Related papers: Testing Relativity at High Energies Using Spacebor…
Blazars, the extreme family of AGN, can be strong gamma-ray emitters and constitute the largest fraction of identified point sources of EGRET. The next Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is a high energy (30MeV-300GeV) gamma-ray…
Gravitational lensing of very high energy photons has recently been observed in the JVAS B0218+357 strong lensing system. This observation opens the possibility of performing a test of gravity at high energy by comparing the difference in…
High-energy astrophysics observations provide the best possibilities to detect a very small violation of Lorentz invariance, such as may be related to the structure of space-time near the Planck scale. I discuss the possible signatures of…
We examine what the absorbed spectra of extra-galactic TeV gamma-ray sources, such as blazars, would look like in the presence of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). Pair-production with the extra-galactic background light modifies the…
The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), scheduled to be launched in fall 2007, is the next generation satellite for high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. The Large Area Telescope (LAT), GLAST main instrument, with a wide field of view…
We describe the role of GeV gamma-ray observations with GLAST-LAT (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope - Large Area Telescope) in identifying interaction sites of cosmic-ray proton (or hadrons) with interstellar medium (ISM). We expect to…
The Very Large Area gamma-ray Space Telescope (VLAST) is a mission concept proposed to detect gamma-ray photons through both the Compton scattering and electron-positron pair production mechanisms, enabling the detection of photons with…
Recent observations of Ultra High Energy Cosmic rays suggest a small violation of Lorentz symmetry. Such a violation is expected in schemes with discrete/quantized spacetime. We examine this situation and suggest tests which could be…
The GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) will augment the capabilities of GLAST for the detection of cosmic gamma-ray bursts by extending the energy range (20 MeV to > 300 GeV) of the Large Area Telescope (LAT) towards lower energies by 2…
One of the scientific goals of the main instrument of GLAST is the study of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) in the energy range from ~20 MeV to ~300 GeV. In order to extend the energy measurement towards lower energies a secondary instrument, the…
Gamma-ray observations provide sensitive tests of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). At present the most sensitive tests come from observations of transient events, gamma-ray bursts and flaring AGN. Disadvantages of transients are that an…
The detection of exotic cosmic rays due to pair annihilation of dark matter particles in the Milky Way halo is a viable techniques to search for supersymmetric dark matter candidates. The study of the spectrum of gamma-rays, antiprotons and…
Due to their cosmological distances high-energy astrophysical sources allow for unprecedented tests of fundamental physics. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) comprise among the most sensitive laboratories for exploring the violation of the central…
The COMPTEL and EGRET detectors aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory measured an extragalactic gamma-ray background extending from MeV energies up to about 100 GeV. Calculations performed making reasonable assumptions indicate that…
The double humped SED (Spectral Energy Distribution) of blazars, and their flaring phenomena can be explained by various leptonic and hadronic models. However, accurate modeling of the high frequency component and clear identification of…
At least three pulsars in supernova remnants were detected at E > 100 MeV by EGRET on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Efforts to search for additional pulsars in the EGRET data have been unsuccessful due to limited statistics. An example…
Analyzing data from GLAST's Large Area Telescope (LAT) will require sophisticated techniques. The PSF and effective area are functions of both photon energy and the position in the field-of-view. During most of the mission the observatory…
Lorentz invariance violations (LIV) can yield vacuum birefringence, which results in an energy-dependent rotation of the polarization vector of linearly polarized emission from astrophysical sources. It is believed that if the relative…
Simultaneous observations by the large number of gamma-ray burst detectors operating in the GLAST era will provide the spectra, lightcurves and locations necessary for studying burst physics and testing the putative relations between…
Models of quantum gravity suggest that the vacuum should be regarded as a medium with quantum structure that may have non-trivial effects on photon propagation, including the violation of Lorentz invariance. Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT)…