Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

For more than 20 years helioseismology, the study of solar oscillations, has provided an exquisite picture of the solar interior structure. However these oscillations, which are standing acoustic waves in the solar interior, have diminishing amplitudes towards the deep interior and render a blurred picture of the solar innermost core, where most nuclear reactions take place and neutrinos are produced. During the last decade, after the discovery of neutrino oscillations, solar neutrino experiments such as SuperKamiokande, SNO and more recently Borexino have continued to develop and improve the accuracy and precision of measurements solar neutrino fluxes. Helioseismic and neutrino constraints offer complementary views of solar interiors and open up the best possibilities to date for testing solar (and stellar) evolution theory as well as for using the Sun a laboratory for particle physics. The talk will first review the current status of (standard) solar modeling in the context of helioseismic constraints, and discuss where problems and uncertainties lie. About the latter, some emphasis will be placed on recent calculations and experiments of radiative opacities that impact solar and stellar modeling. The second part of the talk will present results of solar neutrino experiments, focusing on Borexino's capabilities to perform solar neutrino spectroscopy, and the constraints on solar interior models that can be obtained. The third part of the talk will briefly discuss the relevance of solar model uncertainties for evolution of low mass stars and the uncertainties in determination of stellar properties based on asteroseismic results might be affected.