2 research outputs found
Quantum-Gravity Phenomenology: Status and Prospects
Over the last few years part of the quantum-gravity community has adopted a
more optimistic attitude toward the possibility of finding experimental
contexts providing insight on non-classical properties of spacetime. I review
those quantum-gravity phenomenology proposals which were instrumental in
bringing about this change of attitude, and I discuss the prospects for the
short-term future of quantum-gravity phenomenology.Comment: 28 pages, LaTex, invited Brief Review to appear in a a special issue
of Modern Physics Letters A devoted to the First IUCAA Meeting on the
Interface of Gravitational and Quantum Realm
Introduction to Quantum-Gravity Phenomenology
After a brief review of the first phase of development of Quantum-Gravity
Phenomenology, I argue that this research line is now ready to enter a more
advanced phase: while at first it was legitimate to resort to heuristic
order-of-magnitude estimates, which were sufficient to establish that
sensitivity to Planck-scale effects can be achieved, we should now rely on
detailed analyses of some reference test theories. I illustrate this point in
the specific example of studies of Planck-scale modifications of the
energy/momentum dispersion relation, for which I consider two test theories.
Both the photon-stability analyses and the Crab-nebula synchrotron-radiation
analyses, which had raised high hopes of ``beyond-Plankian'' experimental
bounds, turn out to be rather ineffective in constraining the two test
theories. Examples of analyses which can provide constraints of rather wide
applicability are the so-called ``time-of-flight analyses'', in the context of
observations of gamma-ray bursts, and the analyses of the cosmic-ray spectrum
near the GZK scale.Comment: 46 pages, LaTex. Based on lectures given at the 40th Karpacz Winter
School in Theoretical Physic