The variation of the fine structure constant: testing the dipole model with thermonuclear supernovae

DR. LUCILA KRAISELBURD ; DR. SUSANA LANDAU; CAROLINA NEGRELLI; DR. ENRIQUE GARCIA BERRO

ASTROPHYSICS AND SPACE SCIENCE

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2015 vol. 357

0004-640X

The large-number hypothesis conjectures thatfundamental constants may vary. Accordingly, the spacetimevariation of fundamental constants has been an activesubject of research for decades. Recently, using data obtainedwith large telescopes a phenomenological model inwhich the fine structure constant might vary spatially hasbeen proposed. We test whether this hypothetical spatialvariation of α, which follows a dipole law, is compatiblewith the data of distant thermonuclear supernovae. Unlikeprevious works, in our calculations we consider not onlythe variation of the luminosity distance when a varying α isadopted, but we also take into account the variation of thepeak luminosity of Type Ia supernovae resulting from a variationof α. This is done using an empirical relation for thepeak bolometric magnitude of thermonuclear supernovaethat correctly reproduces the results of detailed numericalsimulations. We find that there is no significant differencebetween the several phenomenological models studied here and the standard one, in which α does not vary spatially. Weconclude that the present set of data of Type Ia supernovaeis not able to distinguish the standard model from the dipolemodels, and thus cannot be used to discard nor to confirmthe proposed spatial variation of α.