The Solar $Hep$ Process

Abstract

The $Hep$ process is a weak-interaction reaction, $He3+p\to He4+e^{+}+{\nu }_e$, which occurs in the sun. There is renewed interest in $Hep$ owing to current experimental efforts to extract from the observed solar neutrino spectrum information on non-standard physics in the neutrino sector. $Hep$ produces highest-energy solar neutrinos, although their flux is quite modest. This implies that the $Hep$ neutrios can at some level influence the solar neutrino spectrum near its upper end. Therefore, a precise interpretation of the observed solar neutrino spectrum requires an accurate estimate of the $Hep$ rate. This is an interesting but challenging task. We describe the difficulties involved and how the recent theoretical developments in nuclear physics have enabled us to largely overcome these difficulties. A historical survey of $Hep$ calculations is followed by an overview of the latest developments. We compare the results obtained in the conventional nuclear physics approach and those obtained in a newly developed effective field theory approach. We also discuss the current status of the experiments relevant to $Hep$.

Published in Ann. Rev. Nuc. Part. Sci. vol. 54, 19 (2004). AR209 macros are included

References in corpus (6)

• First Results from KamLAND: Evidence for Reactor Anti-Neutrino Disappearance
• Three-Nucleon Forces from Chiral Effective Field Theory
• Parameter-free effective field theory calculation for the solar proton-fusion and hep processes
• A road map to solar neutrino fluxes, neutrino oscillation parameters, and tests for new physics
• Global Analysis of Solar Neutrino and KamLAND Data
• Super-Kamiokande hep neutrino best fit: a possible signal of nonmaxwellian solar plasma

Cited by in corpus (23)

• Two-pion exchange electromagnetic current in chiral effective field theory using the method of unitary transformation
• Short Range Correlations and the EMC Effect in Effective Field Theory
• Proton-proton fusion in pionless effective theory
• Low energy proton-proton scattering in effective field theory
• Up-to N${}^3$LO heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory calculation for the M1 properties of three-nucleon systems
• Towards a Unified Model of Neutrino-Nucleus Reactions for Neutrino Oscillation Experiments
• Ab initio short-range-correlation scaling factors from light to medium-mass nuclei
• New Test of Supernova Electron Neutrino Emission using Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Sensitivity to the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background
• Universality of the EMC Effect
• Effective field theory approach for the M1 properties of A=2 and 3 nuclei
• $pp\to pp{\pi }^0$ near threshold in pionless effective theory
• Bridging over p-wave pi-production and weak processes in few-nucleon systems with chiral perturbation theory
• Heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory approach to thermal neutron capture on ${}^{3}He$
• Chiral Perturbation for Large Momentum Effective Field Theory
• A closer look at the $pp$-chain reaction in the Sun: Constraining the coupling of light mediators to protons
• Renormalization group analysis of nuclear current operators
• Neutron-Neutron Fusion
• Two-pion-exchange contributions to the pp\to ppπ^0 reaction
• First Demonstration of a Combined Light and Charge Pixel Readout on the Anode Plane of a LArTPC
• Use of V_{low-k} in a chiral-perturbation-theory description of the $pp\to pp{\pi }^0$ reaction
• The "Folk Theorem" on Effective Field Theory: How Does It Fare in Nuclear Physics?
• An Effective Field Theory at Finite Density
• Consistency between renormalization group running of chiral operator and counting rule -- Case of chiral pion production operator --