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]
Super-Kamiokande Overview by Kamioka Observatory. Detector tank, photomultiplier instrumentation and underground location
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.