The IceCube high-energy neutrino telescope is designed to detect neutrinos with energies ranging from 10~(11) to 10~(21) eV. A large burst of MeV neutrinos produced by the collapse of a star in our Galaxy will nevertheless be detected as a collective increase in photomultiplier counting rates on top of their low dark noise in sterile ice. The origin of this increased rate is Cherenkov light from shower particles produced by supernova neutrinos interacting in the ice, predominantly by the reaction ??_e + p → e~+ + n. Neutrinos and gravitational waves from a Galactic supernova explosion will arrive simultaneously, several hours before the optical display, creating the possibility of an early alert. Data from both types of detectors can be mined for coincident sub-threshold detections and IceCube alone will provide a high-statistics measurement of the time profile of the neutrino flux from a Galactic supernova with a sensitivity corresponding to amegaton class proton decay and supernova-search experiment.
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