High Magnetic Field in Low Temperature Vacuum Conditions : Magnet Design, Modeling and Testing

Abstract: The Swiss Free Electron Laser (SwissFEL) at the Paul Scherrer Institute is a national prestige project that will enable ground breaking new x-ray scattering experiments in areas such as biology, chemistry and physics. A plannedactivity is to generate possibility for x-ray diffraction under high pulsed magnetic fields to explore quantum mattermaterials. In fact, an entire beam line (CristallinaQ), dedicated to extreme sample environment (vacuum, electro-magnetic field, low temperature).This Master’s thesis project concerns the development of a magnet system for pulsed magnetic fields to be synchronised with the free electron laser pulses. The system is based on small-sized coils. This makes the systemtransportable and avoids the huge financial challenges and power requirements of the magnets at pulsed fields laboratories at Toulouse, Dresden or Tallahassee. Ultimately the magnet shall provide large pulsed fields of more than 30 T under conditions very similar to space, i.e. vacuum, low-temperature.The thesis presents the development of a complete coil manufacture and testing setup including a capacitor bank topower the magnet. With planned upgrades of the equipment, the coil manufacturing process is reaching reproduceable levels. I produce a first iteration of magnet coils. They follow a classical copper conductor design reinforcedwith an epoxy-Zylon matrix. During testing we produced 15 Tesla fields without degradation of the coils. At lastI analyse the observations from the tests and propose improvements and future steps for the further developmentof the magnet.