Neutrino oscillation tomography of the Earth with KM3NeT-ORCA

Elewyck, V. Van; Bourret, S.; Coelho, J. A. B.

doi:10.22323/1.301.1020

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…When one of these quantities was fixed in the value of the reference geophysical model, our results, shown in Figs. 9 and 10, are compatible with those obtained by others authors in an uncorrelated way [33,35]. The remote located interface between the rocky mantle and iron core is physically the most significant in the Earth's interior.…”

Section: Results and Final Commentssupporting

confidence: 89%

“…On the other hand, neutrino oscillation tomography takes advantage of the matter effect on neutrino oscillations [26][27][28] to probe the Earth's interior with lower energy (MeV to GeV) neutrinos. In matter the flavor transition probabilities depend on the number density of electrons n e along the neutrino baseline, which is proportional to the product of the matter density ρ times the average ratio of the atomic number Z to the mass number A [18,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Earth tomography with atmospheric neutrino oscillations

et al. 2020

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The study of the flux of atmospheric neutrino crossing the Earth can provide useful information not only on the matter density of the different layers that make up the planet but also on their chemical composition. The key phenomenon that makes this possible is flavor oscillations and their dependence on the electron density along the neutrino baseline. To extract the relevant information, we simulate the energy and azimuth angle distribution of events produced in a generic neutrino telescope by atmospheric neutrinos passing through the deepest parts of the Earth. Changes in the densities of the outer core and the mantle are implemented by varying the location of the boundary between these layers so that the restrictions on the mass of and the moment of inertia of the Earth are both satisfied. This allows us to examine the effect of simultaneous changes in composition and density of the outer core, unlikely other works on the subject, where only one of these quantities was varied.

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Section: Results and Final Commentssupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Earth tomography with atmospheric neutrino oscillations

et al. 2020

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Oscillation tomografy study of Earth’s composition and density with atmospheric neutrinos

et al. 2022

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Knowledge of the composition of the Earth’s interior is highly relevant to many geophysical and geochemical problems. Neutrino oscillations are modified in a non-trivial way by the matter effects and can provide valuable and unique information not only on the density but also on the chemical and isotopic composition of the deep regions of the planet. In this paper, we re-examine the possibility of performing an oscillation tomography of the Earth with atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos to obtain information on the composition and density of the outer core and the mantle, complementary to that obtained by geophysical methods. Particular attention is paid to the D$$^{\prime \prime }$$ ″ layer just above the core-mantle boundary and to the water (hydrogen) content in the mantle transition zone. Our analysis is based on a Monte-Carlo simulation of the energy and azimuthal angle distribution of $$\mu $$ μ -like events generated by neutrinos. Taking as reference a model of the Earth consisting of 55 concentric layers with constant densities determined from the PREM, we evaluate the effect on the number of events due to changes in the composition and density of the outer core and the mantle. To examine the capacity of a detector like ORCA to resolve such variations, we construct regions in planes of two of these quantities where the statistical significance of the discrepancies between the reference and the modified Earth are less than $$1\sigma $$ 1 σ . The variations are implemented in such a way that the constraint imposed by both the total mass of the Earth and its moment of inertia are verified.

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Unveiling the outer core composition with neutrino oscillation tomography

et al. 2023

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In the last 70 years, geophysics has established that the Earth’s outer core is an FeNi alloy containing a few percent of light elements, whose nature and amount remain controversial. Besides the classical combinations of silicon and oxygen, hydrogen has been advocated as the only light element that could account alone for both the core density and velocity profiles. Here we show how this question can be addressed from an independent viewpoint, by exploiting the tomographic information provided by atmospheric neutrinos, weakly-interacting particles produced in the atmosphere and constantly traversing the Earth. We evaluate the potential of the upcoming generation of atmospheric neutrino detectors for such a measurement, showing that they could efficiently detect the presence of 1 wt% hydrogen in the Earth’s core in 50 years of concomitant data taking. We then identify the main requirements for a next-generation detector to perform this measurement in a few years timescale, with the further capability to efficiently discriminate between FeNiH and FeNiSixOy core composition models in less than 15 years.

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Neutrino oscillation tomography of the Earth with KM3NeT-ORCA

Cited by 3 publications

References 11 publications

Earth tomography with atmospheric neutrino oscillations

Earth tomography with atmospheric neutrino oscillations

Oscillation tomografy study of Earth’s composition and density with atmospheric neutrinos

Unveiling the outer core composition with neutrino oscillation tomography

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