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A solar neutrino is a neutrino originating from nuclear fusion in the Sun's core, and is the most common type of neutrino passing through any source observed on Earth at any particular moment. [ citation needed ] Neutrinos are elementary particles with extremely small rest mass and a neutral electric charge .
The Sun performs nuclear fusion via the proton–proton chain reaction, which converts four protons into alpha particles, neutrinos, positrons, and energy.This energy is released in the form of electromagnetic radiation, as gamma rays, as well as in the form of the kinetic energy of both the charged particles and the neutrinos.
The Homestake experiment (sometimes referred to as the Davis experiment or Solar Neutrino Experiment and in original literature called Brookhaven Solar Neutrino Experiment or Brookhaven 37 Cl (Chlorine) Experiment) [1] was an experiment headed by astrophysicists Raymond Davis, Jr. and John N. Bahcall in the late 1960s.
A neutrino (/ nj uː ˈ t r iː n oʊ / new-TREE-noh; denoted by the Greek letter ν) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. [2] [3] The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small that it was long thought to be zero.
However, the neutrinos released by the pep reaction are far more energetic: while neutrinos produced in the first step of the p–p reaction range in energy up to 0.42 MeV, the pep reaction produces sharp-energy-line neutrinos of 1.44 MeV. Detection of solar neutrinos from this reaction were reported by the Borexino collaboration in 2012. [16]
The neutrino is absorbed in the reaction and an electron is produced. Solar neutrinos have energies smaller than the mass of muons and tau leptons, so only electron neutrinos can participate in this reaction. The emitted electron carries off most of the neutrino's energy, on the order of 5–15 MeV, and is detectable. The proton which is ...
This was dramatically confirmed in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), which has resolved the solar neutrino problem. SNO measured the flux of solar electron neutrinos to be ~34% of the total neutrino flux (the electron neutrino flux measured via the charged current reaction, and the total flux via the neutral current reaction). The SNO ...
Work that led to discovery of neutrino oscillation (implying a non-zero mass for the neutrino absent in the Standard Model of particle physics) was motivated by a solar neutrino flux about three times lower than expected from theories — a long-standing concern in the nuclear astrophysics community colloquially known as the Solar neutrino problem.