Synoptic Sky Surveys and the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background: Removing Astrophysical Uncertainties and Revealing Invisible Supernovae

Understand

The cumulative (anti)neutrino production from all core-collapse supernovae within our cosmic horizon gives rise to the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB), which is on the verge of detectability.

• The observed flux depends on supernova physics, but also on the cosmic history of supernova explosions; currently, the cosmic supernova rate introduces a substantial (+/-40%) uncertainty, largely through its absolute normalization.
• However, a new class of wide-field, repeated-scan (synoptic) optical sky surveys is coming online, and will map the sky in the time domain with unprecedented depth, completeness, and dynamic range.
• We show that these surveys will obtain the cosmic supernova rate by direct counting, in an unbiased way and with high statistics, and thus will allow for precise predictions of the DSNB.