Limitations on the use of the pulsed-wire field measuring technique

As wigglers become longer and the wavelength of the light they produce becomes shorter, the requirements for magnetic field uniformity and precision of wiggler construction become more severe. Techniques used to measure magnetic fields and to estimate the performance of wigglers are now being pushed to their limits in precision and are generally awkward and time consuming in practice. A new field-error measurement technique has been developed that has the usual advantages of a null technique, demonstrates high sensitivity to field errors, and is rapid and simple to employ. With this technique, it appears practical to use computer control to both measure and correct field errors. In a particularly attractive application, these measuring and correcting steps could be carried out on a daily basis for an operational wiggler, which is mounted under vacuum in its optical cavity. In this way, changes in the fields caused by aging or by thermal or radiation-induced deterioration effects could be rapidly identified and corrections could be instituted without significant interruption to normal operations. The principles and limitations of this technique will be described and examples given of various implementations that have been examined experimentally. (orig.)