Short Range Probes to Extensions of the Standard Model

Abstract

As successful as the Standard Model has been in describing particle interactions, there are still many open questions it does not answer; the strong CP violation and the existence of dark matter among them. To address these issues many extensions to the Standard Model have been devised. Some of these extensions propose a new force mediating particle; a massive particle results in a potential described by a Yukawa-like interaction, while a massless exchange particle leads to power law type potentials. Limits on the strength of these interactions at the sub-micron range of separation between two particles are poorly characterized, but previous experiments conducted at IUPUI placed the best limits to date on the strength of a Yukawa-like interaction. Those experiments used a spherical test mass and a planar source mass. However, if a cylindrical test mass was used, the increased interaction volume of the cylinder would result in an increased sensitivity of about an order of magnitude over the spherical test mass experiment. Building such a system presents many challenges, namely the alignment of the cylinder with respect to the planar source mass. A capacitance based scheme to determine the alignment of a cylinder with respect to a plane will be discussed. The thesis concludes with an outline for a new type of measurement system. The new experiment attempts to induce a gravitational Π-pulse in a nanoshphere to probe extensions to the Standard Model.