APPENDIX B
ways which these noise sources work their way into an experiment.
Capacitive Coupling
A voltage on a nearby piece of apparatus (or operator) can couple to a detector via a stray capacitance. Although Cstray may be very small, the coupled in noise may still be larger than a weak experimental signal.
3)Install capacitive shielding by placing both the experiment and the detector in a metal box.
Capacitive Noise Coupling
To estimate the noise current through Cstray into the detector we have
I = Cstray dV = jwcstray Vnoise
dt
Where a reasonable approximation to Cstray can be made by treating it as parallel plate capacitor. Here, w is the radian frequency of the noise source (perhaps 2 ∗ π ∗ 60 Hz), Vnoise is the noise voltage source amplitude (perhaps 120 VAC). For an area of A =
(0.01 m)2 and a distance of d = 0.1 m, the ‘capacitor’ will have a value of 0.009 pF and the resulting noise current will be 400 pA. This meager current is about 4000 times larger than the most sensitive current scale that is available on the SR510
Cures for capacitive coupling of noise signals include:
1)Remove or turn off the interfering noise source.
2)Measure voltages with low impedance sources and measure currents with high impedance sources to reduce the effect
of istray.
Inductive Noise Coupling
Inductive Coupling
Here noise couples to the experiment via a magnetic field:
A changing current in a nearby circuit gives rise to a changing magnetic field which induces an emf in the loop connecting the detector to the experiment, (emf = dØB/dt). This is like a transformer, with the
Cures for inductively coupled noise include:
1)Remove or turn off the interfering noise source (difficult to do if the noise is a broadcast station).
2)Reduce the area of the
3)Use magnetic shielding to prevent the magnetic field from inducing an emf (at high frequencies a simple metal enclosure is adequate).
4)Measure currents, not voltages, from high impedance experiments.
