A frequentist analysis of solar neutrino data

Abstract

We present a Monte Carlo analysis in terms of neutrino oscillations of the total rates measured in solar neutrino experiments in the framework of frequentist statistics. We show that the goodness of fit and the confidence level of the allowed regions in the space of the neutrino oscillation parameters are significantly overestimated in the standard method. We also present a calculation of exact allowed regions with correct frequentist coverage. We show that the exact VO, LMA and LOW regions are much larger than the standard ones and merge together giving an allowed band at large mixing angles for all Delta m^2 > 10^{-10} eV^2.