The variation of the fine structure constant: testing the dipole model with thermonuclear supernovae

The large-number hypothesis conjectures that fundamental constants may vary. Accordingly, the spacetime variation of fundamental constants has been an active subject of research for decades. Recently, using data obtained with large telescopes a phenomenological model in which the fine structure constant might vary spatially has been proposed. We test whether this hypothetical spatial variation of α, which follows a dipole law, is compatible with the data of distant thermonuclear supernovae. Unlike previous works, in our calculations we consider not only the variation of the luminosity distance when a varying α is adopted, but we also take into account the variation of the peak luminosity of Type Ia supernovae resulting from a variation of α. This is done using an empirical relation for the peak bolometric magnitude of thermonuclear supernovae that correctly reproduces the results of detailed numerical simulations. We find that there is no significant difference between the several phenomenological models studied here