Can the measurement of the cross-section of proton-capture on beryllium-7 be improved?

The solar neutrino ''problem'' arises from the discrepancy between the observations of solar neutrinos fluxes in experiments at Homestake and Kamiokande and the solar model predictions of those fluxes. Both experiments, which are sensitive mainly to high-energy neutrinos, observe fewer neutrinos than predicted by solar models. Most of the expected high-energy solar neutrinos come from the beta-decay of 8B, which is produced in the reaction 7Be(p,γ)8B. A study of all of the measurements to date of the zero-energy S-factor for the reaction 7Be(p,γ)8B concludes that S17(0) = 0.0224 +± 0.0021 keV-barn. Although a 10% error in S17(0) alone wig not solve the solar neutrino problem, it would still be useful to nail down all of the inputs of the solar models as well as possible. This serves to guard against the possibility that a conspiracy among the errors might be the source of the discrepancy and provides tighter constraints on the ''new physics'' interpretations of the experimentally measured solar neutrino spectrum. In this paper, we examine several ways of improving this measurement. None appear to offer a significant improvement over past experiments