Regularity of high energy photon events from gamma ray bursts

TL;DR

This study analyzes high-energy photon events from 25 gamma-ray bursts to investigate potential quantum gravity effects, revealing a significant regularity in photon arrival times at energies above 40 GeV, consistent with Lorentz violation at a specific energy scale.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, unbiased analysis of GRB photon data, demonstrating a significant regularity that supports quantum gravity-induced light speed variation.

Findings

Regularity in photon arrival times increases with photon energy.

Significance of regularity reaches 3-5 sigma for energies >40 GeV.

Estimated Lorentz violation scale is approximately 3.6×10^{17} GeV.

Abstract

The effect of Quantum Gravity (QG) may bring a tiny light speed variation as $v(E)=c(1-E/E_{\rm LV})$, where $E$ is the photon energy and $E_{\rm LV}$ is a Lorentz violation scale. A remarkable regularity was suggested in previous studies to look for the light speed variation from high energy photon events of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). We provide a general analysis on the data of 25 bright GRBs observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST). Such method allows a completed scan over all possibilities in a more clean and impartial way without any bias compared to previous intuitive analysis. The results show that with the increase in the intrinsic energies of photons, such regularity truly emerges and gradually becomes significant. For photons with intrinsic energies higher than 40~GeV, the regularity exists at a significance of 3-5~$\sigma$ with $E_{\rm LV}=3.6\times 10^{17}~\rm GeV$ determined by the GRB data.