2018

Neutrino Geoscience (and More!) with Direction-Sensitive Detectors

by Dr Michael Leyton

Pacific/Honolulu
112 (Watanabe Hall)

112

Watanabe Hall

2505 Correa Road
Description
Each second, the Earth radiates more than 1025 antineutrinos to space, fueled predominantly by radioactive decays in the crust and mantle. The `geo-neutrinos’ produced by these decays give us important clues about the composition of the Earth’s interior and its radiogenic heat flow, both in the present epoch and from throughout its evolution. In this talk, I present a method for measuring previously unresolved components of Earth’s internal heating using neutrino-electron elastic scattering and low-background, direction-sensitive tracking detectors. These detectors have the potential to unveil the inner workings of the Earth. To conclude, I will briefly discuss the implications of tonne-scale direction-sensitive detectors on fields outside of geophysics, including searches for dark matter and nuclear non-proliferation.