Speaker
Prof.
Brett Altschul
(University of South Carolina)
Description
In the last fifteen years, there has been a growing interest in the possibility that Lorentz and CPT symmetries may not be exact. Both string theory and loop quantum gravity suggest the possibility of Lorentz and CPT violations in certain regimes. An effective field theory has been developed to describe such violations: the standard model extension (SME). Many of the parameters in the SME are subject to stringent experimental constraints, and of particular interest are astrophysical constraints on Lorentz violations in the electron sector, which come from observations of the synchrotron and inverse Compton spectra of high-energy sources.
