Undergraduate students, graduate students and other University researchers recently broke ground in the T2K, or the Tokai to Kamioka Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment, which they have been working on in Japan for several years. The experiment intends to study the neutrino, one of the most elusive of fundamental subatomic particles. The researchers’ newly built neutrino beam at the J-Parc accelerator laboratory in Tokai, Japan generated the first neutrino events. ‘This represents a major milestone and is a tremendous achievement of the collaboration considering the complexity of the machinery, the operation and international nature of the project,’ said Thomas Kutter, physics professor and leader of the T2K project at LSU. ‘I am excited since this is just the beginning of ground breaking findings from this experiment in the near future.’ In the experiment, high energy protons were directed onto a carbon target. The collisions produced charged particles called pions, which then traveled through a helium-filled volume where they decayed to produce a beam of the elusive neutrinos, said a University news release. The T2K team includes 474 scientists from 13 nations. The University’s team is one of eight groups in the United States.
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—- Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]