MINICAL

The MiniCal - A Small Hadronic Calorimeter Prototype

Figure 1: MiniCal stack

The MiniCal is a small calorimeter prototype build and operated at DESY testbeam within the CALICE collaboration.
The purpose of this prototype is to gain experience in using new read out technics for a possible hadronic calorimeter ( ILD calorimeter ) of the future linear collider ( ILC ). It is also the predessesor of a larger prototype (internally called 'physics prototype'), which is makeing exessively use on the new readout scheme for SiPM readout.
The design of the MiniCal is simple. The MiniCal is a sampling calorimeter with 28 steel absorber plates. Each plate has a thicknes of 20 mm. The plates are stacked with a gap of 10 mm holding place for cassettes of 9 plastic scintillators with different readout technics. The plate sizes are 30x30 cm². The scintillator tiles have a size of 5x5 cm².
The scintillator tiles are read out with three different detectors:

• Photomultipliers - 2 Hamamatsu MAPM reading out up to 13 layers
• APDs - 33 pieces of 3x3 mm Hamamatsu special types reading out up to 13 layers
• SiPMs - 109 pieces of 1x1 mm Pulsar types (1024 pix) reading out up to 11 layers

Figure 2: wavelength shifiting fibres for read out

Figure 3: one active layer consisting of 3x3 tiles

More pictures from the MiniCal

To read more on MiniCal tests and results:

(all postscript)

• S. Reiche on 'Studies for the Optical Read Out of a HCAL' (Diploma)
• H. Meyer on 'Studies of APDs for a HCAL Readout' (Diploma)
• NIM Paper on SiPM readout results (NIM A (2005))
• NIM Paper on APD readout results (NIM A 564, 144 (2006))