Radiography of the Earth's Core and Mantle with Atmospheric Neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper proposes using atmospheric neutrinos detected by next-generation neutrino telescopes to map the Earth's internal density distribution, offering a new method to study Earth's interior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to Earth's internal structure analysis using atmospheric neutrinos with upcoming large-scale detectors, overcoming previous luminosity limitations.

Findings

Potential to image Earth's core and mantle with atmospheric neutrinos

Revival of neutrino-based geophysical studies using new detectors

Feasibility of neutrino absorption measurements for Earth's density mapping

Abstract

A measurement of the absorption of neutrinos with energies in excess of 10 TeV when traversing the Earth is capable of revealing its density distribution. Unfortunately, the existence of beams with sufficient luminosity for the task has been ruled out by the AMANDA South Pole neutrino telescope. In this letter we point out that, with the advent of second-generation kilometer-scale neutrino detectors, the idea of studying the internal structure of the Earth may be revived using atmospheric neutrinos instead.