Is it possible to create a neutrino data channel?

Question

With neutrinos capable of traveling directly through Earth, is it possible to encode information on one end and decode on another, potentially creating the fastest data link between, say London and New York? We have a neutrino telescope close to our home and I was wondering if it can serve as a receiver with a neutrino emitter somewhere else?

Answer 1

Well, I don't know whether this is practical, but in principle it is possible. See for instance Demonstration of communication using neutrinos on the arXiv. The researchers report transmitting data at 0.1 bits/sec over more than a kilometer, including 240m of earth (and with a bit error rate of 1%).

Answer 2

It is plausible, but would be very difficult. From the transmission side it would be hard to generate modulated pulses of neutrinos. One would need considerable control over the weak nuclear processes used to generate them. The Fermilab Tevatron generates a beam of neutrinos for the MiniBooNE experiment. That is not a practical transmitter at this time.

The detection part is maybe more plausible. Dark matter experiments seek to detect a neutral current interactions with a nucleus in a crystal lattice. The interaction results in a phonon in the crystal that is detected. This might serve as the receiving antenna for a neutrino signal. Just as with putative dark matter a neutral current interaction between a neutrino and a nucleus, one which would be a flavor changing interaction, would vibrate the lattice of a crystal. Of course filtering out all the noise from cosmic rays and background radiation would be a challenge.

Answer 3

No, it's not possible. Neutrinos almost never interact with matter, so they are impossible to manipulate, or if by some miracle you managed to do that, to decode them at the other end. A flood of trillions of neutrinos from a nuclear reactor or bomb might be detectable by a neutrino telescope, but it would be an extremely clumsy and inefficient way of sending a signal. Neutrino telescopes are not the precise and accurate instruments that other forms of telescopes are. We already have means of sending intricate messages to the opposite side of the world at the speed of light, so no useful purpose would be achieved by a neutrino signalling system.