Performance of the NuTeV Fe-scintillator sampling calorimeter and implications for thin calorimeters

NuTeV is a neutrino-nucleon deep inelastic scattering experiment at Fermilab. The NuTeV detector is a traditional heavy target neutrino detector which consists of an iron/liquid scintillator sampling calorimeter followed by a muon spectrometer. The calorimeter response to hadrons, muons and electrons has been measured in an in situ calibration beam over the energy range from 4.5 to 190 GeV. The small non-linearity of the response to hadrons is compared to the expectation from the measured ratio of responses between electrons and hadrons combined with the energy dependence of the fractional electromagnetic energy deposition in the form of neutral pions in hadronic showers fπ0(Eπ). The predictions use fπ0(Eπ) from the Monte Carlo simulations by GHEISHA, GFLUKA and GCALOR and also from the parameterizations of Wigmans and Groom. In addition, a study based on the NuTeV hadron calibration data of the effectiveness of a thin calorimeter is presented. The results of this study have important consequences for the energy resolution of calorimeters used in other applications; for example, measuring the cosmic ray flux in space or with balloon-based experiments.