Jost Midenga: "Supernova Observation with Hyper-Kamiokande"

Wednesday 19 Feb 2020, 15:30 → 16:30 Europe/London

MATH-104 (Liverpool Math Department)

Supernovae are magnificent astrophysical events that produce neutron stars, black holes and many of the chemical elements necessary for life. However, despite millennia of observations and almost a century of astrophysical study, their explosion mechanism is not yet well understood.

In this talk, I will give an overview over the planned Hyper-Kamiokande experiment, which will observe the neutrino flux from the next galactic supernova in unprecedented detail. By comparing a range of different supernova models, I show that a supernova at up to 100 kpc distance would be sufficient to identify the true model with high accuracy.
Once the next galactic supernova happens, Hyper-Kamiokande will thus be able to determine details of the supernova explosion mechanism.

20200120_JostMigenda.pdf