Two Approaches for the Passive Charge Management of Contactless Test Masses

Abstract

Free floating Test Masses (TM) of inertial reference instruments accumulate charge mainly through the triboelectric effect during separation from their housings and, if in the space environment, from cosmic radiation. These charges will degrade the accuracy of high sensitivity accelerometers and drag-free sensors. We demonstrate in ground testing two passive bipolar charge management systems using photoelectrons emitted from Au coated surfaces under illumination by UV-LEDs of 255 nm, 275 nm, and 295 nm central wavelength. The first method uses fast photoelectrons, generated by two 255 nm UV-LEDs with adjustable-intensity (through fine-tuning of their excitation currents) and illuminating the TM and its housing respectively. A second technique uses slow photoelectrons generated by one UV LED, of either 275 nm or 295 nm, located on the TM housing. Fast and slow electrons are defined as having kinetic energies after photoemission above and below the maximum allowable potential above ground, VTMmax, required for normal operation of the TM. In their optimized configurations and following a 10 to 30 sec exposure to UV with initial TM potentials of between -3 V and 3 V, both control systems converge to a TM potential of about 10 mV with a drift of about 2 mV/day. For reference, VTMmax is about 100mV for the LISA and LISA pathfinder sensors. Insight into the slow photoelectrons charge control method is provided by our simple gaussian model of the distribution of the photoemission sites of Au films: 4.6 eV center, 0.2 eV standard deviation, and 4.30 eV and 4.90 eV cutoffs. The lowest energy photoemission is obtained with the 295 nm LED at about 4.35 eV or 285 nm; equivalent to 2.5 times the standard deviation from its center wavelength and at 4% of its maximum intensity.