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arXiv 1803.05901hep-phastro-ph.HE
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地球的中微子层析成像

Neutrino tomography of the Earth

Andrea Donini, Sergio Palomares-Ruiz, Jordi Salvado

摘要:

宇宙射线与地球大气层的原子核相互作用产生了能量超过TeV量级的中微子流。然而,对于能量超过几TeV的中微子来说,地球并不是一个完全透明的介质。在这些能量下,带电中微子-核子的截面足够大,以至于中微子在具有地球密度的介质中的平均自由程与地球的直径相当。因此,当这些能量的中微子穿过地球时,它们被吸收的可能性不可忽略。由于这种效应取决于中微子的传播距离及其能量,研究TeV大气中微子穿过地球的天顶和能量分布提供了一个推断地球密度分布的机会。在这里,我们使用实际数据,公开可用的一年通过大气中微子数据的IceCube中微子望远镜的μ子样本与中微子进行地球层析成像。我们能够确定地球的质量,它的转动惯量,地球核心的质量,并建立核心比地幔密度大,只使用弱相互作用,在某种程度上完全独立于重力测量。我们的研究结果证实,这可以实现与目前的中微子探测器。这种研究地球内部结构的方法是对基于地震数据的地球物理学传统方法的补充,它开始提供有用的信息,而且由于目前和未来更大的中微子探测器,一旦有更多的统计数据,它就可能具有竞争力。

英文摘要:

Cosmic-ray interactions with the nuclei of the Earth's atmosphere produce a flux of neutrinos in all directions with energies extending above the TeV scale. However, the Earth is not a fully transparent medium for neutrinos with energies above a few TeV. At these energies, the charged-current neutrino-nucleon cross section is large enough so that the neutrino mean-free path in a medium with the Earth's density is comparable to the Earth's diameter. Therefore, when neutrinos of these energies cross the Earth, there is a non-negligible probability for them to be absorbed. Since this effect depends on the distance traveled by neutrinos and on their energy, studying the zenith and energy distributions of TeV atmospheric neutrinos passing through the Earth offers an opportunity to infer the Earth's density profile. Here we perform an Earth tomography with neutrinos using actual data, the publicly available one-year through-going muon sample of the atmospheric neutrino data of the IceCube neutrino telescope. We are able to determine the mass of the Earth, its moment of inertia, the mass of the Earth's core and to establish the core is denser than the mantle, using weak interactions only, in a way completely independent from gravitational measurements. Our results confirm that this can be achieved with current neutrino detectors. This method to study the Earth's internal structure, complementary to the traditional one from geophysics based on seismological data, is starting to provide useful information and it could become competitive as soon as more statistics is available thanks to the current and larger future neutrino detectors.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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