Apparent Lorentz violation through spacetime-varying couplings

Abstract

In this talk, we explore the relation between smoothly varying couplings and Lorentz violation. Within the context of a supergravity model, we present an explicit mechanism that causes the effective fine-structure parameter and the effective electromagnetic $θ$ angle to acquire related spacetime dependences. We argue that this leads to potentially observable Lorentz violation and discuss some implications for the Standard-Model Extension.