University of Pennsylvania
Department of Physics and Astronomy
High Energy Physics Seminar
Apr. 20 at 1:30
Abstract:
Neutrinos from the Next Galactic Supernova
There is great current interest in the physics of neutrinos,
especially given the recent results on atmospheric neutrinos that seem
to confirm mass and mixing. Important further clues about neutrinos
are likely to come from astrophysics, in particular from the next
Galactic supernova. Core-collapse supernovae emit of order $10^{58}$
neutrinos and antineutrinos of all flavors over several seconds, with
average energies of 10--25 MeV. I will discuss what some present
neutrino detectors will observe, and what we will learn from these
measurements. In particular, I will consider the Sudbury Neutrino
Observatory (SNO), for which several hundred events are expected from
a future supernova at 10 kpc. From these events, it will be possible
to probe tau neutrino masses a million times smaller than the current
limit from accelerator studies. This seems to be the best possibility
for direct determination of a mu or tau neutrino mass within the range
interesting to cosmology and particle physics. Finally, I will also
discuss the problem of locating a supernova by its neutrinos.