First results of the CALICE SDHCAL Technological Prototype

The CALICE Semi-Digital Hadronic CALorimeter (SDHCAL) prototype, built in 2011, was exposed to beams of pions, electrons and muons at CERN in two periods of two weeks each in 2012. The prototype with its 48 active layers was run using the triggerless and power-pulsing modes. The performances of the SDHCAL during the test beam were found to be very satisfactory with efficiency exceeding 90% for almost all of the 48 Glass Resistive Plate Chambers (GRPC). The preliminary results show that by using appropriate calibration coefficients, a linear response (within 4%) and a good energy resolution are obtained for a large range of hadronic energies (10–80 GeV) for both the Digital (Binary) and the Semi-Digital (Multi-threshold) modes of the SDHCAL prototype.