LABORATORI NAZIONALI DI LEGNARO
Many theories attempting to resolve known problems with the Standard Model introduce yet unobserved light bosons that could manifest themselves as macroscopic-range interactions between bodies of ordinary matter whose vacuum potentials do not satisfy Laplace's equation. The experimental work I will describe is based on a scheme for detecting such non-Newtonian forces directly through this signature of a non-zero Laplacian, thereby implying a violation of the inverse-square law. This approach involves a torsion pendulum with carefully chosen mass distribution undergoing large-amplitude oscillations in proximity to a source mass also of special form. Our realization of this method is potentially able to detect corresponding inverse square law violations that are smaller than 10^-5 of standard gravity on scales of order ten centimeters, approaching a two-order-of-magnitude improvement over the current empirical upper limit on that length scale. This advance is possible due largely to an experimental design that is only second-order sensitive to fabrication errors in pendulum and source mass configurations, and not by heroic efforts to reduce these errors.

DATA: 12-07-2004

Sito Collegato : http://www.lnl.infn.it/~seminari/2004/12July_04.html