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Phys. Rev. D 66, 081302(R) (2002) [5 pages]

TeV astrophysics constraints on Planck scale Lorentz violation

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Ted Jacobson*, Stefano Liberati, and David Mattingly
Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742–4111

Received 21 December 2001; published 29 October 2002

We analyze observational constraints from TeV astrophysics on Lorentz violating nonlinear dispersion for photons and electrons without assuming any a priori equality between the photon and electron parameters. The constraints arise from thresholds for vacuum Čerenkov radiation, photon decay and photo-production of electron-positron pairs. We show that the parameter plane for cubic momentum terms in the dispersion relations is constrained to an order unity region in Planck units. We find that the threshold configuration can occur with an asymmetric distribution of momentum for pair creation, and with a hard photon for vacuum Čerenkov radiation.

© 2002 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.66.081302
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.66.081302
PACS:
98.70.Sa, 04.60.-m, 11.30.Cp

*Electronic address: jacobson@physics.umd.edu

Electronic address: liberati@physics.umd.edu

Electronic address: davemm@physics.umd.edu