Temperature stabilization of a lab space at 10 mK-level over a day

Abstract

Temperature fluctuations over long time scales (≳ 1 h) are an insidious problem for precision measurements. In optical laboratories, the primary effect of temperature fluctuations is drifts in optical circuits over spatial scales of a few meters and temporal scales extending beyond a few minutes. We present a lab-scale environment temperature control system approaching 10 mK-level temperature instability across a lab for integration times above an hour and extending to a day. This is achieved by passive isolation of the laboratory space from the building walls using a circulating air gap and an active control system feeding back to heating coils at the outlet of the laboratory’s Heating-Ventilation-Air-Conditioning (HVAC) unit. These techniques together result in 20 dB suppression of the temperature power spectrum across the lab at 10−4 Hz—approaching the limit set by statistical coherence of the temperature field—and 10 mK Allan deviation around 15 °C after an hour of averaging, which is an order of magnitude better than any previous report for a full laboratory.