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Ph.D. Thesis - Physics

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Finally, we note that the chilled water supply must be engaged whenever the cryostat is<br />

on, and must be switched off when the compressor is not running, to avoid water condensing<br />

on the hoses in places it shouldn’t.<br />

As a final caution, if the static pressure is below about 240 psi, then helium may need<br />

to be added. This should not need to happen very often, so if the pressure has fallen a good<br />

deal there may be a leak. We have, in the lab, a portable helium sniffer that can detect<br />

fairly large leaks. A mass spectrometer for vacuum systems may also be run in a sniffer<br />

mode, with higher sensitivity, if the proper attachment can be purchased or built. The<br />

author has experienced only one major helium leak, and it was located on the cold head<br />

itself (due to a manufacturing defect that has now been fixed).<br />

C.3 Pressure and temperature measurement<br />

The pressure inside the cryostat reaches UHV conditions in a matter of hours. However, it is<br />

not possible to directly measure the pressure near the 40 K or 4 K surfaces, since ionization<br />

gauges cannot run at cryogenic temperatures. Instead, we use the current reading on an ion<br />

pump attached to the vacuum chamber to measure the pressure outside the 4 K shield. We<br />

may reasonably assume that the pressure inside the radiation shield is significantly lower<br />

than that measured on the ion pump. For instance, if the ion pump reads 0.5 × 10 −9 torr,<br />

we may expect pressure in the 10 −11 torr range or better near the ion trap.<br />

The temperature is measured using two Lake Shore DT-670 diodes, across each of which<br />

a 10 µA current is passed. The voltage across the diode records the temperature, and the<br />

voltage-to-temperature conversion chart is reprinted below. There are two diodes, one of<br />

which is heat-sunk directly to the 4 K cold head, and the other of which is heat-sunk to<br />

the experimental 4 K baseplate. The former typically reaches a temperature of 5 K, while<br />

the latter normally reads 9-11 K. It is not known why the temperature is not lower, but<br />

modifying the heat sinking of wires or replacing the radiation shield with an all-copper piece<br />

may help, since copper is a better thermal conductor than stainless steel.<br />

243

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