T2K Latest News
First result gives hint of neutrinos changing!
The T2K experiment today released their first ever physics result which has also given us our first evidence of a previously unseen phenomenon.
The experiment studies the Universe's most mysterious particles, known as "neutrinos", which exhibit a behaviour known as "neutrino oscillations". There are three distinct types of neutrino (electron, muon and tau) but as they travel they can change back and forth from one to the other. So just because you had a muon neutrino to begin with, you might not have a muon neutrino later!
In T2K, an accelerator on Japan's East coast produces a beam of muon neutrinos, then fires them almost 300km through Japan to a detector at Kamioka. What the experiment has observed, for the first time, is a hint that some of those muon neutrinos are oscillating into electron neutrinos. With many experiments around the world racing to be the first to observe this effect, T2K's publication of this hint will be a significant result in the particle physics community.
Measuring such oscillations is a crucial step in our attempts to explain why the Universe is now made almost entirely of matter and not equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, as it was at the big bang: the biggest open question in particle physics.
If it were not for the devastating earthquake earlier this year, T2K would have most likely been able to confirm this result, instead of seeing just a hint, so all eyes will be watching for what happens when the experiment restarts in the near future!
If you'd like someone to comment on this significant result, Warwick's Dr Gary Barker and Dr Steve Boyd have been working on T2K for over 6 years.
- Read our description of T2K and its physics goals
- Download the paper
- Read the UK press release
- Read the Japanese press release (in English)
- Read the article on BBC news
First T2K event at Super-Kamiokande
On 24th February, the T2K experiment observed the first neutrino event its the far-detector Super-Kamiokande. This is a significant milestone for the collaboration as we move from the construction phase into data taking.
Over the next few months T2K will continue taking data before a summer shutdown to install the last few detector modules, including the six "P0D ECal" modules being built here at the University of Warwick. The experiment will then embark fully on its quest to make the first measurement of the important parameter θ13 which is critical to answering some of the biggest questions in particle physics today.
You can learn more about the T2K experiment by reading our public overview, and more about this event from the press release.
First Event At T2K
During a test run of the J-PARC neutrino beam on 22.11.2009 the T2K experiment saw its first neutrino interaction in the INGRID near-detector. This represents a significant milestone for the collaboration which is now looking forward to a full physics run early next year.