Bounding the Photon Mass with Ultrawide Bandwidth Pulsar Timing Data and Dedispersed Pulses of Fast Radio Bursts

Abstract

Exploring the concept of a massive photon has been an important area in astronomy and physics. If photons have mass, their propagation in nonvacuum space would be affected by both the nonzero mass m γ and the presence of a plasma medium. This would lead to a delay time proportional to m γ 2 ν − 4 , which deviates from the classical dispersion relation (proportional to ν −2). For the first time, we have derived the dispersion relation of a photon with a nonzero mass propagating in plasma. To reduce the impact of variations in the dispersion measure (DM), we employed the high-precision timing data to constrain the upper bound of the photon mass. Specifically, the DM/time of arrival (TOA) uncertainties derived from ultrawide bandwidth (UWB) observations conducted by the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) are used. The dedispersed pulses from fast radio bursts (FRBs) with minimal scattering effects are also used to constrain the upper bound of photon mass. The stringent limit on the photon mass is determined by uncertainties of the TOA of pulsars, with an optimum value of 9.52 × 10−46 kg (5.34 × 10−10 eV c−2). In the future, it is essential to investigate the photon mass, as pulsar timing data are collected by PPTA and UWB receivers, or FRBs with wideband spectra are detected by UWB receivers.

Cosmology-Independent Photon Mass Limits from Localized Fast Radio Bursts by Using Artificial Neural Networks

“…Based on the vacuum dispersion method, several studies have used FRBs to put stringent upper limits on the photon mass. [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Since FRBs originate at cosmological distances, the cosmic expansion rate 𝐻(𝑧) has to be considered in constraining the photon mass 𝑚𝛾. In all previous studies, the required 𝐻(𝑧) information is calculated within the standard ΛCDM cosmological model.…”