Using supernova neutrinos to probe proton strangeness

Bhavesh Chauhan, Ph.D.; University of Iowa

The strange quarks' contribution to proton's spin is poorly determined from current experiments. Neutrino-proton elastic scattering is a promising channel to measure this, but requires an intense source of low-energy neutrinos and a low-threshold detector with excellent resolution. In this talk, I will discuss my proposal to determine the proton strangeness using neutrinos from the next galactic supernova and their interactions with protons in large-volume scintillation detectors. Albeit challenging, supernova neutrinos allow for a true low-energy, thus axial-mass independent, determination and the limits can be comparable to lattice-QCD for an unlikely nearby supernova.