Manifestations of a spatial variation of fundamental constants on atomic clocks, Oklo, meteorites, and cosmological phenomena

The remarkable detection of a spatial variation in the fine-structure constant, alpha, from quasar absorption systems must be independently confirmed by complementary searches. In this letter, we discuss how terrestrial measurements of time-variation of the fundamental constants in the laboratory, meteorite data, and analysis of the Oklo nuclear reactor can be used to corroborate the spatial variation seen by astronomers. Furthermore, we show that spatial variation of the fundamental constants may be observable as spatial anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background, the accelerated expansion (dark energy), and large-scale structure of the Universe.Comment: 4 page

2-Point Correlations in the COBE DMR 4-Year Anisotropy Maps

The 2-point temperature correlation function is evaluated from the 4-year COBE DMR microwave anisotropy maps. We examine the 2-point function, which is the Legendre transform of the angular power spectrum, and show that the data are statistically consistent from channel to channel and frequency to frequency. The most likely quadrupole normalization is computed for a scale-invariant power-law spectrum of CMB anisotropy, using a variety of data combinations. For a given data set, the normalization inferred from the 2-point data is consistent with that inferred by other methods. The smallest and largest normalization deduced from any data combination are 16.4 and 19.6 uK respectively, with a value ~18 uK generally preferred.Comment: Sumbitted to ApJ Letter

Real space tests of the statistical isotropy and Gaussianity of the WMAP CMB data

ABRIDGED: We introduce and analyze a method for testing statistical isotropy and Gaussianity and apply it to the WMAP CMB foreground reduced, temperature maps, and cross-channel difference maps. We divide the sky into regions of varying size and shape and measure the first four moments of the one-point distribution within these regions, and using their simulated spatial distributions we test the statistical isotropy and Gaussianity hypotheses. By randomly varying orientations of these regions, we sample the underlying CMB field in a new manner, that offers a richer exploration of the data content, and avoids possible biasing due to a single choice of sky division. The statistical significance is assessed via comparison with realistic Monte-Carlo simulations. We find the three-year WMAP maps to agree well with the isotropic, Gaussian random field simulations as probed by regions corresponding to the angular scales ranging from 6 deg to 30 deg at 68% confidence level. We report a strong, anomalous (99.8% CL) dipole ``excess'' in the V band of the three-year WMAP data and also in the V band of the WMAP five-year data (99.3% CL). We notice the large scale hemispherical power asymmetry, and find that it is not highly statistically significant in the WMAP three-year data (<~ 97%) at scales l <= 40. The significance is even smaller if multipoles up to l=1024 are considered (~90% CL). We give constraints on the amplitude of the previously-proposed CMB dipole modulation field parameter. We easily detect the residual foregrounds in cross-band difference maps at rms level <~ 7 \mu K (at scales >~ 6 deg) and limit the systematical uncertainties to <~ 1.7 \mu K (at scales >~ 30 deg).Comment: 20 pages, 20 figures; more tests added; updated to match the version to be published in JCA

Power Spectrum of Primordial Inhomogeneity Determined from the 4-Year COBE DMR Sky Maps

Fourier analysis and power spectrum estimation of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy on an incompletely sampled sky developed by Gorski (1994) has been applied to the high-latitude portion of the 4-year COBE DMR 31.5, 53 and 90 GHz sky maps. Likelihood analysis using newly constructed Galaxy cuts (extended beyond |b| = 20deg to excise the known foreground emission) and simultaneously correcting for the faint high latitude galactic foreground emission is conducted on the DMR sky maps pixelized in both ecliptic and galactic coordinates. The Bayesian power spectrum estimation from the foreground corrected 4-year COBE DMR data renders n ~ 1.2 +/- 0.3, and Q_{rms-PS} ~ 15.3^{+3.7}_{-2.8} microK (projections of the two-parameter likelihood). These results are consistent with the Harrison-Zel'dovich n=1 model of amplitude Q_{rms-PS} ~ 18 microK detected with significance exceeding 14sigma (dQ/Q < 0.07). (A small power spectrum amplitude drop below the published 2-year results is predominantly due to the application of the new, extended Galaxy cuts.)Comment: 9 pages of text in LaTeX, 1 postscript Table, 4 postscript figures (2 color plates), submitted to The Astrophysical Journal (Letters