The Scintillating Tiles Detector

The multiplicity array of BRAHMS measures the deposit of energy by charged particles, as they pass through the sensitive matter of the detectors two components: the plastic scintillating tiles, and the silicon strip detectors.

Although the silicon strip detectors have a much better intrinsic resolution than the scintillating tiles, no attempt have been made to use these detectors for determining the centrality. This is mainly because the silicon strip detectors cover a lesser solid angle than the tiles, and the general consensus is that the scintillating tiles do well enough for the purpose at hand, determining the centrality.

The geometry of the scintillating tiles is described elsewhere [2], suffice to say, that the tiles are distributed around the nominal collision point in a slightly asymmetric way, as can be seen on figure 7.