Energy calibration at high-energy photon colliders

Abstract: Calibration of the absolute energy scale at high-energy photon (gamma-gamma, gamma-electron) colliders is discussed. The luminosity spectrum at photon colliders is broad and has a rather sharp high-energy edge, which can be used, for example, to measure the mass of the Higgs boson in the process gamma-gamma to H or masses of charged scalars by observing the cross-section threshold. In addition to the precise knowledge of the edge energy of the luminosity spectrum, it is even more important to have a way to calibrate the absolute energy scale of the detector. At first sight, Compton scattering itself provides a unique way to determine the beam energies and produce particles of known energies that could be used for detector calibration. The energy scale is given by the electron mass m_e and laser photon energy \omega_0. However, this does not work at realistic photon colliders due to large nonlinear effects in Compton scattering at the conversion region (\xi^2 \sim 0.3). It is argued that the process gamma-electron to eZ_0 provides the best way to calibrate the energy scale of the detector, where the energy scale is given by m_Z.