Flat Frequency Response in the Electronic Measurement of the Boltzmann Constant

Published

June 1, 2013

Author(s)

Jifeng Qu, Horst Rogalla, Yang Fu, Jianqiang Zhang, Alessio Pollarolo, Samuel Benz

Abstract

A new quantum voltage calibrated Johnson noise thermometer (JNT) was developed at NIM to demonstrate the electrical approach that determines the Boltzmann constant k by comparing electrical and thermal noise power. A measurement with an integration period of 19 hours and bandwidth of 638 kHz results in a relative offset of 1x10-6 from the current CODATA value of k, and type A relative standard uncertainty of 17x10-6. Closely matched noise powers and transmission-line impedances were achieved and resulted in a flat frequency dependence of the noise power ratio. Consequently, the quadratic fitting parameters of the ratio spectrum show flat frequency responses with respect to the measurement bandwidth. This flat response produces a dramatically reduced systematic error compared to that of the NIST measurement of k, in which the relative combined uncertainty was dominated by this error.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Volume

62

Issue

6

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2013.2238431

Local Download

Keywords

Boltzmann constant, Correlation, Johnson Noise, Josephson junction arrays, Noise, Quantization, Thermometry

Citation

Qu, J. , Rogalla, H. , Fu, Y. , Zhang, J. , Pollarolo, A. and Benz, S. (2013), Flat Frequency Response in the Electronic Measurement of the Boltzmann Constant, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2013.2238431, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=911739 (Accessed October 13, 2025)