US Super-Kamiokande Home Page

Super-Kamiokande
U.S. Collaboration Home Page

See also the Official Home Page at the Super-K site in Japan.

NOTE: The US Home Page has a local mirror in Japan, too.

NEWS:

July 10, 2008: Sad news about our friend and colleague Yoji Totsuka
Mike Dziomba's Blog about summer 08 upgrade work.
Jan. 18, 2003: K2K beam restarted
Dec. 6, 2002: Super-K reconstruction finished successfully; start of SK-II data taking.
Oct. 8, 2002: The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics:
Prof. M. Koshiba (U. Tokyo) is awarded "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos."
June 12, 2002: New Results From K2K.
Nov. 12, 2001: Super-Kamiokande accident:
On November 12, 2001, several thousand PMTs in the Super-Kamiokande detector imploded, apparently in a chain reaction. We will post news here as it becomes available. Meanwhile, the basic message is:
- Super-K will go back on line, with end of 2002 as the target date.
- K2K will postpone its planned 2002 running period to 2003.
Additional information:
- Nov. 13, 2001: "We will rebuild the detector. There is no question." (Y. Totsuka)
- New York Times article "Accident Curbs Japan Research Into Cosmos's Ghostly Particles"
- Nov. 15, 2001: Appeal from the director of Kamioka Observatory
- Nov. 17, 2001: Photographs of the damage posted at the official SK website.
- Reports on the Super-K accident: Report 1 (Nov. 22, 2001), Report 2 (Jan. 31, 2002) posted at SUNY's Super-K website.
- Reports from cause committee posted at the official SK website.
April 2, 2001: The Super-K Evidence paper has 1000 citations by now, according to SLAC SPIRES HEP Database
June 28, 1999: K2K Announces First KEK Beam Neutrino Detected at Super-K
March 3, 1999: K2K experiment begins data taking - man-made neutrino beam directed to Super-K
Remember the hyphen!
By collaboration agreement, our official name is Super[-]Kamiokande, or Super[-]K, not SuperKamiokande or SuperK. (Index and citation searches will be more efficient if non-members also observe this convention when referencing our experiment!)
Nov.6, 1998: Sad news about our friend and colleague Ken Young
June 5, 1998: Super-Kamiokande Announces Evidence for Neutrino Oscillations
- Responses from leading Neutrino Physicists (Physical Review Focus)
April 1, 1996: Super-Kamiokande starts taking data.

Copies of all Super-K scientific papers are available from arXiv.org e-Print archive (formerly xxx.lanl.gov)

Super-Kamiokande is a joint Japan-US collaboration to construct the world's largest underground neutrino observatory. This page is maintained by the US side of the collaboration. There is also an official Super-K home page maintained at the experiment site in Japan.

Neutrinos are subatomic particles which have no electrical charge, are very nearly massless, and interact only via the weak nuclear force. They are products of radioactive decay processes, and so are produced abundantly in our Sun, and in other astrophysical sources like supernovae and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). Super-Kamiokande is located in the Kamioka Mine, about 200 km north of Tokyo, and is a water cerenkov detector , which means it is a large (40 meters diameter by 40 meters tall) tank of ultra-pure water viewed by thousands of sensitive phototubes. Super-Kamiokande will address some of the most important open questions in physics today, such as: why does the Sun appear to produce only half as many neutrinos as theory would predict? Do neutrinos have mass? Do protons decay, as predicted by Grand Unification Theory?

A brief Introduction to Super-K for the non-specialist.
Listings of jobs available at US Super-K and K2K institutions.
14-year-old high school senior performs independent analysis, and confirms SK results!
(News clipping from Boulder (Colorado) Daily Planet, 1/27/99.)
President Clinton refers to SK results in speech at MIT.
Neutrino'98 Conference: 4 - 9 June 1998 in Takayama, Japan.
- transparencies of the NU98 talks available at ICRR now (click here for local US copies).
SAFETY REGULATIONS FOR THE KAMIOKA UNDERGROUND OBSERVATORY.
- Additional regulations for Feb. 1998 to Mar. 2000 and after 16 Mar. 1998.
- "Better safe than ..." ; important info from our Safety Repreesenative.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR SHIFT PERSONS AT SUPER-K.
The Collaboration Mailing Lists moved to hepxvt.ps.uci.edu.
US Collaboration members: Don't forget to cc Hank Sobel when making or altering your travel dates to Japan!
- see also the latest shift schedule (password).
Pictures of the detector during construction [click here if you're in Japan now].
Flash!! Super-K has been taking data since 1 April 1996!
Neutrinos, a poem by John Updike.
Haiku about neutrinos, by Roberta Wilkes.
Fortune cookie with mysterious portent for SK.
Other types of neutrinos recently discovered:
- THE NEUTRINOS, Super-K's unofficial favorite Seattle rock band,
- THE FLYING NEUTRINOS, Super-K's unofficial favorite neo-swing band,
- THE FLOATING NEUTRINOS, a round-the-world raft family crew.
... and Matt Groening's view of neutrino interactions in an Open Universe.

This site has been included in:

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Web masters: R. J. Wilkes and H.G. Berns (UW group); last updated Mon Jun 27 09:51:00 PDT 2005 .

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