International School of Cosmic Ray Astrophysics

15^th  Course: "Astrophysics at Ultra-high Energies"

 20-27 June 2006
Ettore Majorana Centre
Erice, Sicily, Italy

Topic: The LUD Detector of Neutrinos from Collapsing Stars
Lecturer: Piero Galeotti

The theory of stellar evolution predicts that massive stars must end their lives during a gravitational stellar collapse, eventually accompanied by a type II supernova. The huge binding energy of the collapsed core is emitted, mostly as neutrinos, in a very short time. In this lecture we shall discuss the mechanisms of a gravitational collapse and neutrino emission, the characteristics of the burst at the Earth, and the possibility to detect neutrinos in an underground detector, such as the LVD experiment in the Gran Sasso Laboratory.