The 300 TeV photon from GRB 221009A: a Hint at Non-linear Lorentz Invariance Violation?
Fuente:
arXiv
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| _version_ | 1866914115855843328 |
|---|---|
| author | Ofengeim, Dmitry D. Piran, Tsvi |
| author_facet | Ofengeim, Dmitry D. Piran, Tsvi |
| contents | 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 $E_{\rm LIV2} = 1.30_{-0.35}^{+0.56} \times 10^{-7} E_{\rm Pl}$ (95.4% credibility level; $E_{\rm Pl}$ is the Planck energy) is consistent with all the observed data. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_07153 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The 300 TeV photon from GRB 221009A: a Hint at Non-linear Lorentz Invariance Violation? Ofengeim, Dmitry D. Piran, Tsvi High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 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 $E_{\rm LIV2} = 1.30_{-0.35}^{+0.56} \times 10^{-7} E_{\rm Pl}$ (95.4% credibility level; $E_{\rm Pl}$ is the Planck energy) is consistent with all the observed data. |
| title | The 300 TeV photon from GRB 221009A: a Hint at Non-linear Lorentz Invariance Violation? |
| topic | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07153 |