One of the experimental tests of Lorentz invariance violation is to measure
the helicity dependence of the propagation velocity of photons originating in
distant cosmological obejcts. Using a recent determination of the distance of
the Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 041219A, for which a high degree of polarization is
observed in the prompt emission, we are able to improve by 4 orders of
magnitude the existing constraint on Lorentz invariance violation, arising from
the phenomenon of vacuum birefringence.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication as a Rapid Communication
in Physical Review
