Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2010-09-20
Astrophys.J.726:65,2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
8 pages, 2 figures, accepted to ApJ; v2: reformatted for ApJ and discussion of systematics significantly extended
Scientific paper
10.1088/0004-637X/726/2/65
Quantum mechanical tunneling inversion transition in ammonia NH3 is actively used as a sensitive tool to study possible variations of the electron-to-proton mass ratio, mu = m_e/m_p. The molecule H3O+ has the inversion barrier significantly lower than that of NH3. Consequently, its tunneling transition occurs in the far-infrared (FIR) region and mixes with rotational transitions. Several such FIR and submillimiter transitions are observed from the interstellar medium in the Milky Way and in nearby galaxies. We show that the rest-frame frequencies of these transitions are very sensitive to the variation of mu, and that their sensitivity coefficients have different signs. Thus, H3O+ can be used as an independent target to test hypothetical changes in mu measured at different ambient conditions of high (terrestrial) and low (interstellar medium) matter densities. The environmental dependence of mu and coupling constants is suggested in a class of chameleon-type scalar field models - candidates to dark energy carrier.
Kozlov MiKhail G.
Levshakov Sergei A.
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