Hadron Calorimetry using scintillator tiles and WLS fibers: the Tilecal/ATLAS Tilecal/ATLAS collaboration

Scintillator Tiles read out by WLS optical fibers are the active medium of the Tilecal, the barrel hadron calorimeter of the ATLAS detector. The scintillator tiles are oriented perpendicularly to the beam axis and light is detected by photomultiplier tubes. Several optical components have been tested in the laboratory and in calorimeter prototypes. The first real scale prototype of a barrel module was built and tested by the first time in 1996. The response to beams of muons and pions allows to study the performance of the calorimeter, namely its uniformity. Preliminary results are presented.