AstroNu

The Neutrino Astrophysics (AstroNu) group at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen aims at unveiling the nature of fascinating weakly interacting elementary particles, such as the neutrino, and at using them as probes of the engine behind the most energetic transients in our Universe.

About us

Neutrino Astrophysics (AstroNu) is a research group at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen.

Neutrinos vastly outnumber all other particles in our Universe, except photons. Neutrinos are weakly interacting particles playing a fundamental role in astrophysical environments. Because of their feeble interacting nature, neutrinos escape almost unimpeded from their sources hence being powerful messengers of extreme astrophysical sites not otherwise accessible. The AstroNu group aims at unveiling the nature of these puzzling elementary particles and at using neutrinos as probes of the engine behind the most energetic transients in our Universe.

Our research activity is supported by the University of Copenhagen, the Villum Foundation, the Knud Højgaard Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

The AstroNu group is actively engaged in supporting underrepresented groups and enhancing diversity at the Niels Bohr Institute. We firmly believe that a diverse and inclusive scientific environment is beneficial to our research work.

Research

Neutrinos are fascinating elementary particles. They vastly outnumber all other particles in our Universe, except photons. Neutrinos interact very weakly and exist in three distinct families or “flavors” which oscillate (convert) into each other by flavor mixing.

In addition to the Early Universe, neutrinos are copiously produced in a variety of astrophysical environments, ranging from stars like the Sun to the most extreme astrophysical transients such as core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers. Many cosmic accelerators, such as gamma-ray bursts, starburst galaxies or active galactic nuclei, should also produce neutrinos.

Owing to their weak interactions, neutrinos have the extraordinary ability to escape undisturbed from these cosmic sources and carry information on sites otherwise unreachable. Moreover, neutrinos and particles beyond the ones predicted within the Standard Model dramatically affect the dynamics of their sources and the synthesis of new elements.

The AstroNu group aims at addressing the following questions:

Which is the role of weakly interacting particles and their interactions in dense astrophysical environments, such as core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers?
What is the impact of neutrino flavor conversions on the stellar dynamics and formation of elements in the Universe?
What are the experimentally detectable imprints of the source dynamics carried by neutrinos?
How can we learn about standard and non-standard properties of weakly interacting particles through astrophysical sources?
How are neutrinos produced in cosmic accelerators? And what can we learn about the physics of these mysterious events?
What are the chances of detecting cosmic neutrinos and other weakly interacting particles with existing and upcoming neutrino telescopes?

Publications

2019

J. R. Westernacher-Schneider, E. O'Connor, E. O'Sullivan, I. Tamborra, M.-R. Wu, S. M. Couch, F. Malmenbeck, Multimessenger Asteroseismology of Core-Collapse Supernovae, arXiv: 1907.01138.
M. Bustamante, Exact neutrino oscillation probabilities: a fast general-purpose computation method for two and three neutrino flavors, arXiv: 1904.12391.
S. Shalgar and I. Tamborra, Criteria for the Occurrence of Crossings Between the Angular Distributions of Electron Neutrinos and Antineutrinos in the Supernova Core, arXiv: 1904.07236.
C. Fryer et al., Core-Collapse Supernovae and Multi-Messenger Astronomy, Bull. Am. Astron. Soc. 51 (2019) 122.
R. Alves Batista et al., Open Questions in Cosmic-Ray Research at Ultrahigh Energies, Front. Astron. Space Sci. 6 (2019) 23 [arXiv: 1903.06714].
M. Ackermann et al., Astrophysics Uniquely Enabled by Observations of High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos, Bull. Am. Astron. Soc. 51 (2019) 185 [arXiv: 1903.04334].
M. Ackermann et al., Fundamental Physics with High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos, Bull. Am. Astron. Soc. 51 (2019) 215 [arXiv: 1903.04333].
M. Bustamante and M. Ahlers, Inferring the flavor of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos at their sources, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122 (2019) no. 24, 241101 [arXiv: 1901.10087].
L. Walk, I. Tamborra, H.-T. Janka, A. Summa, Effects of SASI and LESA in the neutrino emission of rotating supernovae, arXiv: 1901.06235.

