Four direct measurements of the fine-structure constant 13 billion years ago

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2003.07627
• Publication Date: 2020-01-01
• Authors: Michael R. Wilczy...; John K. Webb; Matthew Bainbridge; Sarah E. I. Bosman; John D. Barrow; R. F. Carswell; Mariusz P. Dąbrowski; Vincent Dumont; A. C. O. Leite; Chung-Chi Lee; Katarzyna Leszczy...; J. Liske; Konrad Marosek; C. J. A. P. Martins; Dinko Milaković; P. Molaro; L. Pasquini
• Keywords: Fine-structure constant

Observations of the redshift z=7.085 quasar J1120+0641 have been used to search for variations fine structure constant, alpha, over range 5.5 7.1. at z=7.1 probe physics universe when it was only 0.8 billion years old. These are most distant direct measurements alpha date and first made with a near-IR spectrograph. A new AI analysis method has employed. Four from X-SHOOTER spectrograph on European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) directly constrain any changes in relative value measured Earth (alpha_0). The weighted mean strength electromagnetic force this location is da/a = (alpha_z - alpha_0)/alpha_0 (-2.18 +/- 7.27) X 10^{-5}, i.e. we find no evidence temporal change 4 very high measurements. When combined large existing sample lower measurements, limit possible spatial variation marginally preferred no-variation model 3.7 sigma level.