QUARTZ FIBER CALORIMETRY FOR LHC EXPERIMENTS

Particle detection in the very forward region is one of the most cruci al and at the same time one of the most difficult tasks in experiments at the future Large Hadron Collider. So far, survival of the detector in the intense radiation levels that characterize this region has bee n the (only) guiding principle in proposals for very forward calorimet ers. In this paper, we discuss a type of detector that is not only ade quate in radiation hardness, but also optimized with respect to the ve ry specific requirements that a very forward calorimeter in an LHC exp eriment has to fulfill in order to be useful for the study of the phys ics for which it is intended. The detector consists of a large number of quartz fibers embedded in a copper (or iron) matrix and is based on the detection of Cherenkov light produced by relativistic shower part icles in the fibers. We discuss the arguments for the choice of quartz , copper/iron and the fiber structure and the unique calorimeter prope rties that result from this choice. We present Monte Carlo simulations assessing the characteristics and the expected performance of this ca lorimeter.