Talk detail

Participant	Menten, Karl
Institution	Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie - Auf dem Huegel 69 - Bonn - NRW - Germany

Session	EG2	Accepted	Yes	Order	5	Time	15' + 3'
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	Variations of Fundamental Constants with Cosmic History and/or with Location – Pushing the Limits with Radio and (Sub)millimeter Interferometry
Co-authors
Abstract	Different types of spectral lines may have (often vastly) different dependences on fundamental constants. Examples include far-infrared rotational transitions of ammonia vs. this molecule’s radio-wavelength inversion transitions, which are very different functions of the proto-to-electron mass ratio. Even more extreme differences occur for sets of methanol transitions because of the contributions of hindered internal rotation and the overall rotation of the molecule to this molecule’s energy levels. For these two molecules, many of the “best” transitions are accessible from ground-based observing facilities over a wide range of redshift. I shall argue that the only way to obtain significantly higher accuracy data on possible variations and also for measurements of the temperature of the microwave background at earlier epochs is high angular resolution imaging of the absorbing molecular clouds with connected element radio and (sub)millimeter interferometers such as the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and, finally, Very Long Baseline Interferometry.