Improved Constraints on Anisotropic Birefringent Lorentz Invariance and CPT Violation from Broadband Optical Polarimetry of High Redshift Galaxies

Abstract

In the framework of the Standard Model Extension (SME), we present improved constraints on anisotropic Lorentz invariance and Charge-Parity-Time (CPT) violation by searching for astrophysical signals of cosmic vacuum birefringence with broadband optical polarimetry of high redshift astronomical sources, including Active Galactic Nuclei and Gamma-Ray Burst afterglows. We generalize Ref. [1], which studied the SME mass dimension d = 4 case, to arbitrary mass dimension for both the CPT-even and CPT-odd cases. We then present constraints on all 10, 16, and 42 anisotropic birefringent SME coefficients for dimension d = 4, d = 5, and d = 6 models, respectively, using 7554 observations for odd d and 7376 observations for even d of 1278 unique sources on the sky, which, to our knowledge, comprises the most complete catalog of optical polarization from extragalactic sources in the literature to date. Compared to the smaller sample of 44 and 45 broadband optical polarimetry observations analyzed in Refs. [1] and [2], our dimension d = 4 and d = 5 average constraints are more sensitive by factors of 35 and 10, corresponding to a reduction in allowed SME parameter space volume for these studies of 15 and 16 orders of magnitude, respectively. Constraints from individual lines of sight can be significantly stronger using spectropolarimetry, due to the steep energy dependence of birefringence effects at increasing mass dimension. Nevertheless, due to the increased number of observations and lines of sight in our catalog, our average d = 4 and d = 5 broadband constraints are within factors of 2 and 12 of previous constraints using spectropolarimetry from Refs. [1] and Ref.[2], respectively, using an independent data set and an improved analysis method. By contrast, our anisotropic constraints on all 42 birefringent SME coefficients for d = 6 are the first to be presented in the literature.

Effects of the CPT-even and Lorentz violation on the Bhabha scattering at finite temperature

“…There is no doubt that the Bhabha Scattering is very useful in providing such a behavior even though it is quite small indeed. It is important to note that the search for Lorentz violation using astrophysics has been carried out [37]. Since the astrophysics processes occur at very high temperatures, the thermal effects may contribute to a new clash of constraints on Lorentz violation effects.…”

Probing Lorentz-violating electrodynamics with CMB polarization

“…The CMB-based cosmological bounds on the CPT-even coefficients are only overcome by those obtained from optical polarimetry of extragalactic sources, see refs. [40,78,79]. F for the listed datasets and models.…”

“…On the other hand, higher-order LV operators lead to modifications of the photon dispersion relation that are more relevant at higher photon energies. Therefore, they are better constrained using high-energy radiation sources, such as gamma ray bursts[80] and active galactic nuclei[78,79]. See the review[1] for a more complete account of these tests.…”

Impact of Lorentz violation on anomalous magnetic moments of charged leptons

“…(3.10). Since LV in photons is tightly constrained by spectropolarimetry [121][122][123][124] as well as table-top experiments with optical cavities [125,126], we will discard k F in the remainder of the current section. Also, it is beyond the scope of this work to investigate sidereal variations of (c ) µν .…”