A Superconducting Gravimeter Sensor: Levitated-Sphere Stiffness, Acceleration Noise Floor and Drift Budget

This paper presents a computed design for a superconducting gravimeter intended for precision gravity measurement, with its performance, resource budgets and margins derived from stated assumptions rather than asserted. The headline results are: vertical resonance frequency of the levitated sphere of 4.2 Hz; acceleration noise floor below resonance of 1.39 nGal per root hertz; mass of the levitated niobium sphere of 35.9 g; static displacement under gravity at the working point of 14.1 mm; time constant of persistent-current decay at the stated joint-resistance bound of 6.34e+04 years. Each figure was produced by the deposited computation from the inputs listed in the Methods, and the sensitivity of the conclusions to those inputs is examined in the Discussion. The design is a paper study: it is labelled, on its face and in this abstract, SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED, and no quantity reported here is a measurement of built hardware.