Supernova neutrino physics with xenon dark matter detectors: A timely perspective

TL;DR

Liquid xenon dark matter detectors can effectively detect supernova neutrinos, providing valuable data on supernova properties and neutrino energies, with upcoming experiments significantly enhancing detection capabilities.

Contribution

This study introduces a realistic detector model for supernova neutrino detection using liquid xenon experiments, demonstrating their potential and complementarity to existing neutrino telescopes.

Findings

XENON1T can detect supernovae up to 25 kpc away with high significance.

DARWIN could detect supernovae up to 65 kpc, observing hundreds of events.

Detectors can measure neutrino energies and supernova explosion parameters.

Abstract

Dark matter detectors that utilize liquid xenon have now achieved tonne-scale targets, giving them sensitivity to all flavours of supernova neutrinos via coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. Considering for the first time a realistic detector model, we simulate the expected supernova neutrino signal for different progenitor masses and nuclear equations of state in existing and upcoming dual-phase liquid xenon experiments. We show that the proportional scintillation signal (S2) of a dual-phase detector allows for a clear observation of the neutrino signal and guarantees a particularly low energy threshold, while the backgrounds are rendered negligible during the supernova burst. XENON1T (XENONnT and LZ; DARWIN) experiments will be sensitive to a supernova burst up to 25 (35; 65) kpc from Earth at a significance of more than 5 sigma, observing approximately 35 (123; 704) events from a 27 Msun supernova progenitor at 10 kpc. Moreover, it will be possible to measure the average neutrino energy of all flavours, to constrain the total explosion energy, and to reconstruct the supernova neutrino light curve. Our results suggest that a large xenon detector such as DARWIN will be competitive with dedicated neutrino telescopes, while providing complementary information that is not otherwise accessible.