Resonance spin flavour precession and solar neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper investigates resonance spin flavour precession as a potential explanation for the solar neutrino problem, analyzing various solar magnetic field profiles and fitting experimental data with promising results.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of resonance spin flavour precession with multiple magnetic field profiles, comparing its fit quality to other neutrino oscillation solutions.

Findings

Rate fits are excellent for some magnetic field profiles.

Energy spectrum fits are comparable to large mixing angle MSW solutions.

Spectrum data uncertainties hinder definitive conclusions.

Abstract

We examine the prospects for the resonance spin flavour precession as a solution to the solar neutrino problem. We study seven different realistic solar magnetic field profiles and, by numerically integrating the evolution equations, perform a fit of the event rates for the three types of solar neutrino experiments (Ga, Cl and SuperKamiokande) and a fit of the energy spectrum of the recoil electrons in SuperKamiokande. A $\chi^2$ analysis shows that the quality of the rate fits is excellent for two of the field profiles and good for all others with $\chi^2 /d.o.f.$ always well below unity. Regarding the fits for the energy spectrum, their quality is better than that for the small mixing angle MSW solution of the solar neutrino problem, at the same level as that for the large mixing angle MSW solution but worse than that for the vacuum oscillations one. The experimental data on the spectrum are however largely uncertain especially in the high energy sector, so that it is too early yet to draw any clear conclusions on the likeliest type of particle physics solution to the solar neutrino problem.