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 γ . In this paper, we combine measurements of the dispersion measure (DM) of fast radio bursts (FRB) with the luminosity distance from type Ia supernovae (SNe) to investigate updated constraints on the photon rest mass. We derive the expression of DM dependence concerning a non-vanishing photon mass from a cosmological model-independent approach and constrain the parameter m γ from measurements of 110 well-localized FRBs and 1701 SNe data from the Pantheon+ compilation. We consider the baryon fraction in the intergalactic medium ( f IGM ) as a free parameter, f IGM = f IGM.0 and find m γ = (20.5 -8.2 +7.1 ) × 10 -51 kg, at 1σ level. Our results also demonstrate an anticorrelation between f IGM and m γ , which highlights the importance of analyzing a larger sample of FRBs for a more comprehensive understanding of their properties.