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Title: Constraints on Lorentz invariance violation from Fermi -Large Area Telescope observations of gamma-ray bursts

Journal Article · · Physical Review. D, Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [5]
  1. Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier, Universite Montpellier 2, CNRS/IN2P3, CC 72, Place Eugene Bataillon (France)
  2. Laboratoire de Physique Nucleaire et de Hautes Energies, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie Paris 6, Universite Denis Diderot Paris 7, CNRS/IN2P3 (France)
  3. The Open University of Israel (Israel). Department of Natural Sciences
  4. Astrophysics Science Division, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (United States); University of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Department of Physics and Astronomy
  5. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Trieste (Italy); Universita di Trieste (Italy). Dipartimento di Fisica

For this research, we analyze the MeV/GeV emission from four bright gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Fermi Large Area Telescope to produce robust, stringent constraints on a dependence of the speed of light in vacuo on the photon energy (vacuum dispersion), a form of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV) allowed by some quantum gravity (QG) theories. First, we use three different and complementary techniques to constrain the total degree of dispersion observed in the data. Additionally, using a maximally conservative set of assumptions on possible source-intrinsic, spectral-evolution effects, we constrain any vacuum dispersion solely attributed to LIV. We then derive limits on the QG energy scale (the energy scale where LIV-inducing QG effects become strong, EQG) and the coefficients of the Standard Model Extension. For the subluminal case (where high-energy photons propagate more slowly than lower-energy photons) and without taking into account any source-intrinsic dispersion, our most stringent limits (at 95% C.L.) are obtained from GRB 090510 and are EQG,1 > 7.6 times the Planck energy (EPl) and EQG,2 > 1.3 × 1011 GeV for linear and quadratic leading-order LIV-induced vacuum dispersion, respectively. In conclusion, these limits improve the latest constraints by Fermi and H.E.S.S. by a factor of ~2 . Our results disfavor any class of models requiring EQG,1 ≲ EPl .

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Contributing Organization:
Fermi-LAT Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1356591
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1102800
Journal Information:
Physical Review. D, Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, Vol. 87, Issue 12; ISSN 1550-7998
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 144 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Lorentz violation from cosmological objects with very high energy photon emissions text January 2009
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VLT/X-shooter spectroscopy of the GRB 090926A afterglow text January 2010
Modeling-Free Bounds on Nonrenormalizable Isotropic Lorentz and CPT Violation in QED text January 2010
Search for Lorentz Invariance breaking with a likelihood fit of the PKS 2155-304 flare data taken on MJD 53944 text January 2011
A New Limit on Planck Scale Lorentz Violation from Gamma-ray Burst Polarization text January 2011
A unified constraint on the Lorentz invariance violation from both short and long GRBs text January 2012
Constraints on relativity violations from gamma-ray bursts text January 2013
New Tests of Lorentz Invariance Following from Observations of the Highest Energy Cosmic Gamma Rays text January 2001
On the Variety of the Spectral and Temporal Behaviors of Long Gamma-Ray Burst Pulses text January 2001
New limits on Planck scale Lorentz violation in QED text January 2003
Lorentz violation at high energy: concepts, phenomena and astrophysical constraints text January 2005
GRB 051221A and Tests of Lorentz Symmetry text January 2006
Comparison of QG-Induced Dispersion with Standard Physics Effects text January 2004
Sensitive polarimetric search for relativity violations in gamma-ray bursts text January 2006
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Cited By (30)

The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Science and design journal August 2019
On the detectability of Lorentz invariance violation through anomalies in the multi-TeV γ -ray spectra of blazars journal December 2015
Constraints on the emission region of 3C 279 during strong flares in 2014 and 2015 through VHE γ -ray observations with H.E.S.S. journal July 2019
A review of the generalized uncertainty principle journal October 2015
Photon splitting constraint on Lorentz invariance violation from Crab Nebula spectrum journal April 2019
Photon emission and decay from generic Lorentz invariance violation journal June 2017
New constraints on Lorentz invariance violation with polarized gamma-ray bursts journal March 2019
Dispersive light propagation at cosmological distances: Matter effects journal September 2013
ELKO fermions as dark matter candidates journal October 2015
Viability of quantum-gravity induced ultraviolet completions for matter journal October 2017
Lorentz violations in multifractal spacetimes journal May 2017
Asymptotically Weyl-invariant gravity journal November 2019
Renormalizing spacetime journal December 2018
Spacetime and Deformations of Special Relativistic Kinematics journal November 2019
Limits on the Lorentz Invariance Violation from UHECR Astrophysics journal January 2018
Renormalizing Spacetime text January 2018
Constraints on the emission region of 3C 279 during strong flares in 2014 and 2015 through VHE γ -ray observations with H.E.S.S. text January 2019
Dispersive Light Propagation at Cosmological Distances: Matter Effects text January 2013
ELKO fermions as dark matter candidates text January 2014
Lorentz violations in multifractal spacetimes text January 2016
A New Test of Lorentz Invariance Violation: the Spectral Lag Transition of GRB 160625B text January 2016
Viability of quantum-gravity induced ultraviolet completions for matter text January 2017
Renormalizing Spacetime text January 2018
The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Science and Design text January 2018
Improved limits on Lorentz invariance violation from astrophysical gamma-ray sources text January 2018
Signals for Lorentz violation in gravitational waves text January 2019
New constraints on Lorentz invariance violation with polarized gamma-ray bursts text January 2019
Constraints on the emission region of 3C 279 during strong flares in 2014 and 2015 through VHE gamma-ray observations with H.E.S.S text January 2019
Asymptotically Weyl-Invariant Gravity text January 2019
Spacetime and deformations of special relativistic kinematics text January 2019

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