Constraints on time variation of fine structure constant from WMAP-3yr data
Astrophysics
2008-11-26 v1
Abstract
This paper presents the constraints on the time variation of the fine structure constant at recombination relative to its present value, Delta_alpha = (alpha_rec-alpha_0) / alpha_0, obtained from the analysis of the WMAP-3yr Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data, with an additional prior on the Hubble expansion rate from HST Hubble Key Project. I found out that -0.039 < Delta_alpha < 0.010 at 95% C.L., which brings a 30% improvement to the previous limits from WMAP-1yr data. The corresponding recombination redshift, 1012 < z_rec < 1115, shows a delayed recombination epoch compared with the results from WMAP-1yr data.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0707.0190,
title = {Constraints on time variation of fine structure constant from WMAP-3yr data},
author = {Petruta Stefanescu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0707.0190},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
11 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in New Astronomy, June 02 2007