Neutrinos from the cosmic noon: a probe of the cosmic star formation history

Riya, Vikram Rentala

Published 2020-07-06Version 1

Multiple astrophysical probes of the cosmic star formation history yield widely different inferences of this rate at redshifts z > 1. While all probes seem to indicate a period of peak star formation known as the cosmic noon between 1.5 < z < 3, the detailed inferences from these probes are in disagreement. In particular, the magnitude of the peak star formation rate density indicated by H-alpha data is higher by a factor of ~ 4 compared to the magnitude of the peak indicated by UV/IR data. In this work, we explore the potential of future measurements of the diffuse supernova neutrino background at the Hyper-Kamiokande (HK) experiment to resolve the discrepancy and help pin down the magnitude of the peak cosmic star formation rate. We find that, depending upon the cosmic core-collapse supernova neutrino spectrum, HK loaded with 0.1% Gadolinium by mass has the potential to discriminate between the different star formation histories with between 1.6-20 years of data collection.