On October 9, 2022, the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) reported the observation of the very early TeV afterglow of the brightest-of-all-time GRB 221009A, recording the highest photon statistics in the TeV band ever from a gamma-ray burst. We use this unique observation to place stringent constraints on an energy dependence of the speed of light in vacuum, a manifestation of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV) predicted by some quantum gravity (QG) theories. Our results show that the 95% confidence level lower limits on the QG energy scales are $E_{ \mathrm{ QG},1}>10$ times of the Planck energy $E_\mathrm{ Pl}$ for the linear, and $E_{ \mathrm{ QG},2}>6\times10^{ -8}E_\mathrm{ Pl}$ for the quadratic LIV effects, respectively. Our limits on the quadratic LIV case improve previous best bounds by factors of 5--7.
Categories: astro-ph.HE gr-qc hep-ph hep-th