Test of an iron/streamer tube calorimeter with electrons and pions of energy between 1 and 100 GeV

We have constructed a simple and low cost modular electron/hadron streamer tube calorimeter with 2 cm (resp. 4 cm) iron sampling. To suppress saturation effects we use small cell streamer tubes (6 mm x 6 mm) filled with pure isobutane. The calorimeter was tested with electrons and pions in the energy range from 1 to 100 GeV. The linearity of the electron response extends to about 25 GeV. The response to pions per GeV increases at the highest energies by about 20%. The energy resolution for electrons (pions) is determined to be σ/E = 3.8% + (28.8%/√E)(σ/E = 3.9% + (72.1%/√E)), where the hadron resolution can be improved considerably by a weighting procedure for individual channels. (orig.)