The Hyper-Kamiokande Project: Preparing for Discovery

by Lucio Ludovici (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Monday 5 May 2025, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

Hyper-Kamiokande is a multi-purpose next generation neutrino experiment currently under construction in Japan. It will be the world's largest underground water Cherenkov detector, boasting a fiducial volume eight times larger than his predecessor, Super-Kamiokande. The inner detector will be equipped with tens of thousands of new photosensors, including 50 cm diameter PMTs and multi-PMT modules, significantly enhancing the detection of water Cherenkov radiation.
The Hyper-Kamiokande  observatory will study neutrinos from astrophysical sources, supernova burst neutrinos, supernova relic neutrinos and rare phenomena such as nucleon decay. Additionally, it will serve as far detector for a long baseline experiment with neutrinos produced at the JPARC accelerator, located 295 km away, currently utilized by the T2K experiment. A suite of near detectors, positioned close to the accelerator, will characterize the beam and minimize systematic errors.  With the upgraded 1.3 MW neutrino beam, Hyper-Kamiokande will achieve unprecedented precision in measuring neutrino oscillation, enabling the discovery of leptonica CP violation and the precise measurement of atmospheric neutrino oscillation.

The experiment is under construction and is expected to begin data taking in 2028.  Italian contributions to Hyper-Kamiokande include critical components such as the multi-PMT modules, the front-end electronics of the 50 cm diameter PMTs and the near detectors.  The seminar will provide an overview of the experiment, discussing its physics goals, current status and future perspectives.