Fundamental constants: from measurement to the universe, a window on gravitation and cosmology

Understand

Fundamental constants are a cornerstone of the physical laws.

• Any constant varying in space and/or time would signal a violation of local position invariance and be associated with a violation of the universality of free fall, and hence of the weak equivalence principle.
• It will reflect the existence of new degrees of freedom that couple to standard matter.
• Thus, testing for the stability of fundamental constants is of utmost importance for our understanding of gravity and for characterizing the domain of validity of General Relativity.