Nuclear Particle Astrophysics (NPA) Seminar: Akira Konaka, TRIUMF, “Precision measurement of neutrinos at Hyper-Kamiokande”

Event time: 
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
Wright Lab (WNSL), 216 See map
272 Whitney Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Please note special date.

Hyper-Kamiokande (HyperK) is a water Cherenkov neutrino detector in Japan. The fiducial mass is 187kton, eight times larger than the Super-Kamiokande. Upgraded J-PARC accelerator located 295km away will provide high intensity of neutrino and anti-neutrino beams tuned at the oscillation maximum. The statistical precision of HyperK will reach 3% for both neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, making sensitive measurement of leptonic CP violation. Atmospheric neutrinos, where as many as 20k events/year expected, will provide complementary neutrino oscillation studies with very long baseline up to the size of the earth, corresponding to several oscillation maxima. Higher energy atmospheric neutrinos are sensitive to neutrino mass hierarchy through matter resonance effect and tau neutrino appearance. Careful control of systematic uncertainties is essential to exploit the high statistical precision. HyperK uses a near detector covering wide range of angles (NuPRISM approach) to precisely cancel the systematic uncertainties in the neutrino cross section. A new hadron production experiment at Fermilab, EMPHATIC, is proposed to precisely predict the neutrino flux in the accelerator and atmospheric neutrino flux. A new approach for precise calibration of the water Cherenkov detector is being developed.

In this talk, I will describe the challenges of the systematic uncertainties the future neutrino oscillation experiments and how the HyperK plan to address them. In addition to the observation of CP violation, Hyper-Kamiokande will explore directions that may become the main research topic in the future if something new is discovered: Precision neutrino oscillations to test the unitarity of the lepton flavour mixing, neutrino astronomy, such as supernova neutrinos and searches for astrophysical point source of neutrinos, and searches for phenomena beyond the standard model, such as dark matter and nucleon decays.

Host: Karsten Heeger karsten.heeger@yale.edu

Open to: 
undergraduate