Pulsed High Magnetic Field Facility in China: Current status and future

The upgrade of the Pulsed High Magnetic Field Facility (PHMFF-U, stage II), which is one of the National Major Science and Technology Infrastructure Projects within the “National Fourteenth Five-Year Plan” funded by the Chinese National Development and Reformation Committee, was officially approved in October, 2023. The PHMFF-U represents the upgrade of the PHMFF (stage I) and is planned to be built right next to stage I on the campus of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

The high magnetic field is an important research tool in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering.1 It has been used to modify and to detect the energy states of electrons and of magnetic moments associated with atoms and molecules that denote the building blocks of solids. High magnetic fields can be divided into two types: the static magnetic field and the pulsed magnetic field. The former can be produced by a water-cooled magnet, superconducting magnet, or hybrid magnet. Due to the joule heating and the critical magnetic field of superconductors, currently, the highest static field is 45 T. In contrast, the pulsed magnetic field, with a value of up to 100 T, can be produced with pulsed magnets by circumventing the limitations imposed by joule heating. Pulsed magnets are normally a wire-wound solenoid reinforced with high-strength fiber/epoxy composite. Capacitor banks or a pulse generator are typically used as power supplies. The pulse duration of the magnetic field ranges from milliseconds to a few hundreds of milliseconds. Since the pulsed magnetic field is much higher than the static magnetic field, it has played an important role in high-field science for a long time. Currently, the pulsed magnetic field facilities open to users worldwide include the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Los Alamos (USA), the High Field Laboratory at Dresden (Germany), the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses in Toulouse (France), the Institute for Solid State Physics of the University of Tokyo (Japan), and the Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center at Wuhan (China).