Constraining the mass of the photon with gamma-ray bursts

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• 作者：Bo Zhang^a ; Ya-Ting Chai^b ; ^c ; Yuan-Chuan Zou^b ; Xue-Feng Wu^a ; ^d ; ^{xfwu@pmo.ac.cn" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Radio continuum ; general ; Gamma-ray burst ; general ; Photon rest mass
• 刊名：Journal of High Energy Astrophysics
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：September-December 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：11-12
• 期：Complete
• 页码：20-28
• 全文大小：377 K

文摘

One of the cornerstones of modern physics is Einstein's special relativity, with its constant speed of light and zero photon mass assumptions. Constraint on the rest mass m_γ$m_{\gamma }$ of photons is a fundamental way to test Einstein's theory, as well as other essential electromagnetic and particle theories. Since non-zero photon mass can give rise to frequency- (or energy-) dependent dispersions, measuring the time delay of photons with different frequencies emitted from explosive astrophysical events is an important and model-independent method to put such a constraint. The cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), with short time scales, high redshifts as well as broadband prompt and afterglow emissions, provide an ideal testbed for m_γ$m_{\gamma }$ constraints. In this paper we calculate the upper limits of the photon mass with GRB early time radio afterglow observations as well as multi-band radio peaks, thus improve the results of Schaefer (1999) by nearly half an order of magnitude.