Possible variations of the fine structure constant $\alpha$ and their metrological significance

Abstract

We briefly review the recent experimental results on possible variations of the fine structure constant $\alpha$ on the cosmological time scale and its position dependence. We outline the theoretical grounds for the assumption that $\alpha$ might be variable, mention some phenomenological models incorporating a variable $\alpha$ into the context of modern cosmology and discuss the significance of possible $\alpha$ variations for theoretical and practical metrology.

Latex, 17 pages, brief review. References updated, minor errors removed

References in corpus (4)

• Local Experiments See Cosmologically Varying Constants
• Frequency comparisons and absolute frequency measurements of 171Yb+ single-ion optical frequency standards
• Possible time variations of G in scalar-tensor theories of gravity
• New Constraints on Varying Alpha

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• Fundamental physical constants: current results in search for variations and their description
• Non-minimal coupling inspires the Dirac cosmological model
• Constants of extended Standard Model and search for their temporal variations