Prospects for detecting supernova neutrino flavor oscillations
- Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0319 (United States)
- Institute for Nuclear Theory, Box 351550, and Department of Physics, Box 351560, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195 (United States)
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 {nu}{sub e} 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, {sup 9}Be,{sup 23}Na,{sup 35}Cl, and {sup 208}Pb. 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 {sup 208}Pb, a signal emerges that is largely flavor specific and extraordinarily sensitive to the {nu}{sub e} 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 {sup 208}Pb 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. {copyright} {ital 1999} {ital The American Physical Society}
- OSTI ID:
- 335631
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review, D, Vol. 59, Issue 8; Other Information: PBD: Apr 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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