Super-Kamiokande Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
Super-Kamiokande is an underground water Cherenkov detector in Japan. Its roughly 50,000-ton water target is viewed by photomultipliers around the tank. A neutrino is observed indirectly when an interaction produces charged secondaries that emit Cherenkov radiation.[ref]
Photon arrival times and detected charges constrain interaction position and outgoing directions. Ring appearance helps distinguish showering electrons from more track-like muons, enabling the Super-Kamiokande atmospheric-neutrino experiment. The water mass is both target and optical medium: transparency, sensor timing and background rejection affect reconstruction. The useful fiducial volume is smaller than the full water volume.