The advent of gadolinium-loaded Super-Kamiokande (SK-Gd) and of the soon-to-start JUNO liquid scintillator detector marks a substantial improvement in the global sensitivity for the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB). The present article reviews the detector properties most relevant for the DSNB searches in both experiments and estimates the expected signal and background levels. Based on these inputs, we evaluate the sensitivity of both experiments individually and combined. Using a simplified statistical approach, we find that both SK-Gd and JUNO have the potential to reach $>$3$σ$ evidence of the DSNB signal within 10 years of measurement. The combined results are likely to enable a $5σ$ discovery of the DSNB signal within the next decade.
The detection of the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB) will preciously contribute to gauge the properties of the core-collapse supernova population. We estimate the DSNB event rate in the next-generation neutrino detectors, Hyper-Kamiokande enriched with Gadolinium, JUNO, and DUNE. The determination of the supernova unknowns through the DSNB will be heavily driven by Hyper-Kamiokande, given its higher expected event rate, and complemented by DUNE that will help in reducing the parameters uncertainties. Meanwhile, JUNO will be sensitive to the DSNB signal over the largest energy rang…
We estimate the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB) using the simulation results for neutron star-forming and black hole-forming stellar collapses from the Garching group. Scenarios with different distributions of black-hole forming collapses with the progenitor mass are discussed, and the uncertainty on the cosmological rate of collapses is included. The electron antineutrino component of the DSNB above 11 MeV of energy is found to be ~(1.4 - 3.7) cm^-2 s^-1; the contribution of black hole-forming collapses could dominate the flux above ~25 MeV. We calculate the potential of detectin…
We revisit the possibility that neutrinos undergo non-radiative decay. We investigate the potential to extract information on the neutrino lifetime-to-mass ratio from the diffuse supernova neutrino background. To this aim, we explicitly consider the current uncertainties on the core-collapse supernova rate and the fraction of failed supernovae. We present predictions in a full 3 neutrino framework in the absence and presence of neutrino non-radiative decay, for the Super-Kamiokande+Gd, the JUNO, the Hyper-Kamiokande, and the DUNE experiments, that should observe the diffuse supernova neutrino …
The experimental searches for diffuse supernova neutrino background and proton decay in next-generation large liquid-scintillator (LS) detectors are competitive with and complementary to those in the water-Cherenkov detectors. In this paper, we carry out a systematic study of the dominant background induced by atmospheric neutrinos via their neutral-current (NC) interactions with the $^{12}{\rm C}$ nuclei in the LS detectors. The atmospheric neutrino fluxes at the location of Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) are used, as the JUNO detector is obviously a suitable representative …
A Galactic cosmic-ray transport model featuring non-homogeneous transport has been developed over the latest years. This setup is aimed at reproducing gamma-ray observations in different regions of the Galaxy (with particular focus on the progressive hardening of the hadronic spectrum in the inner Galaxy) and was shown to be compatible with the very-high-energy gamma-ray diffuse emission recently detected up to PeV energies. In this work, we extend the results previously presented to test the reliability of that model throughout the whole sky. To this aim, we compare our predictions with detai…
Non-standard neutrino interactions with a massive boson can produce the bosons in the core of core-collapse supernovae (SNe). After the emission of the bosons from the SN core, their subsequent decays into neutrinos can modify the SN neutrino flux. We show future observations of neutrinos from a next galactic SN in Super-Kamiokande (SK) and Hyper-Kamiokande (HK) can probe flavor-universal non-standard neutrino couplings to a light boson, improving the previous limit from the SN 1987A neutrino burst by several orders of magnitude. We also discuss sensitivity of the flavor-universal non-standard…
Although Galactic core-collapse supernovae (SNe) only happen a few times per century, every hour a vast number of explosions happen in the whole universe, emitting energy in the form of neutrinos, resulting in the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). The DSNB has not yet been detected, but Super-Kamiokande doped with gadolinium is expected to yield the first statistically significant observation within the next several years. Since the neutrinos produced at the core collapse undergo mixing during their propagation to Earth, the flavor content at detection is a test of oscillation phys…
The diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB) is a powerful future tool to constrain core-collapse explosion mechanisms without observation of a nearby event, and the corresponding signal has been calculated for a variety of collapse models. For Supernova (SN) 1987A, a peculiar double neutrino burst was detected, but models for the double collapse have never been studied in the DSNB context. Here, we fill this gap and compare the DSNB signal expected in the Standard Collapse (SC) and the Double Collapse (DC) models in various future detectors, including Hyper-Kamiokande, JUNO, DUNE and the …
Unveiling Neutrino Nature with the Diffuse Supernova Background
Università del Salento（萨莱诺大学）；INFN-Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Lecce（意大利国家核物理研究所莱切分部）；Niels Bohr International Academy and DARK, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所及尼尔斯·玻尔国际学院与DARK）
Cosmic Rays (CRs) interact with the diffuse gas, radiation, and magnetic fields in the interstellar medium (ISM) to produce electromagnetic emissions that are a significant component of the all-sky flux across a broad wavelength range. The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has measured these emissions at GeV $γ$-ray energies with high statistics. Meanwhile, the High-Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) telescope array has observed large-scale Galactic diffuse emission in the TeV $γ$-ray energy range. The emissions observed at GeV and TeV energies are connected by the common origin of the CR pa…
We present the detection potential for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB) at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), using the inverse-beta-decay (IBD) detection channel on free protons. We employ the latest information on the DSNB flux predictions, and investigate in detail the background and its reduction for the DSNB search at JUNO. The atmospheric neutrino induced neutral current (NC) background turns out to be the most critical background, whose uncertainty is carefully evaluated from both the spread of model predictions and an envisaged \textit{in situ} measur…
Recently, the LIGO observatory reported the first direct observation of gravitational waves, with a signal consistent with a binary black hole merger. This detection triggered several follow-up searches for coincident emission in electromagnetic waves as well as neutrinos, but no such emission was found. In this article, the implications of the non-detection of counterpart neutrinos are investigated using general arguments. The results are interpreted with a parameter denoting the energy emitted in neutrinos relative to the energy emitted in gravitational waves. The bound on this parameter fro…
Future large liquid-scintillator (LS) detectors are competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the searches for diffuse supernova neutrino background and nucleon decay. In a companion paper, we have performed a systematic calculation of the neutral-current (NC) background induced by atmospheric neutrino interactions on $^{12}{\rm C}$ nuclei in LS detectors, which are expected to be crucially important for the experimental searches for the diffuse supernova neutrino background and nucleon decay. In this paper, we perform a systematic study on the measurement of the N…
The diffuse cosmic supernova neutrino background (DSNB) is observational target of the gadolinium-loaded Super-Kamiokande (SK) detector and the forthcoming JUNO and Hyper-Kamiokande detectors. Current predictions are hampered by our still incomplete understanding of the supernova (SN) explosion mechanism and of the neutron star (NS) equation of state and maximum mass. In our comprehensive study we revisit this problem on grounds of the landscapes of successful and failed SN explosions obtained by Sukhbold et al. and Ertl et al. with parametrized one-dimensional neutrino engines for large sets …
The importance of detecting neutrinos from a Milky Way core-collapse supernova is well known. An under-studied phase is proto-neutron star cooling. For SN 1987A, this seemingly began at about 2 s, and is thus probed by only 6 of the 19 events (and only the $\barν_e$ flavor) in the Kamiokande-II and IMB detectors. With the higher statistics expected for present and near-future detectors, it should be possible to measure detailed neutrino signals out to very late times. We present the first comprehensive study of neutrino detection during the proto-neutron star cooling phase, considering a varie…
Ultra-high-energy (UHE) neutrinos, with EeV-scale energies, carry with them unique insight into fundamental open questions in astrophysics and particle physics. For fifty years, they have evaded discovery, but maybe not for much longer, thanks to new UHE neutrino telescopes, presently under development. We capitalize on this upcoming opportunity by producing state-of-the-art forecasts of the discovery of a diffuse flux of UHE neutrinos in the next 10-20 years. By design, our forecasts are anchored in often-overlooked nuance from theory and experiment; we gear them to the radio array of the pla…
