The Vienna Nuclear Demagnetization Refrigerator

A new nuclear demagnetization system coupled to a powerful dilution refrigerator and a vector magnet was successfully built and operated. Our aim was to construct a versatile, modular cryostat, with a large experimental space providing an excellent platform for various types of ultralow temperature measurements. A powerful dilution unit allows us to cool the mixing chamber down to 3 mK and to precool a massive copper (∼90 mol) nuclear stage in a field of 9 T to 8 mK in 100 h. After demagnetization the lowest temperature of the copper stage measured by a Pt thermometer was 50.9 μK in a field of 20 mT. The cryostat is integrated with a 8 T-4 T vector magnet system. The refrigerator is provided with a 50 mm central clear shot tube allowing the insertion of a top-loading probe to cool down samples for measurements inside the vector magnet bore in a reasonably short time of about 4 hours. The system will be used to study quantum critical behavior of heavy fermion compounds.