1999/04/13 by T. Kifune, Tadashi Kifune · 19 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Neutrino Physics Research #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/312057
published as Astrophys.J. 518 (1999) L21-L24 · 14 pages, 1 figure, to be published in Ap J Letters
arxiv created 1999/04/13 · openalex publication_date 1999/06/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We postulate that the energy-momentum relation is modified for very high energy particles to violate Lorentz invariance and the speed of photon is changed from the light velocity c . The violation effect is amplified in a sensitive way to detection through the modified kinematical constraints on the conservation of energy and momentum, in the absorption process of γ-rays colliding against photons of longer wavelengths and converting into an electron-positron pair. For γ-rays of energies higher than 10 13 eV, the minimum energy of the soft photons for the reaction and then the absorption mean free path of γ-rays are altered by orders of magnitude from those conventionally estimated. Consideration is similarly applied to high-energy cosmic-ray protons. The consequences may require the standard assumptions on the maximum distance from which very high energy radiation can travel to be revised.