Sep 8 – 13, 2019
Europe/Rome timezone
All inquiries about receipts for the payment of the conference fee and/or dinner should be addressed to: a.vriz@fondazionealmamater.it, d.bordignon@fondazionealmamater.it

The HERMES Project: Probing Space-time Quantum Foam and Hunting for Gravitational Wave Electromagnetic Counterpart"

Sep 12, 2019, 5:35 PM
15m
Contributed FUTURE MISSIONS

Speaker

Luciano Burderi (University of Cagliari)

Description

I discuss how several of the proposed models for space-time quantization predict an energy dependent speed for photons.
Although the predicted discrepancies with the general speed of light are minuscule, I discuss how it is possible to detect this intriguing signature of space-time granularity with a new concept of modular observatory for photons in the energy band from few keV to few MeV. This observatory may consist of a swarm of micro/nano-satellites on low orbits. Sub-microsecond time resolution and wide energy band allows to probe tiny energy dependent delays, expected to be the signature of the granular structure of space-time in several of the proposed theories of Quantum Gravity. Moreover this kind of experiment allows to perform temporal triangulation of high signal to noise impulsive events with positional accuracies of few arcseconds, making an observatory like that a promising hunter for the elusive electromagnetic counterparts of Gravitational Waves.

Affiliation University of Cagliari
Topic Future missions

Primary author

Luciano Burderi (University of Cagliari)

Co-authors

Dr Andrea Sanna (University of Cagliari) Prof. Tiziana Di Salvo (University of Palermo) Prof. Alessandro Riggio (University of Cagliari) Prof. Rosario Iaria (University of Palermo) Dr Fabrizio Fiore (INAF)

Presentation materials