IceCube sensitivity for low-energy neutrinos from nearby supernovae

¹ Dept. of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
² Dept. of Subatomic and Radiation Physics, University of Gent, 9000 Gent, Belgium
³ Dept. of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI 54022, USA
⁴ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
⁵ Dept. of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3NP, UK
⁶ Dept. of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany
⁷ Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA
⁸ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
⁹ Dept. of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹⁰ DESY, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany
¹¹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹² Dept. of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
¹³ Dept. of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
¹⁴ Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
¹⁵ Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
¹⁶ Dept. of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
¹⁷ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
¹⁸ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany
¹⁹ Oskar Klein Centre and Dept. of Physics, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden
²⁰ Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Dienst ELEM, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
²¹ Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, 53115 Bonn, Germany
²² Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden
²³ Dept. of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221 Dortmund, Germany
²⁴ Laboratory for High Energy Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
²⁵ Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, 69177 Heidelberg, Germany
²⁶ Dept. of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
²⁷ Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
²⁸ School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
²⁹ CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA 30314, USA
³⁰ Dept. of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA 70813, USA
³¹ Dept. of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
³² Dept. of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2G7, Canada
³³ Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099 Mainz, Germany
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
³⁴ Université de Mons, 7000 Mons, Belgium
³⁵ Dept. of Physics, Chiba University, Chiba 263-8522, Japan
³⁶ Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany
³⁷ alsoSezione INFN, Dipartimento di Fisica, 70126 Bari, Italy
³⁸ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr., Anchorage, AK 99508, USA
³⁹ Dept. of Physics, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Bridgetown BB11000, Barbados
⁴⁰ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
⁴¹ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
⁴² Now at T.U. Munich, 85748 Garching & Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
⁴³ Now at T.U. Munich, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴⁴ Now at Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA
⁴⁵ Now at Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD 57701, USA
⁴⁶ Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA

Received: 2 August 2011
Accepted: 18 September 2011

Abstract

This paper describes the response of the IceCube neutrino telescope located at the geographic south pole to outbursts of MeV neutrinos from the core collapse of nearby massive stars. IceCube was completed in December 2010 forming a lattice of 5160 photomultiplier tubes that monitor a volume of  ~1 km³ in the deep Antarctic ice for particle induced photons. The telescope was designed to detect neutrinos with energies greater than 100 GeV. Owing to subfreezing ice temperatures, the photomultiplier dark noise rates are particularly low. Hence IceCube can also detect large numbers of MeV neutrinos by observing a collective rise in all photomultiplier rates on top of the dark noise. With 2 ms timing resolution, IceCube can detect subtle features in the temporal development of the supernova neutrino burst. For a supernova at the galactic center, its sensitivity matches that of a background-free megaton-scale supernova search experiment. The sensitivity decreases to 20 standard deviations at the galactic edge (30 kpc) and 6 standard deviations at the Large Magellanic Cloud (50 kpc). IceCube is sending triggers from potential supernovae to the Supernova Early Warning System. The sensitivity to neutrino properties such as the neutrino hierarchy is discussed, as well as the possibility to