Josephson voltage standard at National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi

Abstract

A C Josephson effect is now used by several countries as the reference standard for the unit of d.c. voltage. This paper describes the work done at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), New Delhi in the realization of the unit of volt based on the a.c Josephson effect. A voltage standard at 1 mV level using a Nb-Nb point contact junction has been established and the as-maintained volt based on a bank of standard cells has been inter compared against it using a 1:1000 voltage divider. The experimental set-up used in this comparison and the results of recent measurements are described. The overall uncertainty in assigning the value of emf to a standard cell is about 1 ppm. The as-maintained volt has been found to agree with the Josephson voltage within overall uncertainty.