Data analysis scheme for correcting general misalignments of an optics configuration for a voltage measurement system based on the Pockels electro-optic effect

Abstract

Having a sub-ns response time and not requiring physical contacts to the measurement points, a voltage measurement system based on the Pockels electro-optic effect, referred to as a PE (Pockels effect)-based voltmeter, is widely used for pulsed high voltage devices such as accelerators and X-pinch systems. To correct for the misalignment of a Pockels cell and the transmittance ratio of a beam splitter, a polar-coordinate-based data analysis scheme has been proposed. This scheme also overcomes a limitation on the measurable range of a PE-based voltmeter without ambiguity and can measure the half-wave voltage of a Pockels cell. We present an improved polar-coordinate-based data analysis scheme using an ellipse fitting method, which can correct for misalignments of all the optics components of a PE-based voltmeter while keeping the advantages of the previous scheme. We show the results of the improved data analysis scheme for measuring a slowly modulated voltage up to approximately 5 kV in about 30 s and a pulsed high voltage up to 7 kV with a rise time of less than 20 ns.