Upper limits on the diffuse supernova neutrino flux from the SuperKamiokande data

Abstract

We analyze the 1496 days of SuperKamiokande data to put limits on the nue, anti-nue, numu + nutau and anti-numu + anti-nutau components of the diffuse flux of supernova neutrinos, in different energy intervals and for different neutrino energy spectra. By considering the presence of only one component at a time, we find the following bounds at 90% C.L. and for neutrino energy E>19.3$ MeV: Phi_{nue}<73.3-154 cm^-2 s^-1, Phi_{anti-nue} <1.4-1.9 cm^-2 s^-1, Phi_{numu+nutau} <(1.0-1.4) 10^3 cm^-2 s^-1, and Phi_{anti-numu+ anti-nutau} <(1.3-1.8) 10^3 cm^-2 s^-1, where the intervals account for varying the neutrino spectrum. In the interval E = 22.9 - 36.9 MeV, we find Phi_{nue}<39-54 cm^-2 s^-1, which improves on the existing limit from SNO in the same energy window. Our results for numu + nutau and anti-numu + anti-nutau improve by about four orders of magnitude over the previous best constraints from LSD.