Recent Borexino results and prospects for the near future (original) (raw)

Borexino Results on Neutrinos from the Sun and Earth

Universe, 2021

Borexino is a 280-ton liquid scintillator detector located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. Since the start of its data-taking in May 2007, it has provided several measurements of low-energy neutrinos from various sources. At the base of its success lie unprecedented levels of radio-purity and extensive thermal stabilization, both resulting from a years-long effort of the collaboration. Solar neutrinos, emitted in the Hydrogen-to-Helium fusion in the solar core, are important for the understanding of our star, as well as neutrino properties. Borexino is the only experiment that has performed a complete spectroscopy of the pp chain solar neutrinos (with the exception of the hep neutrinos contributing to the total flux at 10−5 level), through the detection of pp, 7Be, pep, and 8B solar neutrinos and has experimentally confirmed the existence of the CNO fusion cycle in the Sun. Borexino has also detected geoneutrinos, antineutrinos from the decays of long-lived radi...

Study of Low Energy Neutrinos From Sun and Earth With Borexino

2014

The Borexino is a unique detector able to study neutrino interactions with a threshold below 1MeV thanks to the unprecedented radiopurity reached by it. So it has been possible to measure for the first time the solar neutrino fluxes from the Be and pep nuclear reactions and consequently to study the neutrino oscillation in vacuum and in the transition region. The neutrinos from B with a lower threshold down to 1 MeV has been also measured and an upper limit of the flux from the CNO cycle has been reached . The measurement of these fluxes allowed a good check of the Solar Standard Model predictions. Finally Borexino has obtained evidence of geoneutrinos with 4.2 sigma confidence level. 1. Why the solar neutrinos ? I would like first of all to set the study of the solar neutrinos within the physics framework and to explain why this issue has been and is so important in order to understand two crucial problems in the astro-particle physics: the Sun physics and the Neutrino physics. 394...

Solar Neutrinos: Status and Prospects

Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2013

We describe the current status of solar neutrino measurements and of the theory—both neutrino physics and solar astrophysics—employed in interpreting measurements. Important recent developments include Super-Kamiokande's determination of the ν−e elastic scattering rate for 8B neutrinos to 3%; the latest Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) global analysis in which the inclusion of low-energy data from SNO I and II significantly narrowed the range of allowed values for the neutrino mixing angle θ12; Borexino results for both the 7Be and proton-electron-proton (pep) neutrino fluxes, the first direct measurements constraining the rate of proton-proton (pp) I and pp II burning in the Sun; global reanalyses of solar neutrino data that take into account new reactor results on θ13; a new decadal evaluation of the nuclear physics of the pp chain and CNO cycle defining best values and uncertainties in the nuclear microphysics input to solar models; recognition of an emerging discrepancy be...

Borexino: recent solar and terrestrial neutrino results and description of the SOX project

Proceedings of The European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics — PoS(EPS-HEP 2013)

Important neutrino results came recently from Borexino, a massive, calorimetric liquid scintillator detector installed at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory. With its unprecedented radiopurity levels achieved in the core of the detection medium, it is the only experiment in operation able to study in real time solar neutrino interactions in the challenging sub-MeV energy region. The recently achieved precise measurement of the 7 Be solar neutrino flux and the results concerning the pep, 8 B and CNO fluxes, together with their physics implications, are described in this work. Moreover the detector has also provided a clean detection of terrestrial neutrinos, from which they emerge as a new probe of the interior of the Earth. In the near future the scope of the experiment will be broadened to the sterile neutrino issue, through the SOX project based on the deployment of a powerful neutrino source nearby the detector.