Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods applied to measuring the fine structure constant from quasar spectroscopy

Details Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods applied to measuring the fine structure constant from quasar spectroscopy Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods applied to measuring the fine structure constant from quasar spectroscopy

Nov 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010hia....15..318k&link_type=abstract

Highlights of Astronomy, Volume 15, p. 318-318

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Atomic Processes, Methods: Numerical, Methods: Statistical, Quasars: Absorption Lines, Quasars: Individual: Lbqs 2206-1958, Quasars: Individual: Lbqs 0013-0029, Quasars: Individual: Q 0551-366, Cosmology: Observations

Scientific paper

Recent attempts to constrain cosmological variation in the fine structure constant, α, 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 Δα/α, the fractional change in the fine structure constant, as our MCMC algorithm, and thus that VPFIT is reliable.

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