Do solar neutrinos decay?

Despite the fact that the solar neutrino flux is now well understood in the context of matter-affected neutrino mixing, we find that it is not yet possible to set a strong and model-independent bound on solar neutrino decays. If neutrinos decay into truly invisible particles, the Earth-Sun baseline defines a lifetime limit of tau/mgreater than or similar to10(-4) s/eV. However, there are many possibilities which must be excluded before such a bound can be established. There is an obvious degeneracy between the neutrino lifetime and the mixing parameters. More generally, one must also allow the possibility of active daughter neutrinos and/or antineutrinos, which may partially conceal the characteristic features of decay. Many of the most exotic possibilities that presently complicate the extraction of a decay bound will be removed if the KamLAND reactor antineutrino experiment confirms the large-mixing angle solution to the solar neutrino problem and measures the mixing parameters precisely. Better experimental and theoretical constraints on the B-8 neutrino flux will also play a key role, as will tighter bounds on absolute neutrino masses. Though the lifetime limit set by the solar flux is weak, it is still the strongest direct limit on nonradiative neutrino decay. Even so, there is no guarantee (by about eight orders of magnitude) that neutrinos from astrophysical sources such as a Galactic supernova or distant active galactic nuclei will not decay.