1998/02/28 by J. F. Beacom, P. Vogel · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutrino detector #Neutrino oscillation #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Supernova #astro-ph #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.58.053010
published as Phys.Rev.D58:053010,1998 · 13 pages including 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. D; second version has minor corrections and is in two-column form
arxiv created 1998/06/10 · openalex publication_date 1998/08/07 · arxiv updated 2010/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The \ensuremathν_\ensuremathμ and \ensuremathν_\ensuremathτ neutrinos (and their antiparticles) from a Galactic core-collapse supernova can be observed in a water-\ifmmode \checkC\else \vC\fierenkov detector by the neutral-current excitation of 16O. The number of events expected is several times greater than from neutral-current scattering on electrons. The observation of this signal would be a strong test that these neutrinos are produced in core-collapse supernovae, and with the right characteristics. In this paper, this signal is used as the basis for a technique of neutrino mass determination from a future Galactic supernova. The masses of the \ensuremathν_\ensuremathμ and \ensuremathν_\ensuremathτ neutrinos can either be measured or limited by their delay relative to the \ensuremathνe neutrinos. By comparing to the high-statistics \ensuremathνe data instead of the theoretical expectation, much of the model dependence is canceled. Numerical results are presented for a future supernova at 10 kpc as seen in the SuperKamiokande detector. Under reasonable assumptions, and in the presence of the expected counting statistics, \ensuremathν_\ensuremathμ and \ensuremathν_\ensuremathτ masses down to about 50 eV can be simply and robustly determined. The signal used here is more sensitive to small neutrino masses than the signal based on neutrino-electron scattering.