Synchrotron radiation in Lorentz-violating electrodynamics: The Myers-Pospelov model

Abstract

We develop a detailed analysis of synchrotron radiation in the effective Lorentz invariance violating (LIV) model of Myers-Pospelov, considering explicitly both the dynamics of the charge producing the radiation and the dynamics of the electromagnetic field itself. Within the radiation approximation we compute exact expressions in the LIV parameters for the electric and magnetic fields, the angular distribution of the power spectrum, the total emitted power in the $m$th harmonic and the polarization. We also perform expansions of the exact results in terms of the LIV parameters to identify the dominant effects and study the main features of the high energy limit of the spectrum. A very interesting consequence is the appearance of rather unexpected and large amplifying factors associated with the LIV effects, which go along with the usual contributions of the expansion parameter. This opens up the possibility of looking for astrophysical sources where these amplifying factors are important to further explore the constraints imposed upon the LIV parameters by synchrotron radiation measurements. We briefly sketch some phenomenological applications in the case of supernova remnants and gamma ray bursts.