Measuring the Casimir Force with a Commercial MEMS Accelerometer

The Casimir Effect is a physical manifestation of quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic vacuum. When two metal plates are placed closely together, typically much less than a micron, the long wavelength modes between them are frozen out, giving rise to a net attractive force between the plates, scaling as d^-4 (or d^-3 for a spherical-planar geometry) even when they are not electrically charged. In this work we show that by modifying a post-release MEMS accelerometer, similar to the one in your phone, we can actually measure this effect in ambient conditions. This device is a step towards leveraging the Casimir Effect for cheap, sensitive, room temperature quantum metrology.