High Energy Solar Physics: Anticipating HESSI (eds. R. Ramaty and N. Mandzhavidze), ASP Conf. Series: 206, 83 - 87, 2000



Solar Neutrinos as a Possible Diagnostic of the Solar Magnetic Field



Peter A. Sturrock

Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA




ABSTRACT

Spectrum analysis of neutrino flux measurements made by the Homestake and GALLEX experiments shows, for each experiment, a prominent peak near 13 cycles per year. This synodic frequency corresponds to a sidereal frequency of 14 cycles per year or 444 nHz, compatible with the rotation frequency of the radiative zone. These results suggest that neutrinos have nonzero magnetic moment, and that the neutrino flux is modulated by the Sun's internal magnetic field. If these preliminary results are corroborated, measurements of the solar neutrino flux will provide a new diagnostic of the Sun's internal magnetic field.


CORRECTION

In this article, the spectrum analysis was carried out by a least squares procedure that involved fitting a cosine term, a sine term, and an offset. In this procedure, the data were not normalized to have mean value zero. We have found from later studies that this procedure is unfortunately sensitive to the sampling time-series. By contrast, the Lomb-Scargle procedure (used in other articles), which involves normalizing the data to have mean-value zero, is insensitive to the sampling process. The peak at 13.08 y-1 does not show up in the spectrum obtained by Lomb-Scargle analysis. We conclude that the peak at 13.08 y-1 is spurious - it is not due to the neutrino flux but to the sampling process.





Maintained by Mark Weber.

Last modified: 2002 April 30.