Related papers: Confronting Cosmology and New Physics with Fundame…
The laws of physics have a set of fundamental constants, and it is generally admitted that only dimensionless combinations of constants have physical significance. These combinations include the electromagnetic and gravitational fine…
A phenomenological model is proposed to explain the recent observed cosmological variation of the fine structure constant as an effect of the quantum vacuum, assuming a flat universe with cosmological constant $\Lambda$ in the cases…
Astrophysical tests of the stability of fundamental couplings, such as the fine-structure constant $\alpha$, are a powerful probe of new physics. Recently these measurements, combined with local atomic clock tests and Type Ia supernova and…
The fundamental constants of electromagnetism, gravity and quantum mechanics can be related empirically by the numerical approximation $\ln(V_e/V_P)\approx \alpha^{-1}$, where $\alpha$ is the low energy value of the electromagnetic fine…
In this work, we compute the universe temperature for the cosmological horizon for the FLRW metric. For this purpose, we consider a scalar field on the cosmological horizon. This scalar field satisfies the Klein-Gordon equation in a curved…
The progress of Particle Physics is closely linked to the progress in the understanding of the fundamental constants, like the finestructure constant, the mass of the electron or nucleon, or the electroweak mixing angle. The relation…
Dynamical scalar fields in an effective four-dimensional field theory are naturally expected to couple to the rest of the theory's degrees of freedom, unless some new symmetry is postulated to suppress these couplings. In particular, a…
Motivated by recent astrophysical observations of quasar absorption systems, we formulate a simple theory where the electron to proton mass ratio $\mu =m_{e}/m_{p}$ is allowed to vary in space-time. In such a minimal theory only the…
We discuss experiments and observations aimed at testing the possible space-time variability of fundamental physical constants, predicted by the modern theory. Specifically, we consider two of the dimensionless physical parameters which are…
Any variation of the fundamental physical constants, and more particularly of the fine structure constant, $\alpha$, or of the mass of the electron, $m_e$, would affect the recombination history of the Universe and cause an imprint on the…
Recent key observational results on the variation of fine structure constant, the proton to electron mass ratio and the gravitational constant are reviewed. The necessity to substantiate the dark sector of cosmology and to test gravity on…
Beyond the standard cosmological model the late-time accelerated expansion of the universe can be reproduced by the introduction of an additional dynamical scalar field. In this case, the field is expected to be naturally coupled to the…
In quantum field theory the parameters of the vacuum action are subject to renormalization group running. In particular, the ``cosmological constant'' is not a constant in a quantum field theory context, still less should be zero. In this…
Most of the calculations done to obtain the value of the cosmological constant use methods of quantum gravity, a theory that has not been established as yet, and a variety of results are usually obtained. The numerical value of the…
Our universe is observed to be accelerating due to the dominant dark energy with negative pressure. The dark energy equation of state (w) holds a key to understanding the ultimate fate of the universe. The cosmic voids behave like bubbles…
Bekenstein's model of a scalar field, \phi, that affects the electromagnetic permeability (usually identified with ``changing \alpha'') predicts tiny variations of the effective fine structure constant up to very high red-shifts,…
In a class of models designed to solve the cosmological constant problem by coupling scalar or tensor classical fields to the space-time curvature, the universal scale factor grows as a power law in the age, $a \propto t^\alpha$, regardless…
Fundamental constants are a cornerstone of our physical laws. Any constant varying in space and/or time would reflect the existence of an almost massless field that couples to matter. This will induce a violation of the universality of free…
We report new upper limits on any possible long-term time variation of the ratio of the electron to proton masses, $(m_e/m_p)$, the fine-structure constant, ($\alpha$), and the quantity $\alpha^2 g_p(m_e/m_p)$, where $g_p$ is the proton…
The standard interpretation of the observed redshifted spectra and luminosities towards distant astrophysical objects is that the universe is expanding, an inference which is found to be consistent with other cosmological probes as well.…