Toma K, Mukohyama S, Yonetoku D, Murakami T, Gunji S, Mihara T, Morihara Y, Sakashita T, Takahashi T, Wakashima Y, Yonemochi H, Toukairin N. Strict limit on CPT violation from polarization of γ-ray bursts.
Phys Rev Lett 2012;
109:241104. [PMID:
23368301 DOI:
10.1103/physrevlett.109.241104]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2012] [Revised: 10/31/2012] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
We report the strictest observational verification of CPT invariance in the photon sector, as a result of γ-ray polarization measurement of distant gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which are the brightest stellar-sized explosions in the Universe. We detected γ-ray polarization of three GRBs with high significance levels, and the source distances may be constrained by a well-known luminosity indicator for GRBs. For the Lorentz- and CPT-violating dispersion relation E(±)(2) = p(2) ± 2ξp(3)/M(Pl), where ± denotes different circular polarization states of the photon, the parameter ξ is constrained as |ξ|<O(10(-15)). Barring precise cancellation between quantum gravity effects and dark energy effects, the stringent limit on the CPT-violating effect leads to the expectation that quantum gravity presumably respects the CPT invariance.
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