I am not sure if this has been asked recently, but has there been any headway into solving the solar neutrino problem? I recently completed the Particle Physics for non-Physicists by Professor Stephen Pollack. It is from 2006 and I was wondering if the issue had been solved yet.
In it he stated that 66% of the expected neutrinos were being detected. He postulated that the neutrinos could possibly oscillate between types. However wouldn't a tau neutrino and muon neutrino be detected as well?
Answer
However wouldn't a tau neutrino and muon neutrino be detected as well?
Yes, and an experiment that led to a Nobel prize was done
. All of the solar neutrino detectors prior to SNO had been sensitive primarily or exclusively to electron neutrinos and yielded little to no information on muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos.
In 1984, Herb Chen of the University of California at Irvine first pointed out the advantages of using heavy water as a detector for solar neutrinos.Unlike previous detectors, using heavy water would make the detector sensitive to two reactions, one reaction sensitive to all neutrino flavours, the other reaction sensitive to only electron neutrino. Thus, such detector can measure neutrino oscillations directly.
....
On 18 June 2001, the first scientific results of SNO were published, bringing the first clear evidence that neutrinos oscillate (i.e. that they can transmute into one another), as they travel in the sun. This oscillation in turn implies that neutrinos have non-zero masses. The total flux of all neutrino flavours measured by SNO agrees well with the theoretical prediction. Further measurements carried out by SNO have since confirmed and improved the precision of the original result.
Italics mine.
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