Lorentz Invariance Violation with Absorption of Gamma-rays by Solar Photons

We compute in detail the absorption optical depth for astrophysical gamma-ray photons interacting with solar photons to produce electron positron pairs. This effect is greatest for gamma-ray sources at small angular distances from the Sun, reaching optical depths as high as a few 10^-2. We also calculate this effect including modifications to the absorption cross section threshold from subluminal Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). We show for the first time that subluminal LIV can lead to increases or decreases in the absorption optical depth compared to the non-LIV case. We show that, at least in principle, LIV can be probed with this effect with observations of gamma-ray sources near the Sun at >20 TeV by HAWC or LHAASO, although a measurement will be extremely difficult due to the small size of the effect.