Local Experiments See Cosmologically Varying Constants

TL;DR

This paper proves that local experiments can detect cosmological variations in fundamental constants driven by scalar fields, enabling combined constraints from different scales.

Contribution

It introduces a rigorous matched asymptotic expansion method to connect cosmological variations with local measurements of constants.

Findings

Local experiments can measure effects of cosmological constant variations.

Constants driven by scalar fields evolve within virialised structures.

Supports combining cosmological and terrestrial constraints on fundamental constants.

Abstract

We describe a rigorous construction, using matched asymptotic expansions, which establishes under very general conditions that local terrestrial and solar-system experiments will measure the effects of varying `constants' of Nature occurring on cosmological scales to computable precision. In particular, `constants' driven by scalar fields will still be found to evolve in time when observed within virialised structures like clusters, galaxies, and planetary systems. This provides a justification for combining cosmological and terrestrial constraints on the possible time variation of many assumed `constants' of Nature, including the fine structure constant and Newton's gravitation constant.