Scientists achieve record precision in voltage control for neutrino detection
A research team has demonstrated ultra-precise voltage regulation—accurate to a few parts per million—critical for detecting the universe's relic neutrinos. The breakthrough in measurement technology could accelerate fundamental physics discoveries and has implications for any precision instrumentation requiring extreme voltage stability.
Originaltitel: Ultra-high precision high voltage system for PTOLEMY
<p>The PTOLEMY project is prototyping a novel electromagnetic filter for high-precision /3 spectroscopy, with the ultimate and ambitious long-term goal of detecting the cosmic neutrino background through electron capture on tritium bound to graphene. Intermediate small-scale prototypes can achieve competitive sensitivity to the effective neutrino mass, even with reduced energy resolution. To reach an energy resolution better than 500 meV at the tritium /3-spectrum endpoint of 18.6 keV, and accounting for all uncertainties in the filtering chain, the electrode voltage must be controlled at the level of a few parts per million and monitored in real time. In this work, we present the first results obtained in this effort, using a chain of commercial ultra-high-precision voltage references, read out by precision multimeters and afield mill device. The currently available precision on high voltage is, in the conservative case, as low as 0.2 ppm per 1 kV single board and less than or similar to 50 mV over the 10 kV series, presently limited by field mill read-out noise. However, assuming uncor related Gaussian noise extrapolation, the real precision could in principle be as low as 0.05 ppm over 20 kV.</p>