E and Zas E, Ultra-transparent antarctic ice as a supernova detector

We have simulated the response of a high energy neutrino telescope in deep Antarctic ice to the stream of low energy neutrinos produced by a supernova. The passage of a large flux of MeV-energy neutrinos during a period of seconds will be detected as an excess of single counting rates in all individ...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: F. Halzen, J. E. Jacobsen, E. Zas
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1996
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.255.915
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9512080v1.pdf
Description
Summary:We have simulated the response of a high energy neutrino telescope in deep Antarctic ice to the stream of low energy neutrinos produced by a supernova. The passage of a large flux of MeV-energy neutrinos during a period of seconds will be detected as an excess of single counting rates in all individual optical modules. We update here a previous estimate of the performance of such an instrument taking into account the recent discovery of absorption lengths of several hundred meters for near-UV photons in natural deep ice. The existing AMANDA detector can, even by the most conservative estimates, act as a galactic supernova watch. 1 I.