I. Leedom

A readout system for plastic scintillating fibers

Abstract A readout system for plastic scintillating fibers has been developed using a multi-anode microchannel photomultiplier tube operated in a 5 kG magnetic field and the CMOS MX4 microplexer chip. The microchannel photomultiplier tube with an anode array of 10×10 is coupled to an array of fibers using a precise alignment procedure. Each readout unit is capable of sampling signals from 100 fibers simultaneously and multiplexing the analog signals serially with rates of up to 5 MHz. The analog signals are subsequently digitized and subtracted from the pedestals previously stored using a specially designed analog to digital VME module. Such a readout system has many applications in high energy physics, solid state physics, and other fields where a large number of fibers must be read out in short times and at relatively high rates.

Performance of the L3 plastic scintillating fibre calibration system

Abstract The L3 plastic scintillating fibre system is used to calibrate the central tracker by providing an external measurement of the track position in the bending plane. We describe the performance of the system during the LEP runs of 1989–1995 on the Z and the results of the calibration using the PSF system.

Effect of a preshower detector on calorimetry performance

Abstract Test beam results obtained with a preshower detector in a SDC calorimetry configuration are presented. The benefits of independently instrumenting the first scintillating tile of each tower of the tile/fiber electromagnetic calorimeter, forming the analogue of the “Massless Gap” in LAr calorimeters, are demonstrated. Electron and pion data were taken with a calorimeter configured with one or two radiation lengths of inert material in front, a scintillating fiber preshower detector, a tile/fiber electromagnetic calorimeter, a shower maximum detector, and a tile/fiber hadron calorimeter. The energy deposited in the scintillating fibers of the preshower detector was summed to simulate the preshower energy that would be detected by the first scintillating tile of an EMC tower. The data were collected in the MP9 beam line at Fermilab during the Summer and Fall of 1991. The relative degradation in electromagnetic energy resolution due to the inert material in front of the electromagnetic calorimeter was measured. The resolution is improved by adding in the properly weighted preshower energy. The charged pion rejection versus electron acceptance is presented for combined cuts using the electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, with the energy deposited in the preshower and shower maximum detectors. We show that, even after calorimetric and shower maximum cuts, the pion rejection is further improved by using the preshower energy.