A HEURISTIC REMARK ON THE PERIODIC VARIATION IN THE NUMBER OF SOLAR NEUTRINOS DETECTED ON EARTH

Abstract

Four operating neutrino observatories confirm the long standing discrepancy between detected and predicted solar neutrino flux. Among these four experiments the Homestake experiment is taking data for almost 25 years. The reliability of the radiochemical method for detecting solar neutrinos has been tested recently by the GALLEX experiment. All efforts to solve the solar neutrino problem by improving solar, nuclear, and neutrino physics have failed so far. This may also mean that the average solar neutrino flux extracted from the four experiments may not be the proper quantity to explain the production of neutrinos in the deep interior of the Sun. Occasionally it has been emphasized that the solar neutrino flux may vary over time. In this paper we do address relations among specific neutrino fluxes produced in the proton-proton chain that are imposed by the coupled systems of non-linear partial differential equations of solar structure and kinetic equations by focusing our attention on a statistical interpretation of selected kinetic equation of PPII/PPIII branch reactions of the proton-proton chain. A fresh look at the statistical implications for the outcome of kinetic equations for nuclear reactions may shed light on recent claims that the $^7$Be-neutrino flux of the Sun is suppressed in comparison to the pp- and $^8$B neutrino fluxes and may hint at that the solar neutrino flux is indeed varying over time as shown by the Homestake experiment.