Photon decay in ultrahigh-energy air showers: Stringent bound on Lorentz violation

Abstract

In extensive air showers induced by ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays, secondary photons are expected to be produced at energies far above those accessible by other means. It has been shown that the decay of such photons, as possible in certain theories allowing Lorentz violation, can lead to significant changes of the shower development. Based on observations of the average depth of the shower maximum $\left<X_\text{max}\right>$, a stringent bound on Lorentz violation has been placed in a previous work. Here we include the shower-to-shower fluctuations $\sigma(X_\text{max})$ as an additional observable. The combined comparison of $\left<X_\text{max}\right>$ and $\sigma(X_\text{max})$ to shower observations allows a much stricter test of the possible decay of UHE photons, improving the previous bound by a factor of 50.