In high energy physics detectors, shashlik refers to a pile of alternating slices of absorber (e.g. lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

) and scintillator materials (crystal or plastic) used in calorimetry

Calorimetry

Calorimetry is the science of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes. Calorimetry is performed with a calorimeter. The word calorimetry is derived from the Latin word calor, meaning heat...

. The absorber has a small interaction length, so that a particle radiates energy in a short track. The scintillator material produces visible light when transversed by the particle's radiated energy. This occurs with an electromagnetic calorimeter, in the form of photon

Photon

In physics, a photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of the electromagnetic interaction and the basic unit of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation. It is also the force carrier for the electromagnetic force...

s and/or electron

Electron

The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...

+positron

Positron

The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1e, a spin of ½, and has the same mass as an electron...

 pairs. The energy of the particle may be then measured by the intensity of scintillation light produced by the various scintillator slices. An example detector that uses a shashlik electromagnetic calorimeter is the LHCb

LHCb

LHCb is one of six particle physics detector experiments collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider accelerator at CERN. LHCb is a specialized b-physics experiment, that is measuring the parameters of CP violation in the interactions of b-hadrons...

 detector.

This type of calorimeter was likely named after the shashlik

Shashlik

Shashlyk or Shashlik , is a form of Shish kebab popular throughout Israel, Lithuania, former Soviet Union, Iran, Mongolia, and parts of central Europe. Shashlyk is originally lamb depending on local preferences and religious observances...

, a popular form of shish kebab sold by street vendors in the former Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, by the Russian and Ukrainian scientists who first proposed it.