Improved constraints on possible variation of physical constants from H I 21cm and molecular QSO absorption lines
Abstract
QSO absorption spectra provide an extremely useful probe of possible cosmological variation in various physical constants. Comparison of H I 21cm absorption with corresponding molecular (rotational) absorption spectra allows us to constrain variation in y=alpha^2*g_p where alpha is the fine structure constant and g_p is the proton g-factor. We analyse spectra of two QSOs, PKS 1413+135 and TXS 0218+357, and derive values of dy/y at absorption redshifts of z=0.2467 and 0.6847 by simultaneous fitting of the H I 21cm and molecular lines. We find dy/y=(-0.20 +/- 0.44)*10^{-5} and dy/y=(-0.16 +/- 0.54)*10^{-5} respectively, indicating an insignificantly smaller y in the past. We compare our results with other recent constraints from the same two QSOs (Drinkwater et al. 1998; Carilli et al. 2000) and with our recent optical constraints which indicated a smaller alpha at higher redshifts.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0101519,
title = {Improved constraints on possible variation of physical constants from H I 21cm and molecular QSO absorption lines},
author = {M. T. Murphy and J. K. Webb and V. V. Flambaum and M. J. Drinkwater and F. Combes and T. Wiklind},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0101519},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
6 Pages, 3 Figures, Accepted to MNRAS, small changes after referee's comments, accepted version