Light sterile neutrinos, spin flavour precession and the solar neutrino experiments

TL;DR

This paper extends a model of solar neutrino flavor conversion to include three active flavors and sterile neutrinos, highlighting the role of magnetic fields and their modulation in explaining experimental data.

Contribution

It generalizes a two-flavor model to three flavors, incorporating magnetic moments and solar magnetic field effects, providing a comprehensive framework for solar neutrino oscillations.

Findings

Data favor a sizable solar magnetic field in certain zones.

Borexino data sensitive to magnetic field modulation during quiet solar periods.

Neutrino experiments can trace solar magnetic field variations.

Abstract

We generalize to three active flavours a previous two flavour model for the resonant spin flavour conversion of solar neutrinos to sterile ones, a mechanism which is added to the well known LMA one. The transition magnetic moments from the muon and tau neutrinos to the sterile play the dominant role in fixing the amount of active flavour suppression. We also show, through numerical integration of the evolution equations, that the data from all solar neutrino experiments except Borexino exhibit a clear preference for a sizable magnetic field either in the convection zone or in the core and radiation zone. This is possibly related to the fact that the data from the first set are average ones taken during a period of mostly intense solar activity, whereas in contrast Borexino data were taken during a period of quiet sun. We argue that the solar neutrino experiments are capable of tracing the possible modulation of the solar magnetic field. Those monitoring the high energy neutrinos, namely the $^8 B$ flux, appear to be sensitive to a field modulation either in the convection zone or in the core and radiation zone. Those monitoring the low energy fluxes will be sensitive to the second type of solar field profiles only. In this way Borexino alone may play an essential role, since it examines both energy sectors, although experimental redundance from other experiments will be most important.