New values of e and h and related fundamental constants from the CSIRO National Measurement Laboratory

The development of the liquid electrometer and the quantized Hall resistance facility has enabled the National Measurement Laboratory (NML) of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) to directly compare the quantum and the classical standards of resistance and voltage and determine new values for a set of fundamental constants, including electron charge (e), Planck's constant (h), the fine structure constant (α-1) and the magnetic flux quantum (φO). The experiments have also contributed to recent international agreements to change the Josephson constant (Kj) by 8ppm and to adopt a value for the von Klitzing constant (Rk). Agreement between fundamental constant values derived from NML experiments and those of the 1986 Adjustment of Fundamental Physical Constants or those reported by other laboratories is good. The pairs of values differ by less than 1.3 times the sum of their individual uncertainities, thus indicating that the measurement procedures used in such experiments do not have significant systematic errors and have been assigned appropriate measurement uncertainities. 11 refs., 2 figs., 1 tab