Martins, C. J. A. P.; Cristiani, S.; Cupani, G.; D'Odorico, V.; Génova Santos, R.; Leite, A. C. O.; Marques, C. M. J.; Milaković, D.; Molaro, P.; Murphy, Michael T.; Nunes, N. J.; Schmidt, Tobias M.; Adibekyan, V.; Alibert, Y.; Di Marcantonio, Paolo; González Hernández, J. I.; Mégevand, D.; Palle, E.; Pepe, F. A.; Santos, N. C.; Sousa, S. G.; Sozzetti, A.; Suárez Mascareño, A.; Osorio, M. R. Zapatero
Physical Review D
Dynamical scalar fields in an effective four-dimensional field theory are naturally expected to couple to the rest of the theory's degrees of freedom, unless some new symmetry is postulated to suppress these couplings. In particular, a coupling to the electromagnetic sector will lead to spacetime variations of the fine-structure constant, α . Astrophysical tests of the space-time stability of α are therefore a powerful probe of new physics. Here we use ESPRESSO and other contemporary measurements of α , together with background cosmology data, local laboratory atomic clock and weak equivalence principle measurements, to place stringent constraints on the simplest examples of the two broad classes of varying α models: Bekenstein models and quintessence-type dark energy models, both of which are parametric extensions of the canonical Λ CDM model. In both cases, previously reported constraints are improved by more than a factor of ten. This improvement is largely due to the very strong local constraints, but astrophysical measurements can help to break degeneracies between cosmology and fundamental physics parameters.
Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background
The general goal of this project is to determine and characterize the spatial and spectral variations in the temperature and polarisation of the Cosmic Microwave Background in angular scales from several arcminutes to several degrees. The primordial matter density fluctuations which originated the structure in the matter distribution of the present
Exoplanets and Astrobiology
The search for life in the universe has been driven by recent discoveries of planets around other stars (known as exoplanets), becoming one of the most active fields in modern astrophysics. The growing number of new exoplanets discovered in recent years and the recent advance on the study of their atmospheres are not only providing new valuable