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Session D9 - Experimental Tests of Short Range Gravitation.
ORAL session, Saturday afternoon, May 01
Governor's Square 12, Adam's Mark Hotel

[D9.003] Searching for New Physics from 20 microns to a micron and below

Andrew Geraci, Sylvia Smullin, David Weld, Aharon Kapitulnik, Savas Dimopoulos (Department of Physics, Stanford University)

Several recent theoretical ideas suggest that new physics related to gravity may appear at short length scales. For example, light moduli or particles in "large" extra dimensions could mediate macroscopic forces of (super)gravitational strength at length scales below a millimeter. At the 20 microns level, I will discuss the Stanford cantilever experiment (J. Chiaverini, S. J. Smullin, A. A. Geraci, D. M. Weld, A. Kapitulnik, Phys.Rev.Lett. 90, 151101 (2003).), including an improvement involving a magnetic analog which allows force calibration and precision alignment to reduce systematics. I will also discuss some experimental challenges at length scales below a few microns including the Casimir/Van der Waals background, and will describe an experimental prospect to search for new (sub)-micron forces using arrays of trapped Bose-Einstein condensed atoms (Savas Dimopoulos and Andrew A. Geraci, Phys. Rev. D 68, 124021 (2003). ).

Part D of program listing