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After six decades of using solar neutrinos primarily to establish the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, scientists now have sufficiently precise measurements of oscillation parameters from reactor experiments to use solar neutrinos as probes of the Sun's internal physics. However, current detection capabilities fall short by an order of magnitude in measuring the dominant pp-neutrino flux due to intrinsic carbon-14 background interference, requiring breakthrough detection technologies rather than incremental improvements. Combined with helioseismology data, precision solar neutrino measurements could enable comprehensive "heliotomography" of the solar interior by reading both its nuclear and mechanical structure.
Why it matters
This would transform solar neutrino physics from a particle physics tool into an astronomical instrument, enabling unprecedented insights into the Sun's core processes and potentially revealing new physics about stellar evolution and structure through multi-messenger observations.
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⚠️ Preprint – Noch nicht peer-reviewed
Dieser Artikel wurde noch nicht von unabhängigen Experten begutachtet. Die Ergebnisse sind vorläufig und sollten mit Vorsicht interpretiert werden.
Abstract: For sixty years, the Sun served neutrino physics more than the reverse: its neutrinos established oscillations rather than probing the star itself. That is now changing. Reactor antineutrinos have pinned down the oscillation parameters governing solar-neutrino flavour conversion so precisely that the propagation-related uncertainty is becoming negligible — closing the first of two abysses. Solar neutrinos can, at last, be turned on the Sun. Yet a second abyss remains: today’s solar-neutrino detection falls an order of magnitude short of the precision the Standard Solar Model already predicts for the dominant pp flux ($>,$90$%$) — a gap no reactor experiment can close. The intrinsic $^{14}mathrm{C}$ background walls off the pp region; only new detection techniques can breach it. Bridging this second abyss demands a revolution, not an increment. Combined with helioseismology’s complementary reading of the Sun’s mechanical structure, precision neutrino measurements of the nuclear source terms would enable a multi-messenger heliotomography of the solar interior — reading our star from both sides at once. A new age of solar discoveries may follow, on one condition: that the field builds the instruments equal to the task.