Detection of Supernova Neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper discusses how current and future large underground neutrino detectors can observe supernova neutrinos, providing insights into supernova mechanisms, neutrino properties, and cosmic supernova rates, with a comparison of detection techniques.

Contribution

It evaluates the capabilities of various neutrino detectors to extract detailed supernova neutrino signals and compares different experimental methods for observing cosmic supernova neutrinos.

Findings

Large detectors can detect time and flavor-dependent neutrino signals.

Detection of cosmic supernova neutrinos can inform about supernova rates.

Different experimental techniques offer complementary insights.

Abstract

The neutrino burst from a core-collapse supernova can provide information about the star explosion mechanism and the mechanisms of proto neutron star cooling but also about the intrinsic properties of the neutrino such as flavor oscillations. One important question is to understand to which extent can the supernova and the neutrino physics be decoupled in the observation of a single supernova. The capabilities of present and future large underground neutrino detectors to yield information about the time and flavor dependent neutrino signal from a future galactic supernova are described in this paper. Neutrinos from past cosmic supernovae are also observable and their detection will improve our knowledge of the core-collapse rates and average neutrino emission. A comparison between the different experimental techniques is included.