New Solar Opacities, Abundances, Helioseismology, and Neutrino Fluxes

TLDR

The authors built solar models using Opacity Project opacities and updated, lower heavy‑element abundances, and compared them to models based on OPAL opacities, older abundances, and revised nuclear rates. These models with lower abundances disagree markedly with helioseismic measurements of the convective‑zone depth, surface helium, sound speed, and density, and the new opacities predict an 8B neutrino flux ratio of 1.09 (or 0.87) relative to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory measurement, with 9 % experimental and 16 % theoretical uncertainties.

Abstract

We construct solar models with the newly calculated radiative opacities from the Opacity Project (OP) and with recently determined (lower) heavy-element abundances. We compare the results from the new models with the predictions of a series of models that use OPAL radiative opacities, older determinations of the surface heavy-element abundances, and refinements of nuclear reaction rates. For all the variations we consider, solar models that are constructed with the newer and lower heavy-element abundances advocated by Asplund et al. disagree by much more than the estimated measuring errors with the helioseismological determinations of the depth of the solar convective zone, the surface helium composition, the internal sound speeds, and the density profile. Using the new OP radiative opacities, the ratio of the 8B neutrino flux calculated with the older and larger heavy-element abundances (or with the newer and lower heavy-element abundances) to the total neutrino flux measured by the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is 1.09 (0.87) with a 9% experimental uncertainty and a 16% theoretical uncertainty, 1 σ errors.