Published March 2009 | Version v1
Journal article

Detecting Solar Neutrino Flare in Megaton and km3 detectors

  • 1. Physics Department, Rome Univ. 1, Sapienza Ple A. Moro 2, 00185 (Italy) and INFN, Rome (Italy)

Description

To foresee a solar flare neutrino signal we infer its upper and lower bound. The upper bound was derived since a few years by general energy equipartition arguments on observed solar particle flare. The lower bound, the most compelling one for any guarantee neutrino signal, is derived by most recent records of hard Gamma bump due to solar flare on January 2005 (by neutral pion decay). Because neutral and charged pions (made by hadron scattering in the flare) are born on the same foot, their link is compelling: the observed gamma flux [Grechnev V.V. et al., (arXiv:0806.4424), Solar Physics, Vol. 1, October, (2008), 252] reflects into a corresponding one for the neutrinos, almost one to one. Moreover while gamma photons might be absorbed (in deep corona) or at least reduced inside the flaring plasma, the secondaries neutrino are not. So pion neutrinos should be even more abundant than gamma ones. Tens-hundred MeV neutrinos may cross undisturbed the whole Sun, doubling at least their rate respect a unique solar-side for gamma flare. Therefore we obtain minimal bounds opening a windows for neutrino astronomy, already at the edge of present but quite within near future Megaton neutrino detectors. Such detectors are considered mostly to reveal cosmic supernova background or rare Local Group (few Mpc) Supernovas events [Matthew D. Kistler et al. (0810.1959v1)]. However rarest (once a decade), brief (a few minutes) powerful solar neutrino 'flare' may shine and they may overcome by two to three order of magnitude the corresponding steady atmospheric neutrino noise on the Earth, leading in largest Neutrino detector at least to one or to meaning-full few events clustered signals. The voice of such a solar anti-neutrino flare component at a few tens MeVs may induce an inverse beta decay over a vanishing anti-neutrino solar background. Megaton or even inner ten Megaton Ice Cube detector at ten GeV threshold may also reveal traces in hardest energy of solar flares. Icecube, marginally, too. Solar neutrino flavors may shine light on neutrino mixing angles. Not only on orbit satellites but even human astronauts in Space may exploit underground neutrino detectors for the prompt alert on (otherwise) fast and maybe lethal solar explosions.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2009.02.035

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2009.02.035;
arXiv
arXiv:0812.4592v2;
PII
S0920-5632(09)00135-2;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Nuclear Physics. B, Proceedings Supplements
Journal Volume
188
Journal Page Range
p. 142-145
ISSN
0920-5632
CODEN
NPBSE7

Conference

Title
Neutrino oscillation workshop
Acronym
NOW 2008
Dates
6-12 Sep 2008
Place
Otranto (Italy)

Optional Information

Copyright
Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.