Operational experience and first results with a highly granular tungsten analog hadron calorimeter

Precision physics at future multi-TeV lepton colliders such as CLIC requires excellent jet energy resolution. The detectors need deep calorimeter systems to limit the energy leakage also for very highly energetic particles and jets. At the same time, compact physical dimensions are mandatory to permit the installation of the complete calorimeter system inside high-field solenoidal magnets. This requires very dense absorbers, making tungsten a natural choice for hadron calorimeters at such a future collider. To study the performance of such a calorimeter, a physics prototype with tungsten absorbers and scintillator tiles with SiPM readout as active elements has been constructed and has been tested in particle beams at CERN over a wide energy range from 1 GeV to 300 GeV. We report on the construction and on the operational experience obtained with muon, electron and hadron beams.