Thorne-Żytkow objects (TŻOs) are a class of stellar object comprised of a neutron star core surrounded by a large and diffuse envelope. Their exterior appearance is identical to red supergiants; the distinctive electromagnetic signature of a TŻO is a suite of unusual chemical abundance patterns, including excesses of Li, Rb, Mo, and Ca. However, electromagnetic observations cannot unambiguously identify the presence of a neutron star core. Detection of continuous gravitational wave emission from a rotating neutron star core would provide strong supporting evidence for the existence of TŻOs. We…
Fully understanding the average core-collapse supernova requires detecting the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB) in all flavors. While the DSNB $\barν_e$ flux is near detection, and the DSNB $ν_e$ flux has a good upper limit and prospects for improvement, the DSNB $ν_x$ (each of $ν_μ, ν_τ, \barν_μ, \barν_τ$) flux has a poor limit and heretofore had no clear path for improved sensitivity. We show that a succession of xenon-based dark matter detectors -- XENON1T (completed), XENONnT/LUX-ZEPLIN (running), and DARWIN (proposed) -- can dramatically improve sensitivity to DSNB $ν_x$ the n…
Direct Detection of Millicharged Particles from Supernovae
University of California, Riverside（加州大学河滨分校）；Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学）；The University of Sheffield（谢菲尔德大学）；The University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室）
The recent LIGO observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger triggered several follow-up searches from both electromagnetic wave as well as neutrino observatories. Since in general, it is expected that all matter has been removed from the binary black hole environment long before the merger, no neutrino emission is expected from such mergers. Still, it remains interesting to test this hypothesis. The ratio of the energy emitted in neutrinos with respect to gravitational waves represents a useful parameter to constrain the environment of such astrophysical events. In addit…
The RICE experiment seeks observation of ultra-high energy (UHE; >100 PeV) neutrinos interacting in Antarctic ice, by measurement of the radiowavelength Cherenkov radiation resulting from the collision of a neutrino with an ice molecule. RICE was initiated in 1999 as a first-generation prototype for an eventual, large-scale in-ice UHE neutrino detector. Herein, we present updated limits on the diffuse UHE neutrino flux, based on twelve years of data taken between 1999 and 2010. We find no convincing neutrino candidates, resulting in 95% confidence-level model-dependent limits on the flux which…
Analogously to globular clusters, the dense stellar environment of the Galactic center has been proposed to host a large population of as-yet undetected millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Recently, this hypothesis found support in the analysis of gamma rays from the inner Galaxy seen by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi satellite, which revealed a possible excess of diffuse GeV photons in the inner 15 deg about the Galactic center (Fermi GeV excess). The excess can be interpreted as the collective emission of thousands of MSPs in the Galactic bulge, with a spherical distribution that st…
We examine the prospects for detecting supernova $ν_e$ in JUNO, RENO-50, LENA, or other approved or proposed large liquid scintillator detectors. The main detection channels for supernova $ν_e$ in a liquid scintillator are its elastic scattering with electrons and its charged-current interaction with the $^{12}$C nucleus. In existing scintillator detectors, the numbers of events from these interactions are too small to be very useful. However, at the 20-kton scale planned for the new detectors, these channels become powerful tools for probing the $ν_e$ emission. We find that the $ν_e$ spectrum…
Tau neutrinos are expected to comprise roughly one third of both the astrophysical and cosmogenic neutrino flux, but currently the flavor ratio is poorly constrained and the expected flux at energies above $10^{17}$ eV is low. We present a detector concept aimed at measuring the diffuse flux of tau neutrinos in this energy range via a high-elevation mountaintop detector using the radio technique. The detector searches for radio signals from upgoing air showers generated by Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. Signals from several antennas in a compact array are coherently summed at the trigger level,…
The munuSSM is a supersymmetric model that has been proposed to solve the problems generated by other supersymmetric extensions of the standard model of particle physics. Given that R-parity is broken in the munuSSM, the gravitino is a natural candidate for decaying dark matter since its lifetime becomes much longer than the age of the Universe. In this model, gravitino dark matter could be detectable through the emission of a monochromatic gamma ray in a two-body decay. We study the prospects of the Fermi-LAT telescope to detect such monochromatic lines in 5 years of observations of the most …
