Over the last two decades, a number of large-scale infrastructures, such as photon and neutron sources, have realised the importance of high magnetic fields in conjunction with their beamlines. Consequently, high magnetic field installations that go beyond what is commercially available have been developed and operated, for example, on the ILL, ESRF, LULI or PSI beamlines. This mode of...
In Type-II superconductors, there are two critical fields, one corresponding to the end of perfect expulsion of field (Hc1), and the other to the destruction of superconductivity (Hc2). Between the two, we have the mixed state, where magnetic lines of flux enter the material, creating regions of normal state with the core of the associated magnetic vortex. As the field increases, eventually...
Strongly correlated electron systems often reveal ground states with deeply intertwined electronic charge, orbital, spin and lattice degrees of freedom. Their interplay can stabilize novel collective phenomena, whose understanding require the application of external parameters to determine the contributions of the various degrees of freedom. External magnetic fields are often ideal tuning...
Topology, a mathematical concept, recently became a hot and truly transdisciplinary topic in condensed matter physics, solid state chemistry and materials science. All 200 000 inorganic materials were recently classified into trivial and topological materials: topological insulators, Dirac, Weyl and nodal-line semimetals, and topological metals [1]. Around 20% of all materials host topological...
Strong electronic correlations are intimately related to the emergence of a plethora of exotic metallic quantum states such as unconventional superconductivity, electronic-nematic states, charge stripe- and loop order, hidden order and most recently topological states of matter such as skyrmion lattices, topological Kondo insulators and semimetals and chiral superconductors.
Here neutron...
Neutron spectroscopy has been one of the key techniques for understanding the origin of fascinating phenomena in strongly correlated electron systems, including lanthanide and actinide compounds. Rich (H,T) phase diagrams and exotic ground states do not only provide fields for curiosity driven science. The investigation of field-induced phase transitions and the character of the related phases...
The ability to reach high magnetic fields for neutron scattering experiments is invaluable to drive systems through phase transitions and thereby explore more quantum magnetic states. The theoretical description of the magnetic field in a material is exactly known and it is possible to accurately tune the field strength during an experiment. However, when performing neutron scattering...
In 2019, unconventional superconductivity was observed in the heavy-fermion paramagnet UTe2 and a spin-triplet nature of the superconducting pairing has been proposed for this compound initially presented as a nearly-ferromagnet [1,2]. Soon after, multiple superconducting phases were found to develop near magnetic transitions in UTe2 under intense magnetic fields and high pressures...
Magnetic fields are a fantastic, non-thermal tuning knob for quantum materials. They drive transitions between different magnetic ground states, they couple to quantum phases of mobile charge carriers, and they induce dynamics in coherent systems, such as vortices in superconductors.
However, they are a relativistic correction and tend to be very weak unlike their electric counterparts. As a...
The combination of modern high brilliance X-ray sources with pulsed magnetic fields allows investigation of correlated states such as charge density waves in the cuprates [1], or detection and analysis of structural phase transitions [2]. As the signatures of these phenomena are often weak (less than 1 ppm) compared to the structural information and can be distributed over wide ranges of...
The last two decades have seen the demonstration of the feasibility of neutron diffraction in fields as high as 40 T with the development of dedicated pulsed field devices based either on short or long duration pulsed magnets [1, 2]. These breakthroughs have allowed to extend the field limits beyond current superconducting (15 T split, 17 T solenoid) and resistive installations already...
Application of high magnetic fields is a powerful method for revealing a complex behaviour in modern materials. In combination with a microscopic probe such as neutrons it provides a direct access to static and dynamic correlations in matter. Until the shutdown of the BERII research reactor in 2019, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) hosted a unique high field facility for neutron scattering. It...
The quasi-two-dimensional quantum magnetic compound BaCuSi2O6, an ancient pigment also known as Han Purple, consists of three different types of stacked, square-lattice bilayers hosting spin-1/2 dimers. This material undergoes a magnetic-field-induced quantum phase transition at a critical field of 23.35 T from a quantum disordered to a magnetically ordered state that resembles the XY...
Magnetic field is a fundamental thermodynamical parameter having a potential to change the miscroscopic arrangement of magnetic moments or even to create them in the first place. To disclose the spatial arrangement, nature and magnitude of magnetic moments involved in a long-range magnetic order, neutron diffraction is still the method of choice. However, the relatively weak interaction...
The main goal of the project “Next generation asymmetric horizontal SANS magnet for quantum phenomena in nanostructures and correlated electron systems” is the development of a high performance compensated asymmetric horizontal magnet optimized for small angle neutron scattering (SANS), reflectometry and the resonance spin echo technique MIEZE [1] (Modulation of IntEnsity with Zero Effort)....
Purely organic magnets with -electron spins have essentially negligibly small spin-orbit couplings and are attractive materials because they are archetypical Heisenberg spin systems in which the quantum fluctuations play an important role. The spin size and the connectivity of the network is the key factor of the novel magnetic states arising from quantum fluctuation. Among the representative...
Recently, several technological breakthroughs have confirmed the practical feasibility of superconducting solenoid magnets generating more than 30 T, based on a large traditional low-temperature superconducting (SBT) magnet, in which an insert based on high temperature superconductors (HTS) is introduced. In addition to a very significant reduction in electrical energy consumption, they also...
The Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses (LNCMI) is a French host facility for experiments in high magnetic fields. LNCMI is a member of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL) with the Hochfeld-Magnetlabor in Dresden (HLD) and the High Field Magnet Laboratory in Nijmegen (HFML). The Toulouse facility is dedicated to the generation of pulsed magnetic fields. The...
Because of the energy scales of moderated neutrons, their penetrating power for metals, and their large cross-section for magnetic materials, neutron scattering will always couple well with applied magnetic field sample environments and measurements. Magnetic fields are used in neutron scattering measurements to probe systems across complicated phase diagrams as well as to directly tune the...
From its laboratory scale beginnings, 2G High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) coated conductor (CC) tapes have evolved to readily available products, enabling a growing range of HTS applications. Most prominent among these is the use in high-field magnets: while 2G HTS are the best choice of material to use in high magnetic fields, the technological readiness until recently was not...
HTS materials have gradually become a serious option for high-field user magnets in the last few years. Solenoid magnets including HTS inserts and operating above the 23 T limit are routinely used in a few facilities for NMR experiments among others. Standalone HTS magnets with lower operating fields but featuring high availability have also become commercially available, especially using 1st...
