Ultra-Transparent Antarctic Ice as a Supernova Detector

• Main Authors: Halzen Jacobsen And, F. Halzen, J. E. Jacobsen, E. Zas
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1995
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.40.3441

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. INTRODUCTION Although aspects of the observations of SN1987A [1,2] left some lingering doubts about supernova models [3,4], they provided, in general, remarkable confirmation of established ideas about supernova mechanisms [5]. At collapse, the core of the progenitor star is expected to release energy in a prompt e burst lasting a few milliseco.