Kamioka ObservatoryICRR, The University of Tokyo

On 6-11 March 2023, the Hyper-Kamiokande Collaboration Meeting was held in Toyama, Japan. The meeting was the first face-to-face meeting of the Hyper-Kamiokande Collaboration, having been held online several times a year since the official start of the Hyper-Kamiokande project in February 2020. Of the approximately 500 collaborators, about 120 gathered at the conference venue and about 100 participated virtually.

The first half of the approximately one-week conference period saw a lot of meetings of research groups from various departments, including cavity excavation, photo sensors, photo sensor covers, electronics, software, outer detector, the near/intermediate detector complex, etc. During the plenary sessions in the second half of the meeting period, there were very active discussions on the progress of each division and the overall policy, etc. The face-to-face meetings were beneficial at this important time, four years before the start of the experiment in 2027.

Professor Masato Shiozawa, Co-spokesperson of the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment, said at the end of the meeting: “Thanks to the in-person meeting, we were able to see a lot of interaction and follow-up discussions between the collaborators that would not have been possible in a virtual setting. In collaboration, it is critical to make many decisions at the right time. Let’s keep communicating frequently and efficiently.”