Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-10-14
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
IAU 2009 JD9 conference proceedings. 6 pages, 2 figures. MmSAI, vol. 80 in press Paolo Molaro & Elisabeth Vangioni eds
Scientific paper
Recent attempts to constrain cosmological variation in the fine structure constant, alpha, using quasar absorption lines have yielded two statistical samples which initially appear to be inconsistent. One of these samples was subsequently demonstrated to not pass consistency tests; it appears that the optimisation algorithm used to fit the model to the spectra failed. Nevertheless, the results of the other hinge on the robustness of the spectral fitting program VPFIT, which has been tested through simulation but not through direct exploration of the likelihood function. We present the application of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to this problem, and demonstrate that VPFIT produces similar values and uncertainties for (Delta alpha)/(alpha), the fractional change in the fine structure constant, as our MCMC algorithm, and thus that VPFIT is reliable.
King Julian A.
Mortlock Daniel J.
Murphy Michael T.
Webb John K.
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