title: Technique for direct eV-scale measurements of the Mu and tau neutrino masses using supernova neutrinos
abstract: Early black hole formation in a core-collapse supernova will abruptly truncate the neutrino fluxes. The sharp cutoff can be used to make model-independent time-of-flight neutrino mass tests. Assuming a neutrino luminosity of 10(52) erg/s per flavor at cutoff and a distance of 10 kpc, Super-Kamiokande can detect an electron neutrino mass as small as 1.8 eV, and the proposed OMNIS detector can detect mu and tau neutrino masses as small as 6 eV. We present the first technique with direct sensitivity to eV-scale mu and tau neutrino masses.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department 161-33, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Beacom
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Boyd
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mezzacappa