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Maintenance and Dissemination of the Magnetic Field Unit at PTB

Kurt Weyand
AbstractThe different methods which are used at Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) to disseminate the unit of flux density are presented and compared with respect to their uncertainties. A dc flux density range from 10 T to 2 T is covered with the lowest relative uncertainty of 10 6 at fields of 1 mT to 2 mT. In case of ac fields, field coils are used as standards, the frequency response of which is checked by means of a simple but very reliable inductive measuring technique. A relative uncertainty of 3 10 3 or even less is typically achieved for frequencies below 30 kHz. Index TermsMagnetic field calibration, magnetic field standard, magnetic field unit.

I. INTRODUCTION LUX density standards based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and in particular on the gyromagnetic ratio of protons as recommended by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) [1], should be regarded as the most accurate standards for realizing and maintaining the flux density unit. For this reason, new instruments have been developed to apply NMR-based methods over a large dc-field range for the PTB client calibration service. Field coils have proved to be reliable magnetic field standards for industry, if their coil constants the ratio of flux density over coil current are calibrated together with the current measuring instrument, i.e., the coil and the instrument are to be regarded as a combined standard. In cases where NMR can not be applied due to low field values or insufficient homogeneity other techniques are used. Examples are comparing the field of the coil under test with that of a standard coil by superimposing the fields, or by determining the field profile of the coil under test. AC-field standards are provided by means of various field coils, which have had their dc-coil constant determined by means of NMR. The frequency dependence of the coil constant is found by means of a simple but very reliable inductive measuring technique. II. DC-FIELD STANDARDS A. NMR Based Set-Ups If the set-up used in the past to perform a determination by means of free precession is considered as the starting point [2], the present situation regarding the maintainance and disseminination of the flux density unit as a dc quantity is illustrated by Fig. 1. NMR-based calibration can be provided within a field
Manuscript received May 14, 2000; revised March 11, 2001. K. Weyand is with the Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig D-38116, Germany Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9456(01)02968-0.

Fig. 1. Field range, uncertainties, and equipment for the calibration of dc flux density standards by means of NMR methods.

range from T to 2 T corresponding to resonance frequenfrom about 400 Hz to 85 MHz if proton samples are cies are indicated by the lower set of used. These frequencies labels on the horizontal axis of the graph in Fig. 1. The top horizontal band under the graph in Fig. 1 shows the method by which NMR is observed in the particular field range. The next band refers to the availability of the instruments in use, and the last band indicates the way of generating the magnetic field. Various field coils, i.e., Helmholtz coils, Garrett coils or coils similar to the Braunbek configuration have been built for the range up to 200 mT. The lowest relative uncertainty is achieved with fields in the order of 1 mT to 2 mT, experiment was performed. The unbecause in this range the certainty is estimated from comparison measurements made at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on four pure water samples which were fabricated at NIST, National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and PTB. When the same field was applied, relative differences of the precession frequency of up were observed [3]. For fields down to T, the free to precession method with prepolarization of an H O sample must be applied in order to increase the NMR signal level. The uncertainty increases with decreasing flux density for two major reasons: the contribution of fluctuating extraneous fields becomes more significant and the resolution in the frequency measurement cannot be increased at the same rate as the precession frequency decreases. Besides, the field across the sample should be sufficiently homogeneous that an observation time of at least 1 s is achieved to measure the resonance frequency.

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Fig. 2. NMR free precession signal observed in the centre field of 20 T inside a shielded solenoid.

Fig. 3. Scheme of relating an unknown coil constant k to k of a standard coil by means of superimposing their central fields B and B in opposite directions.

