1994/06/26 by Evalyn Gates, Lawrence M. Krauss, Martin White
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.51.2631
published as Phys.Rev.D51:2631-2643,1995 · 29 pages (incl figs), latex, 6 figures (appended as separate uuencoded file. To embed figures in text, uncomment 6 \epsfysize lines which appear before bibliography), CWRU-P5-94, CfPA-94-TTH-29, Fermilab-Pub-94/176-A
arxiv created 1994/06/26 · openalex publication_date 1995/03/15 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We describe how to consistently incorporate solar model uncertainties, along with experimental errors and correlations, when analyzing solar neutrino data to derive confidence limits on parameter space for proposed solutions of the solar neutrino problem. Our work resolves ambiguities and inconsistencies in the previous literature. As an application of our methods we calculate the masses and mixing angles allowed by the current data for the proposed MSW solution using both Bayesian and frequentist methods, allowing purely for solar model flux variations, to compare with previous work. We also show that solutions which simply suppress the 8B solar neutrino flux are strongly disfavored and have a likelihood ratio of at most 10^\mathrm\ensuremath-8 compared to the best MSW solution. Finally, we consider the effects of including metal diffusion in the solar models and also discuss implications for future experiments.