Overall Research Project Description When we picture a telescope, we might first think of looking through a lens to witness light reflected off the surface of the moon or a planet. But, not all telescopes collect light. Some telescopes look for neutrinos, very light subatomic particles found abundantly throughout the universe. Neutrinos interact with matter very rarely, so that neutrinos, unlike light, produced deep inside dense objects like stars can escape and be detected on Earth. In this project, we will study the neutrino signal observable in a future particle detector that was produced inside a dying star's core during a supernova.

The 100 billion stars in the Milky Way shine steadily throughout their roughly billion-year lifespan by fusing light nuclei within their cores into heavier elements. But, a couple times a century, one of the most massive stars in the galaxy exhausts its fusible fuel supply, and the star's life will end in a matter of seconds in a supernova: a violent collapse of the star's core into a neutron star or a black hole. Light produced during this collapse is trapped by the outer envelop of the star, but a huge number of neutrinos are produced which can be detected on Earth. Understanding the dynamics of the stellar collapse using the observed neutrino pulse from this exotic phenomenon is on the boundary of particle and astrophysics.

Through this project, we will investigate the potential to observe neutrinos from a supernova within our galaxy with future neutrino detectors built by the COHERENT experiment at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. We will use computer programs to estimate what neutrino signals we can expect for the next supernova in our galaxy. This will explore how the signal changes with different stellar masses and what information about the dynamics of the collapse we can glean from the neutrino signal. We will also develop visualization tools to convey our results and share findings with collaborators.