• DOI:10.1142/S0217751X05024419
• Corpus ID: 2698152

Casimir effect as a test for thermal corrections and hypothetical long-range interactions

@article{Klimchitskaya2005CasimirEA,
  title={Casimir effect as a test for thermal corrections and hypothetical long-range interactions},
  author={Galina L. Klimchitskaya and Ricardo S. Decca and Ephraim Fischbach and Dennis E. Krause and D.L'opez and Vladimir M. Mostepanenko},
  journal={International Journal of Modern Physics A},
  year={2005},
  volume={20},
  pages={2205-2221}
}

• G. L. Klimchitskaya, R. Decca, +3 authors V. Mostepanenko
• Published 30 April 2005
• Physics
• International Journal of Modern Physics A

We have performed a precise experimental determination of the Casimir pressure between two gold-coated parallel plates by means of a micromachined oscillator. In contrast to all previous experiments on the Casimir effect, where a small relative error (varying from 1% to 15%) was achieved only at the shortest separation, our smallest experimental error (~ 0.5%) is achieved over a wide separation range from 170 nm to 300 nm at 95% confidence. We have formulated a rigorous metrological procedure for the comparison of experiment and theory without resorting to the previously used root-mean-square deviation, which has been criticized in the literature. This enables us to discriminate among different competing theories of the thermal Casimir force, and to resolve a thermodynamic puzzle arising from the application of Lifshitz theory to real metals. Our results lead to a more rigorous approach for obtaining constraints on hypothetical long-range interactions predicted by extra-dimensional physics and other extensions of the Standard Model. In particular, the constraints on non-Newtonian gravity are strengthened by up to a factor of 20 in a wide interaction range at 95% confidence.