Neutrinos from Supernovae

Abstract

The discovery of neutrinos emitted from the Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) explosion is an outstanding milestone in both neutrino physics and neutrino astronomy. On the one hand, this fortunate observation of supernova neutrinos provides a strong support for the modern theory of supernova explosions. On the other hand, it implies that there exists another class of astrophysical neutrino sources or astrophysical laboratories. A part of this chapter is to introduce the standard picture of core-collapse supernovae and production mechanisms of supernova neutrinos. After a brief account of the experimental detection of the neutrino burst from the SN 1987A, we shall explore its implications on neutrino masses and neutrino lifetimes. The flavor conversions of supernova neutrinos, including the effects of collective neutrino oscillations, will be discussed in detail.