E-Field of 110 kV/cm

This weekly win post is for the win awarded on 10/10/16. The win that week was awarded to Roy Ready’s team, working on the Ra EDM project. The RaEDM team  successfully tested the high voltage system, and reached a stable operating voltage of 22 kV. One of the goals  of the project is to reach the highest possible stable electric field with the electrodes to be used in the upcoming Radium EDM experiment. The sensitivity of the measurement is inversely proportional to electric field, so if the field is doubled, so is the precision. In the 2015 experiment at Argonne National Laboratory, the experiment was operated with an electric field of 67 kV/cm. The electrodes that are currently being used are about 2 cm apart, so this gives an electric field of 110 kV/cm when operating at 22 kV. That is more than 1.5 times higher than the 2015 run! More information on the studies done at Argonne National Lab can be found here and here!