Speaker
Description
The Electron-Proton/Ion Collider (ePIC) detector will serve as the first experiment of the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, whose primary purpose is to perform comprehensive studies of nuclear structure via electron-ion and electron-proton collisions. In order to investigate the gluon saturation regime at small values of the momentum fraction \textit{x}, as well as to achieve 3-dimensional nucleon tomography, it is crucial to rigorously measure jets along the hadron-going (forward) direction of such collisions. One of the main motivations of LFHCal design is the precise energy reconstruction of jets of up to 250 GeV at forward rapidity (1.2 $<$ $\eta$ $<$ 3.5) and the possibility for declustering within these jets inorder to investigate their substructure. The later will greatly benefit our understanding of hadronization in particular. The LFHCal is composed of transversely-segmented 5 $\times$ 5 cm$^2$ scintillating plastic tiles -- coupled to a SiPM -- sandwiched between steel absorber layers along the longitudinal direction. During the Fall of 2023 and 2024, a series of beam tests of different types ($e^{-}, h^{\pm},\mu^{+}$) and energies (1 - 15 GeV) took place at the CERN Proton Synchrotron T9 beam line. For these two test beam setups, two different read-out solutions were evaluated: a commercial digitizer (CAEN) and a solution based on the CMS H2GCROC. This contribution will include first results on the performance of both LFHCal beam test prototypes, focusing exclusively on the CAEN read-out solution.
