Supernova neutrinos and the signal from the next galactic supernova

After a review of the mechanism for generating supernova neutrinos, I describe the first results from a comprehensive Monte Carlo analysis which simulated the neutrino signal from a galactic supernova in a large water Cerenkov detector. By exploiting the various features of the signal in a way which is largely independent of the supernova model, a sensitivity to a tau neutrino mass down to the cosmologically interesting range of ≅25 eV for a medium luminosity burst seems possible. In addition, these results allow us to elucidate several aspects of a supernova neutrino signal in water detectors which had not been previously explored, including new results on the observability of the neutronization burst.