On the propagation of neutrinos through the Earth

Abstract: 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 surviving neutrinos traversed a large part of the Earth before being detected. It is commonly assumed that the detected neutrinos go in a straight line through the Earth without loosing energy. 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 this leads to an increase of the detectable flux of neutrinos.