Robust Constraint on a Drifting Proton-to-Electron Mass Ratio at<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>z</mml:mi><mml:mo mathvariant="bold">=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.89</mml:mn></mml:math>from Methanol Observation at Three Radio Telescopes

Bagdonaite, J.; Daprà, M.; Jansen, Paul; Bethlem, Hendrick L.; Ubachs, Wim; Müller, S.; Henkel, C.; Menten, K. M.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.111.231101

Cited by 75 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Recently, variations for other species such as CH 3 OH and CS have also been reported (Bagdonaite et al 2013b;Schultz et al 2014). The origin of these long-term variations is thought to be due to changes in the continuum emission (Muller & Guélin 2008) possibly associated with a precessing jet (Nair et al 2005), although evidence of a periodicity of the absorption changes remains to be seen.…”

Section: Time Variations Of the Line Profilesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Past observations have shown significant variations of the absorption intensity of the different velocity components (Muller & Guélin 2008;Muller et al 2011Muller et al , 2013Schultz et al 2014) but no shifts in velocity, or only small ones. The small variations of ∼1 km s −1 in the centroid of methanol lines reported by Bagdonaite et al (2013b) might be due, as they note, to the simplifying assumption of only one Gaussian component in the fit of the profile.…”

Section: References (A)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most used species are H 2 , OH, CH 3 OH, and NH 3 . The tightest constraints to date yield null results down to Δμ/μ of a few 10 −7 over 6−7 Gyr (Kanekar 2011;Bagdonaite et al 2013b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the absorber in front of PKS 1830−211 offers interesting opportunities as a cosmological probe, it is important to improve our knowledge of this source to understand and address systematics (e.g., Muller et al 2013 about the determination of the CMB temperature at z = 0.89 and Bagdonaite et al 2013b about a constraint of the varation of μ). The high angular resolution and sensitivity now available with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submilliter Array (ALMA) offer new possibilities in investigating the structure of the absorption and the molecular inventory along the two independent lines-of-sight toward PKS 1830−211.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An ALMA Early Science survey of molecular absorption lines toward PKS 1830−211

Müller

Combes

Guèlin

et al. 2014

A&A

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105

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We present the first results of an ALMA spectral survey of strong absorption lines for common interstellar species in the z = 0.89 molecular absorber toward the lensed blazar PKS 1830−211. The dataset brings essential information on the structure and composition of the absorbing gas in the foreground galaxy. In particular, we find absorption over large velocity intervals ( 100 km s −1 ) toward both lensed images of the blazar. This suggests either that the galaxy inclination is intermediate and that we sample velocity gradients or streaming motions in the disk plane, that the molecular gas has a large vertical distribution or extraplanar components, or that the absorber is not a simple spiral galaxy but might be a merger system. The number of detected species is now reaching a total of 42 different species plus 14 different rare isotopologues toward the SW image, and 14 species toward the NE line-of-sight. The abundances of CH, H 2 O, HCO + , HCN, and NH 3 relative to H 2 are found to be comparable to those in the Galactic diffuse medium. Of all the lines detected so far toward PKS 1830−211, the ground-state line of ortho-water has the deepest absorption. We argue that ground-state lines of water have the best potential for detecting diffuse molecular gas in absorption at high redshift.

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Section: Time Variations Of the Line Profilesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: References (A)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

An ALMA Early Science survey of molecular absorption lines toward PKS 1830−211

Müller

Combes

Guèlin

et al. 2014

A&A

Self Cite

105

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show abstract

“…The methanol (Jansen et al 2011;Levshakov, Kozlov & Reimers 2011) and ammonia (Flambaum & Kozlov 2007) molecules are very sensitive to μ variations. Observations of methanol lines in PKS1830−211 at a redshift of 0.88582 by Bagdonaite et al (2013) and Kanekar et al (2015) have restricted μ/μ to ( − 2.9 ± 5.7) × 10 −8 , where the error is the combined statistical and systematic 1σ error. Concerns about common lines of sight have increased the error to ±1.0 × 10 −7 which is the constraint on the variation of μ used in this work.…”

Section: The Proton To Electron Mass Ratio μ Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fundamental constant observational bounds on the variability of the QCD scale

Thompson¹

2017

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Many physical theories beyond the Standard Model predict time variations of basic physics parameters. Direct measurement of the time variations of these parameters is very difficult or impossible to achieve. By contrast, measurements of fundamental constants are relatively easy to achieve, both in the laboratory and by astronomical spectra of atoms and molecules in the early universe. In this work, measurements of the proton to electron mass ratio μ and the fine structure constant α are combined to place mildly model-dependent limits on the fractional variation of the quantum chromodynamic scale and the sum of the fractional variations of the Higgs vacuum expectation value (VEV) and the Yukawa couplings on time-scales of more than half the age of the universe. The addition of another model parameter allows the fractional variation of the Higgs VEV and the Yukawa couplings to be computed separately. Limits on their variation are found at the level of less than 5 × 10 −5 over the past 7 Gyr. A model-dependent relation between the expected fractional variation of α relative to μ tightens the limits to 10 −7 over the same time span. Limits on the present day rate of change of the constants and parameters are then calculated using slow roll quintessence. A primary result of this work is that studies of the dimensionless fundamental constants such as α and μ, whose values depend on the values of the physics parameters, are excellent monitors of the limits on the time variation of these parameters.

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Search for Varying Constants of Nature from Astronomical Observation of Molecules

Ubachs¹

2017

Space Sciences Series of ISSI

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The status of searches for possible variation in the constants of nature from astronomical observation of molecules is reviewed, focusing on the dimensionless constant representing the proton-electron mass ratio µ = m p /m e . The optical detection of H 2 and CO molecules with large ground-based telescopes (as the ESO-VLT and the Keck telescopes), as well as the detection of H 2 with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope is discussed in the context of varying constants, and in connection to different theoretical scenarios. Radio astronomy provides an alternative search strategy bearing the advantage that molecules as NH 3 (ammonia) and CH 3 OH (methanol) can be used, which are much more sensitive to a varying µ than diatomic molecules. Current constraints are |∆µ/µ| < 5 × 10 −6 for redshift z = 2.0 − 4.2, corresponding to look-back times of 10-12.5 Gyrs, and |∆µ/µ| < 1.5 × 10 −7 for z = 0.88, corresponding to half the age of the Universe (both at 3σ statistical significance). Existing bottlenecks and prospects for future improvement with novel instrumentation are discussed.

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Robust Constraint on a Drifting Proton-to-Electron Mass Ratio atz=0.89from Methanol Observation at Three Radio Telescopes

Cited by 75 publications

References 27 publications

An ALMA Early Science survey of molecular absorption lines toward PKS 1830−211

An ALMA Early Science survey of molecular absorption lines toward PKS 1830−211

Fundamental constant observational bounds on the variability of the QCD scale

Search for Varying Constants of Nature from Astronomical Observation of Molecules

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