Supernova-neutrino studies with 100Mo

We show that supernova neutrinos can be studied by observing their charged-current interactions with Mo-100, which has strong spin-isospin giant resonances. Information about both the effective temperature of the electron-neutrino sphere and the oscillation into electron neutrinos of other flavors can be extracted from the electron (inverse beta) spectrum. We use measured hadronic charge-exchange spectra and the Quasiparticle Random Phase Approximation to calculate the charged-current response of Mo-100 to electron neutrinos from supernovae, with and without the assumption of oscillations. A scaled up version of the MOON detector for betabeta and solar-neutrino studies could potentially be useful for spectroscopic studies of supernova neutrinos as well. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.