Speed of light difference in the speeds of photons of different energies, confirming that Lorentz invariance is verified at least down to the scale of the Planck length ("l" = ≈ ) divided by 1.2. In a medium, light usually does not propagate at a speed equal to "c"; further, different types of light wave will travel at different speeds. The speed at which the individual crests and troughs of a plane wave (a wave filling the whole space, with only one frequency) propagate is called the phase velocity "v". An actual physical signal with a finite extent (a pulse of light) travels
Speed of light photon. The limit obtained depends on the model used: if the massive photon is described by Proca theory, the experimental upper bound for its mass is about 10 grams; if photon mass is generated by a Higgs mechanism, the experimental upper limit is less sharp, (roughly 2 × 10 g). Another reason for the speed of light to vary with its frequency would be the failure of special relativity to apply to arbitrarily small scales, as predicted by some proposed theories of quantum gravity. In 2009, the observation of the spectrum of gamma-ray burst GRB 090510 did not find any