Geophysical aspects of very long baseline neutrino experiments

Several proposed experiments will send beams of neutrinos through the Earth along paths with a source-receiver distance of hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Knowledge of the physical properties of the medium traversed by these beams, in particular the density, will be necessary in order to properly interpret the experimental data. Present geophysical knowledge allows the average density along a path with a length of several thousand km to be estimated with an accuracy of about ±5 per cent. Physicists planning neutrino beam experiments should decide whether or not this level of uncertainty is acceptable. If greater accuracy is required, intensive geophysical research on the Earth structure along the beam path should be conducted as part of the preparatory work on the experiments.