Physics Colloquium - Neutrino Physics and Beyond at the Hyper-Kamiokande Experiment

Since their postulation in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli, neutrinos have been central to many puzzles in particle physics, the solutions to which have deeply expanded our understanding of fundamental physics.  Among these was the Nobel Prizing winning discovery by the Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) and SNO experiments that neutrinos oscillate and therefor have non-zero masses.  The study of neutrinos with the Super-K detector has continued with the T2K experiment, which has used accelerator-produced neutrinos to see a hint that there may be large matter/antimatter asymmetry (CP violation) in neutrino oscillations.  To progress further a successor to Super-K, Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) with 8 times more detection mass is being built.  With its unprecedented combination of size and low energy threshold, Hyper-K will probe the frontiers of particle and astroparticle physics in a number of areas including neutrino oscillations, proton decay searches, and the study of supernova neutrinos.  In this talk, I will describe the rich physics program of the Hyper-K experiment, and how Canadian researchers are contributing to the project.  I will cover the various innovative methods Canadian researchers are developing to maximize the sensitivity of Hyper-K by controlling critical systematic uncertainties using the novel Intermediate Water Cherenkov Detector (IWCD) and detector calibration techniques based on light injection/detection and photogrammetry.