  Neutrinos from core collapse supernovae can excite nuclei of some detector
materials beyond their neutron emission thresholds. Detection of these neutrons
can give valuable information about the supernova explosion mechanism and
possibly also throw light on neutrino properties. In this article, we give a
brief review of the basic physics of neutrino induced neutron emission and
describe the results of some recent calculations of supernova neutrino induced
neutrons for some specific target detector materials due to charged current
(CC) interactions of the electron flavored neutrinos and antineutrinos as well
as due to neutral current (NC) interactions of neutrinos and antineutrinos of
all flavors with the detector nuclei. We highlight the fact that a detector
material such as lead with a relatively large neutron excess produces neutrons
dominantly through the CC interaction of the $\nu_e$s, whereas a material such
as iron with small neutron excess produces neutrons dominantly through the
combined NC interaction of all the six neutrino and antineutrino species. This
raises the interesting possibility of probing the fraction of mu- and tau
flavored neutrinos (which interact only through NC interaction) in the
supernova neutrino flux by means of simultaneous detection of a supernova in a
lead and an iron detector, for example.
