2025/11/17 by Jakob Beise, Beise, Jakob, María Durán de las Heras +13
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Neutrino Physics Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.13148
openalex publication_date 2025/11/17 · openalex created_date 2025/11/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Neutrinos produced in core-collapse supernova offer a direct probe into the hydrodynamics and energy transport mechanisms during the collapse and play a pivotal role in the shock revival and success of the supernova explosion. Fast-time features of the neutrino luminosity and energy spectrum encode information about phenomena such as turbulence, convection, shock revival and potential quark-hadron phase transitions. In this study, we explore the detection capabilities of large-volume neutrino telescopes with a focus on IceCube and the planned extension IceCube-Gen2. Furthermore, we consider the effect on the detection sensitivity from wavelength shifters through enhanced light collection. A variety of models predict periodic fast-time features in supernova light curves; to quantify their detectability without relying on specific models, we investigate the detector response to a generic parameterisation of such features. We find that independent of feature frequency, IceCube-Gen2 instrumented with wavelength shifters has sensitivity to weaker modulations (>25% amplitude) as compared to only the strongest modulations (>50% amplitude) with IceCube. In addition, we examine the sensitivity of the neutrino lightcurve to sharp features from a quark-hadron phase transition. Phase transitions leading to a quark star remnant are detectable with IceCube at 5σ up to the edge of the Galaxy, and throughout the Small Magellanic Cloud with IceCube-Gen2 equipped with wavelength-shifters. In contrast, models collapsing into a black hole are observable only within the Galaxy, covering 41% of the CCSNe population for IceCube and nearly all (91%) for IceCube-Gen2 complemented by wavelength shifters. These results highlight the potential of IceCube-Gen2 for detecting Galactic sources more reliably and with greater reach.