Periodic position dependence of the energy measured in the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter

A uniform energy measurement response of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter ECAL is essential for precision physics at the LHC. The ECAL barrel calorimeter consists of 61200 lead tungstate crystals arranged in a quasi-projective geometry. The energy of photons reaching the ECAL will be reconstructed by summing the channels corresponding to matrices of 3x3 or 5x5 crystals centred on the crystal with the largest energy deposit. The energy measured using such matrices of fixed size has been studied using electron test beam data taken in 2004. The variation of the energy containment with the incident electron impact position on the central crystal leads to a degradation of the energy resolution. A method using only the calorimeter information is presented to correct for the position dependent response. After correction, the energy resolution performance for uniform impact distributions of the electrons on the front face of a crystal approaches that obtained for maximal containment with a central impact. The universality of the correction is verified using various electron beam energies and a representative set of central crystals.