A deuterated liquid scintillator for supernova neutrino detection

Abstract

For the next galactic supernova, operational neutrino telescopes will measure the neutrino flux several hours before their optical counterparts. Existing detectors, relying mostly on charged current interactions, are mostly sensitive to ν̅e and to a lesser extent to νe . In order to measure the flux of other flavors (νμ ,ν̅μ ,ντ ,and ν̅τ ), we need to observe their neutral current interactions with the detector. Such a measurement is not only crucial for overall normalization of the supernova neutrino flux but also for understanding the intricate neutrino oscillation physics. A deuterium based detector will be sensitive to all neutrino flavors. In this paper, we propose a 1 kton deuterated liquid scintillator (DLS) based detector that will see about 435 neutral current events and 170 (108) charged current νe (ν̅e ) events from a fiducial supernova at a distance of 10 kpc from Earth. We explore the possibility of extracting spectral information from the neutral current channel by measuring the quenched kinetic energy of the proton in the final state, where the neutron in the final state is tagged and used to reduce backgrounds. We also discuss the secondary interactions of the recoil neutrons in the detector.

Rocks, Water and Noble Liquids: Unfolding the Flavor Contents of Supernova Neutrinos

“…In order to detect heavy lepton flavor neutrinos ν x = {ν µ , νµ , ν τ , ντ }, one must rely on processes with significantly smaller event rates. One strategy to detect ν x is to use scattering on protons in scintillator detectors [8][9][10][11][12]. Another strategy is to exploit flavor-blind channels, for example, elastic scattering events in large direct dark matter detection experiments, and subtract the (anti-)electron-type neutrino contribution by merging data sets.…”

Rocks, water, and noble liquids: Unfolding the flavor contents of supernova neutrinos

“…In order to detect heavy lepton flavor neutrinos ν x ¼ fν μ ; νμ ; ν τ ; ντ g, one must rely on processes with significantly smaller event rates. One strategy to detect ν x is to use scattering on protons in scintillator detectors [8][9][10][11][12]. Another strategy is to exploit flavor-blind channels, for example, elastic scattering events in large direct dark matter detection experiments, and subtract the (anti-)electron-type neutrino contribution by merging datasets.…”

Using supernova neutrinos to probe strange spin of proton with JUNO and THEIA

“…In order to detect other flavors, one has to rely on future detectors such as DUNE [25,26], JUNO [27][28][29], Hyper-Kamiokande [30], and THEIA [31]. There are other proposed detectors such as HALO [32], deuterated liquid scintillator [33], and RES-NOVA [34] that have relatively smaller volume, but will play an important role in detection of supernova neutrinos.…”