New constraint on cosmological variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio from Q0528-250

Details New constraint on cosmological variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio from Q0528-250 New constraint on cosmological variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio from Q0528-250

2011-06-28

arxiv.org/abs/1106.5786v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

30 pages, 6 figures + 14 supplementary figures. Accepted for publication for MNRAS

Scientific paper

Molecular hydrogen transitions in quasar spectra can be used to constrain variation in the proton-to-electron mass ratio, $\mu\equiv m_p/m_e$, at high redshifts ($z\gtrsim 2$). We present here an analysis of a new spectrum of the quasar Q0528$-$250, obtained on VLT/UVES (the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph, on the Very Large Telescope), and analyse the well-known H$_2$ absorber at $z=2.811$ in this spectrum. For the first time we detect HD (deuterated molecular hydrogen) in this system with a column density of $\log_{10}(N/\mathrm{cm^{-2}})=13.27 \pm 0.07$; HD is sensitive to variation in $\mu$, and so we include it in our analysis. Using 76 H$_2$ and 7 HD transitions we constrain variation in $\mu$ from the current laboratory value to be $\Delta\mu/\mu = (0.3\pm 3.2_\mathrm{stat} \pm 1.9_\mathrm{sys})\times 10^{-6}$, which is consistent with no cosmological variation in $\mu$, as well as with previous results from other H$_2$/HD absorbers. The main sources of systematic uncertainty relate to accurate wavelength calibration of the spectra and the re-dispersion of multiple telescope exposures onto the one pixel grid.

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