Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Encyclopedia
| Established: | 2004 |
| Director: | Joachim Wosnitza |
| Responsible body: | Free State of Saxony, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany) |
| Research Field: | Matter Matter Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume... |
| Disciplines: | Solid State Physics, Physics under low temperatures |
| Location: | Dresden Dresden Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area.... , Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
| Official website: | www.hzdr.de/hld |
The Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (Hochfeld-Magnetlabor Dresden, HLD) in the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) focuses on modern materials research at high magnetic fields. It serves as a research facility for in-house as well as for user projects and provides research opportunities for pulsed magnetic fields up to 90 Tesla
Tesla (unit)
The tesla is the SI derived unit of magnetic field B . One tesla is equal to one weber per square meter, and it was defined in 1960 in honour of the inventor, physicist, and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla...
for routine operation. A record field close to 92 T has been reached in 2011. The HLD aims at reaching magnetic fields up to the feasibility limit of about 100 Tesla.
History
In 1999, a proposal was submitted to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany) and the Saxon Ministry of Science and Art requesting the establishment of the High Magnetic Field Laboratory. After evaluation by the German Council of Science and Humanities basic funding was recommended and in 2003 the construction of the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory started on the site of the HZDR. Investment costs were about € 24.5 million and were shared equally by the federal government and the Free State of Saxony. In December 2004, the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory headed by Prof. Dr. Joachim Wosnitza was founded.User Program
The HLD is accepting proposals for magnet time in pulsed magnetic fields and hosted users since the beginning of 2007. The proposals are administrated and evaluated in the frame of the EuroMagNET II user program.Research
As the world's only laboratory, the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory provides access to a magnet with a magnetic flux density of 91.4 Tesla with a pulse duration of 11 milliseconds in a diameter of 16 millimeters. Similarly strong magnetic fields are generated only at the Los Alamos National LaboratoryLos Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
in Los Alamos, USA. In addition, the HLD operates several 70 Tesla coils with pulse durations of 150 milliseconds.
The HLD has an in-house coil development and production program. Because of the high magnetic pressure
Magnetic pressure
Magnetic pressure is an energy density associated with the magnetic field. It is identical to any other physical pressure except that it is carried by the magnetic field rather than kinetic energy of the gas molecules. Interplay between magnetic pressure and ordinary gas pressure is important to...
, a high-strength synthetic fiber has to be wound around the wire layers. The aim is to achieve a field of 100 Tesla over a pulse duration of 10 milliseconds. The required energy of 50 MJ is provided by the world's largest capacitor bank, custom-made for this laboratory.
Primarily, the electronic properties of metallic, semiconducting, superconducting, and magnetic materials are studied at the HLD in high magnetic fields. These include in particular exotic superconductors, strongly correlated electron systems, low-dimensional spin systems, and nanostructures. The pulse durations are sufficient to allow for e.g. resistance, ultrasound
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is thus not separated from "normal" sound based on differences in physical properties, only the fact that humans cannot hear it. Although this limit varies from person to person, it is...
, and NMR measurements.
Uniquely, the radiation provided by the free-electron lasers (FEL) of the neighboring superconducting electron accelerator ELBE can be used for magneto-optical experiments in the infrared spectral range.
HLD 2.0
In response to the large user demand, the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (HLD) is being extended. From 2011 to 2013, it will be equipped with a new capacitor bank and six additional magnet cells. The construction of the extension building is well underway.Cooperation
The HLD cooperates with several research institutions in DresdenDresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
:
- Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
- Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems
- Technische Universität Dresden
- Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden
- Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden
In addition to collaborating with other research institutions in Germany, further European collaborations funded by the European Union exist. The aim of the EU project European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL) is to attract new users to the large research facilities of the participating laboratories within Europe and to develop cooperation in management, infrastructure, and communications. Partners in the EMFL project are: the Dutch "High Magnetic Field Laboratory" in Nijmegen, the French "Laboratoire des Champs Magnétiques Intenses" (LNCMI) in Grenoble and Toulouse and the HLD.