Constraining Absolute Neutrino Masses via Detection of Galactic Supernova Neutrinos at JUNO

TL;DR

This paper investigates how detecting neutrinos from a galactic supernova at JUNO can set upper limits on the absolute neutrino mass, providing a complementary approach to existing experiments and highlighting the impact of supernova models and neutrino ordering.

Contribution

It demonstrates the potential of JUNO to constrain the absolute neutrino mass scale using supernova neutrino detection under specific assumptions.

Findings

Upper bound on neutrino mass: < 0.83 eV at 95% CL

Comparison with Super-Kamiokande: < 0.94 eV at 95% CL

Bounds are sensitive to supernova model parameters and neutrino mass ordering

Abstract

A high-statistics measurement of the neutrinos from a galactic core-collapse supernova is extremely important for understanding the explosion mechanism, and studying the intrinsic properties of neutrinos themselves. In this paper, we explore the possibility to constrain the absolute scale of neutrino masses $m^{}_\nu$ via the detection of galactic supernova neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) with a 20 kiloton liquid-scintillator detector. In assumption of a nearly-degenerate neutrino mass spectrum and a normal mass ordering, the upper bound on the absolute neutrino mass is found to be $m^{}_\nu < (0.83 \pm 0.24)~{\rm eV}$ at the 95% confidence level for a typical galactic supernova at a distance of 10 kpc, where the mean value and standard deviation are shown to account for statistical fluctuations. For comparison, we find that the bound in the Super-Kamiokande experiment is $m^{}_\nu < (0.94 \pm 0.28)~{\rm eV}$ at the same confidence level. However, the upper bound will be relaxed when the model parameters characterizing the time structure of supernova neutrino fluxes are not exactly known, and when the neutrino mass ordering is inverted.