Example 3: T2K

Discoveries of neutrino oscillations in solar and atmospheric neutrinos by Super-Kamiokande (Japan) and SNO (Canada) opened an exciting new era in neutrino physics.  Building on these successes, TRIUMF and Japanese scientists initiated the T2K (Tokai to Kamioka) long baseline neutrino project in 2000.  This project has grown into an international collaboration of 12 countries from Europe, Japan, and North America, including all the G8 nations. 

The Canadian group introduced key components of the experimental design, such as the off-axis beam concept.  TRIUMF accelerator/beam line expertise provided critical input to the neutrino beam line design.  Handling of the extremely high radiation is paramount at a neutrino facility.  For this, TRIUMF engineers, in collaboration with KEK (Japan) and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory group (UK), contributed to the design and construction of the remote handling mechanism in the target station.  For the detector construction, the Canadian group is in charge of some of the most challenging and critical items of the project: the time projection chamber (TPC), fine-grained calorimeter (FGD), and optical transition radiation detector (OTR).  These high-profile international contributions were only possible with strong support from TRIUMF.  At the same time, accumulated detector expertise such as precision machining of the large TPC, development of scintillator extrusion techniques and fabrication of readout electronics, will be important assets for future Canadian projects.  The high profile Canadian role in the T2K collaboration attracted excellent young scientists to Canada, such as S. Oser (UBC, CRC Chair, Sloan Fellow) and Hirohisa Tanaka (UBC, IPP research scientist).