Degeneracy effects on photoionization in the solar interior

The rate of production of solar neutrinos is very sensitive to small variations in the radiative opacity of the material at the centre of the Sun. Relatively small changes to the predicted values of the solar radiative opacity are therefore of particular relevance to the solar neutrino problem. The author shows that the effect of partial electron degeneracy on the photoionization cross sections is to reduce the most recent values of the solar centre opacity by 2%.