Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2006-01-12
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
5 pages, to appear in the Proceed. of IAU Symp.232 "The Scientific Requirements for Extremely Large Telescopes", eds. P. White
Scientific paper
10.1017/S1743921306000494
Cosmological variations in the fine structure constant, alpha, can be probed through precise velocity measurements of metallic absorption lines from intervening gas clouds seen in spectra of distant quasars. Data from the Keck/HIRES instrument support a variation in alpha of 6 parts per million. Such a variation would have profound implications, possibly providing a window into the extra spatial dimensions required by unified theories such as string/M-theory. However, recent results from VLT/UVES suggest no variation in alpha. The COsmic Dynamics EXperiment (CODEX) spectrograph currently being designed for the ESO OWL telescope (Pasquini et al 2005) with a resolution high enough to properly resolve even the narrowest of metallic absorption lines, R>150,000, will achieve a 2-to-3 order-of-magnitude precision increase in Delta\alpha/alpha. This will rival the precision available from the Oklo natural fission reactor and upcoming satellite-borne atomic clock experiments. Given the vital constraints on fundamental physics possible, the ELT community must consider such a high-resolution optical spectrograph like CODEX.
!
Astronomy Institute of
Cambridge University of
di Trieste Osservatorio Astronomico
Institute Ioffe Physico-Technical
No associations
LandOfFree
Exploring variations in the fundamental constants with ELTs: The CODEX spectrograph on OWL does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Exploring variations in the fundamental constants with ELTs: The CODEX spectrograph on OWL, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Exploring variations in the fundamental constants with ELTs: The CODEX spectrograph on OWL will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-494937