Recent developments of the SDHCAL prototype

Abstract

After the construction and successful operation of the first technological prototype of the Semi-Digital Hadronic CALorimeter (SDHCAL), developed within the CALICE collaboration, new R{\&}D efforts have been initiated to fully validate the SDHCAL option for future experiments proposed for the ILC and CEPC colliders. The SDHCAL is a sampling hadronic calorimeter using large Glass Resistive Plate Chamber (GRPC) as active medium with embedded readout electronics. The GRPC prototype size is 1~m$^2$ while future detectors require GRPC detectors with scalable length up to 3~m long (0.9$\times$3~m$^2$). The readout Printed Circuit Board (PCB) consists of 1~cm$^2$ copper pads on one side and 64-channel HARDROC readout chips on the other side. The design of such large size scalable detectors has been addressed (...) A first fully assembled prototype of 2~m$^2$ with 4 GRPCs is expected to be ready in year 2022. In addition, new developpements to replace single gap GRPC by multigap GRPC coupled with fast timing electronics are being pursued. A time resolution better than 50 ps is achievable. This will allow to follow the temporal evolution of the hadronic showers developing in the calorimeter. In parallel, the first SDHCAL prototype has been extensively tested in beam test facilities. Refined analysis techniques are being developed to improve the energy and shower reconstruction. The latest analysis developments cover techniques to improve the spatial uniformity of the response and a better treatment of the particle incidence angle in the energy reconstruction.