Studying the Earth with Geoneutrinos

• Main Authors: L. Ludhova, S. Zavatarelli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2013-01-01
• Series: Advances in High Energy Physics
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/425693

Geoneutrinos, electron antineutrinos from natural radioactive decays inside the Earth, bring to the surface unique information about our planet. The new techniques in neutrino detection opened a door into a completely new interdisciplinary field of neutrino geoscience. We give here a broad geological introduction highlighting the points where the geoneutrino measurements can give substantial new insights. The status-of-art of this field is overviewed, including a description of the latest experimental results from KamLAND and Borexino experiments and their first geological implications. We performed a new combined Borexino and KamLAND analysis in terms of the extraction of the mantle geo-neutrino signal and the limits on the Earth's radiogenic heat power. The perspectives and the future projects having geo-neutrinos among their scientific goals are also discussed.