Core-collapse astrophysics with a five-megaton neutrino detector
Abstract
The legacy of solar neutrinos suggests that large neutrino detectors should be sited underground. However, to instead go underwater bypasses the need to move mountains, allowing much larger water Čerenkov detectors. We show that reaching a detector mass scale of ~5 Megatons, the size of the proposed Deep-TITAND, would permit observations of neutrino "mini-bursts" from supernovae in nearby galaxies on a roughly yearly basis, and we develop the immediate qualitative and quantitative consequences. Importantly, these mini-bursts would be detected over backgrounds without the need for optical evidence of the supernova, guaranteeing the beginning of time-domain MeV neutrino astronomy. The ability to identify, to the second, every core collapse in the local Universe would allow a continuous "death watch" of all stars within ~5 Mpc, making practical many previously-impossible tasks in probing rare outcomes and refining coordination of multiwavelength/multiparticle observations and analysis. These include the abilities to promptly detect otherwise-invisible prompt black hole formation, provide advance warning for supernova shock-breakout searches, define tight time windows for gravitational-wave searches, and identify "supernova impostors" by the nondetection of neutrinos. Observations of many supernovae, even with low numbers of detected neutrinos, will help answer questions about supernovae that cannot be resolved with a single high-statistics event in the Milky Way.
Additional Information
© 2011 American Physical Society. Received 17 October 2008; revised 9 April 2011; published 20 June 2011. We thank Shunsaku Horiuchi, Chris Kochanek, Y. Ohbayashi, José Prieto, Stephen Smartt, Michael Smy, Kris Stanek, Todd Thompson, and Mark Vagins for helpful discussions. This work was supported by Department of Energy Grant No. DE-FG02-91ER40690 (M. D. K.); National Science Foundation CAREER Grant No. PHY-0547102 to J. F. B. (H.Y. and J. F. B.); and by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation at Caltech (S. A.).Attached Files
Published - Kistler2011p14358Phys_Rev_D.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 24295
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110705-113723366
- DE-FG02-91ER40690
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- PHY-0547102
- NSF CAREER Grant
- Caltech Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- Created
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2011-07-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field