Toward clarification of the History of the Universe
Why our Universe was bone and how it developed into the present state? Since its birth at the Big Bang, the Universe has experienced various drastic events. Because the Universe is not a stable object, we have to understand and explain the present state as a consequence of dynamical processes the Universe has experienced. Though many events in the History of the Universe have been clarified, many pieces are still missing to understand our Universe today.
Tomonaga Center for the History of the Universe (TCHoU) was founded in October 2017 as a research center at the University of Tsukuba. The mission of the Center is to clarify the genesis of the Universe as well as the origin of matter and life and to construct an integrated view of the History of the Universe, through international and interdisciplinary collaboration of particle, nuclear, and astrophysics as well as resonant cooperation of experimental and theoretical approaches.
Toward this goal, the center has established the following four research divisions:
- Division of Antarctic Astronomy
- Division of Elementary Particles
- Division of Quark Nuclear Matters
- Division of Photon and Particle Detectors
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Visit [About the Center] for an overview of the Center.
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Visit [Projects] for the research projects of the Center.
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Visit [Organization] for the organization and members of the Center.
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Visit [Materials] for introductory materials and reports.
The name Tomonaga Center comes from Dr. Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, the second Nobel Laureate from Japan, who made fundamental contributions in constructing relativistic quantum field theories, the renormalization theory, theory of collective motions, etc. and also a founder of the physics institute at Tsukuba.
Visit Tomonaga Memorial Room, Univ. Tsukuba and Tomonaga Exibition at the University of Tsukuba Gallery for more information about Dr. Tomonaga.
(Photo: Tomonaga Memorial Room)
What's new
- 2021/06/25 TCHoU Research Member Meeting / Activity and Achievement Reports
We have a meeting of the research members of the Tomonaga Center for the History of the Universe, followed by reports on main achievements in each field in the second period of FY 2020.
- Date: 25 Jun 2021 (Fr)
Details will be announced soon.
Contact: Prof. N. Kuno
- 2021/04/06 New URL for TCHoU
The URL for the web site of the Tomonaga Center for the History of the Universe (TCHoU) has been changed to
https://tchou.tomonaga.tsukuba.ac.jp/Please update the links to TCHoU on your sites.
- 2021/04/06 Asso. Prof. Hara and Assi. Prof. Hashimoto received the 2021 Commendation by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan
Asso. Prof. HARA Kazuhiko (Chair of the Div. of Photon and Particle Detectors) and Assi. Prof. HASHIMOTO Takuya (Div. of Antarctic Astronomy) received the 2021 Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).
Link at MEXT (in Japanese): "About the 2021 Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology"
Asso. Prof. Hara won the Award for Science and Technology (Category for Promotion of Science and Technology) for his contributions to the development of silicon detectors for particle physics experiments and their social applications.
He has conducted development of silicon detectors for the energy-frontier experiments, UA2, CDF and ATLAS leading to the discovery and precision measurements of W/Z, top and Higgs particles. He records the highest Google Scholar h-index (according to the University survey) among Japanese researchers. He also investigated the status of nuclear debris in the Units 1-3 of Fukushima Daiichi using cosmic muons and the technologies developed for the high-energy experiments.
Assi. Prof. Hashimoto won the Award for Young Scientists for his observational researches of various most distant galaxies using emissions from ionized carbons.
Observations of the most distant galaxies in the universe are important for understanding galaxy evolution and cosmic reionization phenomena. The establishment of a new observation method has been an important issue for spectroscopic observations of distant galaxies when the age of the universe was less than a billion years. Dr. Hashimoto established a new observation method for distant galaxies based on the combination of a doubly-ionized oxygen emission line and the ALMA telescope, which has the highest sensitivity. He led an international research team and succeeded in observing the most distant galaxy in history, 13.28 billion light years away, and the most distant merging galaxy, 13.1 billion light years away.
- 2021/03/29 TCHoU Sterring Committee Meeting
- Date: 29 Mar 2020 (Mo) 14:00-16:30
- Venue: zoom online meeting
- Program: (presentations are in Japanese)
14:00-14:30 N. Kuno Activity report for TCHoU 14:30-14:45 N. Kuno Activity report for the Div. of Antarctic Astronomy 14:45-15:00 Y. Takeuchi Activity report for the Div. of Elementary Particles 15:00-15:15 S. Esumi Activity report for the Div. of Quark Nuclear Matters 15:15-15:30 K. Hara Activity report for the Div. of Photon and Particle Detectors 15:30-16:30 Discussions (closed)
Contact: Prof. S. Esumi
- 2021/03/23-30 TCHoU Workshop
To enhance collaborations with external institues towards clarification of the History of the Universe, we organize the TCHoU Workshop.
- Venue: zoom online meeting
- Program:
23 Mar (Tu) 14:00-15:30 Div. of Elementary Particles (I) 25 Mar (Th) 13:00-17:00 Div. of Antarctic Astronomy 29 Mar (Mo) 10:00-12:30 Div. of Photon and Particle Detectors [presentation materials] 30 Mar (Tu) 9:30-17:30 Div. of Quark Nuclear Matters 30 Mar (Tu) 13:30-16:40 Div. of Elementary Particles (II)
Contact: Prof. S. Esumi
- 2021/02/25 HoU Seminar
- Date: 25 Feb 2021 (Thu) 16:00- (about one hour including discussions)
- Venue: online zoom meeting (Please ask the coordinator for connection details.)
