IceCube is a cubic km Cherenkov detector located in the South Pole designed to observe high energy astrophysical neutrinos over GeV energies, optimal for most astrophysical searches. Although designed for high-energy neutrinos, it also monitors our galaxy for supernovae using neutrinos of tens of MeV thanks to a buffering system that enables the temporary capture of both sub-threshold and threshold hits.
Supernovae can also emit high-energy neutrinos with the shock between the ejecta and the circumstellar material from the progenitor star, creating a high flux of neutrinos with energies on the order of TeV and above. These neutrinos could reach earth 0.1 day - 1 year after the low-energy neutrinos.
In this talk, I will describe my service work for IceCube, where I monitor and maintain the buffering system (Hitspool), and my analysis work aimed to investigate whether we can extend Icecube's supernova observational reach to the local galactic group by using these high-energy neutrinos.
