Abstract
A natural nuclear fission reactor operating in the center of the Earth has been proposed by Herndon (Hollenbach and Herndon, 2001) as the energy source that powers the geo-magnetic field. The upper limit on the expected geo-reactor power is set by the estimated 12 TW (Buffett, 2003) heat flow from the Earth’s core. If it exists, a nuclear reactor of that size emits a strong anti-neutrino flux. Emitted electron anti-neutrinos can be detected by the Kamioka liquid scintillator anti-neutrino detector (KamLAND) (Raghavan, 2002), and the geo-reactor power level is proporional to the anti-neutrino emission rate. KamLAND measures the geo-reactor power as a constant positive offset in detected anti-neutrino rate on top of the varying anti-neutrino rate coming from man-made reactors. Here we present the first attempt to measure the geo-reactor power. Based on a 776 ton-year exposure of KamLAND to electron anti-neutrinos, the detected flux corresponds to (6±6) TW. The upper limit on the geo-reactor power at 90% confidence level is 18 TW, which is below the lower limit of the total Earth’s radiogenic heat, estimated to be between 19 and 31TW (Anderson, 2003).
Kamland Collaboration
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ahmed, S. N. et al.: 2004, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 181301.
Anderson, D.: 2003, Energetics of the Earth and the Missing Heat Source Mystery, available at http://www.mantleplumes.org/Energetics,html.
Araki, T. et al.: 2005a, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 081801.
Araki, T. et al.: 2005b, Nature 436, 499–503.
Bemporad, C. et al.: 2002, Rev. Mod. Phys. 74, 297.
Bevington, P. and Robinson, D. K.: 2003, Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences, McGrawHill.
Buffett, B. A.: 2003, Science 299, 1675–1677.
Dye, S. T., et al.: 2006, this volume, doi: 10.1007/s11038-006-9129-z.
Eguchi, K. et al.: 2003, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 021802.
Herndon, J. M.: 1979, Proc. R. Soc. London A 368, 495–500.
Herndon, J. M.: 1980, Proc. R. Soc. London A 372, 149–154.
Herndon, J. M.: 1996, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93, 646–648.
Herndon, J. M.: 2003, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 3047–3050.
Herndon, J. M.: 2006, this volume, doi: 10.1007/s11038-006-9121-7.
Hollenbach, D. F. and Herndon, J. M.: 2001, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 98, 11085.
McDonough, W. F. and Sun, S.-S.: 1995, Chem. Geol. 120, 223.
Raghavan, R. S.: 2002, hep-ex/0208038.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer
About this paper
Cite this paper
Maricic, J. (2006). Experimental Status of Geo-reactor Search with KamLAND Detector. In: Dye, S.T. (eds) Neutrino Geophysics: Proceedings of Neutrino Sciences 2005. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-70771-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-70771-6_10
Received:
Accepted:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-70766-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-70771-6
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)