New constraints on time-dependent variations of fundamental constants using Planck data

2017/05/31 by Luke Hart, Jens Chluba · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Anisotropy #Astrophysics #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Electron #Fine-structure constant #Galaxy #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Physical constant #Physics #Planck #Planck energy #Quantum mechanics #Redshift #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #astro-ph.CO #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stx2783

12 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables, updated to match the published version to MNRAS, fixed references

openalex created_date 2017/05/19 · openalex publication_date 2017/10/28 · arxiv created 2020/06/11 · arxiv updated 2020/06/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) today allow us to answer detailed questions about the properties of our Universe, targeting both standard and non-standard physics. In this paper, we study the effects of varying fundamental constants (i.e. the fine-structure constant, αEM, and electron rest mass, me) around last scattering using the recombination codes cosmorec and recfast++. We approach the problem in a pedagogical manner, illustrating the importance of various effects on the free electron fraction, Thomson visibility function and CMB power spectra, highlighting various degeneracies. We demonstrate that the simpler recfast++ treatment (based on a three-level atom approach) can be used to accurately represent the full computation of cosmorec. We also include explicit time-dependent variations using a phenomenological power-law description. We reproduce previous Planck 2013 results in our analysis. Assuming constant variations relative to the standard values, we find the improved constraints αEM/αEM, 0 = 0.9993 ± 0.0025 (CMB only) and me/me, 0 = 1.0039 ± 0.0074 (including BAO) using Planck 2015 data. For a redshift-dependent variation, αEM(z) = αEM(z0) [(1 + z)/1100]p with αEM(z0) ≡ αEM, 0 at z0 = 1100, we obtain p = 0.0008 ± 0.0025. Allowing simultaneous variations of αEM(z0) and p yields αEM(z0)/αEM, 0 = 0.9998 ± 0.0036 and p = 0.0006 ± 0.0036. We also discuss combined limits on αEM and me. Our analysis shows that existing data are not only sensitive to the value of the fundamental constants around recombination but also its first time derivative. This suggests that a wider class of varying fundamental constant models can be probed using the CMB.

Citations

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