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 w hich high energy B-8 neutrinos will be detected through the observatio n of CC, NC and nu-e elastic scattering processes, could allow to reve al in a model independent way the presence of sterile neutrinos in the flux of solar neutrinos on the earth. Lower bounds for different aver aged values of the probability of transition of solar v(e)'s into ster ile states and for the total flux of B-8 neutrinos are derived in term s of measurable quantities. The possibilities to reveal the presence o f nu(mu) and/or nu(tau) in the solar neutrino flux on the earth are al so considered and the case of transitions of solar nu(e)'s only into s terile states is discussed. Some numerical results for a simple model with nu(e)-nu(s) mixing are given.