After 60 years, here comes the Sun
Abstract
For sixty years, the Sun served neutrino physics more than the reverse: its neutrinos established oscillations rather than probing the star itself. That is now changing. Reactor antineutrinos have pinned down the oscillation parameters governing solar-neutrino flavour conversion so precisely that the propagation-related uncertainty is becoming negligible -- closing the first of two abysses. Solar neutrinos can, at last, be turned on the Sun. Yet a second abyss remains: today's solar-neutrino detection falls an order of magnitude short of the precision the Standard Solar Model already predicts for the dominant pp flux (>90%) -- a gap no reactor experiment can close. The intrinsic 14C background walls off the pp region; only new detection techniques can breach it. Bridging this second abyss demands a revolution, not an increment. Combined with helioseismology's complementary reading of the Sun's mechanical structure, precision neutrino measurements of the nuclear source terms would enable a multi-messenger heliotomography of the solar interior -- reading our star from both sides at once. A new age of solar discoveries may follow, on one condition: that the field builds the instruments equal to the task.
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BibTeX
@misc{cabrera2026after,
title = {{After 60 years, here comes the Sun}},
author = {Anatael Cabrera and Mark Chen and Stefano Dusini and Jeff Hartnell and Jorge Martín Camalich and Diana Navas and Hiroshi Nunokawa and Aldo Serenelli and Javier Trujillo Bueno and Frédéric Yermia},
howpublished = {HAL},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.18799},
eprint = {2609.18799},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05763113v1},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - After 60 years, here comes the Sun
AU - Anatael Cabrera
AU - Mark Chen
AU - Stefano Dusini
AU - Jeff Hartnell
AU - Jorge Martín Camalich
AU - Diana Navas
AU - Hiroshi Nunokawa
AU - Aldo Serenelli
AU - Javier Trujillo Bueno
AU - Frédéric Yermia
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - HAL
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.18799
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05763113v1
AB - For sixty years, the Sun served neutrino physics more than the reverse: its neutrinos established oscillations rather than probing the star itself. That is now changing. Reactor antineutrinos have pinned down the oscillation parameters governing solar-neutrino flavour conversion so precisely that the propagation-related uncertainty is becoming negligible -- closing the first of two abysses. Solar neutrinos can, at last, be turned on the Sun. Yet a second abyss remains: today's solar-neutrino detection falls an order of magnitude short of the precision the Standard Solar Model already predicts for the dominant pp flux (>90%) -- a gap no reactor experiment can close. The intrinsic ^14C background walls off the pp region; only new detection techniques can breach it. Bridging this second abyss demands a revolution, not an increment. Combined with helioseismology's complementary reading of the Sun's mechanical structure, precision neutrino measurements of the nuclear source terms would enable a multi-messenger heliotomography of the solar interior -- reading our star from both sides at once. A new age of solar discoveries may follow, on one condition: that the field builds the instruments equal to the task.
ER -