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Experiments with Supersonic Beams as a Source of Cold Atoms

Experiments with Supersonic Beams as a Source of Cold Atoms

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closed. With the new thyristor gate drive system, this h<strong>as</strong> the side effect <strong>of</strong> closing any<br />

thyristor attached to the IGBT, and subsequently all coils fire simultaneously, rather<br />

than individually. To rectify this, a resistor is added to the snubber capacitor, along<br />

<strong>with</strong> a diode network, such that the resistance is low when charging the capacitor and<br />

it can effectively absorb the current pulse from the coil, but the discharging resistance<br />

is raised to 4Ω, slowing the snubber capacitor discharge. This slower discharge pr<strong>of</strong>ile<br />

<strong>of</strong> the snubber capacitor does not inadvertently close the thyristors, which enables<br />

their continued use <strong>as</strong> isolating switches between the individual coil channels. Similar<br />

to the circuitry used in the pro<strong>of</strong>-<strong>of</strong>-principle experiment, there are still eight total<br />

IGBTs, and the digital timing pulses are sent by the same FPGA board. However,<br />

<strong>with</strong> 64 total coils, each IGBT now switches eight individual coil channels.<br />

The final alteration <strong>of</strong> the drive circuitry is the loss <strong>of</strong> the .25 Ω resistor in<br />

series <strong>with</strong> the coil. The resistor limited the current and <strong>with</strong> the new higher blocking<br />

voltage components is not needed in the improved circuit. This does mean that there<br />

is no convenient way to directly me<strong>as</strong>ure the current in the coil, <strong>as</strong> there is no resistor<br />

in series <strong>with</strong> the coil whose voltage drop can be me<strong>as</strong>ured. The total resistance <strong>of</strong><br />

the circuit is me<strong>as</strong>ured to be ≈ 0.34Ω, leading to a calculated current <strong>of</strong> ≈ 750A, but<br />

this me<strong>as</strong>urement is accurate to 10 % at best, limiting the accuracy <strong>of</strong> the estimations<br />

<strong>of</strong> the field strengths.<br />

While a pickup coil is used to me<strong>as</strong>ure the temporal pr<strong>of</strong>ile <strong>of</strong> the magnetic<br />

field in the pro<strong>of</strong>-<strong>of</strong>-principle experiment, this is not an good method for determining<br />

the overall field strength. The problem is that the pickup coil me<strong>as</strong>ures dB<br />

dt ,andso<br />

must be integrated to determine the absolute field. Small errors can accumulate and<br />

lead to a large uncertainty when determining the absolute field in the coil using this<br />

method. What is needed is a direct method <strong>of</strong> me<strong>as</strong>uring the field, which would be<br />

accurate on the timescale <strong>of</strong> the pulse.<br />

96

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