Test beam performance and detailed studies of the structure of hadronic showers with highly granular calorimeters

The highly granular calorimeters developed and tested by the CALICE collaboration have provided large data samples with precise three-dimensional information on hadronic showers with steel and tungsten absorbers and silicon, scintillator and gas detector readout. The calorimeters have been operated in extensive test beam campaigns at DESY, CERN and FNAL in the energy range from 1 GeV to 300 GeV. The selected results are presented obtained with the highly granular hadron calorimeter prototypes with semi-digital and analogue readout. The performance of the RPC-based semi-digital hadron calorimeter in terms of pattern recognition and the comparison with GEANT4 simulations including a detailed modelling of the RPC response are discussed. We also present the results of spatial shower development studies in the scintillator-steel analogue hadron calorimeter. The component of hadronic showers related to π 0 production is analysed using the shower decomposition technique. The influence of granularity on the resolution obtained with digital, semi-digital and analogue reconstruction methods is demonstrated based on the analogue hadron calorimeter data and simulations. We also show the results of the performance studies of the combined scintillator-based calorimeter system (scintillator electromagnetic, hadronic and tail catcher calorimeters), including the study of the single hadron energy resolution using both classical energy reconstruction and software compensation techniques in comparison with the predictions of GEANT4 simulations.