Hadronic shower development in a highly granular calorimeter

The topic of this thesis is linked to the development of a detector for the future experiments at a Linear Collider, where the high precision needed for the in-depth study of new physics imposes stringent requirements in each detector component and a new sophisticated reconstruction algorithm ( Particle Flow concept).
The interested candidate will work at DESY in the frame of the CALICE collaboration.
Pion and proton shower data have been collected with a highly granular hadronic calorimeter [?]. The first level calibration and reconstruction of the data has been successfully carried out, and first validation studies of hadronic shower models have been performed. The first analysis results to quantify the energy resolution of the calorimeter and to develop a topological correction for the energy leakage have been carried out.

The next step of this important project is to extend the obtained results from test beam data analysis to the analysis of jets.
The thesis will comprise two blocks. First will be the implementation of shower leakage correction in the PandoraPFA algorithm. Followed by studies of the improvement of jets energy resolution after leakage correction. The second block should extend these studies to the comparison of the leakage effects and correction power in a calorimeter with either Steel (candidate for an ILC detector) or Tungsten (candidate for a CLIC detector) absorber material.

The thesis could be started at any time in the first half of 2012. The successful candidate should be familiar with ROOT and C++ programming language, and should have a good background in data analysis and statistical methods.

Please contact Prof. Erika Garutti for more details.