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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie
GR 5: Experimental Gravitation II
GR 5.3: Talk
Monday, March 17, 2014, 15:25–15:45, SPA SR220
A method to test Newton’s law of gravity at micro- and submicrometre distances with parallel plates — •Helena Schmidt and Vladimir Nesterov — Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, 5.1 Oberflächenmesstechnik/Surface Metrology, Bundesallee 100, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany
We propose an experiment to test Newton’s Law of Gravity at micro- and submicrometre length scale. Usually the correction to Newtonian gravity is parameterized through an additional Yukawa-type potential term: V(r) = −Gm1m2/r·[1+α· e−r/λ], α and λ are the parameters of the Yukawa-potential. The main idea is to measure the force variation between two parallel plates with periodically varying distances. The force variation is derived from the yukawa-part of the pontential. To minimize electrostatic parasitic forces a goldmembrane is placed between the plates. The membrane will be produced as a grid and included in one of the two plates. Therefore that plate is called Yukawa-Attraktor. The other plate is called detector, which is connected to the force sensor. The force sensor is the nanonewton force facility at the PTB (Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt). With this facility it is possible to measure up to a resolution of 10−14 N at a measuring time of 2· 105 s. That resolution ables us to measure differences from Newton’s Law of gravity up to 103 times better than current experiments.