T2K

T2K is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment.

Neutrinos, the lightest and most elusive elementary particles, come in three flavours and can oscillate between those as they travel. Neutrino oscillations demonstrate that neutrinos have non-zero mass, which is neither a prediction of, nor a trivial addition to, the Standard Model of particle physics.

T2K (Tokai to Kamioka) is a neutrino oscillation experiment based in Japan. Neutrinos are created at the JPARC accelerator, measured at the near detector ND280 and observed after oscillation at the Super Kamiokande detector 295 km away. T2K has made the first observation of neutrinos appearing in a man-made beam which are of a different flavour to those originally produced. This was the first measurement of a non-zero theta_13 at more than 7 sigma significance with just under a tenth of the total beam exposure approved for T2K. The experiment has also achieved the most precise measurement of the neutrino mixing angle theta_23. By alternating between a beam of neutrinos and a beam of antineutrinos T2K is now searching for CP violation, differences between matter and antimatter, in neutrino oscillations.

Physicists and engineers from Liverpool led the design and construction of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter for the Near Detector and have subsequently served in positions of responsibility in core offline software development and physics analysis for the Near Detector and in the oscillation analysis.

 

Personnel:

Group Leader:

Neil McCauley

Academic Staff:

Costas Andreopoulos

Jonathon Coleman

Kostas Mavrokoridis

Christos Touramanis

Research Staff:

Steve Dennis

David Payne

Adrian Pritchard

Ka Ming Tsui