Tiny violations of the Lorentz symmetry of relativity and the associated discrete CPT symmetry could emerge in a consistent theory of quantum gravity such as string theory. Recent evidence for linear polarization in gamma-ray bursts improves existing sensitivities to Lorentz and CPT violation involving photons by factors ranging from ten to a million.
The Lorentz violation~(LV) effect of ultra-relativistic particles can be tested by gamma-ray burst~(GRB) neutrinos and photons. The IceCube Collaboration has observed plenty of ultra-high energy neutrinos, including four events of PeV scale neutrinos. Recent studies suggested a possible energy dependent speed variation of GRB neutrinos in a similar way to that of GRB photons. Here we find that all four events of PeV neutrinos with associated GRB candidates can satisfy a regularity found from TeV neutrinos about a linear form correlation between the observed time difference and the LV factor. S…
Previous studies on high-energy gamma-ray burst neutrinos from IceCube suggest a neutrino speed variation at the Lorentz violation~(LV) scale of $\sim 6.4\times 10^{17}$~GeV, with opposite velocity variances between neutrinos and antineutrinos. Within a space-time foam model, inspired by string theory, we develop an approach to describe the suggested neutrino/antineutrino propagation properties with both Lorentz invariance and CPT symmetry breaking. A threshold analysis on the bremsstrahlung of electron-positron pair~($ν\rightarrowνee^{+}$) for the superluminal~(anti)neutrino is performed. We …
Lorentz invariance violation (LIV) can manifest itself by an energy-dependent vacuum dispersion of light, which leads to arrival-time differences of photons with different energies originating from the same astronomical source. The spectral lags of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been widely used to investigate the possible LIV effect. However, all current investigations used lags extracted in the observer frame only. In this work, we present, for the first time, an analysis of the LIV effect and its redshift dependence in the cosmological rest frame. Using a sample of 56 GRBs with known redshift…
Models of quantum gravity suggest that the vacuum should be regarded as a medium with quantum structure that may have non-trivial effects on photon propagation, including the violation of Lorentz invariance. Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are sensitive probes of Lorentz invariance, via studies of energy-dependent timing shifts in their rapidly-varying photon emissions. In this paper we analyze the Fermi-LAT measurements of high-energy gamma rays from GRBs with known redshifts, allowing for the possibility of energy-dependent variations in emission time…
Experimental observations indicate that gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and high-energy neutrino bursts may travel at different speeds with a typical delay measured at the order of hours or days. We discuss two potential interpretations for the GRB delay: dispersion of light in interstellar medium and violation of Lorentz invariance due to quantum gravitational fluctuations. Among a few other media, we consider dispersion of light in an axion plasma, obtaining the axion plasma frequency and the dispersion relation from quantum field theory for the first time. We find that the density of axions inferred…
The preliminary detections of the gamma-ray burst 221009A up to 18 TeV by LHAASO and up to 251 TeV by Carpet 2 have been reported through Astronomer's Telegrams and Gamma-ray Coordination Network circulars. Since this burst is at redshift $z=0.1505$, these photons may at first seem to have a low probability to avoid pair production off of background radiation fields and survive to reach detectors on Earth. By extrapolating the reported $0.1-1.0$\ GeV LAT spectrum from this burst to higher energies and using this to limit the intrinsic spectrum of the burst, we show that the survival of the 18 …
Comment on "A limit on the variation of the speed of light arising from quantum gravity effects" aka "Testing Einstein's special relativity with Fermi's short hard gamma-ray burst GRB090510"
Lorentz invariance violations (LIV) can yield vacuum birefringence, which results in an energy-dependent rotation of the polarization vector of linearly polarized emission from astrophysical sources. It is believed that if the relative rotation angle ($ΔΘ$) of the polarization vector of high energy photons with respect to that of low energy photons is larger than $π/2$, then the net polarization of the signal would be significantly depleted and could not be as high as the observed level. Hence, the measurement of high polarization implies that $ΔΘ$ should not be too large. In this work, we ass…
Black hole - neutron star (BHNS) and neutron star - neutron star (NSNS) binaries are among the favored candidates for the progenitors of the black hole - disk systems that may be the engines powering short-hard gamma ray bursts. After almost two decades of simulations of binary NSNSs and BHNSs in full general relativity we are now beginning to understand the ingredients that may be necessary for these systems to launch incipient jets. Here, we review our current understanding, and summarize the surprises and lessons learned from state-of-the-art (magnetohydrodynamic) simulations in full genera…
Violations of Lorentz invariance can lead to an energy-dependent vacuum dispersion of light, which results in arrival-time differences of photons arising with different energies from a given transient source. In this work, direction-dependent dispersion constraints are obtained on nonbirefringent Lorentz-violating effects, using the observed spectral lags of the gamma-ray burst GRB 160625B. This burst has unusually large high-energy photon statistics, so we can obtain constraints from the true spectral time lags of bunches of high-energy photons rather than from the rough time lag of a single …
The observed spectral lags of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been widely used to explore possible violations of Lorentz invariance. However, these studies were generally performed by concentrating on the rough time lag of a single highest-energy photon and ignoring the intrinsic time lag at the source. A new way to test nonbirefringent Lorentz-violating effects has been proposed by analyzing the multi-photon spectral-lag behavior of a GRB that displays a positive-to-negative transition. This method gives both a plausible description of the intrinsic energy-dependent time lag and comparatively ro…
From special relativity, photon annihilation process \HepProcess{{\Pgg}{\Pgg}{\to}{\Pep}{\Pem}} prevents cosmic photons with energies above a threshold to propagate a long distance in cosmic space due to their annihilation with low energy cosmic background photons. However, modifications of the photon dispersion relation from Lorentz invariance violation~(LIV) can cause novel phenomena beyond special relativity to happen. In this paper, we point out that these phenomena include optical transparency, threshold reduction and reappearance of ultra-high energy photons in cosmic space. The recent o…
