2017 Meeting of the APS Division of Particles and Fields (DPF 2017)

Observing Neutrinos from the Next Galactic Supernova with the NOvA Detectors

Jul 31, 2017, 7:08 PM

1m

Reception Area (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

Poster Computing, Analysis Tools and Data Handling Poster Session and Reception

Speaker

Justin Vasel (Indiana University)

Description

The next galactic core-collapse supernova will deliver a wealth of neutrinos which for the first time we are well-situated to measure. These explosions produce neutrinos with energies between 10 and 100 MeV over a period of tens of seconds. Galactic supernovae are relatively rare events, occurring with a frequency of just a few per century. It is therefore essential that all neutrino detectors capable of detecting these neutrinos are ready to trigger on this signal when it occurs. This poster describes a data-driven trigger which is designed to detect the neutrino signal from a galactic core-collapse supernova with the NOvA detectors. The trigger analyzes 5ms blocks of detector activity and applies background rejection algorithms to detect the signal time structure over the background. This background reduction is an essential part of the process, as the NOvA detectors are designed to detect neutrinos from Fermilab's NuMI beam which have an average energy of 2 GeV--well above the average energy of supernova neutrinos.