Lower bound on the propagation speed of gravity from gravitational Cherenkov radiation

By Guy D. Moore, A. Nelson. 2001

162 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recently, interesting 4-D Lorentz violating models have been proposed, in which all particles have a common maximum velocity c, but gravity propagates (in the preferred frame) with a different maximum velocity cg≠c. We show that the case cg < c is very tightly constrained by the observation of the highest energy cosmic rays. Assuming a galactic origin for the cosmic rays gives a conservative bound of c−cg <2 × 10−15c; if the cosmic rays have an extragalactic origin the bound is orders of magnitude tighter, of order c−cg < 2 × 10−19c.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ace47ee1cc6cda2618c47b31302e43c6c86194f2

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Citations in the corpus

Quantum-gravity analysis of gamma-ray bursts using wavelets (2002, background): “In this case, the leading correction to the refractive index takes the form f (E) = ( E M )2 · (5) We assume that the prefactors in both cases are positive, reflecting the fact that there should be no superluminal propagation (Moore & Nelson 2001).”
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].”
Horndeski theory and beyond: a review (2019, background): “cent event is+ −3 ×10−15 <c GW −1 <7× 10−16. (118) + The lower bound on c GW can also be obtained from the argument on the gravitational Cherenkov radiation, which can even be tighter than this [193, 194]. However, the frequencies concerned are much higher than those of LIGO observations. Horn”
Cosmology in generalized Proca theories (2016, background): “If the today’s value of c 2 T is smaller than 1, the tensor propagation speed squared is constrained to be 1 − cT < 2 × 10−15 from the gravitational Cherenkov radiation [97, 98].”
Dark Energy in Light of Multi-Messenger Gravitational-Wave Astronomy (2018, background): “galactic origin set a stringent lower bound−2 · 10−15 ≤ cg/c− 1 (Moore and Nelson, 2001), due to the absence of gravitational Cherenkov radiation (Caves, 1980).”
Modern Tests of Lorentz Invariance (2005, methodology): “A calculation of this for the vacuum Čerenkov has been done for QED with dimension four Lorentz violating operators in [224].”
Dark matter as integration constant in Horava-Lifshitz gravity (2009, unknown): “[41, 42, 43] for tight experimental limits on Lorentz violation.”
Beyond the Cosmological Standard Model (2014, unknown): “67 The parameter s? is the energy at which we would expect to start pair producing particles in a (65)Another consequence of particles which propagate with a higher velocity than gravitons is the possible presence of gravi-Cherenkov radiation [1015].”