Analysis and Packaging of Radiochemical Solar Neutrino Data: A Bayesian Approach

According to current practice, the results of each run of a radiochemical solar neutrino experiment comprise an estimate of the flux and upper and lower error estimates. These estimates are derived by a maximum-likelihood procedure from the times of decay events in the analysis chamber. This procedure has the following shortcomings: (a) published results sometimes include negative flux estimates; (b) even if the flux estimate is non-negative, the probability distribution function implied by the flux and error estimates will extend into negative territory; and (c) the overall flux estimate derived from the results of a sequence of runs may differ substantially from an estimate made by a “global” analysis of all of the timing data taken together. These defects indicate that the usual “packaging” of data in radiochemical solar neutrino experiments provides an inadequate summary of the data, which implies a loss of information. This article reviews this problem from a Bayesian perspective, and we suggest an alternative scheme for the packaging of radiochemical solar neutrino data, which we believe is free from these shortcomings.