Joint HEP/Theory Seminar: Supernova Neutrino Burst Statistical Analysis Issues

The burst of neutrinos created by core collapse supernovae releases some ~10^58 particles over the course of the first few tens of seconds of the explosion. Proposed next generation neutrino experiments will receive thousands to tens of thousands of events from a galactic supernova explosion. While this seems to be an embarrassment of riches compared to the 17 events observed from Supernova 1987a, I will be discussing the difficulties experimenters will face in extracting information from the signal. Advances in the understanding of supernova explosion dynamics, fundamental neutrino mixing properties, and neutrino flavor evolution dynamics have showed that the supernova neutrino burst is both rich with information and rapidly evolving in time. The neutrino signals from distinct physical processes within the explosion can potentially interfere with one another and confound our ability to detect their presence and correctly deduce the state of the explosion. I will discuss my attempts to construct statistical approaches to address these issues.