2010/05/31 by Giovanni Amelino-Camelia, Amelino-Camelia, Giovanni, Antonino Marciano +6
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1006.0007
v2: more comments on the implications of the relevant test theories for quantum-gravity research
openalex publication_date 2010/05/31 · arxiv created 2010/07/05 · arxiv updated 2010/07/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Observations of gamma-ray bursts are being used to test for a momentum dependence of the speed of photons, partly motivated by preliminary results reported in analyses of some quantum-spacetime scenarios. The relationship between time of arrival, momentum of the photon and redshift of the source which is used for these purposes assumes a "breakdown" of relativistic symmetries, meaning that it is a preferred-frame scenario which does not satisfy the Relativity Principle. The alternative hypothesis of a "deformation" of relativistic symmetries, which preserves the Relativity Principle by adopting deformed laws of relativistic transformation between observers, could not so far be tested in gamma-ray-burst observations because it was not known how to formulate it in expanding spacetimes. We here provide such a formulation, and we find that also for the symmetry-deformation scenario the analysis of gamma-ray-burst data take us very close to the desired "Planck-scale sensitivity".