Neutrino spectrum from SN 1987A and from cosmic supernovae

The detection of neutrinos from SN 1987A by the Kamiokande-II and Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven detectors provided the first glimpse of core collapse in a supernova, complementing the optical observations and confirming our basic understanding of the mechanism behind the explosion. One long-standing puzzle is that, when fitted with thermal spectra, the two independent detections do not seem to agree with either each other or typical theoretical expectations. We assess the compatibility of the two data sets in a model-independent way and show that they can be reconciled if one avoids any bias on the neutrino spectrum stemming from theoretical conjecture. We reconstruct the neutrino spectrum from SN 1987A directly from the data through nonparametric inferential statistical methods and present predictions for the diffuse supernova neutrino background based on SN 1987A data. We show that this prediction cannot be too small (especially in the 10-18 MeV range), since the majority of the detected events from SN 1987A were above 18 MeV (including 6 events above 35 MeV), suggesting an imminent detection in operational and planned detectors.