Progress towards OMNIS, the Observatory for Multi-flavor NeutrInos from Supernovae

An observatory has been proposed which would allow the detection of a significant number of all flavors of neutrinos emitted from a Galactic supernova. The detection strategy utilizes the interactions of supernovae neutrinos with large volumes of materials from which neutrons would be spalled which would then be detected. This mechanism is especially sensitive to the mu- and tau-neutrino flavors, to which no other existing or planned detector has comparable sensitivity. The detailed measurements of neutrino fluxes that such an observatory would provide would allow significant probing of the core-collapse environment and mechanism, neutrino physics, and the possible formation of black-holes. Details of the current design work, which includes computer simulations and large volume liquid scintillator detector prototyping, will be presented. This work is made possible by NSF research grant PHY9901241.