Demonstration of the two-chamber approach for high-voltage measurements using collinear laser spectroscopy

An electronic measurement of high-voltages of several ten kV with accuracy as required for precision experiments is currently only feasible using highly sophisticated voltage dividers. Collinear laser spectroscopy can provide a direct and precise measurement of high-voltages using the Doppler shift of accelerated ions. Although proposed already in 1982, a measurement with relative accuracy better than 10−4 was not reported so far. To improve this accuracy, a dedicated new setup for high-voltage measurements will be installed at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. A two-chamber approach will be used to remove uncertainties due to the insufficiently known starting potential inside the ion source. Here we present a demonstration of the pump-and-probe technique performed in preparatory studies at the TRIGA-LASER experiment in Mainz.