What do we mean by detecting earth-skimming of neutrinos?

Abstract

In this talk, we elaborate the strategy for detecting the Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. We first show that there are non-negligible astrophysical tau neutrino fluxes due to neutrino flavor oscillations. We then illustrate the idea of detecting Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. In particular, we point out that the tau-lepton flux resulting from neutrino-nucleon scatterings inside the earth is controlled by the tau-lepton range. We demonstrate this observation by showing the tau-lepton flux induced by the GZK tau-neutrino flux. The question on the energy resolutions of tau neutrinos in this detection strategy is briefly discussed.