Sensitivity of future liquid argon dark matter search experiments to core-collapse supernova neutrinos

TL;DR

Future liquid-argon detectors like DarkSide-20k and ARGO can detect supernova neutrinos via coherent elastic scattering, enabling high-statistics observations across our galaxy and the Small Magellanic Cloud, with detailed energy and timing reconstructions.

Contribution

This paper demonstrates the potential of upcoming liquid-argon dark matter detectors to observe supernova neutrinos through a flavor-insensitive scattering channel, including sensitivity to the neutronization burst.

Findings

Detection of supernova neutrinos throughout the galaxy and beyond.

High-precision reconstruction of neutrino energy and burst timing.

Sensitivity to the neutronization burst despite flavor oscillations.

Abstract

Future liquid-argon DarkSide-20k and ARGO detectors, designed for direct dark matter search, will be sensitive also to core-collapse supernova neutrinos, via coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. This interaction channel is flavor-insensitive with a high-cross section, enabling for a high-statistics neutrino detection with target masses of $\sim$50~t and $\sim$360~t for DarkSide-20k and ARGO, respectively. Thanks to the low-energy threshold of $\sim$0.5~keV$_{nr}$ achievable by exploiting the ionization channel, DarkSide-20k and ARGO have the potential to discover supernova bursts throughout our galaxy and up to the Small Magellanic Cloud, respectively, assuming a 11-M$_{\odot}$ progenitor star. We report also on the sensitivity to the neutronization burst, whose electron neutrino flux is suppressed by oscillations when detected via charged current and elastic scattering. Finally, the accuracies in the reconstruction of the average and total neutrino energy in the different phases of the supernova burst, as well as its time profile, are also discussed, taking into account the expected background and the detector response.