On the propagation of neutrinos through the Earth

M. de Jong

Published 2020-05-04Version 1

The Earth is commonly used as a natural filter for the operation of deep-underground and deep-sea neutrino telescopes. By selecting events pointing in upward directions, the background of muons produced by interactions of cosmic rays in the Earth' atmosphere above the detector can effectively be suppressed. The corresponding neutrinos traversed a large part of the Earth before being detected. It is commonly assumed that the neutrinos go in a straight line through the Earth. A first study has been made of the propagation of neutrinos through the Earth which includes the effects of the charged-current as well as neutral-current interactions. It is found that the diffusion of neutrinos due to neutral-current interactions leads to an increase of the detectable flux of neutrinos.