Fig. 2 shows a precession signal which was observed in a field T while calibrating a magnetically shielded solenoid. For of this measurement, the sample was prepolarized in a 5 mT field and the signal with the precession frequency of about 852 Hz was mixed with the voltage of a frequency reference source with Hz in order to reduce the observation bandwidth to several hertz. As mentioned above, the free precession method can be applied only if the field inhomogeneity does not significantly reduce the spin-spin relaxation time of the sample in use. Moreover, it is not easy to measure an unknown field by this method, because a whole measuring cycle takes more than 10 s due to the prepolarizing procedure. The method of observing the effect of the energy absorption caused by NMR resonance by measuring the damping of the tuned circuit of a marginal oscillator is more convenient. If a small alternating field is superposed on the field to be measured, a quasicontinuous signal can be obtained. For this purpose, attempts were made to increase the resolution of marginal oscillators, and thus to lower the measuring limit with the result as indicated by Fig. 1: the minimum detectable field is at present in the order of 0.5 mT [4], [5]. However, in contrast to the case of a sample used with free precession, the spin-spin relaxation time of a sample to be measured with a marginal oscillator is to be reduced (or, in other words, the absorption line width must be increased). This can be easily achieved by adding paramagnetic ions, for example by adding CuSO , to an H O sample, though the precession frequency of the protons will be shifted. The comparison of CuSO -doped samples to a pure water sample in the same field of 1 mT has yielded a resonance frequency shift of for a 0.5 g/L sample and a shift of in case of a 10 g/L sample. These values are too high, the latter should be achieved for the magnetic neutral solution which means 80 g of salt per dm water. In our experiments the resolution to find the resonance centre with the absorption set-up was not sufficient. Nevertheless, it can be stated that for samples with less than 1 g/L, which is common, the shift to be expected is of neglectable order. The gap between the uncertainty lines of the two NMR methods in Fig. 1 is due to this uncertainty in relating the doped samples to the pure water sample. The step in uncertainty at 0.1 T can be simply explained by the fact that only the low-field sample of the commercially available magnetometer has up to now been related to a pure H O sample.

Fig. 4. Principle of evaluating the coil constant of a winding package with N turns from its field pro-file.

B. Transfer of Coil Constants by Field Superposition If a coil designed as a flux density standard does not provide a sufficiently homogeneous field for use of a NMR technique, may be found by superimposing its field on its coil constant that of a NMR-based coil with the constant . Fig. 3 shows the operation principle with currents generating the fields and in both coils in opposite direction and with a fluxgate magnetometer as a zero field indicator. Its sensor is fixed inside for compensation of extraneous fields a small coil producing . With the designations of Fig. 3, is related to at the sensor position via a current ratio according to (1) where the angle between the coil axes is to be regarded as the main error source. Depending on field range and coil design its constant can be determined with a relative uncertainty of or even less; if is close to the uncertainty of comparison . may be in the order of C. Determination of by Measuring the Field Profile

Another method of determining the coil constant of a coil producing an inhomogeneous field is to measure the field profile on its axis and to calculate its geometrical dimensions from the recorded profile. Unlike the methods previously described, this technique needs a rapidly changing field profile, because the portions of the field distribution which include the points of inflection are most informative with respect to the dimensions of the current paths generating the field [6]. This method is therefore well suited for coils made of winding packages.

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Fig. 5. Measuring circuit used to determine the frequency response of a field coil by measuring the current i through the coil and the voltage u induced in a search coil with area a .

capacitance. It is reasonable to alternately measure the voltage induced in the search coil as well as the current by means of the same instrument (DVM), because in that case the frequency response of the instrument actually does not affect the measurement, provided it does not depend on the voltage level. From the equivalent circuit in Fig. 6, which represents the arrangement of field coil and search coil including the DVM input, the relation describing the frequency response of the circuit is found as (3) with (4a)

Fig. 6. Equivalent circuit of the combination of field coil, search coil and input of the DVM.

(4b) (4c) and (4d) The components denoted by 1 describe the field coil, those deand represent the DVM input noted by 2 the search coil. is the cable capacitance. The mutual inducimpedance and tance , which equals with the product of dc field coil constant and search coil turn area , and the function are the and terms which shall be determined. The terms must be regarded as error terms. The function depends on the particular field coil and should therefore be individually estimated. If the physical dimensions of the search coil are small compared with those of the field coil, this term can usually be , which determines neglected. The influence of the function the frequency response of the search coil, can be significantly and . reduced by resistively loading the search coil with The range over which the search coil frequency response is flat and are can be enlarged by one order if the values of optimized. Fig. 7 shows the response of a search coil without resistive network, with optimized values and in the case of overis compensation. For the flattened frequency range where is valid, (3) can be written as constant and (5) where D is a constant. In contrast with the application of a calibrated search coil, it is advantageous to determine in each case the dc coil constant and to relate its frequency variation to this value, even, if this method needs more measuring points at various frequencies. However, major sources of uncertainty are eliminated: there is no need for placing the sensor exactly in the centre of the field coil nor for aligning it to its axis. Also the field distribution across the sensor area does not need to be considered provided the coil position is unchanged during the whole measuring run. The term