2018

P. B. Denton, Y. Farzan, I. M. Shoemaker, Activating the 4th Neutrino of the 3+1 Scheme, Phys. Rev. D 99 (2019) 035003 [arXiv: 1811.01310].
J. Alvarez-Muniz et al., The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Science and Design, arXiv: 1810.09994.
M. Ahlers, M. Bustamante and S. Mu, Unitarity Bounds of Astrophysical Neutrinos, Phys. Rev. D 98 (2018) 123023 [arXiv:1810.00893].
K. Moller, P. B. Denton, I. Tamborra, Cosmogenic Neutrinos Through the GRAND Lens Unveil the Nature of Cosmic Accelerators, JCAP 05 (2019) 047 [arXiv: 1809.04866].
P. B. Denton and S. J. Parke, The Effective Δm2_ee in Matter, Phys. Rev. D 98 (2018) no. 9, 093001 [arXiv: 1808.09453].
M. Bustamante and S. K. Agarwalla, A Universe's Worth of Electrons to Probe Long-Range Interactions of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122 (2019) 061103 [arXiv: 1808.02042].
L. Walk, I. Tamborra, H.-T. Janka, A. Summa, Identifying rotation in SASI-dominated core-collapse supernovae with a neutrino gyroscope, Phys. Rev. D 98 (2018) no. 12, 123001 [arXiv: 1807.02366].
P. B. Denton, S. J. Parke, X. Zhang, Rotations Versus Perturbative Expansions for Calculating Neutrino Oscillation Probabilities in Matter, Phys. Rev. D 98 (2018) no. 3, 033001 [arXiv: 1806.01277].
P. B. Denton and I. Tamborra, Invisible Neutrino Decay Resolves IceCube's Track and Cascade Tension, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121 (2018) 121802 [arXiv: 1805.05950].
P. B. Denton, Y. Farzan, I. M. Shoemaker, A Plan to Rule out Large Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions After COHERENT Data, JHEP 1807 (2018) 037 [arXiv:1804.03660].
K. Moller, A. M. Suliga, I. Tamborra, P. B. Denton, Measuring the supernova unknowns at the next-generation neutrino telescopes through the diffuse neutrino background, JCAP 05 (2018) 066 [arXiv:1804.03157].
P. B. Denton and I. Tamborra, The Bright and Choked Gamma-Ray Burst Contribution to the IceCube and ANTARES Low-Energy Excess, JCAP 04 (2018) 058 [arXiv: 1802.10098].
I. Tamborra and K. Murase, Neutrinos from Supernovae, Space Sci. Rev. 214 (2018) no.1, 31.
P. B. Denton, H. Minakata and S. J. Parke, Compact Perturbative Expressions for Neutrino Oscillations in Matter: II, JHEP 1806 (2018) 109 [arXiv:1801.06514].

2017

M.-R. Wu, I. Tamborra, O. Just and H.-T. Janka, Imprints of neutrino-pair flavor conversions on nucleosynthesis in ejecta from neutron-star merger remnants, Phys. Rev. D 96 (2017) 123015 [arXiv:1711.00477].
P. B. Denton and I. Tamborra, Exploring the Properties of Choked Gamma-Ray Bursts with IceCube's High Energy Neutrinos, Astrophys. J. 855 (2018) 37 [arXiv:1711.00470].
P. B. Denton, D. Marfatia and T. J. Weiler, The Galactic Contribution to IceCube's Astrophysical Neutrino Flux, JCAP 08 (2017) 033 [arXiv:1703.09721].
I. Tamborra, L. Huedepohl, G. Raffelt and H.-T. Janka, Flavor-dependent neutrino angular distribution in core-collapse supernovae, Astrophys. J. 839 (2017) 132 [arXiv:1702.00060].
M.-R. Wu and I. Tamborra, Fast neutrino conversions: Ubiquitous in compact binary merger remnants, Phys. Rev. D 95 (2017) 103007 [arXiv:1701.06580].
P. Coloma, P. B. Denton, M. C. Gonzalez-Garcia, M. Maltoni and T. Schwetz, Curtailing the Dark Side in Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions, JHEP 1704 (2017) 116 [arXiv:1701.04828].