We compute the sensitivity to dark matter annihilations for the forthcoming large Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) in several primary channels and over a range of dark matter masses from 30 GeV up to 80 TeV. For all channels, we include inverse Compton scattering of e$^\pm$ by dark matter annihilations on the ambient photon background, which yields substantial contributions to the overall gamma-ray flux. We improve the analysis over previous work by: i) implementing a spectral and morphological analysis of the gamma-ray emission; ii) taking into account the most up-to-date cosmic ray background…
Merging compact binaries are the most viable and best studied candidates for gravitational wave (GW) detection by the fully operational network of ground-based observatories. In anticipation of the first detections, the expected distribution of GW sources in the local universe is of considerable interest. Here we investigate the full phase space distribution of coalescing compact binaries at $z = 0$ using dark matter simulations of structure formation. The fact that these binary systems acquire large barycentric velocities at birth ("kicks") results in merger site distributions that are more d…
We investigate $^{60}$Fe in massive stars and core-collapse supernovae focussing on uncertainties that influence its production in 15, 20 and 25 $M_\odot$ stars at solar metallicity. We find that the $^{60}$Fe yield is a monotonic increasing function of the uncertain $^{59}$Fe$(n,γ)^{60}$Fe cross section and that a factor of 10 reduction in the reaction rate results in a factor 8-10 reduction in the $^{60}$Fe yield; while a factor of 10 increase in the rate increases the yield by a factor 4-7. We find that none of the 189 simulations we have performed are consistent with a core-collapse supern…
We present a likelihood profile stacking technique based on the {\it Fermi}-Large Area Telescope (LAT) data to explore the $γ$-ray characteristics of {\it Fermi}-LAT undetected astrophysical populations. The pipeline is applied to a sample of $γ$-ray unresolved extreme blazars, i.e., sources with the highest synchrotron peak frequencies ($ν_{\rm Syn}^{\rm peak}\geqslant 10^{17}$ Hz), and we report a cumulative $γ$-ray detection with more than 32$σ$ confidence for 2 degrees of freedom. Comparing the generated stacked $γ$-ray spectrum with the sensitivity limits of the upcoming Cherenkov Telesco…
We investigate the diffusion of cosmic rays into molecular cloud complexes. Using the cosmic-ray diffusion formalism of Protheroe, et al. (2008), we examine how cosmic rays diffuse into clouds exhibiting different density structures, including a smoothed step-function, as well as Gaussian and inverse-$r$ density distributions, which are well known to trace the structure of star-forming regions. These density distributions were modelled as an approximation to the Galactic centre cloud G0.216+0.016, a recently-discovered massive dust clump that exhibits limited signs of massive star formation an…
The $μν$SSM provides a solution to the $μ$-problem of the MSSM and explains the origin of neutrino masses by simply using right-handed neutrino superfields. Given that R-parity is broken in this model, the gravitino is a natural candidate for dark matter since its lifetime becomes much longer than the age of the Universe. We consider the implications of gravitino dark matter in the $μν$SSM, analyzing in particular the prospects for detecting gamma rays from decaying gravitinos. If the gravitino explains the whole dark matter component, a gravitino mass larger than 20 GeV is disfavored by the i…
The high-energy Diffuse Gamma-Ray Background (DGRB) is expected to be produced by unresolved isotropically distributed astrophysical objects, potentially including dark matter annihilation or decay emissions in galactic or extragalactic structures. The DGRB has only been observed below 1 TeV; above this energy, upper limits have been reported. Observations or stringent limits on the DGRB above this energy could have significant multi-messenger implications, such as constraining the origin of TeV-PeV astrophysical neutrinos detected by IceCube. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observato…
Neutrinos might interact among themselves through forces that have so far remained hidden. Throughout the history of the Universe, such \emph{secret} interactions could lead to scatterings between the neutrinos from supernova explosions and the non-relativistic relic neutrinos left over from the Big Bang. Such scatterings can boost the cosmic neutrino background (C$ν$B) to energies of ${\cal O}$(MeV), making it, in principle, observable in experiments searching for the diffuse supernova neutrino background. Assuming a model-independent, but flavor universal, four-Fermi interaction, we determin…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has been completed in December 2010. In this paper we describe the final detector and report results on physics and performance using data taken at different stages of the yet incomplete detector. No signals for cosmic neutrinos from point sources and diffuse fluxes have been found. Prospects of these searches, including the setup of multi-messenger programs, are discussed. The limits on neutrinos from GRBs, being far below model predictions, require a reevaluation of GRB model assumptions. Various measurements of cosmic ray properties have be…
