Approaches to photon absorption in a Lorentz invariance violation scenario

Abstract

Very high-energy astrophysical gamma rays suffer a suppression of their flux along their propagation due to their interaction, through the $\gamma\gamma\to e^+e^-$ pair-production process, with the soft photon backgrounds present in the Universe. We examine the Universe's transparency to gamma rays within a Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV) framework, focusing on photon subluminal quadratic corrections driven by a high-energy scale. Based on an explicit calculation, we provide a new expression for the cross section that overcomes the limitations of previous approaches and refines existing constraints for the LIV scale, while we introduce a new approximation that may be useful in LIV scenarios beyond effective field theory. These improvements appear essential for setting constraints on LIV effects with future observations at ultra-high energies, where previous approximations may fall short.