Up to which precision has the coulomb law proven to be true? I.e. if you have two electrons in a vacuum chamber, 5 meters appart, have the third order terms been ruled out? Are there any theoretical limits to measure the precision ( Planck's constant?). Obviously there are practical limitations ( imperfect vacuum, cosmic rays, vacuum fluctuation). Still, does anyone know what was the smallest amount ever correctly predicted by that law?
Edit : Summary
On the high end of the energy spectrum a precision of 10^-16 has been shown ( 42 years ago )
For electron point charges at large distances the law might brake down due to practical reasons.
For moving particles QED gives a correction to the law: http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.2303
Answer
Quoting from my copy of the 2nd edition of Jackson's book on Classical Electrodynamics, section 1.2:
Assume that the force varies as 1/r2+ϵ and quote a value or limit for ϵ. [...] The original experiment with concentric spheres by Cavendish in 1772 gave an upper limit on ϵ of |ϵ|≤0.02.
followed a bit later by
Williams, Fakker, and Hill [... gave] a limit of ϵ≤(2.7±3.1)×10−16.
That book was first published in 1975, so presumably there has been some progress in the mean time.
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