Developing Pre-Supernova Neutrino Support for sntools

TL;DR

This paper discusses enhancing the sntools neutrino event generator to include pre-supernova neutrino modeling, aiming to improve early detection and study of imminent supernovae.

Contribution

It introduces modifications to sntools for simulating pre-supernova neutrinos, enabling early warning and better understanding of supernova phenomena.

Findings

Added support for pre-supernova neutrino generation in sntools.

Optimized time binning for robust pre-supernova neutrino simulations.

Validated the new features within the sntools framework.

Abstract

The first detection of supernova burst neutrinos was achieved through the observation of SN1987A, almost four decades ago. However, neutrinos produced during the burning stages of a star prior to core collapse are yet to be detected. Detection of pre-supernova neutrinos could provide an early warning of an imminent supernova and allow the scientific community time to focus their resources on the observation and study of such an event leading to better understanding of these rare phenomena. Integrating pre-supernova models into a neutrino event generator would help to provide a unified framework for studying these neutrinos in current and next generation detectors. sntools is a neutrino event generator for supernova burst neutrinos, originally developed to study supernova model discrimination with Hyper-Kamiokande. Work to add support for pre-supernova event generation to sntools is presented, detailing the adaptations and additions to the code, with emphasis on how time binning can be optimised for a robust simulation, and also detailing the status of the validation process. The current status and capabilities of the package will be explained alongside plans for any further work and the intended use for the new functionality within the Hyper-Kamiokande Collaboration.