Calorimetry with meta-crystals

We present the meta-crystals concept, an approach that consists of using both undoped and properly doped heavy crystal fibers of identical material as the active medium of a calorimeter. The undoped fibers behave as Cherenkov radiators while the doped ones behave as scintillators. A dual readout calorimeter can be built with its sensitive volume composed of a mixture of both types of crystals. In addition if the calorimeter is adequately finely segmented it can also function as a particle flow calorimeter at the same time. In this way one could possibly combine the advantages of both the particle flow concept and the dual-readout scheme. We discuss the approach of dual readout calorimetry with meta-crystals made of Lutetium Aluminium Garnet (LuAG) and present studies on the material development, first testbeam activities and results based on simulation for understanding the performance trends. We close with a brief outlook on open issues and further R and D needed to proceed from an ideal conceptual case to the design of a realistic detector.