Cosmic rays and TeV photons as probes of quantum properties of space-time

Giovanni Amelino-Camelia*, Tsvi Piran

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

65 Scopus citations

Abstract

It has been recently observed that small violations of Lorentz invariance, of a type which may arise in quantum gravity, could explain both the observations of cosmic rays above the GZK cutoff and the observations of 20-TeV gamma rays from Markarian 501. We show here that different pictures of the short-distance structure of space-time would lead to different forms of violation of ordinary Lorentz invariance. In particular, even space-time models leading to the same deformed dispersion relation, the only aspect of Lorentz-invariance violation considered in most recent studies, can lead to very different predictions for the physics of cosmic rays and high-energy gamma rays. This could provide an unexpected window on the (possibly quantum) nature of space-time at very short distances.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)265-270
Number of pages6
JournalPhysics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
Volume497
Issue number3-4
DOIs
StatePublished - 11 Jan 2001

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