Neutrino Absorption Tomography of the Earth's Interior using Isotropic Ultra-high Energy Flux

TL;DR

This paper explores using isotropic ultra-high energy cosmic neutrinos detected by large-scale telescopes to perform neutrino absorption tomography, revealing Earth's internal density profile independently of other methods.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of reconstructing Earth's interior density profile using neutrino angular and energy distributions in a model-independent manner.

Findings

Potential to determine Earth's density profile independently

Method to invert neutrino angular distribution for Earth's structure

Feasibility of using 10-10000 TeV neutrinos for tomography

Abstract

We study the feasibility of using an isotropic flux of cosmic neutrinos in the energy range of 10 to 10000 TeV to study the interior structure of Earth. The angular distribution of events in a $\sim {\rm km}^3$-scale neutrino telescope can be inverted to yield information on the Earth's mass distribution that is independent of other methods. The energy spectrum of the neutrino primaries is also determined from consistency with the angular distribution. It is possible to make a model independent determination of the density profile of Earth's interior, separate from the absolute normalization of the incident cosmic neutrinos.