Solar neutrino flux at keV energies

Abstract

We calculate the solar neutrino and antineutrino flux in the keV energy range. The dominant thermal source processes are photoproduction ($\gamma e\to e\nu \bar{\nu }$), bremsstrahlung ($e+Ze\to Ze+e+\nu \bar{\nu }$), plasmon decay ($\gamma \to \nu \bar{\nu }$), and $\nu \bar{\nu }$ emission in free-bound and bound-bound transitions of partially ionized elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. These latter processes dominate in the energy range of a few keV and thus carry information about the solar metallicity. To calculate their rate we use libraries of monochromatic photon radiative opacities in analogy to a previous calculation of solar axion emission. Our overall flux spectrum and many details differ significantly from previous works. While this low-energy flux is not measurable with present-day technology, it could become a significant background for future direct searches for keV-mass sterile neutrino dark matter.

arXiv comment32 pages, 23 figures. Added several references, a new figure and minor changes to match published version

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• Quantifying uncertainties in the solar axion flux and their impact on determining axion model parameters
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• Stellar probes of dark sector-photon interactions
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• Constraints on Flavor-Diagonal Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions from Borexino Phase-II
• Cosmic neutrino background search experiments as decaying dark matter detectors
• Relic neutrinos at accelerator experiments
• Constraints on Decaying Sterile Neutrinos from Solar Antineutrinos
• Direct anthropic bound on the weak scale from supernovae explosions
• Borexino results on neutrinos from the Sun and Earth
• Upper Limits on the Cosmic Neutrino Background from Cosmic Rays
• Axion Helioscopes as Solar Thermometers
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• Probing sub-eV Dark Matter decays with PTOLEMY
• Sensitivity to neutrino-antineutrino transitions for boron neutrinos
• Spectral features of non-equilibrium antineutrinos of primordial nucleosynthesis
• Status and Perspectives of Neutrino Physics
• Neutrinos from stars in the Milky Way
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