TY - JOUR

T1 - Do photons travel faster than gravitons?

AU - Ejlli, Damian

PY - 2018/2/19

Y1 - 2018/2/19

N2 - The vacuum polarization in an external gravitational field due to one loop electron-positron pair and one loop millicharged fermion-antifermion pair is studied. Considering the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) radiation and gravitational waves (GWs) in an expanding universe, it is shown that by taking into account QED effects in curved spacetime, the propagation velocity of photons is superluminal and can exceed that of gravitons. We apply these results to the case of the GW170817 event detected by LIGO. If the EM radiation and GWs are emitted either simultaneously or with a time difference from the same source, it is shown that the EM radiation while propagating with superluminal velocity, would be detected either in advance or in delay with respect to GW depending on the ratio of millicharged fermion relative charge to mass /m.

AB - The vacuum polarization in an external gravitational field due to one loop electron-positron pair and one loop millicharged fermion-antifermion pair is studied. Considering the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) radiation and gravitational waves (GWs) in an expanding universe, it is shown that by taking into account QED effects in curved spacetime, the propagation velocity of photons is superluminal and can exceed that of gravitons. We apply these results to the case of the GW170817 event detected by LIGO. If the EM radiation and GWs are emitted either simultaneously or with a time difference from the same source, it is shown that the EM radiation while propagating with superluminal velocity, would be detected either in advance or in delay with respect to GW depending on the ratio of millicharged fermion relative charge to mass /m.

KW - gravitational wave detectors

KW - gravitational waves / sources

KW - particle physics - cosmology connection

KW - quantum field theory on curved space

KW - VELOCITY

KW - GRAVITATIONAL-FIELD

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85043578341&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1088/1475-7516/2018/02/035

DO - 10.1088/1475-7516/2018/02/035

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85043578341

VL - 2018

JO - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

JF - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

SN - 1475-7516

IS - 2

M1 - 035

ER -