The 300 TeV photon from GRB 221009A: a Hint at Non-linear Lorentz Invariance Violation?

Abstract

The air shower array Carpet-3 detected a 300 TeV photon from the direction of GRB 221009A at 4536 s after the Fermi-GBM trigger for this event. If the association with this gamma-ray burst is real, it poses two puzzles. First, why was this photon not absorbed by the extragalactic background light? ``New physics'' beyond the Standard Model is required to explain how it managed to reach Earth from a cosmological distance. Second, why was this photon detected when the VHE afterglow observed by LHAASO already faded? A novel astrophysical mechanism is required to explain this delay. In this work we show that Lorentz invariance violation (LIV), which arises as a low-energy limit of certain quantum gravity theories, can solve both puzzles. It shifts thresholds of particle interaction and changes the opacity of the extragalactic background, and cause energy-dependent variations of the photon velocity, which changes the photon time of flight. We investigate the LIV parameter space assuming that the 300 TeV photon is a part of the VHE afterglow detected by LHAASO in the TeV range. We identify viable solutions and place stringent two-sided constraints on the LIV energy scale required to resolve the observational puzzles. First-order LIV appears to be incompatible with the constraints set by analyzing the TeV afterglow of this GRB. Viable solutions emerge for higher orders. In particular, the commonly studied second-order subluminal LIV with $E_{LIV2}=1.30_{-0.35}^{+0.56}\times 10^{-7}{E}_{\mathrm{Pl}}$ (95.4% credibility level; $E_{\mathrm{Pl}}$ is the Planck energy) is consistent with all the observed data.

arXiv comment9 pages, 4 figures

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• Testing new-physics scenarios with the combined LHAASO and Carpet-3 fluence spectrum of GRB 221009A: axion-like particles and Lorentz-invariance violation
• Is There New Physics Beyond 30 TeV in the BOAT?
• Modeling the imprints of large-scale magnetized structures on $\gamma$-rays from extragalactic transients