Supernova Neutrinos: Production, Oscillations and Detection

TY - JOUR

T1 - Supernova Neutrinos

T2 - Production, Oscillations and Detection

AU - Mirizzi, Alessandro

AU - Tamborra, Irene

AU - Janka, Hans-Thomas

AU - Saviano, Ninetta

AU - Scholberg, Kate

AU - Bollig, Robert

AU - Hudepohl, Lorenz

AU - Chakraborty, Sovan

N1 - (revised version:116 pages, 46 pdf figures. References updated and typos removed. Matches the version published on La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento)

PY - 2016/1/1

Y1 - 2016/1/1

N2 - Neutrinos play a crucial role in the collapse and explosion of massive stars, governing the infall dynamics of the stellar core, triggering and fueling the explosion and driving the cooling and deleptonization of the newly formed neutron star. Due to their role neutrinos carry information from the heart of the explosion and, due to their weakly interacting nature, offer the only direct probe of the dynamics and thermodynamics at the center of a supernova. In this paper, we review the present status of modelling the neutrino physics and signal formation in collapsing and exploding stars. We assess the capability of current and planned large underground neutrino detectors to yield faithful information of the time and flavor dependent neutrino signal from a future Galactic supernova. We show how the observable neutrino burst would provide a benchmark for fundamental supernova physics with unprecedented richness of detail. Exploiting the treasure of the measured neutrino events requires a careful discrimination of source-generated properties from signal features that originate on the way to the detector. As for the latter, we discuss self-induced flavor conversions associated with neutrino-neutrino interactions that occur in the deepest stellar regions; matter effects that modify the pattern of flavor conversions in the dynamical stellar envelope; neutrino-oscillation signatures that result from structural features associated with the shock-wave propagation as well as turbulent mass motions in post-shock layers. Finally, we highlight our current understanding of the formation of the diffuse supernova neutrino background and we analyse the perspectives for a detection of this relic signal that integrates the contributions from all past core-collapse supernovae in the Universe.

AB - Neutrinos play a crucial role in the collapse and explosion of massive stars, governing the infall dynamics of the stellar core, triggering and fueling the explosion and driving the cooling and deleptonization of the newly formed neutron star. Due to their role neutrinos carry information from the heart of the explosion and, due to their weakly interacting nature, offer the only direct probe of the dynamics and thermodynamics at the center of a supernova. In this paper, we review the present status of modelling the neutrino physics and signal formation in collapsing and exploding stars. We assess the capability of current and planned large underground neutrino detectors to yield faithful information of the time and flavor dependent neutrino signal from a future Galactic supernova. We show how the observable neutrino burst would provide a benchmark for fundamental supernova physics with unprecedented richness of detail. Exploiting the treasure of the measured neutrino events requires a careful discrimination of source-generated properties from signal features that originate on the way to the detector. As for the latter, we discuss self-induced flavor conversions associated with neutrino-neutrino interactions that occur in the deepest stellar regions; matter effects that modify the pattern of flavor conversions in the dynamical stellar envelope; neutrino-oscillation signatures that result from structural features associated with the shock-wave propagation as well as turbulent mass motions in post-shock layers. Finally, we highlight our current understanding of the formation of the diffuse supernova neutrino background and we analyse the perspectives for a detection of this relic signal that integrates the contributions from all past core-collapse supernovae in the Universe.

KW - astro-ph.HE

KW - astro-ph.SR

KW - hep-ex

KW - hep-ph

U2 - 10.1393/ncr/i2016-10120-8

DO - 10.1393/ncr/i2016-10120-8

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0393-697X

VL - 39

SP - 1

EP - 112

JO - La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento

JF - La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento

IS - 1-2

ER -