A feasibility study for the detection of supernova explosions with an undersea neutrino telescope

We study the potential of a very large volume underwater Mediterranean neutrino telescope to observe neutrinos from supernova (SN) explosions within our galaxy. The intense neutrino burst emitted in a SN explosion results in a large number of MeV neutrinos inside the instrumented volume of the neutrino telescope that can be detected (mainly) via the reaction ν ¯ e + p ⟶ e + + n . In this study we simulated the response of the underwater neutrino telescope to the electron antineutrino flux predicted by the Garching model for SN explosions. We assumed that the neutrino telescope comprises 6160 direction sensitive optical modules, each containing 31 small photomultiplier tubes. Multiple coincidences between the photomultiplier tubes of the same optical module are utilized to suppress the noise produced by 40K radioactive decays and to establish a statistical significant signature of the SN explosion.