Constraining the New Aether: gravitational Cherenkov radiation

By Joshua W. Elliott, Guy D. Moore, Horace Stoica. 2005

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the simplest concrete theory for spontaneous Lorentz violation, the ``New Aether theory'' of Jacobson and Mattingly, which is a vector-tensor gravitational theory with a fixed-modulus condition on the vector field. We show that the observation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (which implies the absence of energy loss via various Cherenkov type processes) places constraints on the parameters of this theory, which are much stronger than those previously found in the literature and are also stronger than the constraints generically arising when gravity displays sub-luminal propagation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/05af41577052ee876d48a8ce5bd7dde956404423

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Citations in the corpus

Post-Newtonian parameters and constraints on Einstein-aether theory (2005, background): “Some authors [7, 12, 13] have suggested that superluminal propagation be excluded a priori on the grounds that ae-theory should be viewed as an effective description of an underlying Lorentz invariant theory in a configuration with broken Lorentz symmetry.”
Tests of Lorentz invariance: a 2013 update (2013, background): “Hence if the speeds are less than unity, high energy cosmic rays will emit vacuum gravitational Čerenkov radiation [216].”
Modern Tests of Lorentz Invariance (2005, background): “If, as the authors of [105] argue, no gravity-aether mode can be superluminal, then these bounds imply that every coefficient is generically bounded by |ci| < 10.”
Hořava gravity at a Lifshitz point: A progress report (2017, background): “To avoid the gravitational Čerenkov effects [203], each of them must be not less than the speed of light, vs ≥ c.”
Maximal freedom at minimum cost: linear large-scale structure in general modifications of gravity (2014, background): “22) but no such upper limit exists on cosmological scales [104–106].”
Einstein-æther gravity: a status report (2008, background): “They must moreover be greater than or equal to unity, to avoid the existence of vacuum Čerenkov radiation by matter [5].”