Supernova Neutrinos and the absolute scale of neutrino masses - a Bayesian approach

Abstract

We apply Bayesian methods to study the sensitivity to neutrino masses of a Galactic supernova neutrino signal. Our procedure makes use of the full statistics of events and is remarkably independent of astrophysical assumptions. Present detectors can reach a sensitivity down to $m_{\nu }\sim 1$ eV. Future megaton detectors can yield up to a factor of two improvement; however, they will not be competitive with the next generation of tritium $\beta$-decay and neutrinoless double $\beta$-decay experiments.

4 pages. Contribution to the proceedings of the Fifth Latin American Simposium on High Energy Physics (V-SILAFAE) Lima, Peru, July 12-17, 2004