Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations for Earth Tomography

TL;DR

Atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments can be used to probe Earth's interior, especially the lower mantle density, with high precision, offering a novel method for geophysical exploration beyond traditional seismic techniques.

Contribution

This paper demonstrates that proposed atmospheric neutrino experiments can measure Earth's lower mantle density with a few percent accuracy, advancing neutrino-based Earth tomography.

Findings

Neutrino oscillations are sensitive to Earth's matter density.

Proposed experiments can determine lower mantle density with high precision.

Accessing Earth's core requires new technological developments.

Abstract

Modern proposed atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments, such as PINGU in the Antarctic ice or ORCA in Mediterranean sea water, aim for precision measurements of the oscillation parameters including the ordering of the neutrino masses. They can, however, go far beyond that: Since neutrino oscillations are affected by the coherent forward scattering with matter, neutrinos can provide a new view on the interior of the earth. We show that the proposed atmospheric oscillation experiments can measure the lower mantle density of the earth with a precision at the level of a few percent, including the uncertainties of the oscillation parameters and correlations among different density layers. While the earth's core is, in principle, accessible by the angular resolution, new technology would be required to extract degeneracy-free information.