On the importance of testing gravity at distances less than 1cm

Abstract

If the mechanism responsible for the smallness of the vacuum energy is consistent with local quantum field theory, general arguments suggest the existence of at least one unobserved scalar particle with Compton wavelength bounded from below by one tenth of a millimeter. We show that this bound is saturated if vacuum energy is a substantial component of the energy density of the universe. Therefore, the success of cosmological models with a significant vacuum energy component suggests the existence of new macroscopic forces with range in the sub-millimeter region. There are virtually no experimental constraints on the existence of quanta with this range of interaction.

9 pages TeX, 2 eps figures, uses mtexsis.tex and epsf.tex. Entry in 1996 Gravity Research Foundation essay competition. To be published in the Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation

Cited by in corpus (28)

• Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law below the Dark-Energy Length Scale
• Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law
• The Casimir effect: Recent controversies and progress
• Sub-millimeter Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-square Law
• New Experimental Limits on Macroscopic Forces Below 100 Microns
• Experimental Status of Gravitational-Strength Forces in the Sub-Centimeter Regime
• On the scaling behavior of the cosmological constant and the possible existence of new forces and new light degrees of freedom
• The Cosmological Constant and the String Landscape
• Constraints on Yukawa-Type Deviations from Newtonian Gravity at 20 Microns
• Search for Screened Interactions Associated with Dark Energy Below the 100 $\mu \mathrm{m}$ Length Scale
• Probing Sub-Micron Forces by Interferometry of Bose-Einstein Condensed Atoms
• Casimir Forces in a Piston Geometry at Zero and Finite Temperatures
• Lensing at cosmological scales: a test of higher dimensional gravity
• Current Short-Range Tests of the Gravitational Inverse Square Law
• Interplay of gravitation and linear superposition of different mass eigenstates
• A New Apparatus for Detecting Micron-Scale Deviations from Newtonian Gravity
• Constraints for weakly interacting light bosons from existence of massive neutron stars
• Astrophysical Constraints on Scalar Field Models
• Ultracold neutrons, quantum effects of gravity and the Weak Equivalence Principle
• Modified gravity, Dark Energy and MOND
• Searching for Extra Dimensions and New String-Inspired Forces in the Casimir Regime
• The cosmological constant problem: a user's guide
• Fat Euclidean Gravity with Small Cosmological Constant
• Can Dark Energy emerge from quantum effects in compact extra dimension ?
• Challenging the Cosmological Constant
• New Bounds on Dark Energy Induced Fifth Forces
• Dark Energy, scalar-curvature couplings and a critical acceleration scale
• A Comment on Technical Naturalness and the Cosmological Constant