Measuring the Sun's Core with Neutrino Measurements: A Solar Orbiter Concept

Abstract

Traditional neutrino detectors are built deep underground to reduce backgrounds. The neutrino solar orbiting laboratory ($\nu$SOL) collaboration has been developing a concept to improve neutrino measurement not with a larger detector underground, but instead we use the nuclear excitation from the neutrino interaction to produce a multi-pulse signal. Cerium-doped gadolinium aluminum gallium garnet (GAGG) is a new scintillator which has 23\% gallium by mass. When a neutrino interacts with the GAGG, about 10\% of the time it will be in an excited nuclear state rather than in the base energy level. A segmented detector looking for the pulses separated by distance and time has the potential to greatly limit background noise from solar wind, cosmic rays, and galactic gamma rays. A polar LEO CubeSat mission is currently in development to measure the GCR backgrounds outside the Van Allen Belts. In this summary of my presentation I will quickly lay the groundwork of the interaction of interest and what a solar orbiter's detector could look like. I will then explore what measurements a near-solar orbiter could make. With these measurements in mind, I will discuss the feasibility of a direct observation of the core's shape, and I will discuss how a solar orbiter's measurements could improve a Standard Solar Model search and compare that measurement with the current global neutrino measurements. I will conclude with a discussion of what these observables could tell us about the solar interior.