Physics impact of the SDC endcap hadronic cracks

摘要

The SDC calorimeter has a set of design requirements. Among them is the need for 'hermeticity.' The calorimeter should not register particle energies which are so badly mismeasured as to induce a significant missing energy. Such a mismeasure would mimic the existence of a neutrino in the event. The extreme case of a catastrophic mismeasure Of particle energy is the total failure to register the energy of a particle due to its loss in a crack or 'dead' region of the calorimeter. The baseline design of the SDC endcap calorimeter consists of a crackless, monolithic electromagnetic (EM) compartment, followed by an azimuthal array of 1/16 'wedge' hadronic (HAD) modules. Of necessity, tolerances in construction lead to azimuthal cracks between adjacent wedge modules. The purpose of this note is to examine the Physics impact of these cracks, and to examine, in detail, their allowable extent.