Abstract

Neutrinos produced in the Sun by electron capture reactions on 13N, 15O and 17F, to which we refer as ecCNO neutrinos, are not usually considered in solar neutrino analysis since the expected fluxes are extremely low. The experimental determination of this sub-dominant component of the solar neutrino flux is very difficult but could be rewarding since it provides a determination of the metallic content of the solar core and, moreover, probes the solar neutrino survival probability in the transition region at Eν∼2.5 MeV. In this Letter, we suggest that this difficult measure could be at reach for future gigantic ultra-pure liquid scintillator detectors, such as LENA.

Highlights

  • One of the main goals of the present and generation ultra-pure liquid scintillator detectors, such as Borexino [1], SNO+ [2] and LENA [3], is the determination of the neutrino fluxes produced by the CNO cycle in the Sun

  • This means that they cannot be neglected in statistical analysis that aim at the reconstruction of the low energy upturn of the electron neutrino survival probability predicted by the LMA-MSW solution of the solar neutrino problem; ii) According to our estimate, the detection of ecCNO neutrinos in the proposed 50 kton LENA detector cannot be excluded

  • In a recent study [19], it was shown that the external background in LENA can be reduced to a negligible level in a fiducial mass of 19 kton, allowing to measure the 8B solar neutrinos event spectrum down to Evis ∼ 1.9 MeV and to explore the energy region where the contribution of ecCNO neutrinos is not negligible

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Summary

Introduction

One of the main goals of the present and generation ultra-pure liquid scintillator detectors, such as Borexino [1], SNO+ [2] and LENA [3], is the determination of the neutrino fluxes produced by the CNO cycle in the Sun. Note that we made the reasonable assumption that the small differences in the temperature profile of the Sun which are implied by a different choice of the surface composition do not affect the rparameter in a significant way In this assumption, the ecCNO neutrinos carry exactly the same information as CNO neutrinos on the efficiency of the CNO cycle and on the metallic content of the solar core. We understand that detectors with fiducial masses equal to ∼ 10 kton or more are necessary, for statistical reasons, to extract the ecCNO neutrino signal

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