English

Short-range force detection using optically-cooled levitated microspheres

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-05-19 v2 Quantum Physics

Abstract

We propose an experiment using optically trapped and cooled dielectric microspheres for the detection of short-range forces. The center-of-mass motion of a microsphere trapped in vacuum can experience extremely low dissipation and quality factors of 101210^{12}, leading to yoctonewton force sensitivity. Trapping the sphere in an optical field enables positioning at less than 1 μ\mum from a surface, a regime where exotic new forces may exist. We expect that the proposed system could advance the search for non-Newtonian gravity forces via an enhanced sensitivity of 10510710^5-10^7 over current experiments at the 1 μ\mum length scale. Moreover, our system may be useful for characterizing other short-range physics such as Casimir forces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1006.0261,
  title  = {Short-range force detection using optically-cooled levitated microspheres},
  author = {Andrew A. Geraci and Scott B. Papp and John Kitching},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.0261},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures, minor changes, Figs. 1 and 2 replaced

R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:30:44.209Z