|
Super-Kamiokande (aslo SuperK or SK) is located in the
Japanese alps near the town of Kamioka (see map to the right,
click for all of Japan) in Gifu-prefecture. This is about half
way between the city of Toyama, to the north on the sea, and
the city of Takayama to the south. Takayama is also the
location of
Neutrino `98,
where SuperK first
announced
evidence for neutrino mass. The detector is also about 250
kilometers west of KEK in Tsukuba Science City where the front
detectors and accellerator of the K2K long
baseline experiment reside.
|
|
|
The detector is located 1 kilometer below Mt. Ikenoyama inside
the Kamioka Mining and Smelting Company's zinc mine (see inset
of figure to the left). The detector is reached by driving
Toyota Landcruisers about a kilometer through a level drift in
Japans fastest mine road (20kph). Just down a side drift from
this main one is the decommissioned predecessor to SuperK,
Kamiokande,
which is also the sight of the new
KamLAND
experiment. It is a very busy mine.
|
|
The detector itself is a water
Cherenkov
detector. It is a 40 meter tall and 40 meter in diameter
stainless steel cylinder containing 50,000 metric tons of
ultra pure water, some of the purest in the world. It
consists of three optically separated and concetric
cylindrical regions. From inner most to outer most (see
figure on right) they are:
|
|
