Revisiting the Triangulation Method for Pointing to Supernova and Failed Supernova with Neutrinos

Understand

In view of the advent of large-scale neutrino detectors such as IceCube, the future Hyper-Kamiokande and the ones proposed for the Laguna project in Europe, we re-examine the determination of the directional position of a Galactic supernova by means of its neutrinos using the triangulation method.

• We study the dependence of the pointing accuracy on the arrival time resolution of supernova neutrinos at different detectors.
• For a failed supernova, we expect better results due to the abrupt termination of the neutrino emission which allows one to measure the arrival time with higher precision.
• We found that for the time resolution of $\pm$ 2 (4) ms, the supernova can be located with a precision of $\sim$ 5 (10)$^\circ$ on the declination and of $\sim$ 8 (15)$^\circ$ on the right ascension angle, if we combine the observations from detectors at four different sites.