- Speaker: Dr. Tetsuro Sugiura (Yahoo Japan, Ph.D. in Tsukuba 2018)
- Title: Science in Yahoo (in Japanese)
- Number of participants: about 16
After some self-introduction of himself in science researches in university and in industry, he presented science activities in Yahoo Japan including artificial intelligence in various directions. He bridged a gap between university student’s imagination of industrial activities and actual duties after the one starts working inside the company.
Contact: Prof. S. Esumi
- 2021/02/24 5th workshop on 3D Quantum Imaging Sensor
Imaging sensors detecting visible lights, X-rays and charged particles require innovations such as in sensitivity enhancement by hybridization of different materials, large-scale integration of fine size pixels, high-speed image transfer, and dynamic-range improvement for next stage applications in scientific, medical and industrial areas.
One of the promising solutions is a 3D integration technology stacking different materials/chips vertically. This workshop is organized under a TIA-Kakehashi program "3D semiconductor quantum imaging sensor" (KEK-AIST-U Tokyo-U Tsukuba) to discuss directions of research activities with presentations on latest 3D integration technology and quantum imaging sensor technology.
- Date: 24 Feb 2021 (Wed) 13:30-17:15
- Venue: online with Webex
- Website: workshop URL
- Program: program
- Registration: workshop URL (free)
- Number of participants: 95
Contact: Asso.Prof. K. Hara
- 2020/11/30 TCHoU Research Member Meeting / Activity and Achievement Reports
We made a meeting of the research members of the Tomonaga Center for the History of the Universe, followed by reports on main achievements of each field in the first period of FY 2020.
- Date: 30 Nov 2020 (Mon)
- Venue: Natural Science Bldg. B114 (limited admission) + Online Zoom meeting
- Program: (presentations are mostly in Japanese)
- Number of participants: 44
Contact: Asso.Prof. Y. Takeuchi
- 2020/10/06 Assi.Prof. Takashi Iida won the Best Young Exploratory Joint Research Award
Assistant Professor Takashi Iida, Div. of Elementary Particles, received the "8th Best Young Exploratory Joint Research Award" from the Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University. This award motivates young researchers who have achieved excellent results in joint use and joint research at the Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, to support further research development, and to develop the field of materials science research.
- Title:
"Development of new scintillator for double beta decay search" - Principal Investigator：Takashi Iida (U. of Tsukuba); Co-investigators: Keita Mizukoshi (Kobe U.), Masao Yoshino (Tohoku U.)
Observation of double beta decay without neutrinos emission is a very important study in elementary particle. If discovered, it can theoretically explain the fact that the universe is made of matter, not antimatter. A detector with high energy resolution is indispensable for the search for this double beta decay. Therefore, a scintillator containing double beta decay nuclei (48Ca, 96Zr, 160Gd, etc.), with a large amount of light emission and high resolution was developed in collaboration with Yoshikawa Laboratory of the Institute of Metallic Materials, Tohoku University, which has a high technologies in scintillator crystal development.
As a result, they succeeded in developing a scintillator called CaI2, and achieved a large emission amount (107,000 [ph./MeV]) and high resolution about 10 times that of commonly used plastic scintillators. In addition, by irradiating the CaI2 scintillator with α / γ rays and examining the waveform, the high particle identification ability of CaI2 was clarified for the first time. Furthermore, the development of a Ca (Brx, I1-x)2 scintillator in which iodine (I) of CaI2 is partially replaced with bromine (Br) and performance evaluation of a scintillator called (Ce0.005, La0.245, Gd0. 75)2Si2O7 including 160Gd was performed. The above research results and their future potential have been highly evaluated, and they have received this award. Currently, they are conducting research toward the practical application of the developed crystals, and developing a new Zr-containing scintillator.
- 2020/10/5-8 29th workshop on 3D Quantum Imaging Sensor
- Date: 5(Mon)-8(Thu) October 2020 20:00-24:00
- Style: remote by internet
- Website: workshop URL
- Number of participants: 135
The International Workshop on Vertex Detectors (VERTEX) is a major annual series of international workshops for physicists and engineers from the high energy and nuclear physics community. VERTEX provides an international forum to exchange the experiences and needs of the community, and to review recent, ongoing, and future activities on silicon based vertex detectors. The workshop covers a wide range of topics: existing and future detectors, new developments, radiation hardness, simulation, tracking and vertexing, electronics and triggering, applications to medical and other fields.
The 29th edition of the series VERTEX2020 will be held on October 5th-8th 2020 virtually by video conferencing.
Reports from the four major groups at the CERN LHC and the KEK-Belle group will cover the operation of the existing and upgrade detectors. In addition, two sessions discussing on the monolithic detectors and timing detectors are scheduled. The workshop will be closed by Prof.Ian Shipsey of the ICFA chair of Instrumentation Innovation and Development Panel.
This workshop was organized by the committee headed by Asso.Prof. Hara, leader of the Division of Photon and Particle Detectors of the Center, and the Center co-hosts the workshop.
Contact: Asso.Prof. K. Hara
- Visit [Archive] for previous news and announcements.
