GrailQuest & HERMES: Hunting for Gravitational Wave Electromagnetic Counterparts and Probing Space-Time Quantum Foam
L. Burderi, T. Di Salvo, A. Sanna, F. Fiore, A. Riggio, A. F. Gambino,, the HERMES-TP, HERMES-SP Collaborations

TL;DR
GrailQuest is a proposed fleet of small satellites designed to detect tiny deviations in light speed caused by quantum space-time effects and to locate electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves, advancing multi-messenger astronomy.
Contribution
This paper introduces GrailQuest, a novel distributed satellite observatory concept for high-energy astrophysics and quantum gravity tests, with a pathfinder mission HERMES.
Findings
Conceptual design of GrailQuest for quantum gravity tests
Development of HERMES pathfinder satellite fleet
Potential for unprecedented sensitivity in gamma-ray astronomy
Abstract
GrailQuest (Gamma-ray Astronomy International Laboratory for Quantum Exploration of Space-Time) is an ambitious astrophysical mission concept that uses a fleet of small satellites whose main objective is to search for a dispersion law for light propagation in vacuo. Within Quantum Gravity theories, different models for space-time quantization predict relative discrepancies of the speed of photons w.r.t. the speed of light that depend on the ratio of the photon energy to the Planck energy. This ratio is as small as 1E-23 for photons in the gamma-ray band (100 keV). Therefore, to detect this effect, light must propagate over enormous distances and the experiment must have extraordinary sensitivity. Gamma-Ray Bursts, occurring at cosmological distances, could be used to detect this tiny signature of space-time granularity. This can be obtained by coherently combine a huge number of small…
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Taxonomy
TopicsComputational Physics and Python Applications
