NuFact 2022: The 23rd International Workshop on Neutrinos from Accelerators

July 30, 2022 to August 6, 2022
Cliff Lodge
US/Mountain timezone

Validating the Earth's Core using Atmospheric Neutrinos with ICAL at INO

Jul 31, 2022, 3:45 PM
25m
Wasatch A/B

Wasatch A/B

Talk Multi-messenger Tomography of Earth (MMTE 2022)

Speaker

Mr Anil Kumar (Insitute of Physics, Bhubaneswar. Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai)

Description

The Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the proposed India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) aims to detect atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately in the multi-GeV range of energies and over a wide range of baselines. By utilizing its charge identification capability, ICAL can efficiently distinguish $\mu^-$ and $\mu^+$ events. Atmospheric neutrinos passing long distances through Earth can be detected at ICAL with good resolution in energy and direction, which enables ICAL to see the density-dependent matter oscillations experienced by upward-going neutrinos in the multi-GeV range of energies. In this work, we explore the possibility of utilizing neutrino oscillations in the presence of matter to extract information about the internal structure of Earth complementary to seismic studies. Using good directional resolution, ICAL would be able to observe 331 $\mu^-$ and 146 $\mu^+$ core-passing events with 500 kt$\cdot$yr exposure. With this exposure, we show for the first time that the presence of Earth's core can be independently confirmed at ICAL with a median $\Delta \chi^2$ of 7.45 (4.83) assuming normal (inverted) mass ordering by ruling out the simple two-layered mantle-crust profile in theory while generating the prospective data with the PREM profile. We observe that in the absence of charge identification capability of ICAL, this sensitivity deteriorates significantly to 3.76 (1.59) for normal (inverted) mass ordering.

Attendance type In-person presentation

Primary authors

Mr Anil Kumar (Insitute of Physics, Bhubaneswar. Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai) Prof. Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla (Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, HBNI, Mumbai, UW Madison and WIPAC, USA)

Presentation materials

 MMTE_2022_Anil_Kumar.odp MMTE_2022_Anil_Kumar.pdf