Recently, the research team led by Huang Pu from the School of Physics at Nanjing University, in collaboration with teams from the University of Science and Technology of China and Zhejiang University, successfully observed the Earth's gravitational tides using room temperature magnetic levitation technology. This is a new technology in the field of gravimeter research. They have published a research paper titled "Measurement of the Earth Tides with a Diamagnetic-Levitated Micro-Oscillator at Room Temperature" on Physical Review Journals. (
The abstract of the paper is as following:
The precise measurement of the gravity of Earth plays a pivotal role in various fundamental research and application fields. Although a few gravimeters have been reported to achieve this goal, miniaturization of high-precision gravimeter remains a challenge. In this work, we have proposed and demonstrated a miniaturized operating at room temperature based on a diamagnetic levitated micro-oscillator with a proof mass of only 215 mg. Compared with the latest reported miniaturized gravimeters based on microelectronic mechanical systems, the performance of our gravimeter has substantial improvements in that an acceleration sensitivity of 15??μ骋补濒/√Hz and a drift as low as 61??μ骋补濒 per day have been reached. Based on this diamagnetic levitation gravimeter, we observed Earth tides, and the correlation coefficient between the experimental data and theoretical data reached 0.97. Some moderate foreseeable improvements can develop this diamagnetic levitation gravimetry into a chip size device, making it suitable for mobile platforms such as drones. Our advancement in gravimeters is expected to facilitate a multitude of applications, including underground density surveying and the forecasting of natural hazards.
Figure 1: Based on the principle of magnetic levitation oscillator gravimeter.
Figure 2: Tidal measurement results: (a) Measurement data directly obtained from the anti magnetic levitation gravimeter, with each blue dot representing the average value of one hour’s measurement data. The instrument has a linear drift speed of 61 μ Gal/Day which has reached an advanced international level. (b) Comparison between tidal theory calculation data and experimental results. The red line represents theoretical calculation data, and the blue dots represent experimental data. The correlation coefficient between these two sets of data has reached 0.97.
Writer: Guo Junlin
Editor: Shao Yihang
