Exploring Layered Structure Inside Earth Using Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillation at IceCube DeepCore

TL;DR

This study shows that IceCube DeepCore can use atmospheric neutrino oscillations to detect Earth's layered density structure, demonstrating potential for geophysical insights through neutrino physics.

Contribution

It is the first demonstration that IceCube DeepCore can differentiate between homogeneous and layered Earth density profiles using atmospheric neutrino data.

Findings

DeepCore data can reject homogeneous density profile at 1.4σ confidence.

Neutrino oscillation patterns are sensitive to Earth's internal structure.

Atmospheric neutrinos can probe Earth's layered density profile.

Abstract

The IceCube detector, using its densely instrumented center, called DeepCore, can detect multi-GeV atmospheric neutrinos. The oscillation pattern of neutrinos is altered due to interactions with ambient electrons as they pass through Earth. The changes in these patterns are influenced by the amount of matter and its specific arrangement. As neutrinos propagate, they retain information about the densities they encounter. Our study demonstrates that IceCube DeepCore can utilize the Earth's matter effects to distinguish between a homogeneous matter density profile and a layered structure density profile of Earth. In this contribution, we present that IceCube DeepCore data equivalent to 9.3 years of observation can reject the homogeneous matter density profile with a confidence level of 1.4$\sigma$.