Detection of Supernova Neutrinos by Neutrino-Proton Elastic Scattering

John F. Beacom; Will M. Farr; Petr Vogel

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.66.033001

paper

Detection of Supernova Neutrinos by Neutrino-Proton Elastic Scattering

arXiv:hep-ph/0205220 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.66.033001

Abstract

We propose that neutrino-proton elastic scattering, $ν + p \to ν + p$ , can be used for the detection of supernova neutrinos in scintillator detectors. Though the proton recoil kinetic energy spectrum is soft, with $T_{p} ≃ 2 E_{ν}^{2} / M_{p}$ , and the scintillation light output from slow, heavily ionizing protons is quenched, the yield above a realistic threshold is nearly as large as that from $ν ˉ_{e} + p \to e^{+} + n$ . In addition, the measured proton spectrum is related to the incident neutrino spectrum, which solves a long-standing problem of how to separately measure the total energy and temperature of $ν_{μ}$ , $ν_{τ}$ , $ν ˉ_{μ}$ , and $ν ˉ_{τ}$ . The ability to detect this signal would give detectors like KamLAND and Borexino a crucial and unique role in the quest to detect supernova neutrinos.

10 pages, 9 figures, revtex4

Detection of Supernova Neutrinos by Neutrino-Proton Elastic Scattering

Abstract

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