Solar Neutrino Oscillations in the Moon

Abstract

The first three quarters of this paper consists of a pedagogical review of neutrino oscillations, including vacuum oscillations, constant density matter oscillations and variable density matter oscillations. We then address the question of whether MSW solar neutrino oscillations in the moon could be observed during a solar eclipse. For the small angle MSW solution, the effect is unmeasureable; for the large angle solution, we find an enhancement in the rate which can be as large as a factor of two. Since the center of the Sun, as seen from a typical solar neutrino detector (through a transparent Earth) is covered for roughly three hours per decade, a world-wide event rate of a few solar neutrino events per hour might be sufficient to observe this effect. This work constituted the undergraduate senior thesis of Brian Mason, and has been submitted to the American Journal of Physics.