Limits on Lorentz Violation from the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays

2004/04/30 by Olivier Gagnon, Guy D. Moore · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-ph #astro-ph #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.70.065002

published as Phys.Rev. D70 (2004) 065002 · 24 pages, no figures. Added references, very slight changes. Version published in Physical Review D

arxiv created 2004/08/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01

Abstract

We place several new limits on Lorentz violating effects, which can modify particles' dispersion relations, by considering the highest energy cosmic rays observed. Since these are hadrons, this involves considering the partonic content of such cosmic rays. We get a number of bounds on differences in maximum propagation speeds, which are typically bounded at the 10^-21 level, and on momentum dependent dispersion corrections of the form v = 1 +- p²/Lambda², which typically bound Lambda > 10²¹ GeV, well above the Planck scale. For (CPT violating) dispersion correction of the form v = 1 + p/Lambda, the bounds are up to 15 orders of magnitude beyond the Planck scale.

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