An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Patrick F. Egan, Jack A. Stone Jr., Jacob E. Ricker, Jay H. Hendricks, Gregory F. Strouse
Abstract
We describe a method for determining density of helium via measurements of optical refractivity. In combination with the equation of state, this allows realization of the pascal. Our apparatus is based on the integration of a gas triple-cell into a quasi-monolithic heterodyne interferometer: the stability of the interferometer is +/- 50 pm over 10 h. We claim the contribution of cell window thinning to pathlength uncertainty can be canceled within an uncertainty of 0.37 fm/Pa per window pass, which for our 25 cm cell length corresponds to a fractional error of 9.3 x 10^-6 in the measure of helium refractivity. We report the ratio (n-1)_N2 / (n-1)_He = 8.570354(13) at p = 367.420(4) kPa, T = 293.1529(13) K and λ = 632.9908(6) nm, which can be used to calibrate less accurate refractometers. By measuring helium refractivity at a pressure realized by a piston gage, we determined the Boltzmann constant with standard uncertainty k_B = 1.380652(17) x 10^-23 JK^-1.
Egan, P.
, Stone, J.
, Ricker, J.
, Hendricks, J.
and Strouse, G.
(2017),
Cell-based refractometer for pascal realization, Optics Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.42.002944
(Accessed May 2, 2024)