Related papers: The Archimedes project: a feasibility study for we…
Archimedes is a feasibility study of a future experiment to ascertain the interaction of vacuum fluctuations with gravity. The experiment should measure the force that the earth's gravitational field exerts on a Casimir cavity by using a…
Archimedes is an INFN-funded pathfinder experiment aimed at verifying the feasibility of measuring the interaction of vacuum fluctuations with gravity. The final experiment will measure the force exerted by the gravitational field on a…
The force exerted by the gravitational field on a Casimir cavity in terms of Archimedes force of vacuum is discussed, the force that can be tested against observation is identified, and it is shown that the present technology makes it…
Aladin2 is an experiment devoted to the first measurement of variations of Casimir energy in a rigid body. The main short-term scientific motivation relies on the possibility of the first demonstration of a phase transition influenced by…
Casimir energy in presence of a weak gravitational field is discussed taking into account the issues related to energy and its conservation in a curved background. It is well-known that there are inherent difficulties in defining energy in…
Vacuum fluctuations have observable consequences, like the Casimir force appearing between two mirrors in vacuum. This force is now measured with good accuracy and agreement with theory. We discuss the meaning and consequences of these…
We discuss the possibility of verifying the equivalence principle for the zero-point energy of quantum electrodynamics, by evaluating the force, produced by vacuum fluctuations, acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational…
Gedanken experiments are used to explore properties of quantum vacuum energy that are currently challenging to explore experimentally. A constant lateral Casimir force is predicted to exist between two overlapping finite parallel plates at…
Vacuum fluctuations produce a force acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational field. Such a force is here evaluated and is found to have opposite direction with respect to the gravitational acceleration; the order of…
The existence of irreducible field fluctuations in vacuum is an important prediction of quantum theory. These fluctuations have many observable consequences, like the Casimir effect which is now measured with good accuracy and agreement…
Aladin2 is an experiment devoted to the first measurement of variations of Casimir energy in a rigid cavity. The main scientific motivation relies on the possibility of the first demonstration of a phase transition influenced by vacuum…
We address a problem of Casimir apparatus in dense medium and weak gravitational field. The falling of the apparatus has to be governed by the equivalence principle, with proper account for contributions to the weight of the apparatus from…
We show that the Casimir effect should be influenced by variations of the gravitational potential. This could be tested with a satellite in a highly elliptic orbit. Still significant technology development is required to achieve a relative…
Comparison with theory of Casimir force measurements are used to test the gravity force law at ranges from 0.1 to 10 micrometers. The interest of such tests depends crucially on the theoretical evaluation of the Casimir force in realistic…
Atom interferometers have been developed in the last three decades as new powerful tools to investigate gravity. They were used for measuring the gravity acceleration, the gravity gradient, and the gravity-field curvature, for the…
Surface electric noise, i.e., the non-uniform distribution of charges and potentials on a surface, poses a great experimental challenge in modern precision force measurements. Such a challenge is encountered in a number of different…
Whereas the total energy in zero-point fluctuations of the particle physics vacuum gives rise to the cosmological constant problem, differences in the vacuum give rise to real physical phenomena, such as the Casimir effect. Hence we…
The presence of finite energy in quantum vacuum has profound implications to physics at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. One of the direct consequences of vacuum energy is the Casimir Force, which is a force of attraction experienced…
We explore two hypotheses. First, the possibility that the quantum vacuum energy density of the Casimir effect contributes to a (local) gravitational vacuum energy density. Second, the possibility that a change in the gravitational coupling…
A detailed investigation is presented of the energy-momentum tensor approach to the evaluation of the force acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational field. Such a force turns out to have opposite direction with respect to…