Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Research Tools and Instruments

T2K (Tokai-to-Kamioka experiment) is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment to precisely study neutrino oscillation parameters, in particular to discover oscillations caused by the mixing between first and third generation neutrinos (theta-13). The Canadian group takes a leading role in this international collaboration of 12 countries from Asia, Europe, and North America. The Canadian group is responsible for building the near tracker detector, which consists of fine grained scintillator detectors (FGD) and time projection chamber (TPC). The tracker performs precision measurement of the neutrino flux and their cross sections. A three-year construction grant for FGD and TPC has been awarded by NSERC for FY06-08 period. The funding for photosensors has been awarded by Ministry of Science and Technology in Japan. In this grant proposal, we request the funding for the remaining component, the FGD readout electronics. The FGD front-end electronics are based on the ASIC developed for the TPC which consisting of 72 channels of 512 bucket switching capacitor arrays. It records the wave form of the photosensor outputs at 50MHz sampling speed for 10 microsec, which provides good timing, energy and double pulse measurements. The commissioning of the neutrino beamline is scheduled in April 2009. The near tracker detector, TPC and FGD, are the detectors that are required to be in operation from day-1 of the experiment.