Speaker
Description
Massive stars emit neutrinos during their evolutionary phases, which can serve as an early warning of a nearby core-collapse supernova. However, current detectors are primarily sensitive mainly to silicon burning neutrinos, restricting the warning interval to only a few hours. In contrast, core oxygen burning persists for several months, but the associated neutrinos have lower energies and are more challenging to detect. A Water-based Liquid Scintillator (WbLS) detector uses scintillation light to detect low-energy events while retaining the directional information provided by Cherenkov light. These properties may allow core oxygen-burning neutrino signals to be partially distinguished from background events. In this work, we examine the feasibility of detecting core oxygen burning neutrinos with a WbLS detector, thereby extending the warning time before core collapse. We use the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) to model stars with initial masses in the range of 12-30 solar masses, and we calculate their neutrino luminosities and spectra during the core oxygen-burning phase. For known supernova progenitor candidates within ~ 1 kpc, we estimate the neutrino fluxes and the expected event rates in a simulated WbLS detector. By comparing the signal and background event rates for different detector sizes and configurations, we assess whether core oxygen-burning neutrinos can be detected earlier than core silicon-burning neutrinos, determine the resulting warning time before core collapse, and identify the optimal detector setups required for detection.