The 51Cr neutrino source and Borexino: a desirable marriage

Exposure to a 51Cr neutrino source as that used in Gallex will provide an excellent overall performance test of Borexino, which should collect about 1400 source induced events, with an initial rate of about 35 counts per day. This will be particularly important if MSW-small-angle turns out to be the solution of the solar neutrino problem. In addition, if an independent, accurate calibration is available, one will have an interesting experiment on neutrino properties: as an example, a neutrino magnetic moment of the order 5 · 10−11 μB could be detected/excluded at the 90% C.L.