Observing the Birth of Supermassive Black Holes with the ICECUBE Neutrino Detector

• Main Authors: Shi, X, Fuller, G M, Halzen, Francis
• Language: English
• Published: 1998
• Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy; Antarctic; Hubble; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://cds.cern.ch/record/355181

Supermassive black holes with masses $\ga{10}^6 M_\odot$ are inferred to be the central engines of Active Galactic Nuclei and quasars, and are known to exist in the centers of nearby galaxies observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. It has been suggested that these black holes form as a result of the evolution of relativistic star clusters, in which stellar collisions and tidal disruption could build-up a supermassive star. The Feynman-Chandrasekhar instability could cause such stars to collapse to black holes, accompanied by prodigious thermal neutrino/anti-neutrino emission. We explore the possibility of detecting these neutrino bursts with ICECUBE, a planned 1 km$^3$ neutrino detector in Antarctica (and an expanded version of the current AMANDA - Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array). Assuming that the formation rate of these black holes tracks that of the quasars, we show that it could be possible for ICECUBE in its supernova-watching mode to detect the neutrino bursts from supermassive collapse events at redshift $z\la 0.2$ with a rate of the formation of structure in the universe, especially when correlated with gravitational radiation signatures or even gamma-ray bursts.