Choose timezone
Your profile timezone:
Powered by Indico
v3.3.3
Information about the internal structure of the Earth has traditionally been obtained through gravitational measurements and seismic studies, which rely on gravitational and electromagnetic interactions, respectively. Neutrinos offer an independent and complementary way to explore the interior of Earth through weak interactions. Upward-going atmospheric neutrinos traversing the Earth undergo coherent forward scattering with ambient electrons, leading to matter effects that modify neutrino oscillation probabilities in the multi-GeV energy range. Since these matter effects depend on the electron number density along the neutrino path, measurements of matter effects in neutrino oscillations can be used to infer the distribution of matter inside the Earth. In this seminar, I will discuss how we probe the interior of Earth using atmospheric neutrinos at IceCube DeepCore. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory consists of one cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice at the South Pole, which is instrumented with optical modules to detect Cherenkov photons produced during neutrino interactions. DeepCore, the densely instrumented central and lower region of IceCube, enables the detection of neutrinos with energies as low as a few GeV, which are essential for observing Earth’s matter effects. The IceCube Upgrade, currently under deployment, is expected to substantially enhance the sensitivity to neutrino oscillation tomography. The use of neutrinos alongside traditional gravitational and seismic probes is expected to play an important role in paving the way for multi-messenger tomography of Earth.