Due to the high energies and long distances involved, astrophysical observations provide a unique opportunity to test possible signatures of Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV). Superluminal LIV enables the decay of photons at high energy over relatively short distances, giving astrophysical spectra which have a hard cutoff above this energy. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is the most sensitive currently-operating gamma-ray observatory in the world above 10 TeV. Together with the recent development of an energy-reconstruction algorithm for HAWC using an artificial neural network, HAWC can make detailed measurements of gamma-ray energies above 100 TeV. With these observations, HAWC can limit the LIV energy scale greater than $10^{31}$ eV, over 800 times the Planck energy scale. This limit on LIV is over 60 times more constraining than the best previous value for $\rm E_{LIV}^{(1)}$.
Astrophysical scenarios provide a unique opportunity to test the possible signatures of Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV) due to the high energies and the very long distances they involve. An isotropic correction to the photon dispersion relation, by hypothetical Lorentz invariance violation, has a consequence that photons of sufficient energy are unstable and decay very fast. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is sensitive to gamma-rays in the 100 GeV to 100 TeV energy range, making it a very useful tool to study LIV. In this work we present potential stringent limits for t…
The framework of relativistic quantum-field theories requires Lorentz Invariance. Many theories of quantum gravity, on the other hand, include violations of Lorentz Invariance at small scales and high energies. This generates a lot of interest in establishing limits on such effects, and, if possible, observing them directly. Gamma-ray observatories provide a tool to probe parts of the parameter space of models of Lorentz Invariance Violation that is not accessible in terrestrial laboratories and man-made accelerators. Transients, especially gamma-ray bursts, are a particularly promising class …
Due to the high energies and long distances to the sources, astrophysical observations provide a unique opportunity to test possible signatures of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). Superluminal LIV enables the decay of photons at high energy. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is among the most sensitive gamma-ray instruments currently operating above 10 TeV. HAWC finds evidence of 100 TeV photon emission from at least four astrophysical sources. These observations exclude, for the strongest of the limits set, the LIV energy scale to $2.2\times10^{31}$ eV, over 1800 times t…
The observation of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) with very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays can provide understanding of the particle acceleration mechanisms in GRBs, and can also be used to probe the extra-galactic background light and place constraints on Lorentz invariance violation. We present prospects for GRB detection by the ground-based HAWC (High Altitude Water Cherenkov) gamma-ray observatory. We model the VHE spectrum of GRBs by extrapolating observations by Fermi LAT and other observatories to higher energies. Under the assumption that only e-pair production associated with extra-galactic ba…
Gamma-Ray Bursts are the most energetic explosions in the Universe, and are among the most promising for detecting multiple non-electromagnetic signals, including cosmic rays, high energy neutrinos and gravitational waves. The multi-GeV to TeV gamma-ray range of GRB could have significant contributions from hadronic interactions, mixed with more conventional leptonic contributions. This energy range is important for probing the source physics, including overall energetics, the shock parameters and the Lorentz factor. We discuss some of the latest observational and theoretical developments in t…
Recently two collaborations, Tibet and HAWC, presented new measurements of gamma-ray spectrum from Crab Nebula \cite{Amenomori:2019rjd},\cite{Abeysekara:2019edl} which continues beyond $100$ TeV. We use these data to establish two-sided constraints on parameters of Lorentz Invariance violation in quantum electrodynamics. The limits on Lorentz violating mass scale for quartic dispersion relation are $4.1\times 10^{14}\ \mbox{GeV}$ (photon splitting) and $1.9\times 10^{13}\ \mbox{GeV}$ (photon decay) for superluminal case, and $1.4\times 10^{12}$ GeV (suppression of shower formation) for sublumi…
One of the experimental tests of Lorentz invariance violation is to measure the helicity dependence of the propagation velocity of photons originating in distant cosmological obejcts. Using a recent determination of the distance of the Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 041219A, for which a high degree of polarization is observed in the prompt emission, we are able to improve by 4 orders of magnitude the existing constraint on Lorentz invariance violation, arising from the phenomenon of vacuum birefringence.
We discuss the effect of hypothetical violation of Lorentz invariance at high energies on the formation of atmospheric showers by very-high-energy gamma rays. In the scenario where Lorentz invariance violation leads to a decrease of the photon velocity with energy the formation of the showers is suppressed compared to the Lorentz invariant case. Absence of such suppression in the high-energy part of spectrum of the Crab nebula measured independently by HEGRA and H.E.S.S. collaborations is used to set lower bounds on the energy scale of Lorentz invariance violation. These bounds are competitive…
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 …
We calculate the decay width of the photon splitting into three photons in a model of quantum electrodynamics with broken Lorentz invariance. We show that this process can lead to a cut-off in the very-high-energy part of a photon spectra of astrophysical sources. We obtain the 95\% CL bound on the Lorentz violating mass scale for photons from the analysis of the very-high-energy part of the Crab Nebula spectrum, obtained by HEGRA. This bound improves previous constraints by more than an order of magnitude.
