J-PARC Project in Japan Original Research Article

From Japanese fiscal year JFY2001 a new accelerator project to provide high-intensity proton beams proceeded into its construction phase. This project, called the J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex), is promoted under the cooperation of two institutions, KEK and JAEA. We set a goal to achieve 1 MW proton beams at 3 GeV and 0.75 MW beams at 50 GeV. The project will be completed in JFY2008, with anticipated first beams in the late 2008. In this article I will describe the project itself and examples of Day-1 experiments, in particular, in the area of nuclear and particle physics.