CONSTRAINTS ON THAWING SCALAR FIELD MODELS FROM FUNDAMENTAL CONSTANTS

We consider a dark energy model with a relation between the equation of state parameter w and the energy density parameter Ω_ϕ derived from thawing scalar field models. Assuming the variation of the fine structure constant is caused by dark energy, we use the observational data of the variation of the fine structure constant to constrain the current value of w₀ and Ω_ϕ0 for the dark energy model. At the 1σ level, the observational data excluded some areas around w₀ = –1, which explains the positive detection of the variation of the fine structure constant at the 1σ level, but ΛCDM model is consistent with the data at the 2σ level.