The Physics Post

The groundbreaking discoveries made by Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald earned them the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015. Their contributions led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of neutrino oscillation, a phenomenon that transformed the field of particle physics. This blog post aims to explore the historical context, delve into the physics underlying neutrino oscillation, and examine the experimental principles employed in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) and Super-Kamiokande.  The Solar Neutrino Problem:  In the mid-1960s, physicist Raymond Davis Jr. embarked on a series of experiments aimed at detecting solar neutrinos—neutrinos emitted from the Sun. Employing an underground detector filled with an abundance of chlorine, Davis Jr. sought to capture the elusive interactions between neutrinos and chlorine atoms. However, the outcome of his experiments consistently revealed a strikingly lower count of observed neutrinos compared to the theoretical ...

Today, we delve into the fascinating world of neutrinos and explore the recent breakthrough made by the Borexino collaboration in measuring CNO neutrino fluxes. Neutrinos are elusive particles that originate from various astrophysical sources, and their study has unveiled valuable insights into the workings of the universe. In this post, we will discuss solar neutrinos, the CNO cycle, the significance of Borexino's measurements, and provide an overview of their groundbreaking paper. Solar Neutrinos and Neutrino Flux in Nuclear Reactions: Solar neutrinos, subatomic particles with no electric charge and minuscule mass, are generated within the Sun's core through nuclear reactions, particularly the proton-proton chain where hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium. At each step of this process, various types of neutrinos are emitted, constituting the primary source of solar neutrinos. The quantity of solar neutrinos is truly astonishing – in a mere one-second interval, approximately 65...