Solar Neutrinos Spectroscopy with Borexino Phase-II

International audienceSolar neutrinos have played a central role in the discovery of the neutrino oscillation mechanism. They still are proving to be a unique tool to help investigate the fusion reactions that power stars and further probe basic neutrino properties. The Borexino neutrino observatory has been operationally acquiring data at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy since 2007. Its main goal is the real-time study of low energy neutrinos (solar or originated elsewhere, such as geo-neutrinos). The latest analysis of experimental data, taken during the so-called Borexino Phase-II (2011-present), will be showcased in this talk—yielding new high-precision, simultaneous wide band flux measurements of the four main solar neutrino components belonging to the “pp” fusion chain (pp, pep, 7 Be, 8 B), as well as upper limits on the remaining two solar neutrino fluxes (CNO and hep)

The SOX experiment hunts the sterile neutrino

The SOX (Short distance neutrino Oscillations with BoreXino) experiment aims to perform a resolutive measurement for testing the longstanding hypotesis of a sterile neutrino in the eV2 mass scale. A very intense and well calibrated 144Ce−144Pr antineutrino source will be placed under the large size and very low background Borexino detector at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. Borexino demonstrated a such energy and position resolution that the disappearance experiment can be performed and the short distance oscillations might be directly observed. In this paper an overview of the key elements of the experiment is given and the expected sensitivity to determine the sterile neutrino mass is shown