Simulation and data analysis of supernova neutrinos in the HALO 1kt neutrino detector

Abstract

When a star explodes in a core-collapse supernova(SN),∼99% of the gravitationalbinding energy of the star is released as neutrinos and anti-neutrinos of all flavors[1].The energies of these neutrinos are in the order of tens of MeV and the supernova neu-trinos arrive over a timescale of a few tens of seconds. Neutrinos interact with matterprimarily through weak charged-current (CC) and neutral-current (NC) interactions.The products from these interactions can be detected in detectors which can then beused to study the properties of the incoming neutrino. High rates of interactions canbe produced in detectors using heavy nuclei such as iron and lead. Lead is primarilysensitive to electron neutrinos while most neutrino detectors are sensitive to electronanti-neutrinos. Core collapse supernovae produce a huge flux of electron neutrinosand the sensitivity of lead to this flavor of neutrinos makes lead based detectors[2]useful for studying SN neutrinos. An example of a neutrino detector using lead isHALO in Canada. HALO 1kt is a proposed upgrade of HALO at LNGS in Italy. TheHALO 1kt[3] detector is intended to be more sensitive than the HALO detector. Theresults from the simulation of the HALO 1kt detector will be used to study if HALO1kt is better at distinguishing some supernova models than others