From Super-Kamiokande to Hyper-Kamiokande

ongoing

"The study of the neutrino properties and interactions has been key in the development of the Standard Model of fundamental interactions and it is providing first clues on the understanding of its deeper foundations. In this aspect the Super-Kamiokande (SK) detector (ICRR, U. Tokyo, Japan) for many years has played a crucial role. It contributed to the discovery of oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos, thus establishing their 'massive' character. Because of this discovery, Takaaki Kajita, the “person in charge of this proposal” from our main Third Country partner ICRR, was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics 2015. With SK2HK we aim to continue the very successful SKPLUS, through extension of participation of European institutes in the state-of-the-art experimental program related to the SK, the SK-Gd and the Hyper-Kamiokande (HK) experiments. We want to gain insight and even discover the hypothesized charge-parity violation in the leptonic sector with SK and the future HK. We want to discover the ""Diffuse Neutrino Supernova Background"" with SK-Gd and to explore in depth the Grand Unification with SK and the future HK. Those measurements are key to the complete understanding of the most fundamental concepts of Physics. An important aspect of this proposal is significant amount of hardware R&D related to HK, especially given the decision to start HK construction in 2020. Timely finalization of these activities is crucial to the success of HK and requires even closer cooperation with our partners. Given the uniqueness of the technologies that are being developed, it is efficient to do some work at the location where most of the infrastructure needed for the R&D is. In this project those are the ICRR of the Univ. of Tokyo and the TRIUMF laboratory in Canada, as well as several European laboratories, incl. the applying institutions. The proposed secondment program offers a unique opportunity to fulfill these goals while working with World leading experts."