Topic: How to Spot a Supernova from Deep Underground
Stellar core collapses create enormous bursts of tens-of-MeV neutrinos on a timescale of a few tens of seconds after collapse and preceding optical fireworks by hours or days. These neutrinos can be observed in underground neutrino detectors worldwide. The neutrinos themselves carry directional information that can be exploited in order to determine the position of the supernova (or of the compact remnant, in the case of failed explosion) on the sky. I will give an overview of methods for low-latency pointing to core-collapse events with neutrino detectors.
Speaker: Kate Scholberg of Duke University
Prof. Scholberg's broad research interests include experimental elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Her main specific interests are in neutrino physics: she studies neutrino oscillations with the Super-Kamiokande experiment, a giant underground water Cherenkov detector located in a mine in the Japanese Alps. Super-K was constructed to search for proton decay and to study neutrinos from the sun, from cosmic ray collisions in the atmosphere, and from supernovae. On Super-K, Prof. Scholberg's primary involvement is with the atmospheric neutrino data analysis, which in 1998 yielded the first convincing evidence for neutrino oscillation (implying the existence of non-zero neutrino mass).
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