Strong constraints on Lorentz violation using new $\gamma$-ray observations around PeV

TL;DR

This paper uses recent PeV gamma-ray observations from LHAASO to set the most stringent constraints yet on Lorentz violation, significantly surpassing previous limits and informing quantum gravity theories.

Contribution

It provides the first constraint on Lorentz violation using PeV gamma-ray data from LHAASO, improving previous bounds by nearly two orders of magnitude.

Findings

Lorentz violation energy scale constrained to 1.7×10^{33} eV.

Observation of gamma rays above 100 TeV and up to 1 PeV.

Significant improvement over previous Lorentz violation limits.

Abstract

The tiny modification of dispersion relation induced by Lorentz violation (LV) is an essential issue in quantum gravity (QG) theories, which can be magnified into significant effects when dealing with astrophysical observations at high energy and long propagation distance. LV would lead to photon decay at high energies, therefore, observations of high-energy photons could constrain LV or even QG theories. The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) is the most sensitive gamma-array instrument currently operating above 100 TeV. Recently, LHAASO reported the detection of 12 sources above 100 TeV with maximum photon energy exceeding 1 PeV. According to these observations, the most stringent restriction is achieved in this paper, i.e., limiting the LV energy scale to $1.7\times10^{33} $ eV, which is over 139,000 times that of the Planck energy and achieve an improvement of about 1.9 orders of magnitude over previous limits.