Collective effects on Thomson scattering in the solar interior

The number of neutrinos predicted to be produced in the Sun is sensitive to relatively small variations in the opacity. For conditions representative of the solar interior, electron scattering accounts for about one-third of the total opacity. Recently, there have been questions raised about an apparent inconsistency between the values in the Los Alamos opacity tables and the early work on the subject by Diesendorf and Ninham. Here, the author makes an exact evaluation of the ring approximation to the collective effects on the Thomson cross section and compares the results with both previous calculations.