Supernova Neutrinos, A Spark of Light in My Dark Matter Detector

The observation of a burst of neutrinos coming from Supernova 1987a by the Kamiokande and Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven (IMB) experiments marked the start of an new era of what is now know as multi-messenger astronomy, in which catastrophic astrophysical events are observed with more than just the electromagnetic spectrum.  Since that Nobel Prize winning discovery, not a single galactic supernova has occurred allowing for a second supernova neutrino burst detection.  In the meantime, some of the most sensitive detectors on Earth have been developed and blossomed the field of direct dark matter searching.  The Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration is building the next generation of their dual-phase, liquid argon time projection chamber detector technology, called DarkSide-20k, inside the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy as the next step in the search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).  While the main focus of the experiment is the direct search for dark matter, the detector will be large enough to observe neutrinos coming from a galactic supernova.  This presentation will discuss the DarkSide-20 detector technology and its unique ability to observe, in a neutrino flavor-blind way, the neutronization burst of the supernova neutrino signal.  Details of DarkSide-20k's participation in the Supernova Early Warning System (SNEWS) and its contribution to the field of neutrino and astro-physics will be given.