Time Profile of the Neutrino Burst from the Supernova 1987A

Extract

SN1987A gave us the first opportunity to study the supernova core directly by providing us the neutrino signal from the core. The observational data of the neutrino flux detected by Kamiokande[1] and IMB[2] show surprisingly good agreements with the theoretical predictions as a whole[3,4]. The fundamental concept of the collapse driven supernova explosion is confirmed for the first time. On the other hand, there are some puzzles. The most peculiar feature of the data is the 7 seconds gap of the Kamiokande data. The first 8 events of Kamiokande were detected in 2 seconds, following the 7 seconds gap and the last 3 events in 4 seconds. Of course just only 7 seconds gap is not unnatural if small neutrino flux come. But there were detected 3 events after the gap. These 3 events may not be produced by the weak flux. We can estimate the time integrated luminosity of corresponding to the last 3 events and get the large value such as 7 · 10⁵²erg [5]. Can we get out of this inconsistency, 3 events after the 7 seconds gap? If not, we may need to consider some nonstandard mechanism of the neutrino emission at the late time. In order to investigate the probability of the case in which there is a 7 seconds gap before 3 events, we have performed Monte Carlo simulations for the simple model of neutrino flux.