No Arabic abstract
Planar, double-torsional oscillators are especially suitable for short-range macroscopic force search experiments, since they can be operated at the limit of instrumental thermal noise. As a study of this limit, we report a measurement of the noise kinetic energy of a polycrystalline tungsten oscillator in thermal equilibrium at room temperature. The fluctuations of the oscillator in a high-Q torsional mode with a resonance frequency near 1 kHz are detected with capacitive transducers coupled to a sensitive differential amplifier. The electronic processing is calibrated by means of a known electrostatic force and input from a finite element model. The measured average kinetic energy is in agreement with the expected value of 1/2 kT.
We construct a class of backgrounds with a warp factor and anti-de Sitter asymptotics, which are dual to boundary systems that have a ground state with a short-range two-point correlation function. The solutions of probe scalar fields on these backgrounds are obtained by means of confluent hypergeometric functions. The explicit analytical expressions of a class of short-range correlation functions on the boundary and the correlation lengths $xi$ are derived from gravity computation. The two-point function calculated from gravity side is explicitly shown to exponentially decay with respect to separation in the infrared. Such feature inevitably appears in confining gauge theories and certain strongly correlated condensed matter systems.
In this work we study the noise induced effects on the dynamics of short polymers crossing a potential barrier, in the presence of a metastable state. An improved version of the Rouse model for a flexible polymer has been adopted to mimic the molecular dynamics by taking into account both the interactions between adjacent monomers and introducing a Lennard-Jones potential between all beads. A bending recoil torque has also been included in our model. The polymer dynamics is simulated in a two-dimensional domain by numerically solving the Langevin equations of motion with a Gaussian uncorrelated noise. We find a nonmonotonic behaviour of the mean first passage time and the most probable translocation time, of the polymer centre of inertia, as a function of the polymer length at low noise intensity. We show how thermal fluctuations influence the motion of short polymers, by inducing two different regimes of translocation in the molecule transport dynamics. In this context, the role played by the length of the molecule in the translocation time is investigated.
A study of the possible interactions between fermions assuming only rotational invariance has revealed 15 forms for the potential involving the fermion spins. We review the experimental constraints on unobserved macroscopic, spin-dependent interactions between electrons in the range below 1 cm. An existing experiment, using 1 kHz mechanical oscillators as test masses, has been used to constrain mass-coupled forces in this range. With suitable modifications, including spin-polarized test masses, this experiment can be used to explore all 15 possible spin-dependent interactions between electrons in this range with unprecedented sensitivity. Samples of ferrimagnetic dysprosium iron garnet have been fabricated in the suitable test mass geometry and shown to have high spin density with very low intrinsic magnetism.
The MICROSCOPE experiment was designed to test the weak equivalence principle in space, by comparing the low-frequency dynamics of cylindrical free-falling test masses controlled by electrostatic forces. We use data taken during technical sessions aimed at estimating the electrostatic stiffness of MICROSCOPEs sensors to constrain a short-range Yukawa deviation from Newtonian gravity. We take advantage of the fact that in the limit of small displacements, the gravitational interaction (both Newtonian and Yukawa-like) between nested cylinders is linear, and thus simply characterised by a stiffness. By measuring the total stiffness of the forces acting on a test mass as it moves, and comparing it with the theoretical electrostatic stiffness (expected to dominate), it is a priori possible to infer constraints on the Yukawa potential parameters. However, we find that measurement uncertainties are dominated by the gold wires used to control the electric charge of the test masses, though their related stiffness is indeed smaller than the expected electrostatic stiffness. Moreover, we find a non-zero unaccounted for stiffness that depends on the instruments electric configuration, hinting at the presence of patch-field effects. Added to significant uncertainties on the electrostatic model, they only allow for poor constraints on the Yukawa potential. This is not surprising, as MICROSCOPE was not designed for this measurement, but this analysis is the first step to new experimental searches for non-Newtonian gravity in space.
We study the spectral properties of the thermal force giving rise to the Brownian motion of a continuous mechanical system -- namely, a nanomechanical beam resonator -- in a viscous liquid. To this end, we perform two separate sets of experiments. First, we measure the power spectral density (PSD) of the position fluctuations of the resonator around its fundamental mode at its center. Then, we measure the frequency-dependent linear response of the resonator, again at its center, by driving it with a harmonic force that couples well to the fundamental mode. These two measurements allow us to determine the PSD of the Brownian force noise acting on the structure in its fundamental mode. The PSD of the force noise extracted from multiple resonators spanning a broad frequency range displays a colored spectrum. Using a single-mode theory, we show that, around the fundamental resonances of the resonators, the PSD of the force noise follows the dissipation of a blade oscillating in a viscous liquid -- by virtue of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem.