Probing the Earth's interior with the LENA detector

Abstract

A future large-volume liquid scintillator detector such as the proposed 50 kton LENA (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy) detector would provide a high-statistics measurement of terrestrial antineutrinos originating from $\beta$-decays of the uranium and thorium chains. Additionally, the neutron is scattered in the forward direction in the detection reaction ${\bar{\nu }}_e+p\to n+e^{+}$. Henceforth, we investigate to what extent LENA can distinguish between certain geophysical models on the basis of the angular dependence of the geoneutrino flux. Our analysis is based on a Monte-Carlo simulation with different levels of light yield, considering an unloaded PXE scintillator. We find that LENA is able to detect deviations from isotropy of the geoneutrino flux with high significance. However, if only the directional information is used, the time required to distinguish between different geophysical models is of the order of severals decades. Nonetheless, a high-statistics measurement of the total geoneutrino flux and its spectrum still provides an extremely useful glance at the Earth's interior.

13 pages, 3 figures. Contributed to the proceedings of Neutrino Sciences 2005: Neutrino Geophysics, Honolulu, HI, 14-16 Dec 2005

References in corpus (8)

• Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation with KamLAND: Evidence of Spectral Distortion
• Search for neutrino oscillations on a long base-line at the CHOOZ nuclear power station
• The angular distribution of the reaction ${\bar{\nu }}_e+p\to e^{+}+n$
• Antineutrinos from Earth: A reference model and its uncertainties
• Determination of neutrino incoming direction in the CHOOZ experiment and Supernova explosion location by scintillator detectors
• Search for the proton decay p->K+antineutrino in the large liquid scintillator low energy neutrino astronomy detector LENA
• KamLAND, terrestrial heat sources and neutrino oscillations
• Light Concentrators for Borexino and CTF

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Muon and Cosmogenic Neutron Detection in Borexino
• Geo-neutrinos and Silicate Earth Enrichment of U and Th
• Estimating terrestrial uranium and thorium by antineutrino flux measurements
• Exploiting the directional sensitivity of the Double Chooz near detector
• Testing Geological Models with Terrestrial Antineutrino Flux Measurements
• Geo-Neutrinos