English

Modelling spatial variations of the speed of light

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2017-10-11 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

In this paper we extend a new method to measure possible variation of the speed of light by using Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and the Hubble function presented in our earlier paper [V. Salzano, M. P. D\c{a}browski, and R. Lazkoz, Phys. Rev. D93, 063521 (2016)] onto an inhomogeneous model of the universe. The method relies on the fact that there is a simple relation between the angular diameter distance (DA)(D_{A}) maximum and the Hubble function (H)(H) evaluated at the same maximum-condition redshift, which includes speed of light cc. One limit of such method was the assumption of null spatial curvature (even if we showed that even a non-zero curvature would have negligible effects). Here, we move one step further: we explicitly assume a model with intrinsic non-null curvature, and calculate the exact relation between DAD_{A} and HH in this case. Then, we evaluate if current or future missions such as SKA can be sensitive enough to detect any such kind of spatial variation of cc which can perhaps be related to the recently observed spatial variation of the fine structure constant (an effect known as α\alpha-dipole).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1604.07655,
  title  = {Modelling spatial variations of the speed of light},
  author = {Adam Balcerzak and Mariusz P. Dabrowski and Vincenzo Salzano},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.07655},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

7 pages, 1 table