Could one find petroleum using neutrino oscillations in matter?

Abstract

PACS. 14.60.Pq -Neutrino mass and mixing (see also 12.15.Ff Quark and lepton masses and mixing). PACS. 13.15.+g -Neutrino interactions (for neutrino-lepton interactions, see 13.10). PACS. 91.35.-x -Earth's interior structure and properties.Abstract. -In neutrino physics, it is now widely believed that neutrino oscillations are influenced by the presence of matter, modifying the energy spectrum produced by a neutrino beam traversing the Earth. Here, we will discuss the reverse problem, i.e. what could be learned about the Earth's interior from a single neutrino baseline energy spectrum, especially about the Earth's mantle. We will use a statistical analysis with a low-energy neutrino beam under very optimistic assumptions. At the end, we will note that it is hard to find petroleum with such a method, though it is not too far away from technical feasibility.

Probing High-Energy Interactions of Atmospheric and Astrophysical Neutrinos

“…Ohlsson and Winter proposed a similar study, but using matter-enhanced neutrino oscillations as a probe [41], as a means to probe search for petroleum deposits. They concluded that this was a very difficult endeavor, since this involves much lower energy neutrinos and a different means of neutrino disappearance.…”

Time of Flight Survey by Artificially Generated Neutrinos: A Novel Complementary Approach in Remote Sensing Geophysics

“…Winter [1] shows that by use of a 500MeV superbeam reasonably accurate positional information can be obtained. The example of a water dense cavity is given with location sensitivity to 100 km length and size specificity of density alteration can be measured to +50 km [41]. As compared to NAT, the NOT approach differs in that it can locate the actual position of the cavity as reconstructed from a single baseline within +100 km.…”

Neutrino tomography

“…Possible applications of neutrino tomography would be to complement geophysical measurements of the profile of the Earth's interior or to find large deposits of oil. 33 A realistic study of tomography indicates that a precise determination of such profiles will be challenging, with statistics being a limitation even when the neutrino oscillation parameters become precisely known. 19 To demonstrate the essential physics of tomography, we will consider an idealized example in which the neutrino oscillation parameters are known to high precision.…”