KamLAND is marked by ability to detect low energy anti-neutrino signals with 1,000 tons of ultra pure liquid scintillator. This feature has the sensitivity to detect geo-neutrinos produced by the decay of 238U and 232Th within the Earth. Owing to the long-term shutdown of Japanese reactors, the flux of reactor anti-neutrinos has been significantly reduced, and the data yield greater...
Understanding the composition and homogeneity of the Earth's core-mantle boundary (CMB) is crucial to understanding the radiogenic heat of the Earth and the science of planetary formation. This talk discusses our work at the University of Hawai'i (UH) in collaboration with Tohoku University on an neutrino ocean bottom detector (OBD) with the goal of observing the CMD.
I will specifically...
GEONU (an open-source MATLAB toolkit) is a computational framework for geoneutrino signal predictions. It was first introduced by Wipperfurth et al. (2019) and made publicly available on GitHub in 2024. The framework supports multiple global crustal datasets, propagates uncertainties in density, thickness, and abundances of heat-producing elements (HPEs), and allows for global signal...
To investigate global Earth models with geoneutrino observations, it is crucial to characterize the surrounding crustal composition, since uranium (U) and thorium (Th) in the local crust contribute nearly half of the observed flux. In previous work, we developed a fully stochastic method to describe the 3D distribution of U and Th [1], along with a new geochemical approach to mitigate biases...
Nuclear emulsion is a radiation detector composed of silver bromide crystals dispersed in gelatin that records charged-particle tracks as sequences of silver grains with submicron spatial resolution. Although high energy tracks recorded in emulsion can be analyzed with the world fastest readout system (Hyper Track Selector 2: HTS2) , fast and precise detection of α-particle tracks has remained...
The tectonic plates form the upper thermal boundary layer of Earth’s mantle convection system. In the oldest continental regions (the cratons), the lithospheric plate thickness can exceed 200 km. The thickness and stability of the craton lithosphere is controlled by its thermal structure, which in turn depends on the vigour of the underlying mantle convection and the thermal properties of the...
The Earth’s mantle is bracketed by continental lithosphere above and Large Low Velocity Provinces (LLVPs) below, both of which can affect the efficiency of convective heat transfer within the mantle. Previous studies argue that continents act like insulators for the mantle, reducing surface heat flow and causing mantle temperatures to rise over time. In contrast, other studies show that LLVPs...
Previous studies suggest that the enigmatic seismic anomalies known as Large Low Velocity Provinces (LLVPs), located atop the core-mantle-boundary, may arise from thermal anomalies or a combination of thermal and compositional effects, including the possible incorporation of hydrogen (i.e., water) into high-pressure phases of mantle minerals such as MgSiO3 and CaSiO3. However, the fundamental...
According to geophysical studies, the Earth’s interior is highly heterogeneous, containing large-scale structures. One of the most prominent features is the Large Low Shear Velocity Province (LLSVP), imaged by seismic tomography as regions with anomalously slow S-wave velocities relative to the surrounding mantle. Two major LLSVPs have been identified: one beneath the Pacific Ocean and the...
Using the Chooz method on segmented detectors has limitations when discussing multiple distributed nonhomogeneous sources, and identification between sources; something that we wish to understand about Earth's core-mantle boundary (CMB). Using our new method of neutrino directionality, we aim to solve these problems by implementing a new mathematical framework in the directional analysis of...