Radiatively Induced Lorentz-Violating Photon Masses

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Lorentz-violating parameters in an extended standard model induce photon masses through radiative corrections, providing new bounds on Lorentz violation based on photon mass limits.

Contribution

It demonstrates that gauge noninvariant terms from radiative corrections can be interpreted as Lorentz-violating photon masses, establishing bounds on Lorentz violation from photon mass measurements.

Findings

Photon mass bounds constrain Lorentz violation to below 10^-22 GeV.

Radiative corrections induce Lorentz-violating photon masses.

Gauge noninvariant terms can be physically meaningful.

Abstract

We examine the radiative corrections to an extension of the standard model containing a Lorentz-violating axial vector parameter. At second order in this parameter, the photon self-energy is known to contain terms that violate gauge invariance. Previously, this has been treated as a pathology, but it is also possible to take the gauge noninvariant terms at face value. These terms then make Lorentz-violating contributions to the photon mass, and directly measured limits on the photon mass can be used to set bounds on the Lorentz violation at better than the 10^-22 GeV level.