Astrophysics Potential of Hyper-Kamiokande

Abstract

Hyper-Kamiokande is a next generation underground water Cherenkov detector based on the highly successful Super-Kamiokande experiment. It will be capable of observing - far beyond the sensitivity of the Super-Kamiokande detector - proton decay, atmospheric neutrinos, and neutrinos from astronomical sources. It will also serve as a far detector, 295km away, of a long baseline neutrino experiment for the upgraded J-PARC beam. Further to the detector planned size of more than one order of magnitude larger than predecessor experiments, its improved photon yield will enable superior signal efficiency and background rejection. This is particularly relevant for astrophysical neutrinos, such as the supernova burst neutrinos, supernova relic neutrinos, and solar neutrinos, allowing a much more precise study of their physics phenomena. This poster presents the performance of the current detector design using MC simulations and dedicated event reconstruction tools and the corresponding potential expected for neutrino astrophysics.