2016

P. Mertsch, M. Rameez and I. Tamborra, Detection prospects for high energy neutrino sources from the anisotropic matter distribution in the local universe, JCAP 03 (2017) 011 [arXiv:1612.07311].
S. Rosswog, U. Feindt, O. Korobkin, M.-R. Wu, J. Sollerman, A. Goodbar, G. Martinez-Pinedo, Detectability of compact binary merger macronovae, Class. Quant. Grav. 34 (2017) no.10, 104001 [arXiv:1611.09822].
I. Izaguirre, G. Raffelt and I. Tamborra, Fast Pairwise Conversion of Supernova Neutrinos: Dispersion-Relation Approach, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 (2017) 2, 021101 [arXiv:1610.01612].
M. R. Feyereisen, I. Tamborra and S. Ando, One-point fluctuation analysis of the high-energy neutrino sky, JCAP 03 (2017) 057 [arXiv:1610.01607].
R. F. Lang, C. McCabe, S. Reichard, M. Selvi and I. Tamborra, Supernova neutrino physics with xenon dark matter detectors: A timely perspective, Phys. Rev. D 94 (2016) 10, 103009 [arXiv:1606.09243].
I. Tamborra and S. Ando, Inspecting the supernova-gamma-ray-burst connection with high-energy neutrinos, Phys. Rev. D 93 (2016) 5, 053010 [arXiv: 1512.01559].

Visitors

Projects and jobs

There are several projects at the Bachelor, Master, and PhD level within our group. Please do not hesitate in contacting Prof. Irene Tamborra if you are interested or just want to learn more about any of these.

If you are interested in joining the AstroNu group as postdoctoral fellow, follow the announcements on Academic Jobs Online. You could also consider to apply for individual national and international fellowships. Please, get in touch with Prof. Irene Tamborra, if you like to discuss the latter option further.

Activities

Seminars

Once a week we host an Astroparticle Physics Seminar on a broad range of topics of interest to particle astrophysics, astrophysics and cosmology. The seminars usually take place in Auditorium A on Mondays at 14:15.

Once every other week we host an informal astroparticle journal club, in which group members and visitors discuss recent research papers or other topics of interest. The journal club takes place on Thursdays at 12:30 in room Bk2.

PhD Schools

Advancing Theoretical Astrophysics Summer School, Amsterdam, 15-26 July 2019.
Multi-Messengers from Compact Sources, Copenhagen, 2-6 July 2018.
Neutrinos Underground & in the Heavens, Copenhagen, 1-5 Aug. 2016.

Conferences and Workshops

NBIA-LANL Neutrino Quantum Kinetics in Dense Environments, Copenhagen, 26-30 Aug. 2019.
Physics and Astrophysics in the Era of Gravitational Wave Detection, Copenhagen, Aug. 19-23, 2019.
MITP workshop "Supernova Neutrino Observations: What can we learn and do?", Mainz, 9-13 Oct. 2017.

Outreach

Irene Tamborra delivered a public lecture organized by Folkeuniversitet i København (the Public University of Copenhagen), 14 & 15 Nov. 2016: Supernova explosions and neutrinos.

Networking

Our group is involved in the activities of the Collaborative Research Center: Neutrinos and Dark Matter in Astro- and Particle Physics, Technical University of Munich.
Our group is involved in COST Action 15108 and COST Action 18108.

Teaching

Fundaments of High-Energy Astrophysics and Particle Astrophysics [2018/2019, block 4].
Gravitational dynamics and galaxy formation [2016/2017, block 3 & 2017/2018, block 3].

Contact

Our group is based at the Niels Bohr International Academy, Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.

Associate Professor, Irene Tamborra
Phone: + 45 35 33 32 27
Email: tamborra*nbi.ku.dk

NBIA Research Academic Officer, Jane Elvekjær
Phone: +45 35325364
Email: jane.elvekjaer *nbi.ku.dk

Staff

Name	Title	Phone	E-mail
Bustamante, Mauricio	Postdoc	+45 353-34778	E-mail
Padilla Gay, Ian	PhD fellow	+45 353-33308	E-mail
Pitik, Tetyana	PhD fellow		E-mail
Shalgar, Shashank Motilal	Postdoc	+45 353-28005	E-mail
Suliga, Anna Malgorzata	PhD fellow	+45 353-37667	E-mail
Tamborra, Irene	Associate professor	+45 353-33227	E-mail
Walk, Laurie	PhD fellow		E-mail

External staff & students

Navn	Titel	Telefon	E-mail
Charlotte Amalie Rosenstrøm	MSc student	+45	vkc652*alumni.ku.dk
Kilian Hersent	Exchange Student	+45	kilian.hersent*ensta-paristech.fr
Karen Macías Cárdenas	Exchange Student	+45	macias.karen*uabc.edu.mx