The CALICE Semi-Digital Hadronic Calorimeter (SDHCAL) prototype, built in 2011, was exposed to beams of hadrons, electrons and muons in two short periods in 2012 on two different beam lines of the CERN SPS. The prototype with its 48 active layers, made of Glass Resistive Plate Chambers and their embedded readout electronics, was run in triggerless and power-pulsing mode. The performance of the SDHCAL during the test beam was found to be very satisfactory with an efficiency exceeding 90% for almost all of the 48 active layers. A linear response (within ± 5%) and a good energy resolution are obtained for a large range of hadronic energies (5-80 GeV) by applying appropriate calibration coefficients to the collected data for both the Digital (Binary) and the Semi-Digital (Multi-threshold) modes of the SDHCAL prototype. The Semi-Digital mode shows better performance at energies exceeding 30 GeV.

The high granularity of the CALICE Semi-Digital Hadronic CALorimeter (SDHCAL) provides the capability to reveal the track segments present in hadronic showers. These segments are then used as a tool to probe the behaviour of the active layers in situ, to better reconstruct the energy of these hadronic showers and also to distinguish them from electromagnetic ones. In addition, the comparison of these track segments in data and the simulation helps to discriminate among the different shower models used in the simulation. To extract the track segments in the showers recorded in the SDHCAL, a Hough Transform is used after being adapted to the presence of the dense core of the hadronic showers and the SDHCAL active medium structure.

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