Topical Seminar: Looking through Earth: A neutrino's eye view

by Dr. César Jesús-Valls (Kavli IPMU, University of Tokyo, Japan)

Thursday 16 Jan 2025, 12:00 → 13:00 Europe/Madrid

1001-Primera-135 - Nave Exp. Sala de Audiovisuales (Universe)

Nowadays, our knowledge of the Earth's interior is primarily based on seismological measurements. Neutrinos provide two alternative ways of exploring the Earth's structure and its inner composition. On one hand, the neutrino interaction cross section increases with energy, such that one can perform a tomography of the Earth by studying the attenuation of the atmospheric neutrino flux with energies above TeV, a method that has already been demonstrated experimentally. On the other hand, atmospheric neutrinos with MeV-GeV energies traversing the Earth's interior experience significant flavor mixing and, due to matter effects, are sensitive to the Earth's density profile. This feature remains yet to be exploited, but is expected to be achieved by next-generation neutrino experiments. In this talk, I will review the status and prospects of performing a tomography of the Earth with neutrinos using existing and future experiments via the two methods described above, focusing on the prospects of Hyper-Kamiokande.