CM Seminar - High field superconducting magnet science for particle and condensed matter physics

Abstract : Magnets are unarguably the "killer app" of superconductivity, with medical imaging magnets comprising an annual $2 billion market that consumes about 1000 tons of superconductor per year, and magnets for large science projects contributing a similar share. Yet, no magnet is ever better than the conductors from which it is wound, making the frontier of magnet technology inseparably connected to limits of conductor manufacturing and basic materials science.  The Applied Superconductivity Center (ASC) has played a central role in the advance of conductor and magnet technology for particle physics for over 4 decades, and ASC continues this role in partnership with the US Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics and the US Magnet Development Program. This presentation will highlight the present status of conductor and magnet technology for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, as well as prospects for 2050-era colliders at 100 TeV energy. After moving to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) in 2006, the ASC worked in earnest on the challenges of very high field magnets made from high-temperature superconductors (HTS), now being implemented as the world's first all-superconducting user magnet at 32 T. Conductor technology now provides multiple options for magnet technology in the 40 T to 60 T range for condensed matter physics and other user communities, as well as nuclear magnetic resonance opportunities above 30 T and 1.3 GHz. This presentation will also describe ongoing work toward these goals from the point of view of limitations at the conductor level and innovations in magnet technology to overcome them. NHMFL has over 2,000 users annually, most of which are in the condensed matter, chemistry, and biology communities, and for these stakeholders the ability to "sit" at very high magnetic field measurements for long periods of time will transform present experiments. The presentation will highlight some of the NHMFL's science drivers and recent headline results.

Biosketch: Lance Cooley is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Florida State University, in addition to his MagLab roles as director of the Applied Superconductivity Center (ASC) and an associate lab director. Cooley began his career in superconducting materials in 1986 at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, in the Applied Superconductivity Center where he explored the ultimate limits of electric current in superconducting wires used for magnets. He earned a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, and later returned to Madison, Wisconsin, as a member of the research faculty to further investigate limits of superconductors. The discovery of superconductivity in magnesium diboride in 2001 prompted Cooley to move to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he eventually became head of the Superconducting Materials Group. He moved to Fermilab in 2007 to lead the SRF Materials Group, and later the Superconducting Materials Department. During this time, he coordinated external programs at multiple universities, laboratories and industry to improve performance of superconducting radio-frequency cavities and superconducting wires. This led to specifications and international standards related to niobium commerce, for which he received the International Electrotechnical Commission 1906 Award. He joined Florida State University and MagLab in 2017. He is also the manager of conductor acquisition for the Large Hadron Collider High-Luminosity Accelerator Upgrade Project as well as the head of Conductor Procurement and R&D for the National Magnet Development Program, both in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of High-Energy Physics.