Spatial and temporal variations of the fine-structure constant in the Finslerian universe

Abstract

Recent observations show that the electromagnetic fine-structure constant, α e , may vary with space and time. In the framework of Finsler spacetime, we propose here an anisotropic cosmological model, in which both the spatial and temporal variations of α e are allowed. Our model naturally leads to the dipole structure of α e , and predicts that the dipole amplitude increases with time. We fit our model to the most up-to-date measurements of α e from the quasar absorption lines. It is found that the dipole direction points towards (l, b) = (330.2 • ± 7.3 • , −13.0 • ± 5.6 • ) in the galactic coordinates, and the anisotropic parameter is b 0 = (0.47 ± 0.09) × 10 −5 , which corresponds to a dipole amplitude (7.2 ± 1.4) × 10 −8 at redshift z = 0.015. This is well consistent with the upper limit of the variation of α e measured in the Milky Way. We also fit our model to the Union2.1 type Ia supernovae, and find that the preferred direction of Union2.1 is well consistent with the dipole direction of α e .

Anisotropy of the Universe via the Pantheon supernovae sample revisited

“…As standard candles, the supernovae of type Ia (SNe Ia) have been used to investigate the accelerating expansion of the Universe (Riess et al 1998;Perlmutter et al 1999), and the possible deviations from the isotropic universe ( Heneka et al 2014;Bengaly et al 2015;Li et al 2015;Javanmardi et al 2015;Lin et al 2016a,b;Salehi & Aftabi 2016;Salehi & Setare 2017;Li & Lin 2017;Ghodsi et al 2017;Wang & Wang 2018;Andrade et al 2018b;Chang et al 2018a;Deng & Wei 2018b), with the datasets given by the Union2 sample (Amanullah et al 2010), the Union2.1 sample (Suzuki et al 2012) and the "Joint Lightcurve Analysis" (JLA) sample (Betoule et al 2014). Antoniou & Perivolaropoulos (2010) first used the hemisphere comparison (HC) method to the Union2 sample and they found a certain cosmological preferred direction with maximum accelerating expansion rate.…”

“…Meanwhile, a model-independent approach (Schwarz & Weinhorst 2007;Kalus et al 2013) was used to estimate the cosmic anisotropy at low-redshift range. In addition, these works have been extended to include gammaray bursts (GRBs) Chang et al 2014a) and the fine-structure constant (Mariano & Perivolaropoulos 2012;Li et al 2015;Li & Lin 2017), and the preferred direction still exists. A similar cosmic anisotropy has been found in the Union2.1 sample (Yang et al 2014;Javanmardi et al 2015;Bengaly et al 2015;Li et al 2015;Lin et al 2016b).…”

Anisotropic power spectrum and the observed low-lpower in PLANCK CMB data

“…The flat Finsler space-time can be used to test the Lorentz invariance through the modified dispersion relation. The geodesic equations in Finsler space-time can be given by the first order variation of Finslerian length as (Li & Lin 2017)…”

A tomographic test of cosmological principle using the JLA compilation of type Ia supernovae

“…& Weinhorst, B. 2007;Gupta et al 2008;Antoniou & Perivolaropoulos 2010;Blomqvist et al 2010;Colin et al 2011;Cai & Tuo 2012;Mariano & Perivolaropoulos 2012;Cai et al 2013;Kalus, B. et al 2013;Zhao et al 2013;Chang et al 2014a;Heneka et al 2014;Yang et al 2014;Chang et al 2014b;Javanmardi et al 2015;Li et al 2015;Lin et al 2016a,b;Li & Lin 2017a;Li et al 2017). The dark energy fluctuations were found to be vanishing when the Union2 compilation was used to study the angular covariance function of SNIa magnitude residuals (Blomqvist et al 2010).…”