Precise Measurements of the Speed of Light with High-redshift Quasars: Ultra-compact Radio Structure and Strong Gravitational Lensing

Although the speed of light has been measured with very high precision, most of these measurements were carried out on Earth or in our close cosmic surroundings. In this Letter, we propose an original idea to combine the observations of ultra-compact structure in radio quasars and strong gravitational lensing with quasars acting as background sources to estimate the speed of light. The method will provide precise measurements of the speed of light using extragalactic objects at different redshifts. We evaluate if current or future missions such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and Dark Energy Survey (DES) can be sensitive enough to detect any variation of c. Our results show that strongly lensed quasars observed by LSST would produce robust constraints on Δc/c at the level of 10−4, if the compact radio structure measurements are available.