Quantum-Gravity Phenomenology and the DSR Ether Theories

TL;DR

This paper critically examines Doubly Special Relativity (DSR) theories in quantum gravity phenomenology, highlighting their incompatibility with fundamental principles due to their implications for signal speeds and the relativity of inertial frames.

Contribution

It demonstrates that certain DSR models predicting energy-dependent light speeds are nonviable because they conflict with the relativity principle and the invariance of inertial frames.

Findings

DSR theories imply signals of arbitrarily high speed, violating relativity.

Such theories could allow absolute rest detection, contradicting relativity.

The paper rules out specific DSR models based on these inconsistencies.

Abstract

Guided primarily by versions of a theoretical framework called Doubly Special Relativity, or DSR, that are supposed to entail speeds of light that vary with energy while preserving the relativity of inertial frames, quantum-gravity phenomenologists have recently been seeking clues to quantum gravity, in hoped-for differing times of arrival, for light of differing energies, from cosmologically distant sources. However, it has long been known that signals, of arbitrarily high speed in opposing directions, could be used to observe the translational state of (absolute) rest, as could signals of a fixed speed different from c. Consequently, the above versions of DSR are nonviable.