IceCube sensitivity for low-energy neutrinos from nearby supernovae

Abstract

This paper describes the response of the IceCube neutrino telescope located at the geographic south pole to outbursts of MeV neutrinos from the core collapse of nearby massive stars. IceCube was completed in December 2010 forming a lattice of 5160 photomultiplier tubes that monitor a volume of ∼1 km 3 in the deep Antarctic ice for particle induced photons. The telescope was designed to detect neutrinos with energies greater than 100 GeV. Owing to subfreezing ice temperatures, the photomultiplier dark noise rates are particularly low. Hence IceCube can also detect large numbers of MeV neutrinos by observing a collective rise in all photomultiplier rates on top of the dark noise. With 2 ms timing resolution, IceCube can detect subtle features in the temporal development of the supernova neutrino burst. For a supernova at the galactic center, its sensitivity matches that of a background-free megaton-scale supernova search experiment. The sensitivity decreases to 20 standard deviations at the galactic edge (30 kpc) and 6 standard deviations at the Large Magellanic Cloud (50 kpc). IceCube is sending triggers from potential supernovae to the Supernova Early Warning System. The sensitivity to neutrino properties such as the neutrino hierarchy is discussed, as well as the possibility to A109, page 1 of 18 detect the neutronization burst, a short outbreak of ν e 's released by electron capture on protons soon after collapse. Tantalizing signatures, such as the formation of a quark star or a black hole as well as the characteristics of shock waves, are investigated to illustrate IceCube's capability for supernova detection.

Detecting the Supernova Breakout Burst in Terrestrial Neutrino Detectors

“…Smaller CCSNdis-tances will provide a higher count rate, but even a CCSN at 7 kpc will have a count rate of only 89 ms −1 , somewhat larger but still comparable to the detector background fluctuations. Even with introducing a 250 μs dead time to lower the background rate to 286 Hz (which leads to a ∼13% dead time total; Abbasi et al 2011), the Poissonian fluctuations on the detector background rate are 37 ms −1 , as compared with the reduced 38 ms −1 ν e signal rate for CCSNe at 10 kpc and 77 ms −1 for CCSNe at 7 kpc. Even if a CCSN was sufficiently close to distinguish a signal against the detector background fluctuations, there is still the issue of extracting the ν e signal from the e x n n + backgrounds, which our calculations show begin dominating in the first few millisecondsafter the peak ν e luminosity.…”

“…linearly on the energy of the interaction products (Abbasi et al 2011). Using a cross-section-weighted average ν e energy of 13 MeV for the 15 M e CCSN model with the LSEOS and the spread of interaction product energies, IceCube corresponds to a ∼900ktonne CCSN neutrino detector.…”

“…The breakout burst light curve is dominated by ν e 's, but the higher-energy ē n 's and ν x 's are favored by the energy-dependent effective detection volume and may swamp the ν e signal. Additionally, although the detector background rate is stable, random fluctuations around the average rate (540 Hz per PMT with no dead time and 286 Hz per PMT with a 250 μs dead time; Abbasi et al 2011) can also swamp the ν e signal. We relegate a quantitative discussion of the detectability of the ν e signal against the backgrounds to Section 6.…”

A Search for Neutrino Emission from Fast Radio Bursts with Six Years of IceCube Data

“…Where ANTARES provides a non-zero effective area but IceCube's is equal to zero for this event selection, the ratio plotted is the scale minimum 10 −2 ; likewise, where the converse is true, the ratio plotted is the scale maximum 10 high significance in very short time windows, where background is low. Furthermore, if some sub-class of FRBs is associated with nearby supernovae, MeV-scale neutrinos can be searched in the IceCube supernova stream, which looks for a sudden increase in the overall noise rate of the detector modules (Abbasi et al 2011). The ANTARES neutrino observatory is most sensitive in the southern hemisphere, where the majority of FRB sources have been detected to date.…”

Neutrinos from type Ia supernovae: The deflagration-to-detonation transition scenario

“…The electron [99] or positron [100] The event counts are for the full ∼ 1.5s neutrino signal and include energy smearing from the neutrino energy to the measured particle's energy (x-axis).…”