Very special relativity as a background field theory

Journal article, 2016

We consider violation of Lorentz invariance in QED induced by a very high frequency background wave. An effective theory is obtained by averaging observables over the rapid field oscillations. This preserves Ward identities and restores translation invariance below the high-frequency scale, but only partial Lorentz invariance: we show that the effective theory is C-invariant SIM(2)-QED in very special relativity. Averaging leads to the nonlocal terms familiar from SIM(2) theories, while the short-distance behavior of the background field fermion propagator generates the infinite number of higher-order vertices of SIM(2)-QED.