A)v{\rm {d}}\sigma/{\rm {d}}v$ of a fractional energy loss $v = \Delta E_{\mu} / E_{\mu}$ has been measured in the range $v$ = 0.1 $\div$ 1; it is compared with the theoretical predictions. Measured value of $(0.25 \pm 0.03_{stat} \pm 0.03_{syst})\cdot 10^{-6} cm^{2}g^{-1}$ of the integrated cross section $(N_{A}/A) \int_{0.1}^{1} v{\rm {d}}\sigma/{\rm {d}}v$ for was found in good agreement with the theoretical prediction of $0.267 \cdot 10^{-6} cm^{2}g^{-1}$.