Light speed variation from gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

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 $v(E)=c(1-E/E_{\mathrm{LV}})$, where $E$ is the photon energy and $E_{\mathrm{LV}}=(3.60\pm 0.26)\times 10^{17}\mathrm{GeV}$ is the Lorentz violation scale measured by the energetic photon data of GRBs. The results support an energy dependence of the light speed in cosmological space.

7 pages, 3 figures, final version for publication with typos corrected

References in corpus (4)

• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Lorentz-violation-induced arrival delays of cosmological particles
• The redshift and afterglow of the extremely energetic gamma-ray burst GRB 080916C
• VLT/X-shooter spectroscopy of the GRB 090926A afterglow

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