Restrictions from Lorentz invariance violation on cosmic ray propagation

Abstract

Lorentz Invariance Violation introduced as a generic modification to particle dispersion relations is used to study high energy cosmic ray attenuation processes. It is shown to reproduce the same physical effects for vacuum Cherenkov radiation, as in some particular models with spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry. This approximation is also implemented for the study of photon decay in vacuum, where stringent limits to the violation scale are derived from the direct observation of very high energy cosmic ray photon events on gamma telescopes. Photo production processes by cosmic ray primaries on photon background are also addressed, to show that Lorentz violation may turn off this attenuation process at energies above a well defined secondary threshold.