Sampling nonuniformity in the SDC calorimeter EM/HAD boundary

The SDC steel hadronic (HAD) calorimeter absorber structure has been designed to be of low magnetic reluctance, high rigidity, and excellent hermiticity. Transverse scintillator tiles staggered longitudinally allow one to assemble the hadronic calorimeter compartment with no transverse dead areas between tiles. Clearly, the structure affords many advantages, among them hermeticity. The only problem is that, at the boundary of the structure, as at the E boundary, the steel sampling fraction for adjacent transverse towers is different. In principle then, the adjacent towers will have different energy calibrations, and different energy resolutions. The aim of this note is to examine the size of these effects and, ff necessary, explore ways to minimize their impact