Probing Lorentz Invariance Violation with Absorption of Astrophysical Gamma-rays by Solar Photons

Abstract

We compute in detail the absorption optical depth for astrophysical $\gamma$-ray photons interacting with solar photons to produce electron positron pairs. This effect is greatest for $\gamma$-ray sources at small angular distances from the Sun, reaching optical depths as high as $\tau_{\gamma\gamma}\sim 10^{-2}$. We also calculate this effect including modifications to the absorption cross section threshold from subluminal Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). We show for the first time that subluminal LIV can lead to increases or decreases in $\tau_{\gamma\gamma}$ compared to the non-LIV case. We show that, at least in principle, LIV can be probed with this effect with observations of $\gamma$-ray sources near the Sun at $\gtrsim20$ TeV by HAWC or LHAASO, although a measurement will be extremely difficult due to the small size of the effect.