Preliminary results of the LAT Calibration Unit beam tests

The calibration strategy of the GLAST Large Area Telescope (LAT) combines analysis of cosmic ray data with accelerator particle beams measurements. An advanced Monte Carlo simulation of the LAT, based on the Geant4 package, was set up to reproduce the LAT response to such radiation and to benchmark the event reconstruction and the background rejection strategy before launch and during operation. To validate the LAT simulation, a massive campaign of beam tests was performed between July and November 2006, in parallel with the LAT integration and test, on the LAT Calibration Unit. This is a detector built with spare flight modules and flight-like readout electronics, which was exposed to a large variety of beams, representing the whole spectrum of the signal that will be detected by the LAT, using the CERN and the GSI accelerator facilities. Beams of photons (0 - 2.5 GeV), electrons (1 - 300 GeV), hadrons (π and p, a few GeV - 100 GeV) and ions (C Xe, 1.5 GeV/n) were shot through the CU to measure the physical processes taking place in the detector and eventually fine-tune their description in the LAT Monte Carlo simulation. This paper describes the motivations and goals of the test runs, the many different experimental setups used, the measured detector performance and preliminary results of the LAT Monte Carlo validation.