1301.3390 (Robert Ehrlich)

Could a reported 2007 analysis of Super-Kamiokande data have missed a detectable supernova signal from Andromeda?    [PDF]

Robert Ehrlich

According to a 2007 paper there was no evidence for a neutrino "burst" of two or more events in Super-Kamiokande (SK) during the entire period of data-taking from 1996 to 2005 from Andromeda or anywhere else. It may seem presumptuous for the author to suggest that this carefully done analysis may have missed a clearly detectable signal, but that is indeed the case. A new search should be performed using an alternative method, which depends on the hypothesis that two of the neutrino mass eigenstates have masses 4.0 eV and 21.4 eV which was inferred from an analysis of the SN 1987A data. Although one might argue that the hypothesis of such large neutrino masses is remote, there is a way they could be compatible with observed upper limits on the electron neutrino mass and the sum of the neutrino masses from cosmology involving a third tachyonic ($m^2<0$) eigenstate. Given the importance of a positive supernova search result, and the ease of conducting it using existing SK data, there would seem to be little reason not to do it.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.3390