Engineering topics

Petzoldt, G.

Publications and source records attributed to Petzoldt, G..

4 records

DOE OSTI2015

Deuterated polyethylene coatings for ultra-cold neutron applications

We report on the fabrication and use of deuterated polyethylene as a coating material for ultra-cold neutron (UCN) storage and transport. The Fermi potential has been determined to be 214 neV, and the wall loss coefficient η is 1.3 × 10{sup 4} per wall collision. The coating technique allows for a wide range of applications in this field of physics. In particular, flexible and quasi-massless UCN guides with slit-less shutters and seamless UCN storage volumes become possible. These properties enable the use in next-generation measurements of the electric dipole moment of the neutron.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2015

Minimizing magnetic fields for precision experiments

An increasing number of measurements in fundamental and applied physics rely on magnetically shielded environments with sub nano-Tesla residual magnetic fields. State of the art magnetically shielded rooms (MSRs) consist of up to seven layers of high permeability materials in combination with highly conductive shields. Proper magnetic equilibration is crucial to obtain such low magnetic fields with small gradients in any MSR. Here, we report on a scheme to magnetically equilibrate MSRs with a 10 times reduced duration of the magnetic equilibration sequence and a significantly lower magnetic field with improved homogeneity. For the search of the neutron's electric dipole moment, our finding corresponds to a 40% improvement of the statistical reach of the measurement. However, this versatile procedure can improve the performance of any MSR for any application.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2015

A large-scale magnetic shield with 10{sup 6} damping at millihertz frequencies

We present a magnetically shielded environment with a damping factor larger than 1 × 10{sup 6} at the mHz frequency regime and an extremely low field and gradient over an extended volume. This extraordinary shielding performance represents an improvement of the state-of-the-art in the difficult regime of damping very low-frequency distortions by more than an order of magnitude. This technology enables a new generation of high-precision measurements in fundamental physics and metrology, including searches for new physics far beyond the reach of accelerator-based experiments. We discuss the technical realization of the shield with its improvements in design.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2014

A magnetically shielded room with ultra low residual field and gradient

A versatile and portable magnetically shielded room with a field of (700 ± 200) pT within a central volume of 1 m × 1 m × 1 m and a field gradient less than 300 pT/m, achieved without any external field stabilization or compensation, is described. This performance represents more than a hundredfold improvement of the state of the art for a two-layer magnetic shield and provides an environment suitable for a next generation of precision experiments in fundamental physics at low energies; in particular, searches for electric dipole moments of fundamental systems and tests of Lorentz-invariance based on spin-precession experiments. Studies of the residual fields and their sources enable improved design of future ultra-low gradient environments and experimental apparatus. This has implications for developments of magnetometry beyond the femto-Tesla scale in, for example, biomagnetism, geosciences, and security applications and in general low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