Constraining a possible time-variation of the speed of light along with the fine-structure constant using strong gravitational lensing and Type Ia supernovae observations

COLAÇO, L.R.; LANDAU, S.J.; GONZALEZ, J.E.; SPINELLY, J.; SANTOS, G.L.F.

JOURNAL OF COSMOLOGY AND ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Año: 2022 vol. 2022

1475-7516

The possible time variation of the fundamental constants of nature has been an active subject of research since the large-number hypothesis was proposed by Dirac. In this paper, we propose a new method to investigate a possible time variation of the speed of light (c) along with the fine-structure constant (α) using Strong Gravitational Lensing (SGL) and Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) observations. We assume a general approach to describe the mass distribution of lens-type galaxies, the one in favor of the power-law index model (PLAW). We also consider the runaway dilaton model to describe a possible time-variation of α. In order to explore the results deeply, we split the SGL sample into five sub-samples according to the lens stellar velocity dispersion and three sub-samples according to lens redshift. The results suggest that it is reasonable to treat the systems separately, but no strong indication of varying c was found.