Casimir force measurements in Au-Au and Au-Si cavities at low temperature

Abstract

We report on measurements of the Casimir force in a sphere-plane geometry using a cryogenic force microscope to move the force probe in situ over different materials. We show how the electrostatic environment of the interacting surfaces plays an important role in weak force measurements and can overcome the Casimir force at large distance. After minimizing these parasitic forces, we measure the Casimir force between a gold-coated sphere and either a gold-coated or a heavily doped silicon surface in the 100-400 nm distance range. We compare the experimental data with theoretical predictions and discuss the consequence of a systematic error in the scanner calibration on the agreement between experiment and theory. The relative force over the two surfaces compares favorably with theory at short distance, showing that this Casimir force experiment is sensitive to the dielectric properties of the interacting surfaces.