[News-releases] Japan/Canada Physics Team Reaches New Milestone with Mysterious Neutrinos

[Tim Meyer]

News Release | For Immediate Release | February 25, 2010

JAPAN/CANADA PHYSICS TEAM REACHES NEW MILESTONE WITH MYSTERIOUS NEUTRINOS
After 295 km Journey Underground, Neutrinos Observed at Super-Kamiokande
Detector in Japan

(Vancouver, BC) - Physicists from the Japanese-led multinational T2K
collaboration announced today that they had made the first detection of a
neutrino which had travelled all the way under Japan from their neutrino
source at the J-PARC facility in Tokai (about an hour north of Tokyo by
train) to the gigantic Super-Kamiokande underground detector near the west
coast of Japan, 295 km away.
 
"It is a big step forward," said T2K spokesperson Takashi Kobayashi. "We've
been working hard for more than 10 years to make this happen."  They have
constructed their new neutrino beam line, which will deliver the world's
most powerful neutrino beams, to study the mysterious phenomenon known as
neutrino oscillations, and the observation of this event proves that their
study can now begin.

Interacting only weakly with matter, neutrinos can traverse the entire earth
with vastly less attenuation than light passing through a window. The very
weakness of their interactions allows physicists to make what should be very
accurate predictions of their behavior, and thus it came as a shock when
measurements of the flux of neutrinos coming from the fusion reactions which
power our sun were far lower than predicted. A second anomaly was then
clearly demonstrated by Super-Kamiokande when it showed that the flux of
different types of neutrinos generated within our atmosphere by cosmic-ray
interactions was different depending on whether the neutrinos were coming
from above or below (which should not have been possible given our
understanding of particle physics). Other experiments, such as KamLAND (also
performed at Kamioka), have conclusively demonstrated that these anomalies
are caused by neutrino oscillations, whereby one type of neutrino turns into
another.
 
TRIUMF's Akira Konaka, spokesperson for the T2K Canada team, said, "We are
excited about the first observation of neutrinos from the T2K beam at
Super-Kamiokande. Together with the successful operation of the near
detector, including time projection chambers and fine grained detectors that
Canada contributed, we now enter the physics phase of T2K.  It has been a
very productive and stimulating time since we started developing the T2K
concept almost 10 years ago with our Japanese colleagues."

The T2K experiment has been built to make measurements of unprecedented
precision of known neutrino oscillations, and to look for a so-far
unobserved type of oscillation which would cause a small fraction of the
muon neutrinos produced at J-PARC to become electron neutrinos by the time
they reach Super-Kamiokande.
 
University of Toronto graduate student Patrick de Perio said, "I feel very
privileged to have worked on the T2K beam line, where this neutrino was
created. I also spent countless nights in the Super-Kamiokande control room
waiting for an event like this! This is the first of many toward my Ph. D.
thesis."

The excitement was shared by Dr. Nigel Smith, SNOLAB Director, who said,
"SNOLAB warmly congratulates the T2K team on this tremendous milestone for
their project.  The knowledge that T2K will tease out about the elusive
neutrino will further our understanding of these sub-atomic particles and
their role within the Universe, and why the Universe looks the way it is."


********************************************************
Timothy I. Meyer, Ph.D.
Head, Strategic Planning & Communications
TRIUMF
4004 Wesbrook Mall
Vancouver, BC  V6T 2A3  CANADA
Tel: 604-222-7674
Fax: 604-222-3791
Cell: 650-464-8955
E-mail: tmeyer at triumf.ca
WWW: http://www.triumf.ca
********************************************************

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