Measuring the Sun's Core with Neutrino Measurements: A Solar Orbiter Concept

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel solar neutrino detection method using a space-based orbiter with a GAGG scintillator to measure the Sun's core, aiming to improve solar models and understand solar interior processes.

Contribution

It introduces a space-based neutrino detection concept utilizing nuclear excitation signals in GAGG scintillators, enabling background reduction and new solar interior measurements.

Findings

Potential to directly observe the solar core shape.

Improved constraints on Standard Solar Models.

Feasibility of space-based neutrino measurements outside Van Allen Belts.

Abstract

Traditional neutrino detectors are built deep underground to reduce backgrounds. The neutrino solar orbiting laboratory ($\nu$SOL) collaboration has been developing a concept to improve neutrino measurement not with a larger detector underground, but instead we use the nuclear excitation from the neutrino interaction to produce a multi-pulse signal. Cerium-doped gadolinium aluminum gallium garnet (GAGG) is a new scintillator which has 23\% gallium by mass. When a neutrino interacts with the GAGG, about 10\% of the time it will be in an excited nuclear state rather than in the base energy level. A segmented detector looking for the pulses separated by distance and time has the potential to greatly limit background noise from solar wind, cosmic rays, and galactic gamma rays. A polar LEO CubeSat mission is currently in development to measure the GCR backgrounds outside the Van Allen Belts. In this summary of my presentation I will quickly lay the groundwork of the interaction of interest and what a solar orbiter's detector could look like. I will then explore what measurements a near-solar orbiter could make. With these measurements in mind, I will discuss the feasibility of a direct observation of the core's shape, and I will discuss how a solar orbiter's measurements could improve a Standard Solar Model search and compare that measurement with the current global neutrino measurements. I will conclude with a discussion of what these observables could tell us about the solar interior.