Determination of the total absorption peak in an electromagnetic calorimeter

A physically-motivated function was developed to accurately determine the total absorption peak in an electromagnetic calorimeter and to overcome biases present in many commonly used methods. The function is the convolution of a detector resolution function with the sum of a delta function, which represents the complete absorption of energy, and a tail function, which describes the partial absorption of energy and depends on the detector materials and structures. Its performance was tested with the simulation of three typical cases. The accuracy of the extracted peak value, resolution, and peak area was improved by an order of magnitude on average, relative to the Crystal Ball function.