Strong limit on the spatial and temporal variations of the fine-structure constant

Observed spectra of quasars provide a powerful tool to test the possible spatial and temporal variations of the fine-structure constant alpha = e(2)/<(h)overbar>c over the history of the Universe. It is demonstrated that high sensitivity to the variation of a can be obtained from a comparison of the spectra of quasars and laboratories. We reported a new constraint on the variation of the fine-structure constant based on the analysis of the optical spectra of the fine-structure transitions in [NeIII], [NeV], [OM], [OI] and [SII] multiplets from 14 Seyfert 1.5 galaxies. The weighted mean value of the a-variation derived from our analysis over the redshift range 0.035 < z < 0.281 Delta alpha/alpha = (4.50 +/- 5.53) x 10(-5). This result presents strong limit improvements on the constraint on Delta alpha/alpha compared to the published in the literature