Speaker
Description
CNO cycle of thermonuclear reactions is one of the two main energy production mechanisms in the main sequence stars, dominant in those heavier than the Sun.
In the context of solar physics, despite its minor role in the energy production, the CNO cycle is of a particular interest for it is directly related to the abundance of heavy elements in the solar core.
The Borexino experiment provided the first experimental evidence of the CNO cycle in the Sun by detecting neutrinos emitted in its reactions.
This measurement is made possible thanks to the unprecedented radiopurity of the detector and advanced methods of constraining the correlated background allowing to pick out a relatively weak and featureless CNO neutrino signal.
In this work we present the recent update of the CNO neutrino flux measurement along with the first evaluation of the C and N abundance in the Sun based on the neutrino data only.