Relativistic Invariance might be modified by Quantum Gravity effects. The interesting point which emerged in the last fifteen years is that remnants of possible Lorentz Invariance Violations could be present at energies much lower than their natural scale, and possibly affect Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays phenomena. We discuss their status in the view of recent data from the Pierre Auger Observatory.
A growing class of ultra-high energy neutrino (UHE-nu) observatories based on the Askaryan effect and Antarctic ice is able to search for Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). The ARA, ARIANNA, ANITA and EVA collaborations have the power to constrain the Standard Model Extension (SME) by measuring the flux and energy distribution of neutrinos created through the GZK process. The future expansion of ARA, at the South Pole, pushes the discovery potential further.
Cosmic rays and air showers at ultra-high energy are unique tools to test the validity of Lorentz invariance. A brief overview is given on such tests focusing on isotropic, non-birefringent Lorentz violation (LV) in the photon sector. Based on the apparent absence of vacuum Cherenkov radiation and photon decay, the LV parameter $κ$ is bound to $-0.6 \cdot 10^{-20} < κ< 6 \cdot 10^{-20}$ (98\% CL). We report an updated limit from cosmic-ray photon observations and preliminary results on testing vacuum Cherenkov radiation in air showers.
Lorentz Invariance Violation introduced as a generic modification to particle dispersion relations is used to study high energy cosmic ray attenuation processes. It is shown to reproduce the same physical effects for vacuum Cherenkov radiation, as in some particular models with spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry. This approximation is also implemented for the study of photon decay in vacuum, where stringent limits to the violation scale are derived from the direct observation of very high energy cosmic ray photon events on gamma telescopes. Photo production processes by cosmic ray primar…
The effects of local Lorentz violation on dispersion and birefringence of gravitational waves are investigated. The covariant dispersion relation for gravitational waves involving gauge-invariant Lorentz-violating operators of arbitrary mass dimension is constructed. The chirp signal from the gravitational-wave event GW150914 is used to place numerous first constraints on gravitational Lorentz violation.
Pierre Auger experiment has detected at least a couple of ray events above energy 60 EeV from the direction of the radio-galaxy Centaurus A. Assuming those events are from Centaurus A, we have calculated the number of neutral cosmic ray events from this source for small values of the degree of violation in Lorentz invariance. Our results show that a comparison of our calculated numbers of events with the observed number of events at EeV energy from the direction of the source can probe extremely low value of the degree of this violation.
Cosmic messengers (gamma rays, cosmic rays, neutrinos and gravitational waves) provide a powerful complementary way to search for Lorentz invariance violating effects to laboratory-based experiments. The long baselines and high energies involved make Cherenkov telescopes, air-shower arrays, neutrino telescopes and gravitational wave detectors unique tools to probe the expected tiny effects that the breaking of Lorentz invariance would cause in the propagation of these messengers, in comparison with the standard scenario. In this chapter we explain the expected effects that the mentioned detect…
We present an updated review of Lorentz invariance tests in Effective field theories (EFT) in the matter as well as in the gravity sector. After a general discussion of the role of Lorentz invariance and a derivation of its transformations along the so called von Ignatovski theorem, we present the dynamical frameworks developed within local EFT and the available constraints on the parameters governing the Lorentz breaking effects. In the end, we discuss two specific examples, the OPERA "affaire" and the case of Hořava-Lifshitz gravity. The first case will serve as an example, and a caveat, of …
The assumption of Lorentz invariance is one of the founding principles of Modern Physics and violation of it would have profound implications to our understanding of the universe. For instance, certain theories attempting a unified theory of quantum gravity predict there could be an effective refractive index of the vacuum; the introduction of an energy dependent dispersion to photons could in turn lead to an observable Lorentz invariance violation signature. Whilst a very small effect on local scales the effect will be cumulative, and so for very high energy particles that travel very large d…
In light of recent and probably upcoming observations of very high energy astroparticles, such as those reported by the IceCube collaboration, we readdress the energy loss mechanism by Lorentz violating particles. We analytically show that Cohen-Glashow's formula for energy loss is connected with a Poisson distribution for the number of decays, whose large fluctuations prevent placing bounds on Lorentz invariance violations. However, this model ignores the sharp change in the decay width after each process. We propose replacing Poisson statistics with a new distribution that takes this into ac…
