Experimental Status of Geo-reactor Search with KamLAND Detector |
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Authors: | Jelena Maricic |
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Institution: | (1) University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA;(2) Present address: Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA |
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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). |
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Keywords: | Anti-neutrinos geo-reactor geo-magnetic field natural nuclear reactor |
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