ARE THERE STERILE NEUTRINOS IN THE FLUX OF SOLAR NEUTRINOS ON THE EARTH

It is shown that the future SNO and Super-Kamiokande experiments, in which high energy B-8 neutrinos will be detected through the observation of CC, NC and nu-e elastic scattering processes, could allow to reveal in a model independent way the presence of sterile neutrinos in the flux of solar neutrinos on the earth. Lower bounds for different averaged values of the probability of transition of solar v(e)'s into sterile states and for the total flux of B-8 neutrinos are derived in terms of measurable quantities. The possibilities to reveal the presence of nu(mu) and/or nu(tau) in the solar neutrino flux on the earth are also considered and the case of transitions of solar nu(e)'s only into sterile states is discussed. Some numerical results for a simple model with nu(e)-nu(s) mixing are given.