Detectability of galactic supernova neutrinos coherently scattered on xenon nuclei in XMASS

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential for the XMASS detector to observe galactic supernova neutrinos through coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, predicting a significant number of detectable events with negligible background, enabling supernova model differentiation.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of detecting supernova neutrinos via CEvNS in XMASS, a novel approach in astroparticle physics with detailed event predictions.

Findings

Expected 3.5 to 21.1 events from a supernova 10 kpc away

Negligible background events in the detection window

Potential to distinguish supernova models with high event counts

Abstract

The coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) plays a crucial role at the final evolution of stars. The detection of it would be of importance in astroparticle physics. Among all available neutrino sources, galactic supernovae give the highest neutrino flux in the MeV range. Among all liquid xenon dark matter experiments, XMASS has the largest sensitive volume and light yield. The possibility to detect galactic supernova via the CEvNS-process on xenon nuclei in the current XMASS detector was investigated. The total number of events integrated in about 18 seconds after the explosion of a supernova 10~kpc away from the Earth was expected to be from 3.5 to 21.1, depending on the supernova model used to predict the neutrino flux, while the number of background events in the same time window was measured to be negligible. All lead to very high possibility to detect CEvNS experimentally for the first time utilizing the combination of galactic supernovae and the XMASS detector. In case of a supernova explosion as close as Betelgeuse, the total observable events can be more than ten thousand, making it possible to distinguish different supernova models by examining the evolution of neutrino event rate in XMASS.