Cosmological-model independent limits on photon mass from FRB and SNe data

Abstract

Electromagnetic emissions from astrophysical sources at cosmological distances can be used to estimate the photon mass, $m_{\gamma }$. In this paper, we combine measurements of the dispersion measure ($\mathrm{DM}$) of fast radio bursts (FRB) with the luminosity distance from type Ia supernovae (SNe) to investigate update constraints on the photon rest mass. We derive the expression of $\mathrm{DM}$ dependence concerning a non-vanishing photon mass from a cosmological-model independent approach and constrain the parameter $m_{\gamma }$ from measurements of 68 well-localized FRBs and 1048 SNe data from the Pantheon compilation. We consider two scenarios for the baryon fraction in the intergalactic medium ($f_{\mathrm{IGM}}$): one where the value is fixed according to recent reports and another where it is treated as a free parameter, $f_{\mathrm{IGM}}=f_{\mathrm{IGM},0}$. In the latter case, we find $m_{\gamma }=(29.4_{-15.5}^{+5.80})\times 10^{-51}$ kg, at $1\sigma$ level. Our results also demonstrate an anticorrelation between $f_{\mathrm{IGM}}$ and $m_{\gamma }$, which highlights the importance of analyzing a larger sample of FRBs for a more comprehensive understanding of their properties.

Comments: 18 pages, 1 figure, 1 table