Towards a precision measurement of the Casimir force in a cylinder-plane geometry

We report on a proposal aimed at measuring the Casimir force in the cylinder-plane configuration. The Casimir force is evaluated including corrections due to finite parallelism, conductivity, and temperature. The range of validity of the proximity force approximation is also discussed. An apparatus to test the feasibility of a precision measurement in this configuration has been developed, and we describe both a procedure to control the parallelism and the results of the electrostatic calibration. Finally we discuss the possibility of measuring the thermal contribution to the Casimir force and deviations from the proximity force approximation, both of which are expected at relatively large distances.