LABORATORI NAZIONALI DI LEGNARO
The structure of spacetime at the Planck scale may lead to a breakdown (or deformation) of Lorentz invariance at high energies in the form of nonlinear dispersion relations for the fundamental particles. In spite of the fact that the extra Lorentz-breaking terms of power higher than 2 in the momentum are suppressed by inverse powers of the Planck scale, it is possible to observe their effect in relatively low energy interactions (w.r.t. the Planck energy) when these involve thresholds, cumulative effects (such as time delay between photons of different frequencies) or are sensitive to the possible existence of a maximal group velocity for the elementary particles (synchrotron effect). In this talk I will provide a broad account of were we stand in constraining these effects and the future perspectives for this growing field of research.

DATA: 20-12-2012