The design and performance of a transportable low-cost instrument for the generation and application of megagauss fields

Abstract

A small megagauss generator which produces 110 T by fast semi-destructive capacitor discharge into a single-turn coil of 10 mm diameter is described. For spectroscopic applications the pulses are adequately resolved by 8 - 12 bit, 200 - 1000 MSa data recording systems. The technical implementation of the 60 kV discharge circuit with a total inductance of less than 26 nH, not including the field coil, is discussed in detail. The performance is characterized in terms of the oscillatory circuit parameters R, L and C with brief references to more fundamental studies on transient field phenomena. Safety features as well as the organization and handling of control units and data recording systems are explicitly described to demonstrate the applicability of the generator.