Speaker
Description
Hyper-Kamiokande is the next generation Water Cherenkov experiment in Japan, following the highly successful Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande experiments. It is currently under construction and will start taking data in 2028. The experiment is located in two sites separated by 295 km, with a massive 258 kilotonne water Cherenkov detector located in Kamioka town on one side, and a neutrino beamline with a set of detectors in the J-PARC center on the East coast of Japan. The experiment has a broad physics program, including the precise study of the oscillations of accelerator, atmospheric and solar neutrinos, searching for proton decay, the detection of supernova neutrinos. It will also conduct additional searches for physics beyond the standard model, such as indirect dark matter detection. The very large size of the Hyper-Kamiokande detector gives it the world’s best sensitivity to proton decay. Combined with the increased intensity of the neutrino beamline and a new “intermediate” detector in J-PARC, Hyper-Kamiokande also has world leading sensitivity to study the remaining open questions in neutrino oscillations, in particular whether neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate in the same way or not (CP symmetry).
In this presentation, we will first present the experiment and its physics program, including the sensitivity of the experiment for the different topics. The construction of the experiment has achieved a number of significant milestones in the last couple of years, and we will present its status and the plans towards completion of the construction in the second part of the presentation.