The principle of the method can be explained by a simple example. A winding package with turns carrying the current and distributed over a cross section which is small compared is shown in Fig. 4. The flux denwith its mean diameter along the -axis related to its value at is sity and the coil constant given by can be found by measuring the field at an additional position on the axis according to (2) provided the number of turns is known. Very good results are obtained for symmetrically arranged packages such as Helmholtz coils. In this case the profile is measured with the packages counterconnected and related to the centre field with the packages series-connected, which means the centre region of the field function becomes most informative. When estimating the was found to performance of this method the ratio represents fluctuabe an important quality factor, where tions of extraneous fields but also includes the instability of the current through the coil and any instability of position. Applying a SQUID magnetometer for the field and a laser interferometer for the position measurement a relative uncertainty of can be achieved. It should be pointed out that with this method the coil constant is directly traced to the length standard and not to a field standard. III. AC-FIELD STANDARDS To determine the ac coil constant dependence on frequency a is commonly used. The insearch coil with a calibrated area duced voltage is measured if the field coil carries the current . The typical measuring circuit is shown by Fig. 5: the current is provided by the generator as voltage source and it is measured (film resistor). as voltage drop across an ac standard resistor must be of the triThe cable connecting the field coil to axial type with the inner shield on the same potential as the curwith the cable rent-carrying core in order to avoid bypassing

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three times, before, during and after circulating the standard. All the measuring points of the mutual inductance measurement were least-square-fitted by a second-order polynomial and were then related to the term which is independent of frequency and, therefore, in agreement with the dc value. The relative combined uncertainty expanded by 2 of determining the frequency response of this field coil is well below for frequencies for frequencies up below 2 kHz and increases to about to 20 kHz.
Fig. 7. Increase of the flat region of a search coil frequency response obtained by resistively loading the search coil, for R , R see Fig. 6, for q (f ) see (4b).

IV. CONCLUSIONS The application of the methods described above ensures the dissemination of the flux density unit by using field coils as transfer standards for dc-fields and ac-fields. The choice of the method to be applied for determination of the dc coil constant depends above all on construction and dimensions of the standard which is to be calibrated. The uncertainty levels quoted herein have therefore to be regarded as best case values which can be achieved using coils quite similar to those applied in our own equipment. They shall give hints how to compare the different methodsin any case, the uncertainty budget has to be analyzed for every individual calibration procedure and it will vary from case to case. Nevertheless, the uncertainties which are usually required by laboratories of the calibration service or industrial companies have up to now been at least one order higher than the uncertainties estimated for the different methods. For this reason, future activities will proceed in the calibration of specially designed standards needed in industrial production lines. REFERENCES
[1] P. J. Mohr and B. N. Taylor, CODATA Recommended Values of the Fundamental Physical Constants 1998, J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data, vol. 26, pp. 12131852, 1999. [2] K. Weyand, First Results of the Experiment at the PTB, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 34, pp. 167173, June 1985. [3] E. R. Williams, G. R. Jones, S. Ye, R. Liu, H. Sasaki, P. T. Olsen, W. D. Phillips, and H. P. Layer, A Low Field Determination of the Proton Gyromagnetic Ratio in Water, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 38, pp. 233237, Apr. 1989. [4] K. Weyand, An NMR Marginal Oscillator for Measuring Magnetic Fields Below 50 mT, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 38, pp. 410414, Apr. 1989. , Magnetometer Calibration Setup Controlled by Nuclear Mag[5] netic Resonance, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 48, pp. 668671, Apr. 1999. [6] K. Weyand and G.-D. Willenberg, Improved Determination of the Coil Constant in the Experiment at the PTB, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 36, pp. 275279, June 1987. [7] Intercomparison of Magnetic Flux Density by means of Field Coil Transfer Standard Euromet Report, Tech. Rep., Metrologia, 2001.

Fig. 8. Results of measuring the frequency dependence of a Garrett-type field standard. The measurements were performed several times using different linearized search coils.

representing the measured values in (3) can be fitted by a polynomial functiona second order polynomial is nearly always sufficientyielding (6) represents D. Consequently, the coil where the term constant as function of frequency is given by (7) As a typical result, Fig. 8 shows the frequency dependence of a Garrett coil capable of a maximum current of 1 A, which was used as a transfer standard in an intercomparison of dc and ac flux density [7]. The coil constant was determined with a dc current of 0.5 A to be about 2 mT/A by means of free precession NMR. The coil was also be used with frequencies of up to 20 kHz. The frequency dependence of the coil was measured