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Published April 1, 2001 | public
Journal Article Open

Black hole formation in core-collapse supernovae and time-of-flight measurements of the neutrino masses

Abstract

In large stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel, the stellar core collapses to a hot and dense proto-neutron star that cools by the radiation of neutrinos and antineutrinos of all flavors. Depending on its final mass, this may become either a neutron star or a black hole. Black hole formation may be triggered by mass accretion or a change in the high-density equation of state. We consider the possibility that black hole formation happens when the flux of neutrinos is still measurably high. If this occurs, then the neutrino signal from the supernova will be terminated abruptly (the transition takes ≲0.5 ms). The properties and duration of the signal before the cutoff are important measures of both the physics and astrophysics of the cooling proto-neutron star. For the event rates expected in present and proposed detectors, the cutoff will generally appear sharp, thus allowing model-independent time-of-flight mass tests for the neutrinos after the cutoff. If black hole formation occurs relatively early, within a few (∼1) seconds after core collapse, then the expected luminosities are of order LBH=1052 erg/s per flavor. In this case, the neutrino mass sensitivity can be extraordinary. For a supernova at a distance D=10 kpc, SuperKamiokande can detect a ν̅e mass down to 1.8 eV by comparing the arrival times of the high-energy and low-energy neutrinos in ν̅e+p→e++n. This test will also measure the cutoff time, and will thus allow a mass test of νμ and ντ relative to ν̅e. Assuming that νμ and ντ are nearly degenerate, as suggested by the atmospheric neutrino results, masses down to about 6 eV can be probed with a proposed lead detector of mass MD=4 kton (OMNIS). Remarkably, the neutrino mass sensitivity scales as (D/LBHMD)1/2. Therefore, direct sensitivity to all three neutrino masses in the interesting few-eV range is realistically possible; there are no other known techniques that have this capability.

Additional Information

©2001 The American Physical Society Received 19 October 2000; published 7 March 2001 J.F.B. was supported by Caltech for the initial portion of this work, and by the NASA/Fermilab Astrophysics Center (supported by the DOE and NASA under NAG5-7092) for the latter portion. R.N.B. was supported by NSF grant PHY-9901241. A.M. was supported at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U.S. Dept. of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. We thank Felix Boehm, Steve Bruenn, Will Farr, Josh Grindlay, Manoj Kaplinghat, Gail McLaughlin, Alex Murphy, Yong-Zhong Qian, Robert Shrock, Petr Vogel, and Jerry Wasserburg for discussions.

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August 21, 2023
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