First detection of CNO neutrinos with Borexino
Abstract
Neutrinos are elementary particles which are known since many years as fundamental messengers from the interior of the Sun. The Standard Solar Model, which gives a theoretical description of all nuclear processes which happen in our star, predicts that roughly 99% of the energy produced is coming from a series of processes known as the "pp chain". Such processes have been studied in detail over the last years by means of neutrinos, thanks also to the important measurements provided by the Borexino experiment. The remaining 1% is instead predicted to come from a separate loop-process, known as the "CNO cycle". This sub-dominant process is theoretically well understood, but has so far escaped any direct observation. Another fundamental aspect is that the CNO cycle is indeed the main nuclear engine in stars more massive than the Sun. In 2020, thanks to the unprecedented radio-purity and temperature control achieved by the Borexino detector over recent years, the first ever detection of neutrinos from the CNO cycle has been finally announced. The milestone result confirms the existence of this nuclear fusion process in our Universe. Here, the details of the detector stabilization and the analysis techniques adopted are reported.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2105.09211,
title = {First detection of CNO neutrinos with Borexino},
author = {G. Settanta and M. Agostini and K. Altenmüller and S. Appel and V. Atroshchenko and Z. Bagdasarian and D. Basilico and G. Bellini and J. Benziger and R. Biondi and D. Bravo and B. Caccianiga and F. Calaprice and A. Caminata and P. Cavalcante and A. Chepurnov and D. D'Angelo and S. Davini and A. Derbin and A. Di Giacinto and V. Di Marcello and X. F. Ding and A. Di Ludovico and L. Di Noto and I. Drachnev and A. Formozov and D. Franco and C. Galbiati and C. Ghiano and M. Giammarchi and A. Goretti and A. S. Göttel and M. Gromov and D. Guffanti and Aldo Ianni and Andrea Ianni and A. Jany and D. Jeschke and V. Kobychev and G. Korga and S. Kumaran and M. Laubenstein and E. Litvinovich and P. Lombardi and I. Lomskaya and L. Ludhova and G. Lukyanchenko and L. Lukyanchenko and I. Machulin and J. Martyn and E. Meroni and M. Meyer and L. Miramonti and M. Misiaszek and V. Muratova and B. Neumair and M. Nieslony and R. Nugmanov and L. Oberauer and V. Orekhov and F. Ortica and M. Pallavicini and L. Papp and L. Pelicci and Ö. Penek and L. Pietrofaccia and N. Pilipenko and A. Pocar and G. Raikov and M. T. Ranalli and G. Ranucci and A. Razeto and A. Re and M. Redchuk and A. Romani and N. Rossi and S. Schönert and D. Semenov and M. Skorokhvatov and A. Singhal and O. Smirnov and A. Sotnikov and Y. Suvorov and R. Tartaglia and G. Testera and J. Thurn and E. Unzhakov and F. L. Villante and A. Vishneva and R. B. Vogelaar and F. von Feilitzsch and M. Wojcik and M. Wurm and S. Zavatarelli and K. Zuber and G. Zuzel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.09211},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
7 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the 2021 Neutrinos session of the 55th Rencontres de Moriond