Exploring the limits of high-energy proton-pion separation in granular calorimeters
Abstract
Highly granular calorimeters provide detailed information about hadronic-shower development that may enable particle identification beyond their conventional role in energy measurement. We investigate how well this information can distinguish protons from positively charged pions and how the achievable discrimination depends on detector segmentation and particle energy. The study uses Geant4 simulations of isolated particles with energies from 10 to 100 GeV in a homogeneous lead-tungstate calorimeter. A Deep Sets model operating directly on cell positions and detected energy and time outperforms a boosted decision tree based on reconstructed shower observables. With cells measuring 3 × 3 × 6 mm3, Deep Sets achieves an accuracy of 93.8% at 10 GeV, decreasing to 67.2% at 100 GeV. Shower topology is independently informative, deposited energy provides the largest additional contribution, and timing supplies complementary information. Coarser segmentation reduces discrimination, with performance more sensitive to longitudinal than transverse granularity. These results provide an encouraging benchmark for calorimeter-based hadron identification and motivate its inclusion among the optimization targets for future highly granular calorimeters.
Related
- Development of Ultrafast and Radiation-Hard GAGG for the Next-Generation of High-Energy Physics Calorimeters
- A Cantilever-Based Method for Probing Adhesive Force and Detachment Energy in Cohesive Granular Materials
- Avalanches can increase stored energy in a granular fault
- Assessing the Limits of He Isotope Separation Under
- Exploring the Limits: Neutrino Mass and Interacting Dark Sector in the DESI Era
BibTeX
@misc{vita2026exploring,
title = {{Exploring the limits of high-energy proton-pion separation in granular calorimeters}},
author = {Andrea De Vita and Abhishek and Tommaso Dorigo and Pietro Vischia},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.19064},
eprint = {2608.19064},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19064},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Exploring the limits of high-energy proton-pion separation in granular calorimeters
AU - Andrea De Vita
AU - Abhishek
AU - Tommaso Dorigo
AU - Pietro Vischia
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.19064
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19064
AB - Highly granular calorimeters provide detailed information about hadronic-shower development that may enable particle identification beyond their conventional role in energy measurement. We investigate how well this information can distinguish protons from positively charged pions and how the achievable discrimination depends on detector segmentation and particle energy. The study uses Geant4 simulations of isolated particles with energies from 10 to 100 GeV in a homogeneous lead-tungstate calorimeter. A Deep Sets model operating directly on cell positions and detected energy and time outperforms a boosted decision tree based on reconstructed shower observables. With cells measuring 3 × 3 × 6 mm^3, Deep Sets achieves an accuracy of 93.8% at 10 GeV, decreasing to 67.2% at 100 GeV. Shower topology is independently informative, deposited energy provides the largest additional contribution, and timing supplies complementary information. Coarser segmentation reduces discrimination, with performance more sensitive to longitudinal than transverse granularity. These results provide an encouraging benchmark for calorimeter-based hadron identification and motivate its inclusion among the optimization targets for future highly granular calorimeters.
ER -