Helioseismology, MSW and the Solar Neutrino Problem

Abstract

In this talk I summarize recent work done in collaboration with Cliff Burgess and Denis Michaud, in which we performed a detailed investigation of how solar neutrinos propagate through helioseismic waves. We find that the MSW solar neutrino spectrum is not modified at all in the presence of seismic waves. This finding differs from earlier estimates mainly because most helioseismic waves are too weak in the vicinity of the MSW resonance to be of relevance for neutrino propagation. A special class of waves may however by subject to an instability and potentially have very large amplitudes. These waves do have long wavelengths, a situation for which the formalism employed in earlier analyses does not apply. Our numerical simulation significantly reduces their influence on neutrino propagation.