2024/03/11 by Justin D. Finke, Finke, Justin D., Patel, Parshad · 2 citations
Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Radiation Therapy and Dosimetry #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2403.07063
openalex publication_date 2024/03/11 · openalex created_date 2024/03/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We compute in detail the absorption optical depth for astrophysical γ-ray photons interacting with solar photons to produce electron positron pairs. This effect is greatest for γ-ray sources at small angular distances from the Sun, reaching optical depths as high as τγγ∼ 10-2. We also calculate this effect including modifications to the absorption cross section threshold from subluminal Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). We show for the first time that subluminal LIV can lead to increases or decreases in τγγ compared to the non-LIV case. We show that, at least in principle, LIV can be probed with this effect with observations of γ-ray sources near the Sun at \gtrsim20 TeV by HAWC or LHAASO, although a measurement will be extremely difficult due to the small size of the effect.