Simulation Study of Barrel Electromagnetic Calorimeter*

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will be an experimental facility to explore the gluons in nucleons and nuclei, shedding light on their structure and the interactions within. As a part of the ATHENA (A Totally Hermetic Electron-Nucleus Apparatus) proto-collaboration among three detector concepts driven by the EIC community, the ANL group proposes a conceptual design of the electromagnetic calorimeter in the central region. It is a hybrid design utilizing imaging calorimetry based on monolithic silicon sensors (AstroPix) and scintillating fibers embedded in Pb with $-1.5 < \eta < 1.2$ coverage. Nearly all physics processes being pursued at the EIC require the detection of the scattered leptons for the momentum or energy reconstruction and particle identification. In particular, the barrel electromagnetic calorimeter must also detect energy and position of neutral particles such as photons and identify single photons originating from Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) process and photon pairs from $\pi^0$ decays. In this work, I will present the expected performance of photon and neutral pion reconstruction based on simulations of the electromagnetic calorimeter in the central region for the ATHENA proto-collaboration.