Named after renowned Oxford physicist, television personality and molecular gastronomist, the Nicholas Kurti High Magnetic Field Laboratory provides access to the highest magnetic fields available within the UK. Pulsed magnet technology allows very high magnetic fields to be achieved for a short space of time. Resistive heating causes the magnet to warm up between pulses, but only long after the data has been taken. Pulsed magnets are the only way to access fields in excess of 45 T.
The Nicholas Kurti Magnetic Field Laboratory has three experimental magnet cells, which are powered by a configurable capacitor bank with maximum energy storage of 3MJ. Pulsed magnets are designed and wound in-house and achieve fields of up to around 70T. Pulse lengths of the order of 10 ms can be adjusted by changing the configuration of the capacitor bank and repetition times are under an hour for full field shots. Non-standard and custom-made magnets are also available with longer pulse lengths, but typically at the cost of peak field.
What we do
- Compensated coil magnetometry: measurements of absolute magnetisation in milligram samples of magnetic material; this technique is highly sensitive to magnetic phase transitions and energy level crossings
- Electronic transport: measurements of resisitivity, skin-depth and penetration-depth of metallic and superconducting systems using contacted and contactless methods
- Fermiology: measurements of the Fermi surface of conducting materials using de Haas-van Alphen and Shubnikov-de Haas quantum oscillation effects
- 3He refrigerators enable experiments to take place at temperatures down to 400 millikelvin