Helioseismology can test the Maxwell - Boltzmann distribution

Nuclear reactions in stars occur between nuclei in the high-energy tail of the energy distribution and are sensitive to possible deviations from the standard equilibrium thermal-energy distribution. We are able to derive strong constraints on such deviations by using the detailed helioseismic information of the solar structure. If a small deviation is parameterized with a factor exp{−δ(E/kT) 2 }, we find that δ should lie between-0.005 and +0.002. However , even values of δ as small as 0.003 would still give important effects on the neutrino fluxes.