Electric Field Sensing - Elfis

Summary for public relations purposes

Within the project, which was co-founded by the Government of Lower-Austria, a new way of passive electric field transduction was developed that hardly distorts the electric field to be measured. The successful approach is based on microsystem technology and exploits electric field induced mechanical deflections in conjunction with a very sensitive optical readout. Since the electrostatic forces responsible for the deflections are extremely weak (in the order of Piconewtons and even smaller), both the actual transducer and the optical readout needed to be built to a level of cutting-edge sophistication.
The requirement for distortion-free measurement was met by the new transduction not depending an electrical power supply or any grounded connection. Dielectric optical waveguides were used as the only interconnection between sensing head and electronics. Due to the simplicity of the integrated optical readout with a micro-shutter which is capable of resolving tiny deflections in the sub-picometer regime, there is no need for expensive, complicated components such as coherent light sources, optical couplers or beam splitters. The resulting rod-like probe with the transducer on its far end allows for almost point-like measurement of the electrical field strength with almost negligible distortions of the electric field.
As an example to showcase the capability of the probe, highly precise, point-like mappings of the field of an electrostatic quadrupole were carried out within the project. These measurements were performed on one of the ELENA ring’s quadrupole focusing elements at CERN, where there exists an unsatisfied need for instrumentation for quality control and optimisation of their electrostatic components.
The findings of the project resulted in a new method of measuring the electric field. The unique properties of this method enable new types of measurements which are not viable with state-of-the-art systems. This will induce progress in numerous scientific and technological fields as diverse as lightning and atmospheric research, environmental and physiological impacts of high-voltage AC and DC infrastructure and autonomous navigation. The corresponding results bear the possibility for paradigm shifts within the respective fields.