1998/09/13 by George M. Fuller, G. M. Fuller, W. C. Haxton +1 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Charged current #Muon #Muon neutrino #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutrino detector #Neutrino oscillation #Neutron #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Solar neutrino #Spectral line #Supernova #Tau neutrino #Type II supernova #astro-ph #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.59.085005
published as Phys.Rev.D59:085005,1999 · 27 pages, RevTeX, 2 figures
arxiv created 1998/09/13 · openalex publication_date 1999/03/01 · arxiv updated 2010/12/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The neutrinos from a type II supernova provide perhaps our best opportunity to probe cosmologically interesting muon and/or tauon neutrino masses. This is because matter enhanced neutrino oscillations can lead to an anomalously hot \ensuremathνe spectrum, and thus to enhanced charged current cross sections in terrestrial detectors. Two recently proposed supernova neutrino observatories, OMNIS and LAND, will detect neutrons spalled from target nuclei by neutral and charged current neutrino interactions. As this signal is not flavor specific, it is not immediately clear whether a convincing neutrino oscillation signal can be extracted from such experiments. To address this issue we examine the responses of a series of possible light and heavy mass targets, 9Be,23Na,35Cl, and 208Pb. We find that strategies for detecting oscillations which use only neutron count rates are problematic at best, even if cross sections are determined by ancillary experiments. Plausible uncertainties in supernova neutrino spectra tend to obscure rate enhancements due to oscillations. However, in the case of 208Pb, a signal emerges that is largely flavor specific and extraordinarily sensitive to the \ensuremathνe temperature, the emission of two neutrons. This signal and its flavor specificity are associated with the strength and location of the first-forbidden responses for neutral and charge current reactions, aspects of the 208Pb neutrino cross section that have not been discussed previously. Hadronic spin transfer experiments might be helpful in confirming some of the nuclear structure physics underlying our conclusions.