Imaging the Internal Structure of the Earth with Atmospheric Neutrinos

Authors: M.C. Gonzalez-Garcia, Francis Halzen, Michele Maltoni, Hiroyuki K.M. Tanaka

(Submitted on 5 Nov 2007)

Abstract: The possibility of doing tomography of the Earth's structure using a cosmic neutrino beam has been extensively studied since it was first suggested more than twenty five years ago. 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. We show that a direct observation of the core of the Earth may be possible using the high statistics data samples collected by IceCube. By giving direct evidence on the Earth's interior, the observation is complementary to indirect geophysical measurements.

Comments: 10 pages, LaTeX file using RevTEX4, 2 figures and 1 table included

Subjects: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); Astrophysics (astro-ph); Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)

Report number: IFT-UAM/CSIC-07-55, YITP-SB-07-34

Cite as: arXiv:0711.0745v1 [hep-ph]

Submission history

From: Michele Maltoni [view email]

[v1] Mon, 5 Nov 2007 21:00:14 GMT (26kb)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0745