A novel ppm-precise absolute calibration method for precision high-voltage dividers

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 $1\cdot 10^{-6}$. 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.

9 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Current Direct Neutrino Mass Experiments
• Precision high voltage divider for the KATRIN experiment
• Calibration of high voltages at the ppm level by the difference of ${}^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr conversion electron lines at the KATRIN experiment

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• Wideband precision stabilization of the -18.6 kV retarding voltage for the KATRIN spectrometer
• A method for determining the transition energies of ${}^{83m}$Kr at the KATRIN experiment
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