The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: constraints on the time variation of fundamental constants from the large-scale two-point correlation function

Abstract

We obtain constraints on the variation of the fundamental constants from the full shape of the redshift-space correlation function of a sample of luminous galaxies drawn from the Data Release 9 of the Baryonic Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey. We combine this information with data from recent CMB, BAO and H_0 measurements. We focus on possible variations of the fine structure constant αand the electron mass m_e in the early universe, and study the degeneracies between these constants and other cosmological parameters, such as the dark energy equation of state parameter w_DE, the massive neutrinos fraction f_ν, the effective number of relativistic species N_eff, and the primordial helium abundance Y_He. When only one of the fundamental constants is varied, our final bounds are α/ α_0 = 0.9957_{-0.0042}^{+0.0041} and m_e /(m_e)_0 = 1.006_{-0.013}^{+0.014}. For their joint variation, our results are α/ α_0 = 0.9901_{-0.0054}^{+0.0055} and m_e /(m_e)_0 = 1.028 +/- 0.019. Although when m_e is allowed to vary our constraints on w_DE are consistent with a cosmological constant, when αis treated as a free parameter we find w_DE = -1.20 +/- 0.13; more than 1 σaway from its standard value. When f_νand αare allowed to vary simultaneously, we find f_ν< 0.043 (95% CL), implying a limit of \sum m_ν< 0.46 eV (95% CL), while for m_e variation, we obtain f_nu < 0.086 (95% CL), which implies \sum m_ν< 1.1 eV (95% CL). When N_eff or Y_He are considered as free parameters, their simultaneous variation with αprovides constraints close to their standard values (when the H_0 prior is not included in the analysis), while when m_e is allowed to vary, their preferred values are significantly higher. In all cases, our results are consistent with no variations of αor m_e at the 1 or 2 σlevel.

18 pages, 16 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

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