WMAP constraints on varying alpha and the promise of reionization

• Tipo: Artigo em Revista Científica Internacional
• Data: 2004

Autores

martins, cjap (Autor) Outra; melchiorri, a (Autor) Outra; rocha, g (Autor) Outra; trotta, r (Autor) Outra; avelino, pp (Autor) FCUP; viana, ptp (Autor) FCUP

Revista

Título: Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics

Vol. 585

Páginas: 29-34

ISSN: 0370-2693

Editora: Elsevier

Indexação

ISI Web of Knowledge - 65 Citações

Scopus - 64 Citações

Classificação Científica

FOS: Ciências exactas e naturais > Física

Outras Informações

ID Authenticus: P-000-AV5

DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2003.11.080

Abstract (EN): We present up-to-date constraints on the value of the fine-structure constant at the epoch of decoupling from the recent observations made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite. In the framework of models we considered, a positive (negative) variation of the value of alpha at decoupling with respect to the present-day value is now bounded to be smaller than 2% (6%) at 95% confidence level. We point out that the existence of an early reionization epoch as suggested by the above measurements will, when more accurate cosmic microwave background polarization data is available, lead to considerably tighter constraints. The so-called 'reionization bump', in particular, will be extremely useful for this purpose. We find that the tightest possible constraint on alpha is about 0.1% using CMB data alone-tighter constraints will require further (non-CMB) priors.

Idioma: Inglês

Tipo (Avaliação Docente): Científica

Nº de páginas: 6