IOP Publishing, Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 4(375), p. 042041, 2012
DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/375/1/042041
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Recently the Borexino [1] and KamLAND [2] collaborations reported evidence of the geo-neutrino signal at more than 4 sigma. These experimental results constrain the contribution of radiogenic heat production in the Earth and provide a crucial test of the existing Bulk Silicate Earth (BSE) models. We developed a high resolution, geospatial reference model for the crust and lithospheric mantle in order to determine the U and Th concentration in the deep Earth from the geo-neutrino signal. 1. Overview of current geo-neutrinos experiments The KamLAND and Borexino experiments began taking data in December 2002 and March 2007 respectively and are presently the only two operational geo-neutrinos detectors; SNO+ will begin to collect data in 2013. The Borexino detector contains 278 tons of Liquid Scintillator (LS) confined within a thin spherical nylon vessel with a radius of 4.25 m. The scintillation light is detected by 2212 8" PMT's, which cover nearly 30% of the sphere. In 482 days of live time (December 2007 – December 2009) and in a fiducial mass of 225 tons, the detector collected 21 events with a visible energy below 8 MeV [3]. After a rate-shape-time analysis, the best estimate is (1σ) geo-neutrinos events, which