THE ROLE OF ELECTRON SCREENING DEFORMATIONS IN SOLAR NUCLEAR FUSION REACTIONS AND THE SOLAR NEUTRINO PUZZLE

Theodore E. Liolios
2001 Hadrons, Nuclei and Applications  
Thermonuclear fusion reaction rates in the stellar plasma are enhanced by the presence of the electron cloud that screens fusing nuclei. The present work studies the influence of electron screening deformations on stellar reaction rates in the framework of the Debye-Hückel model. These electron-ion cloud deformations, assumed here to be static and axially symmetric, are shown to influence the solar neutrino fluxes of the pp and the CN O chains. Moreover, a strong magnetic field is suggested as
more » ... plausible source of screening deformations in the sun and the corresponding (magnetized) screening factor is analytically calculated. In such a non-standard solar model a field of B = 4.7 × 10 10 G accelerates the pp reaction by roughly 1.7% while the standard solar model neutrino fluxes undergo a correction of ∼ 5% (N, O, B 8 ) and ∼ 2% (Be 7 ), respectively. However, the confinement of such a strong magnetic field to the solar energy production region remains as an inherent weakness of this model. PACS number(s): 25.10.+s, 25.45.-z, 26.65.+t
doi:10.1142/9789812810922_0055 fatcat:korgevouo5fb7dr4olk4r3p43q