Oscillation effects on supernova neutrino rates and spectra and detection of the shock breakout in a liquid Argon TPC

Abstract

A liquid Argon TPC (ICARUS-like) has the ability to detect clean neutrino bursts from type-II supernova collapses. In this paper, we consider for the first time the four possible detectable channels, namely, the elastic scattering on electrons from all neutrino species, $\nu_e$ charged current absorption on $Ar$ with production of excited $K$, $\bar\nu_e$ charged current absorption on $Ar$ with production of excited $Cl$ and neutral current interactions on $Ar$ from all neutrino flavors. We compute the total rates and energy spectra of supernova neutrino events including the effects of the three--flavor neutrino oscillation with matter effects in the propagation in the supernova. Results show a dramatic dependence on the oscillation parameters and in the energy spectrum, especially for charged-current events. The shock breakout phase has also been investigated using recent simulations of the core collapse supernova. We stress the importance of the neutral current signal to decouple supernova from neutrino oscillation physics.