On the vacuum Cherenkov radiation in noncommutative electrodynamics and the elusive effects of Lorentz violation

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Catania and INFN, Sezione di Catania Città Universitaria, via S. Sofia 64, I-95123 Catania, Italy
² Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA
³ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Salerno and INFN, Gruppo collegato di Salerno via Salvador Allende, Baronissi (SA), Italy

Corresponding authors: paolo.castorina@ct.infn.it iorio@lns.mit.edu dario.zappala@ct.infn.it

Received: 17 May 2005
Accepted: 13 July 2005

Abstract

We show that in the framework of noncommutative classical electrodynamics Cherenkov radiation is permitted in vacuum and we explicitly compute its spectrum at first order in the noncommutative parameter. We discuss the phenomenological impact of the merge of this new analysis with the old results of the substantial modification to the spectrum of the synchrotron radiation obtained in Castorina P., Iorio A. and Zappalà D., Phys. Rev. D 69 (2004) 065008. We propose to consider the pulsars' radiation spectrum —due to its very strong magnetic field— to investigate these Lorentz violating effects in astrophysical phenomena.