AVS 63rd International Symposium & Exhibition
    Vacuum Technology Monday Sessions
       Session VT-MoM

Paper VT-MoM3
Fixed Length Optical Cavity for Photonic Realization of the Pascal

Monday, November 7, 2016, 9:00 am, Room 104C

Session: Vacuum Measurement, Calibration, Primary and Industry Standards
Presenter: Jay Hendricks, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Authors: J. Hendricks, National Institute of Standards and Technology
J. Ricker, National Institute of Standards and Technology
P. Egan, National Institute of Standards and Technology
J. Stone, National Institute of Standards and Technology
G. Scace, National Institute of Standards and Technology
G.F. Strouse, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Correspondent: Click to Email
NIST is actively developing a new paradigm in the methodology of pressure and vacuum gauging and metrology. In a break with nearly 400 years of mercury based primary standards, NIST has developed a new standard that is based on the fundamental physics of light interacting with a gas. For the vacuum community, this represents a shift in how we think about the unit of the Pascal in that it will be directly related to the density of a gas, the temperature, the refractive index, and the Boltzmann constant. The photonic technique has now achieved important benchmarks in performance when compared to the existing primary standards based on mercury manometers: The photonic technique has a 20X smaller footprint, 100X faster sensing response time, 100X lower pressure range, and for an emerging technique has demonstrated impressive accuracy, reproducibility and hysteresis. Photonic sensing of the pascal has the potential to be further miniaturized, and has the key advantage that the light used for sensing the pressure can be transmitted over light-weight, high-speed fiber optic cables and networks. This talk will highlight the NIST efforts to replace our mercury Ultrasonic Interferometer Manometers (UIMs) with the new quantum-based, photonic technique. New data will be presented that shows that two independent Fixed Length Optical Cavities are now operating with part per million reproducibility and measurement agreement. The optical technique has now surpassed mercury manometer performance, and a new paradigm for vacuum metrology and realization of the SI unit, the pascal has begun.