Scanning the Earth with solar neutrinos and DUNE

Abstract

We explore oscillations of the solar ${}^8$B neutrinos in the Earth in detail. The relative excess of night ${\nu }_e$ events (the Night-Day asymmetry) is computed as function of the neutrino energy and the nadir angle $\eta$ of its trajectory. The finite energy resolution of the detector causes an important attenuation effect, while the layer-like structure of the Earth density leads to an interesting parametric suppression of the oscillations. Different features of the $\eta -$ dependence encode information about the structure (such as density jumps) of the Earth density profile; thus measuring the $\eta$ distribution allows the scanning of the interior of the Earth. We estimate the sensitivity of the DUNE experiment to such measurements. About 75 neutrino events are expected per day in 40 kt. For high values of $\Delta m_{21}^2$ and $E_{\nu }>$11 MeV, the corresponding D-N asymmetry is about 4\% and can be measured with $15\%$ accuracy after 5 years of data taking. The difference of the D-N asymmetry between high and low values of $\Delta m_{21}^2$ can be measured at the $4\sigma$ level. The relative excess of the ${\nu }_e$ signal varies with the nadir angle up to 50\%. DUNE may establish the existence of the dip in the $\eta -$ distribution at the $(2-3)\sigma$ level.

The formalism of neutrino oscillations in the Earth is further elaborated, Fig. 5 substituted, references added, typos corrected

References in corpus (7)

• Neutrino Physics with JUNO
• Solar neutrino measurements in Super-Kamiokande-II
• Solar Neutrino Measurements in Super-Kamiokande-IV
• Measurement of electron antineutrino oscillation based on 1230 days of operation of the Daya Bay experiment
• Solar neutrinos and neutrino physics
• Advanced Scintillator Detector Concept (ASDC): A Concept Paper on the Physics Potential of Water-Based Liquid Scintillator
• Oscillations of the ${}^7$Be solar neutrinos inside the Earth

Cited by in corpus (10)

• DUNE as the Next-Generation Solar Neutrino Experiment
• Supernova Neutrino Burst Detection with the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment
• Developing the MeV potential of DUNE: Detailed considerations of muon-induced spallation and other backgrounds
• Solar neutrino physics
• Oscillation tomography of the Earth with solar neutrinos and future experiments
• Locating the Core-Mantle Boundary using Oscillations of Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Earth tomography with supernova neutrinos at future neutrino detectors
• Attenuation effect and neutrino oscillation tomography
• Sensitivities of future solar neutrino observatories to NSI
• Lunar neutrinos