Probing Lorentz Invariance at EeV Energy

TL;DR

This paper investigates potential violations of Lorentz invariance at ultra-high energies by analyzing cosmic ray events from Centaurus A, showing that observed data can set stringent limits on such violations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to constrain Lorentz invariance violation using ultra-high-energy cosmic ray observations from specific astrophysical sources.

Findings

Calculated the expected number of neutral cosmic ray events from Centaurus A for small Lorentz violation.

Showed that comparing these calculations with observed events can probe very low levels of Lorentz invariance violation.

Demonstrated the potential of cosmic ray data to test fundamental physics at extreme energies.

Abstract

Pierre Auger experiment has detected at least a couple of ray events above energy 60 EeV from the direction of the radio-galaxy Centaurus A. Assuming those events are from Centaurus A, we have calculated the number of neutral cosmic ray events from this source for small values of the degree of violation in Lorentz invariance. Our results show that a comparison of our calculated numbers of events with the observed number of events at EeV energy from the direction of the source can probe extremely low value of the degree of this violation.