Archimedes: a feasibility study of an experiment to weigh the electromagnetic vacuum

Archimedes is a feasibility study of a future experiment to ascertain the interaction of vacuum fluctuations with gravity. The experiment should measure the force that the earth's gravitational field exerts on a Casimir cavity by using a small force detector. Here we analyse the main parameters of the experiment and we present its conceptual scheme, which overcomes in principle the most critical problems.