The effect of quantum gravity can bring a tiny light speed variation which is detectable through energetic photons propagating from gamma ray bursts (GRBs) to an observer such as the space observatory. Through an analysis of the energetic photon data of the GRBs observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST), we reveal a surprising regularity of the observed time lags between photons of different energies with respect to the Lorentz violation factor due to the light speed energy dependence. Such regularity suggests a linear form correction of the light speed $v(E)=c(1-E/E_{\rm LV})$, w…
A number of works have claimed detections of a turn-over in the spectral lag data for individual Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), caused by an energy-dependent speed of light, which could be a possible manifestation of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). Here, we stack the spectral lag data from a total of 37 GRBs (with a total of 91 measurements), to verify if the combined data is consistent with a unified model consisting of intrinsic astrophysical emission, along with another contribution due to LIV. We then carry out Bayesian model comparison to ascertain if this combined spectral lag data shows a…
Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) with rapid variations at cosmological distances are used to place new limits on violations of the gravitational weak equivalence principle (WEP). These limits track intrinsic timing deviations between GRB photons of different energies as they cross the universe, in particular in the KeV to GeV energy range. Previous limits in this energy range have involved only the gravitational potential of local sources and utilized temporal variability on the order of 0.1 seconds. Here WEP violation limits are derived from sources with greater distance, faster variability, and large…
Lorentz invariance, the fundamental symmetry of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, has been established and tested by many classical and modern experiments. However, many theories that unify the Standard Model of particle physics and General Relativity predict a violation of Lorentz invariance at the Planck scale. While this energy range cannot be reached by current experiments, minute deviations from Lorentz symmetry may be present at lower energies. Astrophysical experiments are very suitable to search for these deviations, since their effects accumulate as photons travel across large …
A frequentist asymptotic expansion method for error estimation is employed for a network of gravitational wave detectors to assess the amount of information that can be extracted from gravitational wave observations. Mathematically we derive lower bounds in the errors that any parameter estimator will have in the absence of prior knowledge to distinguish between the post-Einsteinian (ppE) description of coalescing binary systems and that of general relativity. When such errors are smaller than the parameter value, there is possibility to detect these violations from GR. A parameter space with …
Cosmological Model Independent Constraints on Lorentz Invariance Violation with Updated Gamma-Ray Burst Observations: An Artificial Neural Network Approach
It has been observed that photons in the prompt emission of some gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are highly polarized. The high polarization is used by some authors to give a strict constraint on the Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). If the Lorentz invariance is broken, the polarization vector of a photon may rotate during its propagation. The rotation angle of polarization vector depends on both the photon energy and the distance of source. It is believed that if high polarization is observed, then the relative rotation angle (denoted by $α$) of polarization vector of the highest energy photon with…
It is postulated in Einstein's relativity that the speed of light in vacuum is a constant for all observers. However, the effect of quantum gravity could bring an energy dependence of light speed. Even a tiny speed variation, when amplified by the cosmological distance, may be revealed by the observed time lags between photons with different energies from astrophysical sources. From the newly detected long gamma ray burst GRB~160509A, we find evidence to support the prediction for a linear form modification of light speed in cosmological space.
The positive-to-negative transition of spectral lag is an uncommon feature reported in a small number of GRBs. An application of such a feature has been made to constrain the critical quantum gravity energy ($E_{\rm QG}$) of the light photons under the hypothesis that the Lorentz invariance might be violated. Motivated by previous case studies, this paper systematically examined the up-to-date Fermi/GBM GRB sample for the lag transition feature to establish a comprehensive physical limit on the Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV). This search resulted in 32 GRBs with redshift available, which e…
Theories of gravity that obey the Weak Equivalence Principle have the same Parametrised Post-Newtonian parameter $γ$ for all particles at all energies. The large Shapiro time delays of extragalactic sources allow us to put tight constraints on differences in $γ$ between photons of different frequencies from spectral lag data, since a non-zero $Δγ$ would result in a frequency-dependent arrival time. The majority of previous constraints have assumed that the Shapiro time delay is dominated by a few local massive objects, although this is a poor approximation for distant sources. In this work we …
Short gamma-ray bursts are associated with binary neutron star mergers, which are multimessenger astronomical events that have been observed both in gravitational waves and in the multiband electromagnetic spectrum. Depending on the masses of the stars in the binary and on details of their largely unknown equation of state, a dynamically evolving and short-lived neutron star may be formed after the merger, existing for approximately 10-300 ms before collapsing to a black hole. Numerical relativity simulations across different groups consistently show broad power spectral features in the 1-5 kH…
The population of stellar-mass, compact object binaries that merge with non-negligible eccentricity may be large enough to motivate searches with ground-based gravitational wave detectors. Such events could be exceptional laboratories to test General Relativity in the dynamical, strong-field regime, as a larger fraction of the energy is emitted at high-velocities, compared to quasi-circular inspirals. A serious obstacle here, however, is the challenge of computing theoretical waveforms for eccentric systems with the requisite accuracy for use in a matched-filter search. The corresponding wavef…
We investigate the possible implications of quark deconfinement on the phenomenology of Long Gamma-Ray Bursts focusing, in particular, on the possibility to describe multiple prompt emission phases in the context of the proto-magnetar model. Starting from numerical models of rotating Hadron Stars and Quark Stars in full general relativity we track the electromagnetic spin-down evolution in both the hadronic and quark phase, linking the two families through conservation of baryon number and angular momentum. We give estimates of the timescales and the energetics involved in the spin-down proces…
