A significant fraction of the 44TW of heat dissipation from the Earth's interior is believed to originate from the decays of terrestrial uranium and thorium. The only estimates of this radiogenic heat, which is the driving force for mantle convection, come from Earth models based on meteorites, and have large systematic errors. The detection of electron antineutrinos produced by these uranium and thorium decays would allow a more direct measure of the total uranium and thorium content, and hence radiogenic heat production in the Earth. We discuss the prospect of building an electron antineutrino detector approximately 700m^3 in size in the Homestake mine at the 4850' level. This would allow us to make a measurement of the total uranium and thorium content with a statistical error less than the systematic error from our current knowledge of neutrino oscillation parameters. It would also allow us to test the hypothesis of a naturally occurring nuclear reactor at the center of the Earth.
Geoneutrinos can provide a unique insight into Earth's interior, its central engine and its formation history. We study the detection of geoneutrinos in large direct detection experiments, which has been considered non-feasible. We compute the geoneutrino-induced electron and nuclear recoil spectra in different materials, under several optimistic assumptions. We identify germanium as the most promising target element due to the low nuclear recoil energy threshold that could be achieved. The minimum exposure required for detection would be $\mathcal{O}(10)$ tonne-years. The realistic low thresh…
Neutrino geophysics, the study of the Earth's interior by measuring the fluxes of geologically produced neutrino at its surface, is a new interdisciplinary field of science, rapidly developing as a synergy between geology, geophysics and particle physics. Geoneutrinos, antineutrinos from long-lived natural isotopes responsible for the radiogenic heat flux, provide valuable information for the chemical composition models of the Earth. The calculations of the expected geoneutrino signal are discussed, together with experimental aspects of geoneutrino detection, including the description of possi…
The review is conceived to help the reader to interpret present geoneutrino results in the framework of Earth's energetics and composition. Starting from the comprehension of antineutrino production, propagation, and detection, the status of the geoneutrino field is presented through the description of the experimental and technological features of the Borexino and KamLAND ongoing experiments. The current understanding of the energetical, geophysical and geochemical traits of our planet is examined in a critical analysis of the currently available models. By combining theoretical models and ex…
Mapping deep-mantle compositional heterogeneity using a directional geoneutrino detector
Tohoku University（东北大学）；Research Center for Neutrino Science, Tohoku University（东北大学中微子科学研究中心）；Center for Geoneutrino Research, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院海洋研究所地球中微子研究中心）；Department of Earth Science, Tohoku University（东北大学地球科学系）；Department of Geological, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, University of Maryland（马里兰大学地质、环境与行星科学系）；University of Maryland（马里兰大学）；High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)（高能加速器研究机构（KEK））
Gravimetric methods are expected to play a decisive role in geophysical modeling of the regional crustal structure applied to geoneutrino studies. GIGJ (GOCE Inversion for Geoneutrinos at JUNO) is a 3D numerical model constituted by ~46 x 10$^{3}$ voxels of 50 x 50 x 0.1 km, built by inverting gravimetric data over the 6° x 4° area centered at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) experiment, currently under construction in the Guangdong Province (China). The a-priori modeling is based on the adoption of deep seismic sounding profiles, receiver functions, teleseismic P-wave velo…
Tohoku University（东北大学）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory（劳伦斯利弗莫尔国家实验室）；Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院海洋研究所）；University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)（高能加速器研究机构（KEK））；University of Rochester（罗切斯特大学）；University of Idaho（爱达荷大学）
IPHC, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS/IN2P3（斯特拉斯堡大学）；Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology（巴基斯坦核科学与技术研究所）；Sun Yat-Sen University（中山大学）；The University of Liverpool（利物浦大学）；INFN Catania and Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell Università di Catania（意大利国家核物理研究所卡塔尼亚分部及卡塔尼亚大学物理与天文系）；Joint Institute for Nuclear Research（联合核研究所）；INFN Sezione di Milano and Dipartimento di Fisica dell Università di Milano（意大利国家核物理研究所米兰分部及米兰大学物理系）；IJCLab, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Institute of Physics and EC PRISMA + , Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz（美因茨约翰内斯·古腾堡大学）；INFN Milano Bicocca and University of Milano Bicocca（意大利国家核物理研究所米拉比科卡分部及米拉比科卡大学）
The earth's surface heat flux is 46$\pm$3 TW (terrawatts, 10$^{12}$ watts). Although many assume we know the earth's abundance and distribution of radioactive heat producing elements (i.e., U, Th, and K), estimates for the mantle's heat production varying by an order of magnitude and recent particle physics findings challenge our dominant paradigm. Geologists predict the earth's budget of radiogenic power at 20$\pm$10 TW, whereas particle physics experiments predict 15.3$^{+4.9}_{-4.9}$ TW (KamLAND, Japan) and 38.2$^{+13.6}_{-12.7}$ TW (Borexino, Italy). We welcome this opportunity to highligh…
