Supernova Neutrino Detection: Experimental Status and Perspectives

After the historical detection of a neutrino burst coming from the supernova 1987A, the interest for supernova neutrinos continuously grew up. Such interest has been further strengthened by the recent enormous progresses in the understanding of neutrino mixing and oscillations. Since neutrinos are very elusive particles, they can preserve a lot of information about their production site even if they traverse huge distances (tens of Kpc or more) before being detected. On the other hand, supernovae are very peculiar physical systems, with unique conditions of density and temperature; then, the interior of a collapsed star is the ideal environment where the neutrino flavour conversion mediated by matter effects can be realized. Moreover, since the neutrino detectors are sensitive to stellar gravitational collapses everywhere in the galaxy, a type II supernova (from now on: SN) explosion offers an extraordinary possibility for studying neutrino properties beyond the Standard Model (mass, electric charge, magnetic moment, mixing ...) in huge ranges of distances and densities. FInally, supernovae emit neutrinos, photons and probably gravitational waves; then, a combined observation of all forms of radiation released during a stellar collapse would provide not only an unprecedented amount of information about the collapse mechanism, but also great opportunities for testing various aspects of Special and General Relativity theories. In this paper I review the present and planned supernova neutrino detectors, their experimental techniques and the expected neutrino signal and discuss the implications for the supernova and neutrino physics of a high statistics neutrino burst detection.