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Nuclear Data in Oklo and Time-Variability of Fundamental Coupling Constants

Yasunori Fujii·Akira Iwamoto·Tokio Fukahori·Toshihiko Ohnuki·Masayuki Nakagawa·Hiroshi Hidaka·Yasuji Oura·Peter Moller
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Abstract

We re-examined Shlyakhter's analysis of the Sm data in Oklo. With a special care of minimizing contamination due to the inflow of the isotope after the end of the reactor activity, we confirmed that his result on the time-variability of the fine-structure constant, $|\dotα/α|\lsim 10^{-17}{\rm y}^{-1}$, was basically correct. In addition to this upper bound, however, we obtained another result that indicates a different value of $α$ 2 billion years ago. We add comments on the recent result from QSO's.

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Yasunori Fujii, Akira Iwamoto, Tokio Fukahori, Toshihiko Ohnuki, Masayuki Nakagawa, Hiroshi Hidaka, Yasuji Oura, Peter Moller. 2002-05-19. Nuclear Data in Oklo and Time-Variability of Fundamental Coupling Constants. https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0205206

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