Why don't the nuclear fusion processes inside the sun produce <mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD

jistefaftexia99kq6

jistefaftexia99kq6

Answered question

2022-05-18

Why don't the nuclear fusion processes inside the sun produce ν ¯ e despite having the same mass as ν e ? Is the reason as simple as "there is no production channel for ν ¯ e s." ?

Answer & Explanation

hospitaliapbury

hospitaliapbury

Beginner2022-05-19Added 25 answers

The sun starts with electrons and protons and fuses the protons into heavier nuclei. Almost all stable nuclei contain neutrons, which means that in this process, protons have to be converted to neutrons. This requires the destruction of electrons by charge conservation, which in turn requires the creation of electron neutrinos by lepton number conservation. So we expect the sun to produce almost all electron neutrinos.
Peia6tvsr

Peia6tvsr

Beginner2022-05-20Added 4 answers

You must convert proton to neutron somehow (pp chain or CNO chain) and this means by charge conservation that a positron must be emitted, and by lepton number conservation to balance lepton number that anti-electron is accompanied by neutrino and not anti-nu.

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