Mission statements of Target & Monitor Group

The Target-Monitor Group is the specially organized team so as to develope the production-target and beam-monitoring devices which are vital in the Hadron and Neutrino Experimental facilities.

The proton beam, accelerated up to 50 billion electron-volt (50 GeV) by the high-intensity proton accelerator, is bombarded onto the production target to create various kind of secondary particles, like kaons, pions, anti-protons, muons, neutrinos. By utilizing these secondary particles, we could push forward the new frontier of the nuclear and elementary-particle physics. At this time, a beam power of 750 kW is concentrated on an area as small as 30 mm^2 at the target. It is thus necessary to keep the production target cool sufficiently to prevent it melting down. We, the Target-Monitor Group, are asked to research and develope the production-target device in order to deliver the secondary particles continuously and stablly agaist such high-power concentration.

If the high-power proton beam irradiates off the target, we might have serious troubles on the beam-line equippments in a view point of continuous and stable delivery of the secondary particles. As a result, the physics research programs are disturbed. Therefore, we need "eyes" to watch if the proton beam hits the right position at the target. A beam-monitoring device play above-mentioned role to transfer the proton beam from the accelerator to the production target in a right way. We, the Target-Monitor Group, are developing the beam-monitoring devices which can detect beam passages and measure the beam position, the beam distribution (in time and/or space), and/or the beam intensity (beam current) without disturbing the beam by materials.