Second-Order Perturbative Correction for Neutrino Oscillation Tomography of the Earth

Abstract

The Earth's interior at depths exceeding present direct probing limit, which is just one five-hundredth of its radius, remains unknown to a significant extent due to existing ambiguities in predicting the distribution of temperature, pressure and chemical composition on the basis of seismic and geophysical observations. Scanning the Earth with neutrinos can provide independent information for refinement of existing seismological models. However, neutrinos interact with medium extremely weakly. Only tiny TeV-energy component of the atmospheric neutrino flux is noticeably absorbed while traversing the Earth, which provides limited statistical data. Flux reduction for much more common neutrinos with energies of the order of 1 GeV is vanishing. However, on their way through the planet they undergo sizable flavor oscillations that depend on the electron number density, which provides a link to seismological models. Accurate calculation of the matter effect in these oscillations is required for successful neutrino oscillation tomography of the Earth besides growing power of neutrino experiments, e. g., KM3NeT, DUNE and Hyper-Kamiokande. We obtained relevant neutrino oscillation probabilities in the second order of perturbation theory. Our results are valid for a neutrino potential that is not necessarily symmetric along the neutrino path. This allowed us to implement a multi-shell evolution scheme to better account for the density jumps between various layers of the Earth.