English

Lunar neutrinos

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2021-09-01 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Cosmic rays bombard the lunar surface producing mesons, which attenuate inside the regolith. They get slower and decay weakly into mostly sub-GeV neutrinos leaving the surface. Thus the Moon shines in neutrinos. Here we calculate spectra of low energy neutrinos, which exhibit bright features potentially recognisable above isotropic neutrino background in the direction towards the Moon. Their observation, though a very challenging task for future neutrino large volume experiments, would make the Moon the nearest astrophysical source for which the concept of multimessenger astronomy works truly. Remarkably, some features of the lunar neutrino flux are sensitive to the surface mass density of the Moon.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.12870,
  title  = {Lunar neutrinos},
  author = {S. Demidov and D. Gorbunov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.12870},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

13 pages, 9 figures, study of lunar neutrino oscillations added, few references added, version accepted for publication in PRD

R2 v1 2026-06-23T21:19:08.998Z