Thanks to this, it will be possible to learn more data about cosmic processes and the surface of the Moon
TASS, October 14. Russian physicists have studied the spectra of lunar neutrinos - ultralight fundamental particles that arise due to the interaction of cosmic rays with the surface of the Moon. Thanks to this, new methods of studying this satellite may appear. The results of the work were published by the scientific journal Physical Review D, the press service of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) briefly writes about it.
A neutrino is a very light elementary particle that has no electric charge. It is formed during various radioactive decays, for example, during beta decay in atomic nuclei, during natural nuclear reactions occurring in stars, during reactions in reactors or accelerators, and in other processes.
"In their work, scientists have calculated the flow of low-energy neutrinos arising from cosmic rays bombarding the surface of the Moon. Numerical simulation of the interaction of cosmic rays with regolith (lunar soil) and the calculation of neutrinos formed in the decays of the formed hadrons showed that the ratio of lunar and atmospheric neutrino fluxes in the direction of the Moon in the low-energy range (from 10 MeV to about 1 GeV) is close to unity, but their spectra are very different, " the report says.
The revealed features, as the researchers note, can be used to search for lunar neutrinos in future neutrino experiments on Earth. However, detecting lunar neutrinos will require not just large, but huge neutrino detectors with exceptionally high energy and angular resolutions.
The observation of lunar neutrinos, according to the authors of the work, will make the Moon the closest astrophysical source for which the concept of multi-channel astronomy works, the purpose of which is to obtain information about processes occurring in space by studying waves, particles and high-energy cosmic rays emitted by the same extraterrestrial sources.
"Despite the similar origin of lunar and atmospheric neutrinos, the peculiar spectrum of the former, caused mostly by the absence of an atmosphere on the Moon, makes it potentially possible to distinguish between neutrinos of different origin. In addition, the modeling revealed the dependence of the spectrum of lunar neutrinos on the density of the regolith, which in the future may help in studying the properties of the lunar soil," said one of the authors of the work Sergey Demidov.
