Detecting High-Energy Neutrinos from Galactic Supernovae with ATLAS

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the ATLAS collider detector can detect high-energy neutrinos from galactic supernovae, providing unique flavor and neutrino-antineutrino discrimination capabilities despite limited event rates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of collider detectors like ATLAS for supernova neutrino detection, highlighting their potential for flavor and particle-antiparticle discrimination.

Findings

ATLAS can detect up to 1 supernova neutrino event from 10 kpc.

ATLAS can distinguish neutrino flavors and neutrino-antineutrino differences.

Detection is feasible for supernovae like Betelgeuse and Eta Carinae.

Abstract

We show that ATLAS, a collider detector, can measure the flux of high-energy supernova neutrinos, which can be produced from days to months after the explosion. Using Monte Carlo simulations for predicted fluxes, we find at most $\mathcal{O}(0.1-1)$ starting events and $\mathcal{O}(10-100)$ throughgoing events from a supernova 10 kpc away. Possible Galactic supernovae from Betelgeuse and Eta Carinae are further analyzed as demonstrative examples. We argue that even with limited statistics, ATLAS has the ability to discriminate among flavors and between neutrinos and antineutrinos, making it an unique neutrino observatory so far unmatched in this capability.