Discriminating among Earth composition models using geo-antineutrinos

It has been estimated that the entire Earth generates heat corresponding toabout 40 TW (equivalent to 10,000 nuclear power plants) which is considered tooriginate mainly from the radioactive decay of elements like U, Th and K,deposited in the crust and mantle of the Earth. Radioactivity of these elementsproduce not only heat but also antineutrinos (called geo-antineutrinos) whichcan be observed by terrestrial detectors. We investigate the possibility ofdiscriminating among Earth composition models predicting different totalradiogenic heat generation, by observing such geo-antineutrinos at Kamioka andGran Sasso, assuming KamLAND and Borexino (type) detectors, respectively, atthese places. By simulating the future geo-antineutrino data as well as reactorantineutrino background contributions, we try to establish to which extent wecan discriminate among Earth composition models for given exposures (in unitsof kt$\cdot$ yr) at these two sites on our planet. We use also information onneutrino mixing parameters coming from solar neutrino data as well as KamLANDreactor antineutrino data, in order to estimate the number of geo-antineutrinoinduced events.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, final version to appear in JHE