Revealing the supernova-gamma-ray burst connection with TeV neutrinos

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are rare, powerful explosions displaying highly relativistic jets. It has been suggested that a significant fraction of the much more frequent core-collapse supernovae are accompanied by comparably energetic but mildly relativistic jets, which would indicate an underlying supernova-GRB connection. We calculate the neutrino spectra from the decays of pions and kaons produced in jets in supernovae, and show that the kaon contribution is dominant and provides a sharp break near 20 TeV, which is a sensitive probe of the conditions inside the jet. For a supernova at 10 Mpc, 30 events above 100 GeV are expected in a 10 s burst in the IceCube detector.