Neutrino Oscillations in the Earth: A Unique Tool to Probe Dark Matter Inside the Core
Published in Physical Sciences Forum, 2023
Recommended citation: Anuj Kumar Upadhyay, Anil Kumar, Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla, Amol Dighe, "Neutrino Oscillations in the Earth: A Unique Tool to Probe Dark Matter Inside the Core", Proceedings of The 23rd International Workshop on Neutrinos from Accelerators (NuFact 2022), 31 Jul to 6 Aug, 2022, Salt Lake City, UT, USA, Phys. Sci. Forum 2023, 8(1), 54. https://doi.org/10.3390/psf2023008054
Abstract: Atmospheric neutrinos, due to their multi-GeV range of energies and wide range of baselines, can probe into the possible existence of dark matter inside the core of the Earth in a unique way via Earth matter effects in neutrino oscillations. We demonstrate that an atmospheric neutrino detector such as the proposed 50 kt Iron Calorimeter detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory with muon charge identification capability can be sensitive to the presence of dark matter at around a $2\sigma$ confidence level with 1000 kt·yr exposure if dark matter constitutes 40% of the mass inside the core. We further demonstrate that it is hard to identify the dark matter profile using neutrino oscillations, but the baryonic matter profile inside the core can be explored as a complement to the seismic measurements.