Neutrino Geoscience: Review, survey, future prospects
Abstract
The earth's surface heat flux is 46$\pm$3 TW (terrawatts, 10$^{12}$ watts). Although many assume we know the earth's abundance and distribution of radioactive heat producing elements (i.e., U, Th, and K), estimates for the mantle's heat production varying by an order of magnitude and recent particle physics findings challenge our dominant paradigm. Geologists predict the earth's budget of radiogenic power at 20$\pm$10 TW, whereas particle physics experiments predict 15.3$^{+4.9}_{-4.9}$ TW (KamLAND, Japan) and 38.2$^{+13.6}_{-12.7}$ TW (Borexino, Italy). We welcome this opportunity to highlight the fundamentally important resource offered by the physics community and call attention to the shortcomings associated with the characterization of the geology of the earth. We review the findings from continent-based, physics experiments, the predictions from geology, and assess the degree of misfit between the physics measurements and predicted models of the continental lithosphere and underlying mantle. Because our knowledge of the continents is somewhat uncertain (7.1$^{+2.1}_{-1.6}$ TW), models for the radiogenic power in the mantle (3.5 to 32 TW) and the bulk silicate earth (crust plus mantle) continue to be uncertain by a factor of $\sim$10 and $\sim$4, respectively. Detection of a geoneutrino signal in the ocean, far from the influence of continents, offers the potential to resolve this tension. Neutrino geoscience is a powerful new tool to interrogate the composition of the…
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