Particle and Astroparticle Seminar

Probing gravity - and other forces - at extreme scales

Giorgio Gratta

Stanford University

The inverse square law of gravity has been empirically tested to various degrees for distances between < 0.1mm to 1AU. Outside this range very little is known and, yet, physics beyond the standard model may actually introduce new long-range forces that would be observed as anomalies in the 1/R² behavior of gravity. I will discuss some new experiments designed to substantially advance our knowledge in this area, at the two extremes of the distance range. While the long distance regime would involve a deep space mission, a new breed of experiments focusing on the micron regime is already taking data, not only on gravitational interactions.