Performance Characterization Studies of The sPHENIX Outer Hadronic Calorimeter Scintillating Tiles*

The sPHENIX Experiment is currently being built at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) located at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL). sPHENIX will measure jets and upsilons and will include a tracking and calorimeter system that includes a Hadronic Calorimeter (HCal) of two segments. The inner HCal will be placed inside a superconducting solenoid magnet, and the outer HCal will be placed outside of the magnet. The HCal is composed of plastic scintillating tiles placed between absorber plates and grouped into calorimeter towers. Each tower for the outer HCal is composed of five tiles with similar behavior to enhance the HCal's performance. To attain this, we conduct a performance characterization study of the scintillating tiles by testing them using cosmic rays. When an incoming particle strikes the tiles, scintillation light is produced and is caught by a wavelength shifting fiber, which then routes the light to a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM). Based on the most probable value (MPV) extracted from the tiles' light response, a performance ratio is calculated for each tile. The outer HCal tile testing is complete and is currently in assembly at BNL. This poster will present the results of the outer HCal tile testing, and the status of the outer HCal assembly and calibrations.