Probing brane-world scenarios with vacuum refraction of light using gamma-ray bursts

We argue that in fat brane-world scenarios the light propagating in vacuum will, because of massive “Kaluza-Klein” (KK) excitations, experience a refraction. The motion of a photon inside a fat brane can be decomposed in the longitudinal and transverse directions with respect to the surface of the brane. Since the light observable propagation is related only with the longitudinal motion, the observed speed of light depends on the value of the momentum transverse fraction contributing as the massive KK excitations. This is directly connected with the energy of the particles emitting the light, and hence with the frequency of the light itself. Using recent results on the arrival times of radiation of different energies from the measurements of gamma-ray bursters with known redshifts, we establish the limit M>620TeV on the inverse thickness of the brane, and thus on the masses of the KK excitations. This limit exceeds by at least one order of magnitude the typical energy scale currently in use to characterize brane phenomena in the realm of future colliders.