New experimental results on the Casimir effect

Abstract

New experiments are discussed on measuring the Casimir force between metallic surfaces. One of them uses torsion pendulum and the other one - atomic force microscope. The claimed agreement of experimental data with a theory is analyzed. A 5% level of agreement obtained with a torsion pendulum is shown to be in contradiction with the values of surface roughness, finite conductivity and temperature corrections to the Casimir force. A 1% agreement (at the closest separations) obtained with an atomic force microscope is confirmed by the use of more exact theory taking into account higher order surface roughness and conductivity corrections.