Re-Examination of Possible Bimodality of GALLEX Solar Neutrino Data

Abstract

The histogram formed from published capture-rate measurements for the GALLEX solar neutrino experiment is bimodal, showing two distinct peaks. On the other hand, the histogram formed from published measurements derived from the similar GNO experiment is unimodal, showing only one peak. However, the two experiments differ in run durations: GALLEX runs are either three weeks or four weeks (approximately) in duration, whereas GNO runs are all about four weeks in duration. When we form 3-week and 4-week subsets of the GALLEX data, we find that the relevant histograms are unimodal. The upper peak arises mainly from the 3-week runs, and the lower peak from the 4-week runs. The 4-week subset of the GALLEX dataset is found to be similar to the GNO dataset. A recent re-analysis of GALLEX data leads to a unimodal histogram.