Session D9 - Experimental Tests of Short Range Gravitation.
ORAL session, Saturday afternoon, May 01
Governor's Square 12, Adam's Mark Hotel
This talk will discuss the design and construction of a new type of cantilever-based probe for measuring gravity-like forces at length scales of order 10^-5 meters. The apparatus is based on a cryogenic helium gas bearing with a hemispherical quartz rotor. The bearing housing contains a silicon nitride cantilever with a metallic test mass mounted on the tip. An alternating pattern of high- and low-density materials is embedded in the flat surface of the rotor so that when the rotor is spun, the mass on the cantilever is subjected to an AC gravitational force. This design combines some of the geometrical advantages of torsion-balance experiments with the small mass size and force sensitivity of our previous cantilever-based experiment.(J. Chiaverini et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 , 151101 (2003))