geo- neutrinos- universityof hawaii（geo -中微子夏威夷大学）.docVIP

1.0 Introduction and Assumptions This preliminary report has been written under the assumption that the reader is somewhat familiar with the general goals of the project, the work accomplished by the KamLAND experiment, and some relevant particle and nuclear physics. In short, we are using the design and experience with the KamLAND detector as a baseline to consider what size and location of detector is needed to approach two goals: The first, a guaranteed source, is the electron anti-neutrino flux from the mantle and core of the earth due to Uranium and Thorium decays. For locations near or on a continental crust, this “geonu” flux is dominated by the U/Th in the crust, not as interesting as the amount in the mantle and core. These values are only known very poorly at present and speculated upon by geologists (typically based upon the content of meteorites), so the geological community will welcome any information from the inaccessible inner earth. The second measurement to be made is a search for a reactor at the earth’s core. As discussed elsewhere, this hypothetical power source could be the driver of the deep earth plumes, and ultimately responsible for the motion of landmasses as well as the earth’s magnetic field. The putative georeactor flux is very hard to measure in a location anywhere near the electrical power reactors in places such as Japan, Europe and North America (it is at most a small background to the georeactor flux in KamLAND). 1.1 Neutrino Oscillations In the following discussion, all processes that involve neutrino production and subsequent detection assume that neutrino oscillations occur, with the oscillation parameters chosen to be the best fit values from global fits to all solar and reactor neutrino experiments. Since the baseline of neutrino propagation considered in this context is much larger than the oscillation lengths for the energy scale under consideration, the neutrinos can be considered to a good approximation to b