Towards measuring variations of the Casimir energy using a superconducting cavity

D. PEREZ MORELO ; A. STANGE; V, AKSYUK; D. BISHOP

Gaithersburg, MD

Jornada; 27TH ANNUAL SIGMA XI POSTDOCTORAL POSTER PRESENTATION (PPP); 2019

The NIST Chapter of Sigma Xi

The Casimir effect is attributed to quantum fluctuations in the electromagnetic vacuum. All the experiments on the Casimir effect performed so far measured the Casimir force in a number of different geometrical configurations, e.g. using MEMS capacitive transducers to measure the small attractive force that these fluctuations exert. A new type of experiments has been proposed to directly detect the change in Casimir Energy in the vacuum between metallic parallel plates. A thin superconducting film near the phase transition is speculated to be sensitive to such small energy changes through their interaction with the superconducting condensation energy. We present our progress toward experimental realization of such measurements using a custom gold NEMS transducer and an in-situ deposited lead superconducting film.