Speaker
Description
The NOvA experiment has two segmented liquid scintillation detectors,
which are sensitive to the neutrino signal from a core-collapse
supernova in our galaxy. Each of these detectors performs an online
reconstruction and analysis of the neutrino interaction candidates,
comparing their time distribution to that of the signals expected from a
core-collapse supernova. The statistical significance calculated in
this comparison is used to decide if a detector is currently observing a
supernova signal.
The combination of these significance values from both detectors
provides a more efficient metric for detecting the supernova signal,
increasing the maximum distance at which NOvA can detect a core-collapse
supernova.
NOvA's approach for its combination of two detectors for supernova
detection can be generalized to a network of various detectors with
different background levels and sensitivities.
