Study of Supernova Neutrinos at ESSnuSB

Abstract: In this paper, we have studied the sensitivity of the ESSnuSB far detector to supernova neutrinos. ESSnuSB is a proposed long-baseline neutrino experiment in Sweden, which will use a 538 kt water Cherenkov detector to probe the leptonic phase $δ_{\rm CP}$ by studying the second oscillation maximum. However, given the very large detector volume, it will have an excellent sensitivity to supernova neutrinos if a supernova explosion occurs during the run-time of ESSnuSB. Motivated by this, we first estimate the expected event rates at the ESSnuSB far detector for three different supernova flux models and then we probe its capability to distinguish these flux models. Additionally, we also investigate the impact of systematic errors and detector efficiency. Our results show that depending on the model of the supernova neutrinos, the expected number of events detected at Earth varies significantly. Our results also show that the ESSnuSB far detector may have excellent potential in distinguishing these flux models depending upon the distance of the supernova explosion, systematic errors and detector efficiency.