Development of a new UHV/XHV pressure standard (cold atom vacuum standard)

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has recently begun a program to develop a primary pressure standard that is based on ultra-cold atoms, covering a pressure range of 1 x 10-6 to 1 x 10-10 Pa and possibly lower. These pressures correspond to the entire ultra-high vacuum range and extend into the extreme-high vacuum. This cold-atom vacuum standard (CAVS) is both a primary standard and absolute sensor of vacuum. The CAVS is based on the loss of cold, sensor atoms (such as the alkali-metal lithium) from a magnetic trap due to collisions with the background gas (primarily H2) in the vacuum. The pressure is determined from a thermally-averaged collision cross section, which is a fundamental atomic property, and the measured loss rate. The CAVS is primary because it will use collision cross sections determined from ab initio calculations for the Li + H2 system. Primary traceability is transferred to other systems of interest using sensitivity coefficients.

References in corpus (3)

• The Feasibility of a Fully Miniaturized Magneto-Optical Trap for Portable Ultracold Quantum Technology
• Effective oscillator strength distributions of spherically symmetric atoms for calculating polarizabilities and long-range atom-atom interactions
• Observation of quantum diffractive collisions using shallow atomic traps

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Coherent scattering of low mass dark matter from optically trapped sensors
• Ab initio Calculation of Fluid Properties for Precision Metrology
• Accurate measurement of the loss rate of cold atoms due to background gas collisions for the quantum-based cold atom vacuum standard
• Comparison of two multiplexed portable cold-atom vacuum standards
• Cross-calibration of atomic pressure sensors and deviation from quantum diffractive collision universality for light particles
• Self-calibrating gas pressure sensor with a 10-decade measurement range
• Collision-resolved pressure sensing
• A constant pressure flowmeter for extreme-high vacuum
• Exploring the limits of ultracold atoms in space
• Trapped particle evolution driven by residual gas collisions
• Measurements of diffusion coefficients for rubidium--inert gas mixtures using coherent scattering from optically pumped population gratings
• On the effect of "glancing" collisions in the cold atom vacuum standard