The variation of the electromagnetic coupling and quintessence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quintessence models can cause variations in the electromagnetic coupling, analyzing observational constraints from fine structure constant measurements and cosmic microwave background data.

Contribution

It introduces two simple quintessence models with a modified exponential potential and assesses their viability against current observational bounds.

Findings

Constraints on model parameters from observational data

Compatibility with fine structure constant variation limits

Implications for dark energy models

Abstract

The properties of quintessence are examined through the study of the variation of the electromagnetic coupling. We consider two simple quintessence models with a modified exponential potential and study the parameter space constraints derived from the existing observational bounds on the variation of the fine structure constant and the most recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe observations.