Constraints on Dirac-Born-Infeld type dark energy models from varying alpha

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Dirac-Born-Infeld dark energy models affect the fine structure constant alpha, using observational data to constrain model parameters and distinguish between different string-inspired theories.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed constraints on DBI dark energy models from varying alpha measurements, highlighting which models are compatible with observations.

Findings

Exponential and inverse power-law potentials are ruled out with string-motivated scales.

Rolling massive scalar potential aligns with observational constraints.

Varying alpha effectively discriminates among string-inspired dark energy models.

Abstract

We study the variation of the effective fine structure constant alpha for Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) type dark energy models. The DBI action based on string theory naturally gives rise to a coupling between gauge fields and a scalar field responsible for accelerated expansion of the universe. This leads to the change of alpha due to a dynamical evolution of the scalar field, which can be compatible with the recently observed cosmological data around the redshift $\tilde{z} \lesssim 3$. We place constraints on several different DBI models including exponential, inverse power-law and rolling massive scalar potentials. We find that these models can satisfy the varying alpha constraint provided that mass scales of the potentials are fine-tuned. When we adopt the mass scales which are motivated by string theory, both exponential and inverse power-law potentials give unacceptably large change of alpha, thus ruled out from observations. On the other hand the rolling massive scalar potential is compatible with the observationally allowed variation of alpha. Therefore the information of varying alpha provides a powerful way to distinguish between a number of string-inspired DBI dark energy models.