Near-critical supernova outflows and their neutrino signatures

We demonstrate that the neutrino-driven outflows inside exploding core-collapse supernovae possess a special property of near-criticality, that is, they are on the edge of forming termination shocks. We derive a novel criterion for the formation of the shock, in terms of the fundamental parameters of the problem: the neutrino luminosity and energy as well as the properties of the protoneutron star. The criterion provides a unified description of the available numerical results and motivates future simulations. The property of near-criticality makes the neutrino signatures of the termination shocks a sensitive diagnostic of the physical conditions around the PNS several seconds into the explosion. The expected signal at DUNE is found to be statistically significant.