Hamamatsu Photonics congratulates winners of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics

Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. would like to congratulate Professor Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo and Professor Arthur B. McDonald of Queen's University (Canada) for being jointly awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass.

 

Hamamatsu employees are especially delighted by the recognition of Professor Kajita, whose research at the Super Kamiokande was conducted in a large-scale facility that included photomultiplier tubes manufactured by the company’s Electron Tube Division. Professor Kajita was one of several top-tier physics researchers in Japan that provided feedback to Hamamatsu during the development of the high-performance 20-inch photomultiplier tube (R3600-05) that was installed at the Super Kamiokande facility to detect atmospheric and solar neutrinos. When observations at the facility began in 1996, there were 11,200 pieces of this photomultiplier tube installed in a 50,000-ton tank of pure water placed 1,000 meters underground. In 1998, when Professor Kajita announced the results of his observations at an international conference on neutrino astrophysics in Gifu Prefecture, his statement that “there is mass in neutrinos” was widely reported by news media in Japan. It is a source of great pride of Hamamatsu employees to have contributed to the discovery of new knowledge, as this is part of the company’s mission to continually support humankind’s journey of scientific discovery.

 

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