Absence of Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin Cutoff and Stability of Unstable Particles at Very High Energy, as a Consequence of Lorentz Symmetry Violation

Abstract

Special relativity has been tested at low energy with great accuracy, but its extrapolation to very high-energy phenomena is much less well established. Introducing a critical distance scale, a , below 10E-25 cm (the wavelength scale of the highest-energy observed cosmic rays) allows to consider models, compatible with standard tests of special relativity, where a small violation of Lorentz symmetry (a can, for instance, be the Planck length) produces dramatic effects on the properties of high-energy cosmic rays. Not only the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff on very high-energy protons and nuclei does no longer apply, but particles which are unstable at low energy (neutron, several nuclei, some hadronic resonances like the Delta++...) would become stable at very high energy. The muon would also become stable or very long lived at very high energy if one of the two neutrinos associated to the light charged leptons (electron, muon) has a mass. Similar considerations apply to the tau lepton. We discuss several possible scenarios originating these phenomena, as well as the cosmic ray energy range (well below the energy scale associated to the fundamental length) and experiments where they could be detected. Observable effects are predicted for the highest-energy cosmic rays.