Particle ID Studies in a Highly Granular Hadron Calorimeter

CERN Summer Student Report: Highly granular hadronic calorimeters optimized for the Particle Flow Paradigm are being developed for future linear colliders. A new algorithm for identifying shower starts has been developed for analyses of data from the CALICE tungsten DHCAL prototype. The new algorithm improves the linearity between the reconstructed and generated interaction layers in Monte Carlo simulations, and it is applied as part of the particle identification of muons and pions. Additionally, the effective nuclear interaction length for pions in the DHCAL is estimated by analysing the distribution of interaction layers.