T2K is the first off-axis and higher beam power long baseline neutrino experiment and one of the experiments in which the neutrino group is involved.
In the last 15 years there has been a huge increase of discoveries in the neutrino sector. T2K plans to achieve the next big milestone that is the determination of the mixing angle theta13.
Theta13 can be measured from the appearance probability of electron neutrinos in a muon neutrino beam. Assuming that theta13 is non-zero, the CP violation measurement will be performed studying the oscillation probabilities of neutrino muons into neutrino electrons and of antineutrino muons to anti-neutrino electrons.
The T2K experiment is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. A high intensity narrow band neutrino beam is produced by secondary pions created by a 50 GeV proton synchrotron at the Japanese Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai, Japan. The neutrino energy is tuned to the oscillation maximum at ~1 GeV for a baseline length of 295 km towards Super-Kamiokande.
The main physics goal of the first phase, that started in 2010 and will last for about 10 year with constant upgrade of the accelerator beam power, is the measuremenf of muon into electron neutrino oscillations and an improvement of the measurement of the muon neutrino disappearance. Once T2K will start to run with an antineutrino beam, the main goals will be to measure the mass hierarchy, to solve the theta23 degeneracy and to set limits to the CP violation parameter. The J-PARC to Super--Kamiokande neutrino program envisages a near detector at 280 m (ND280) to measure the neutrino beam before it reaches the far detector, such to directly measure the neutrino beam before it oscillates. The ND280 experciment measure also the neutrino cross sections at energies lower than 1 GeV. The full list of T2K publications is here.
The activity of the QMUL group spans several crucial areas within T2K: