Pre-Supernova Alert System for Super-Kamiokande

Abstract

In 2020, the Super-Kamiokande (SK) experiment moved to a new stage (SK-Gd) in which gadolinium (Gd) sulfate octahydrate was added to the water in the detector, enhancing the efficiency to detect thermal neutrons and consequently improving the sensitivity to low energy electron anti-neutrinos from inverse beta decay (IBD) interactions. SK-Gd has the potential to provide early alerts of incipient core-collapse supernovae through detection of electron anti-neutrinos from thermal and nuclear processes responsible for the cooling of massive stars before the gravitational collapse of their cores. These pre-supernova neutrinos emitted during the silicon burning phase can exceed the energy threshold for IBD reactions. We present the sensitivity of SK-Gd to pre-supernova stars and the techniques used for the development of a pre-supernova alarm based on the detection of these neutrinos in SK, as well as prospects for future SK-Gd phases with higher concentrations of Gd. For the current SK-Gd phase, high-confidence alerts for Betelgeuse could be issued up to nine hours in advance of the core-collapse itself.

20 pages

References in corpus (9)

• Present-day cosmic abundances. A comprehensive study of nearby early B-type stars and implications for stellar and Galactic evolution and interstellar dust models
• The Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background
• An Updated 2017 Astrometric Solution for Betelgeuse
• Neutrinos from beta processes in a presupernova: probing the isotopic evolution of a massive star
• Sensitivity of Super-Kamiokande with Gadolinium to Low Energy Anti-neutrinos from Pre-supernova Emission
• Unlocking Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars with $\text{Gaia}$ DR2 II: Cluster and Association membership
• Theoretical prediction of presupernova neutrinos and their detection
• Stellar masses from granulation and oscillations of 23 bright red giants observed by BRITE - Constellation
• The variable stellar wind of Rigel probed at high spatial and spectral resolution

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Neutrinos and nucleosynthesis of elements
• Combined Pre-Supernova Alert System with Kamland and Super-Kamiokande
• Supernova model discrimination with a kilotonne-scale Gd-H${}_2$O Cherenkov detector
• Comprehensive neutrino light curves and spectra: from pre-supernova evolution to early supernova phase