Eur. Phys. J. C (2018) 78: 825
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-6294-y

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Light speed variation from gamma ray bursts: criteria for low energy photons

¹ School of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China
² Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing, China
³ Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China
⁴ Center for History and Philosophy of Science, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

^* e-mail: mabq@pku.edu.cn

Received: 29 April 2018
Accepted: 1 October 2018
Published online: 13 October 2018

Abstract

We examine a method to detect the light speed variation from gamma ray burst data observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST). We suggest new criteria to determine the characteristic time for low energy photons by the energy curve and the average energy curve respectively, and obtain similar results compared with those from the light curve. We offer a new criterion with both the light curve and the average energy curve to determine the characteristic time for low energy photons. We then apply the new criteria to the GBM NaI data, the GBM BGO data, and the LAT LLE data, and obtain consistent results for three different sets of low energy photons from different FERMI detectors.