The Archimedes experiment has the goal to measure the vacuum fluctuations interaction with Gravity. A high sensitive balance is employed to measure the small weight variations of high Tc superconducting samples when they pass to their superconductive status.
We descrive the challenging experimental solutions adopted for having a very efficient heat exchange with the samples only through the...
Understanding the fundamental nature of gravity at the interface with quantum theory is a major open question in theoretical physics. Recently, the study of gravitating quantum systems, for instance a massive quantum system prepared in a quantum superposition of positions and sourcing a gravitational field, has attracted a lot of attention: quantum optics experiments are working towards...
Macroscopic and mesoscopic ferromagnets levitated by Meissner effect in vacuum behave as multimode mechanical systems with ultrahigh quality factor and high sensitivity to external magnetic fields. Furthermore, they can be easily coupled to superconducting quantum devices. This suggests the possibility of using this experimental platform for a variety of measurements in the context of...
There is vast parameter space to explore for dark matter masses below a few GeV, and the field of direct dark matter detection is constantly expanding to new frontiers. In particular, low mass dark matter candidates necessitate novel detector designs with lower thresholds and alternative target materials compared to e.g. the xenon-based experiments currently providing the strongest overall...
Based on the production of molecular samples at cryogenic temperatures by the buffer-gas-cooling technique and their combination with cavity-enhanced spectroscopy in the Lamb-dip regime, we present a new generation of high-accuracy physics tests beyond the Standard Model at the eV energy scale. Examples include searching for putative fifth-force interactions and assessing the space-time...
Various types of BSM physics, in particular new light particles, can lead to long-range forces. We can search for such "fifth force" interactions by sensitivity measuring gravity on various scales. In this talk, I will review how such long-range forces can be generated and how they lead to apparent violations of the inverse-square law and the equivalence principle of gravity. I will also...
