TY - JOUR
T1 - Presupernova Neutrinos
T2 - Directional Sensitivity and Prospects for Progenitor Identification
AU - Mukhopadhyay, Mainak
AU - Lunardini, Cecilia
AU - Timmes, F. X.
AU - Zuber, Kai
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2020/8/20
Y1 - 2020/8/20
N2 - We explore the potential of current and future liquid scintillator neutrino detectors of O(10) kt mass to localize a presupernova neutrino signal in the sky. In the hours preceding the core collapse of a nearby star (at distance D ≤ 1kpc), tens to hundreds of inverse beta decay events will be recorded, and their reconstructed topology in the detector can be used to estimate the direction to the star. Although the directionality of inverse beta decay is weak (∼8% forward-backward asymmetry for currently available liquid scintillators), we find that for a fiducial signal of 200 events (which is realistic for Betelgeuse), a positional error of ∼60° can be achieved, resulting in the possibility to narrow the list of potential stellar candidates to less than 10, typically. For a configuration with improved forward-backward asymmetry (∼40%, as expected for a lithium-loaded liquid scintillator), the angular sensitivity improves to ∼15°, and-when a distance upper limit is obtained from the overall event rate-it is in principle possible to uniquely identify the progenitor star. Any localization information accompanying an early supernova alert will be useful to multimessenger observations and to particle physics tests using collapsing stars.
AB - We explore the potential of current and future liquid scintillator neutrino detectors of O(10) kt mass to localize a presupernova neutrino signal in the sky. In the hours preceding the core collapse of a nearby star (at distance D ≤ 1kpc), tens to hundreds of inverse beta decay events will be recorded, and their reconstructed topology in the detector can be used to estimate the direction to the star. Although the directionality of inverse beta decay is weak (∼8% forward-backward asymmetry for currently available liquid scintillators), we find that for a fiducial signal of 200 events (which is realistic for Betelgeuse), a positional error of ∼60° can be achieved, resulting in the possibility to narrow the list of potential stellar candidates to less than 10, typically. For a configuration with improved forward-backward asymmetry (∼40%, as expected for a lithium-loaded liquid scintillator), the angular sensitivity improves to ∼15°, and-when a distance upper limit is obtained from the overall event rate-it is in principle possible to uniquely identify the progenitor star. Any localization information accompanying an early supernova alert will be useful to multimessenger observations and to particle physics tests using collapsing stars.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ab99a6
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ab99a6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85090406275
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 899
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 153
ER -