Constraint on the time variation of the fine-structure constant with the SDSS-III/BOSS DR12 quasar sample

TL;DR

This study uses a large quasar sample from SDSS-III/BOSS DR12 to measure the variation of the fine-structure constant over cosmic time, finding no significant change within current uncertainties.

Contribution

It provides the largest quasar-based constraint on the fine-structure constant variation using emission lines, with a detailed analysis of systematic uncertainties.

Findings

No significant variation of alpha detected within measurement uncertainties.

Systematics, especially sky subtraction, dominate the measurement error.

Constraints are robust over the last 7.9 billion years.

Abstract

From the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 12, which covers the full Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) footprint, we investigate the possible variation of the fine-structure constant over cosmological time-scales. We analyse the largest quasar sample considered so far in the literature, which contains 13175 spectra (10363 from SDSS-III/BOSS DR12 + 2812 from SDSS-II DR7) with redshift $z<\,$1. We apply the emission-line method on the [O III] doublet (4960, 5008 A) and obtain $\Delta\alpha/\alpha= \left(0.9 \pm 1.8\right)\times10^{-5}$ for the relative variation of the fine-structure constant. We also investigate the possible sources of systematics: misidentification of the lines, sky OH lines, H$\,\beta$ and broad line contamination, Gaussian and Voigt fitting profiles, optimal wavelength range for the Gaussian fits, chosen polynomial order for the continuum spectrum, signal-to-noise ratio and good quality of the fits. The uncertainty of the measurement is dominated by the sky subtraction. The results presented in this work, being systematics limited, have sufficient statistics to constrain robustly the variation of the fine-structure constant in redshift bins ($\Delta z\approx$ 0.06) over the last 7.9 Gyr. In addition, we study the [Ne III] doublet (3870, 3969 A) present in 462 quasar spectra and discuss the systematic effects on using these emission lines to constrain the fine-structure constant variation. Better constraints on $\Delta\alpha/\alpha\ $ ($<$10$^{-6}$) using the emission-line method would be possible with high-resolution spectroscopy and large galaxy/qso surveys.