Physics of cascading shower generation and propagation in matter: principles of high-energy, ultrahigh-energy and compensating calorimetry

Calorimetry plays a crucial role in modern experimental physics. Calorimeters are essential tools to extract physics in accelerator and non-accelerator experiments. The physics phenomena at the base of cascading processes in matter and the basic principles of calorimeters operation are reviewed at the light of data obtained from running experiments or from sets of dedicated measurements and the constraints from physics requirements. From this understanding comes the possibility of building powerful calorimetric systems with the optimal performances required by future experiments at high-energy and ultrahigh-energy regimes.