Supernova Relic Neutrinos and Observational Implications for Neutrino Oscillation

Abstract

We investigate the flux and the event rate of supernova relic neutrinos (SRN) at the Super-Kamiokande (SK) detector for various neutrino oscillation models with parameters inferred from recent experimental results. We discuss the detectability of SRN at SK, comparing this SRN flux with other background neutrinos in more detail than previous studies, and it is found that in the energy range 17–25 MeV, ten-year observation might enable us to detect SRN signal (at one sigma level). We also set 90% C.L. upper limit on the SRN flux for various oscillation models using the recently released observational result by SK. In addition, we propose that the SRN observation can be used to set strong constraints on the neutrino decay models. Because of the long distance scale from cosmological supernovae to the Earth, SRN have possibility to provide much stronger limit than the present one obtained from solar neutrino observation. In the near future, further reduced upper limit is actually expected, when the current SK data are reanalyzed using some technique to reduce background events against the SRN signals. It is expected that the reduced upper limit is sufficient to provide useful implications for neutrino oscillation and decaying neutrinos.KeywordsNeutrino MassNeutrino OscillationSolar NeutrinoOscillation ModelAtmospheric NeutrinoThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.