Design and study of a novel tile-scintillator shower maximum detector which yields excellent separation of γπ0 showers

It is shown that π0 initiated showers can be separated, with high efficiency, from γ initiated showers over the incident energy range, 20 to 100 GeV, using a novel shower maximum detector embedded in an electromagnetic calorimeter. The design of the novel shower maximum detector along with the algorithm which has been constructed, allows one to achieve surprisely good γπ0 separation efficiencies. The use of a novel shower maximum detector in the planned search for the Higgs particle via its decay H→γγ will appreciably reduce the π0 contamination in the γ signal. For a 100 GeV Higgs particle, the 50 GeV π0 background is reduced by a factor of 6.6.