Introduction
Fortunately, bringing in the 21 century, elementary particle physics in Japan has steadily been progressing. Considering abundant heavy flavor physics by the B Factory which is backed up by an accelerator with the highest performance in the world and epoch-making results of neutrino physics by the SK/K2K/KamLand etc., there is no doubt that Japan has, in name and in fact, been one big pole of elementary particle physics research.
However, on looking back, there just found only measuring instrument technologies used continuously for 20 years, which were acquired from abroad, and sensors fabricated by the world’s preeminent Japanese manufacturers.
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Junji Haba
Project Leader |
On the other hand, in Europe, ten years’ time and energy have been applied to construct LHCs and their measuring systems, and thus huge technologies developed have been stored. Combining with their culture base, which places importance on the development of measuring systems, the difference between them and us seems to further increase, meaning that we have already lost out in the competition after the LHCs.
Not only for the field of elementary particle physics, but also the high energy laboratories in the world have been exploring every possibility for survival in the future. The key to success is the “technical capabilities” in various respects. Thus, the Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies, KEK has been planning new developments of peripheral technologies for measuring instruments since FY2005. That is just the establishment of the KEK Detector Technology Project (KEK DTP). That may not be acceptable for the “orthodox” experimental researchers of elementary particle physics, but applications of technologies “over the wall of fields,” described above, will also become increasingly important in the future.
There are a variety of fields to which technologies we have developed can be applied, such as measuring instrument systems in various fields related to the Institute of Materials Structure Science which is a laboratory in KEK, and applications related to nuclear medicine, such as PET equipment which was taken up at the workshop held in April. A project aiming at such a purpose has also been planned to start. |
