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  June 21, 2019, Prof. Tom Browder (University of Hawaii) turned over the role of the Belle II spokesperson to Prof. Toru Iijima (Nagoya University, KMI).  The Belle II Experiment is an international collaboration of about 1000 physicists and engineers from 26 countries. Together we explore the fundamental secrets of the Universe with the SuperKEKB cutting-edge electron-positron collider and the new Belle II particle detector. I am greatly honored to be elected Spokesperson of this wonderful international team. Our experiment …

A research group including Associate Professor Kazuhiro Nakazawa, KMI, Nagoya University has observed high-energy radiation phenomena coming from thunder-clouds, and found a prolonged steady emission resulted in a short burst of radiation associated with a lightning discharge. The evolution of the phenomena strongly suggests the initial long emission is related with the triggering of the lightning. The research group was performing ground-based gamma-ray observation campaign aiming at winter thunder-clouds in Hokuriku-region. In the work, they observed a minute-long radiation from …

Dr. Kobayashi, the director of KMI, was inaugurated as the honorary director of Nagoya City Science Museum. “I will try my best so that young people are interested in science” says Makoto Kobayashi.  The inauguration ceremony was held at the Nagoya City Hall on April 23rd.   

Dr. Michihisa Takeuchi is newly assigned to KMI as an associate professor. His profile is here.    Dr. Takeuchi received his letters of appointment from Makoto Kobayashi, the director of KMI, on April 23, 2019. 

KMI held a workshop on “Future perspective in Cosmology and Gravity,” from April 2 through 4, 2019. Our goal of the workshop is to improve collaboration between KMI and Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics (LeCosPA), National Taiwan University. We had about 50 attendees including 11 people from Taiwan. This tremendous joy, I found this first workshop between KMI, Nagoya University and LeCosPA, National Taiwan University organized by Prof. Keisuke Izumi extremely inspiring. To my knowledge, this is a rather unique workshop in …

“Neutron is a massive and chargeless particle, which can be used for various precision measurements”, Associate Professor Masaaki Kitaguchi of KMI says. “We have successfully developed a new type of position sensitive detector with extremely-high resolution of 11 nm. It can be a strong tool for experiments with neutrons.” Nuclear emulsion is used for various experiments for particle physics with muons and neutrinos, which is also applied to imaging through a pyramid today. Nagoya University team is continuing to develop …

  On March 11th, 2019, Phase 3 operation of the SuperKEKB/Belle II project began successfully, marking a major milestone in the development of Japan’s leading particle collider. This phase will be the physics run of the project, in which the Belle II experiment will start taking data with a fully instrumented detector. The KEKB accelerator, operated from 1999 to 2010, currently holds the world record luminosity for an electron-positron collider. SuperKEKB, its successor, plans to reach a luminosity 40 times …

The 17th Sakata-Hayakawa Lecture was held at Nagoya City Science Museum on Saturday, January 26th, 2019. Date: Saturday, January 26th, 2019. In The 17th Sakata-Hayakawa Lecture, we invited Dr. Taichiro Kugo, professor emeritus at Kyoto University/ deputy director of Maskawa-juku, Kyoto Sangyo University. More than 240 people attended the lecture and Professor Kugo answered their questions after his talk.  Speaker: Dr. Taichiro Kugo Title: 消えた真空エネルギー (The missing vacuum energy) See also: https://www.kmi.nagoya-u.ac.jp/eng/events/1244/

The 4th KMI International Symposium (KMI2019) “Quest for the Origin of Particles and the Universe” Nagoya University, ES Hall | February 18-20, 2019  Webpage   The 2nd KMI school  (KMI school 2019) “Particle-Antiparticle Asymmetry in the Universe” Nagoya University, ES635 | February 21-23, 2019  Webpage

40 students from Koyo high school visited Prof. Toshihide Maskawa, the KMI director emeritus, at KMI on Wednesday, January 30th. Students gave presentations on their research in physics and mathematics, before they enjoyed a questions and answer session with Prof. Maskawa. In the end of the event, students presented a beautiful bouquet and the president of Koyo high school expressed their gratitude to Prof. Maskawa.