Speaker
Description
Large-volume neutrino telescopes designed for TeV neutrino astronomy can probe the Earth’s interior through the absorption of atmospheric neutrinos traversing the planet. This provides an independent constraint on the Earth’s radial density profile, complementing conventional methods based on seismic velocity measurements. Such measurements can serve as a cross check of traditional geophysical results and thereby contribute to our understanding of the Earth’s internal structure and long-term evolution. The TRopIcal DEep-sea Neutrino Telescope (TRIDENT), a next-generation neutrino observatory in the South China Sea, is well suited for Earth tomography with high-energy atmospheric neutrinos given its 10-cubic-kilometers physical volume and excellent angular reconstruction resolution. In this work, we present a study of TRIDENT’s Earth tomography sensitivity by simulating atmospheric neutrinos in the 1–100 TeV range. We reconstruct the posterior distributions of a five-layer radial density model and derive constraints on the Earth’s large-scale density structure and related global properties, such as its total mass. We also evaluate the expected sensitivity of TRIDENT and discuss the prospects for improving neutrino-based measurements of the deep Earth.
