Generation of pulsed high magnetic fields in a small laboratory

High magnetic fields have always been integral to experimental physics.
While magnetic fields of about 15 tesla can readily be generated using
superconducting magnets, one has to rely on resistive magnets to go beyond
20 tesla. Unfortunately, such resistive magnets consume a large amount of
power due to the inevitable joule heating, with the power dissipation for
a 35 tesla magnet running into tens of megawatts. An elegant alternative
is to use a "pulsed magnet" and dissipate these megawatts of power for
only a fraction of a second, such that the total energy consumption is
small.

After a brief discussion on some high magnetic field phenomena that I find
interesting, I will take you step by step toward making a modest 35-40
tesla pulsed magnet like the one we have built at IISER Kolkata. The focus
will be on design principles and order of magnitude estimates. I will then
discuss the challenge of integrating sensitive low-temperature experiments
with such a set up. Finally, I will briefly review other pulsed magnet
facilities around the world and attempts to go beyond 100 tesla.

Most importantly, I would like to emphasize that it is possible for even
small laboratories to have ready access to high fields, and not be
dependent on the few dedicated multi-million dollar facilities around the
world.

About Prof. Bhavtosh Bansal:

Prof. Bhavtosh Bansal obtained his Ph.D. from IISc, Bengaluru. He was a
Visiting Fellow at TIFR during 2004-5 in the DCMP & MS. Then after two
more postdoctoral stints - at Catholic University Leuven (Belgium) and the
High Field Magnet Lab in Nijmegen (Netherlands), he joined IISER Kolkata
in 2010. His research has been mostly around the physics of
semiconductors.