Solar neutrinos and the decaying neutrino hypothesis

Abstract

We explore, mostly using data from solar neutrino experiments, the hypothesis that the neutrino mass eigenstates are unstable. We find that, by combining $^{8}\mathrm{B}$ solar neutrino data with those on $^{7}\mathrm{Be}$ and lower-energy solar neutrinos, one obtains a mostly model-independent bound on both the ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{1}$ and ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{2}$ lifetimes. We comment on whether a nonzero neutrino decay width can improve the compatibility of the solar neutrino data with the massive neutrino hypothesis.