The Archimedes experiment

gr-qc

/ Authors

Enrico Calloni, S. Caprara, Martina De Laurentis, Giampiero Esposito, M. Grilli, Ettore Majorana, G. P. Pepe, S. Petrarca, Paola Puppo, P. Rapagnini

and 7 more authors

F. Ricci, Luigi Rosa, Carlo Rovelli, P. Ruggi, N. L. Saini, Cosimo Stornaiolo, Francesco Tafuri

/ Abstract

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 Casimir cavity whose vacuum energy is modulated with a superconductive transition, by using a balance as a small force detector. Archimedes is a two-year project devoted to test the most critical experimental aspects, in particular the balance resonance frequency and quality factor, the thermal modulation efficiency and the superconductive sample realization.