Major Hyper-Kamiokande Construction Milestone
Figure 1: The completed 69m diameter dome and its position relative to the 258 kton water tank for Hyper-K.
Hyper-Kamiokande has reached a major construction milestone with the completion of the dome for the tank. The detector, a 258 kton water Cherenkov detector, is under construction 1 km underground in the Kamioka mine in Japan. The on-time completion of the excavation of the dome, which is 69 m in diameter and 21 m high, represents a major milestone in the construction of Hyper-Kamiokande. The next step is to complete the cavern construction, which will drop the floor by 71 m from the current dome, will be completed by the end of 2024. Data taking is expected from 2027.
The Liverpool Hyper Kamiokande group, led by Prof. Neil McCauley, lead the calibration effort for the detector. Sam Jenkins and Balint Bogdan are developing light sources and fibre optic systems for the detector. We are eagerly awaiting the start of Hyper-Kamiokande physics including neutrino CP violation and proton decay searches.