Abstract: We generate new standard solar models using newly analyzed nuclear fusion cross sections and present results for helioseismic quantities and solar neutrino fluxes. The status of the solar abundance problem is discussed. We investigate whether nonstandard solar models with accretion from the protoplanetary disk might alleviate this problem. We examine a broad range of models, analyzing metal-enriched and metal-depleted accretion and three scenarios for the timing of accretion. Only partial solutions are found. Formetal-rich accreted material (Z(ac) greater than or similar to 0.018) there exist combinations of accreted mass and metallicity that bring the depth of the convective zone into agreement with the helioseismic value. For the surface helium abundance, the helioseismic value is reproduced if metal-poor or metal-free accretion is assumed (Z(ac) less than or similar to 0.09). In both cases a few percent of the solar mass must be accreted. Precise values depend on when accretion takes place. We do not find a simultaneous solution to both problems but speculate that changing the hydrogen-to-helium mass ratio in the accreted material may lead to more satisfactory solutions. We also show that, with current data, solar neutrinos are already a very competitive source of information about the solar core and can help constraining possible accretion histories. Even without helioseismic constraints, solar neutrinos rule out the possibility that more than 0.02 M(circle dot) from the protoplanetary disk were accreted after the Sun settled on the main sequence. Finally, we discuss how measurements of neutrinos from the CN cycle could shed light on the interaction between the early Sun and its protoplanetary disk.

Abstract: We present neutrino mass bounds using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts measured from Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Data Release 8. The galaxies have photometric redshifts between z = 0.45 and z = 0.65 and cover 10,000 deg(2), thus probing a volume of 3 h(-3) Gpc(3) and enabling tight constraints to be derived on the amount of dark matter in the form of massive neutrinos. A new bound on the sum of neutrino masses Sigma m nu < 0.27 eV, at the 95% confidence level (CL), is obtained after combining our sample of galaxies, which we call “CMASS,” with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) seven-year cosmic microwave background data and the most recent measurement of the Hubble parameter from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This constraint is obtained with a conservative multipole range of 30 < l < 200 in order to minimize nonlinearities, and a free bias parameter in each of the four redshift bins. We study the impact of assuming this linear galaxy bias model using mock catalogs and find that this model causes a small (similar to 1 sigma-1.5 sigma) bias in Omega(DM)h(2). For this reason, we also quote neutrino bounds based on a conservative galaxy bias model containing additional, shot-noise-like free parameters. In this conservative case, the bounds are significantly weakened, e. g., Sigma m(nu) < 0.38 eV (95% CL) for WMAP+HST+CMASS (l(max) = 200). We also study the dependence of the neutrino bound on the multipole range (l(max) = 150 versus l(max) = 200) and on which combination of data sets is included as a prior. The addition of supernova and/or baryon acoustic oscillation data does not significantly improve the neutrino mass bound once the HST prior is included. A companion paper describes the construction of the angular power spectra in detail and derives constraints on a general cosmological model, including the dark energy equation of state w and the spatial curvature Omega(K), while a second companion paper presents a measurement of the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations from the same data set. All three works are based on the catalog by Ross et al.

Abstract: A multimessenger analysis optimized for a correlation of arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and neutrinos is presented and applied to 2190 neutrino candidate events detected in 2007-2008 by the ANTARES telescope and 69 UHECRs observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory between 2004 January 1 and 2009 December 31. No significant correlation is observed. Assuming an equal neutrino flux (E-2 energy spectrum) from all UHECR directions, a 90% CL upper limit on the neutrino flux of 5.0 x 10(-8) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) per source is derived.