Abstract
The most common method to measure direct current high voltage (HV) down to the ppm-level is to use resistive high-voltage dividers. Such devices scale the HV into a range where it can be compared with precision digital voltmeters to reference voltages sources, which can be traced back to Josephson voltage standards. So far the calibration of the scale factors of HV dividers for voltages above 1 kV could only be done at metrology institutes and sometimes involves round-robin tests among several institutions to get reliable results. Here we present a novel absolute calibration method based on the measurement of a differential scale factor, which can be performed with commercial equipment and outside metrology institutes. We demonstrate that reproducible measurements up to 35 kV can be performed with relative uncertainties below . This method is not restricted to metrology institutes and offers the possibility to determine the linearity of high-voltage dividers for a wide range of applications.
Highlights
Precision measurements of direct current (DC) high voltage (HV) are important for many applications in physics, e.g. to record an integral spectrum of tritium-β-electrons with the KATRIN neutrino mass experiment [1] or for determining kinetic energies of electrons with electron coolers at ion storage rings [2]
The general approach to measure high voltage is to scale it with a HV divider to a range, where it can be compared to a reference voltage source5, which is calibrated by a metrology laboratory like the German National Metrology Institute Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) with a Josephson voltage standard [8]
Precision measurements of DC high voltages are important for different applications in fundamental research and applied sciences
Summary
Precision measurements of direct current (DC) high voltage (HV) are important for many applications in physics, e.g. to record an integral spectrum of tritium-β-electrons with the KATRIN neutrino mass experiment [1] or for determining kinetic energies of electrons with electron coolers at ion storage rings [2]. HV dividers are composed of resistors and generally show a voltage- and time dependent behavior This is mainly caused by thermal loads and leakage currents with respect to different voltage ranges and powers. Two new methods for an absolute calibration of HV dividers were reported in [10] and [11], where uncertainties in the range of 5 · 10−6 could be achieved These methods require a complex and partially unique experimental set-up (e.g. an ion beamline with a laser spectroscopy set-up or the 70 m long KATRIN neutrino mass experiment), making these methods very difficult to apply in laboratories with only commercially available equipment. In this paper we present a newly developed method for absolute calibrations of HV divider to the ppm-level by measuring a traceable differential voltage under HV conditions, which can be performed with commercially available devices. The newly developed calibration method will be explained and first measurement results with achieved relative uncertainties of less than 1 · 10−6 will be presented
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