Since 2007, the Borexino experiment, located at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories (INFN), has published numerous precision measurements of the solar neutrino fluxes from the so-called "pp chain". After a long and challenging campaign of hardware improvement, aimed at reducing the intrinsic radioactive background of the scintillator, the Borexino experiment has reached the conditions for the first detection of the neutrino flux coming from the so-called "CNO cycle" (Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen), a secondary and sub-dominant mechanism of energy production in the Sun. The CNO neutrino detection opens up new frontiers in the precision modelling of solar physics and astrophysics in general.
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Nicola Rossi
INFN - LNGS