Quantum-gravity analysis of gamma-ray bursts using wavelets

By John Ellis, N. Mavromatos, D. Nanopoulos, Alexander S. Sakharov. 2002

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In some models of quantum gravity, space-time is thought to have a foamy structure with non-trivial optical prop- erties. We probe the possibility that photons propagating in vacuum may exhibit a non-trivial refractive index, by analyzing the times of flight of radiation from gamma-ray bursters (GRBs) with known redshifts. We use a wavelet shrinkage procedure for noise removal and a wavelet "zoom" technique to define with high accuracy the timings of sharp transitions in GRB light curves, thereby optimizing the sensitivity of experimental probes of any energy dependence of the velocity of light. We apply these wavelet techniques to 64 ms and TTE data from BATSE, and also to OSSE data. A search for time lags between sharp transients in GRB light curves in dierent energy bands yields the lower limit M 6:9 10 15 GeV on the quantum-gravity scale in any model with a linear dependence of the velocity of light/ E=M. We also present a limit on any quadratic dependence.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1101a0fe05a4d71f3c553a1b8519e3e8f7234084

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Citations in the corpus

Modern Tests of Lorentz Invariance (2005, background): “The current data from GRB’s limit f (3) to be less than O(10(3)) [109].”
Field theory at a Lifshitz point (2009, background): “In [26, 27, 28], the dispersion relation of the photon is proposed to be modified by the effect of quantum gravity.”
An invitation to loop quantum gravity (2004, background): “the event that the anomaly exists. 3. A consequence of (49) can be an energy dependent speed of light. This effect can be looked for in timing data of gamma ray busts. Present data bounds α <≈ 104 [155] and data expected from the GLAST experiment is expected to be sensitive to α of order one in 2”
How far are we from the quantum theory of gravity (2003, background): “B) in the event that the anomaly exists. 3. A consequence of (2) is an energy dependent speed of light. This eﬀect can be looked for in timing data of gamma ray busts. Present data bounds α <≈ 104 [217] and data expected from the GLAST experiment is expected to be sensitive to α of order one in 2”