Oct 23, 2024
The STAARQ team has successfully commissioned the STAARQ test station, including the 1.9K cryogenic process. The team demonstrated at the same time exceptional performance from the MQYYM quadrupole magnet manufactured by IRFU for the HL-LHC project.
Ten years of intense collaborative work between the DACM and DIS teams at IRFU culminated during the summer of 2024 in the successful testing of the MQYYM mock-up superconducting magnet in the new quadrupole accelerator magnet test station, STAARQ.
Apr 03, 2024
The Iseult project has unveiled the first human brain images obtained using a 11.7 teslas MRI, after almost 25 years of work. This world first was made possible thanks to the commitment of over 200 CEA employees, who believed in this extremely ambitious project from the very beginning
In the early 2000s, a Franco-German project was launched to develop ultra-high resolution imaging. One of the objectives was to build an imager whose key component was a superconducting magnet reaching 11.
Mar 10, 2023
The MADMAX project, which was launched in November 2016, is led by the Max Planck Institut für Physik in collaboration with several European institutes. The goal of the project is the discovery of axions with a mass of about 100 µeV, potential candidates for dark matter. To detect these axions, it is necessary to develop a specific detector consisting of an electromagnetic signal amplifier and a magnet proportional to the size of the amplifier and delivering a strong magnetic field.
Sep 14, 2022
The LEAS (Laboratoire d'Etude des Aimants Supraconducteurs) at CEA Paris-Saclay has entirely manufactured a coil based on the superconductor Nb3Sn (niobium-tin), of the SMC (Short Model Coil) type. This coil is a short model intended to be assembled in a magnet structure, then to be tested at cryogenic temperature. Nb3Sn is being considered for future accelerator magnets generating magnetic fields up to 16 T (teslas), which would double the performance of the best magnets currently in use.
Mar 26, 2021
The large aperture (90 mm) quadrupole superconducting electromagnet for the CERN HL-LHC project, manufactured and tested at 4.2 K by the IRFU teams, reached its nominal gradient of 120 T/m (defined for 1.9 K) the 5th of March, 2021. These very good results validate the design and manufacturing process proposed by the IRFU engineers and were the subject of a technology transfer to the industrial companies working on the European project QuaCo (QUAdrupoleCOrector).
Dec 18, 2020
The main objective of the KATRIN experiment is the measurement of the mass of the three neutrinos of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. But the analysis of the beta decay spectrum of tritium also allows to search for the trace of a hypothetical fourth neutrino, called sterile neutrino. The collaboration has just published its first analysis in Physical Review Letters (see article) based on four weeks of data acquired in 2019.
Nov 19, 2019
After winding, the seventh and last coil of FRESCA2 left Saclay in June 2019 in its reaction mould, putting an end to Irfu's activity on this project, which began in 2009 in collaboration with CERN. This type 3-4 coil is a spare coil, which, after reaction, instrumentation and impregnation at CERN, will join its type 1-2 sister on CERN shelves.
In a first step, the FRESCA2 dipole, a 100 mm Nb3Sn dipole magnet tested at CERN, had reached a field of 13.3 T (see highlight of 20/09/2017).
Sep 25, 2018
The first test campaign of the NOUGAT high field magnet was successfully carried out at the CNRS LNCMI Grenoble. This laboratory wishes to build a 30-tesla magnet by assembling a resistive magnet from LNCMI and a superconducting magnet designed by IRFU based on high temperature superconducting materials. To date, the field reached 20.8 T, including 12.8 T generated by the superconducting magnet alone.
Sep 20, 2017
Designed to equip the FRESCA2 testing station at CERN (Facility for the Reception of Superconducting Cables), the niobium-tin dipole magnet of the same name has reached a record 13.3 T magnetic field for a 100 mm aperture. It was designed and developed as part of a collaboration between IRFU and CERN. The objective is a magnetic-field homogeneity 1% over a length of 540 mm.
Jul 27, 2017
A dipole magnet, built by a European collaboration involving IRFU from high-temperature superconductors, has produced a 4.5 tesla magnetic field, which is one tesla higher than previous prototypes. Once inserted in a Niobium-Tin dipole magnet, the whole system will produce an 18 T field.
