Over the last 5 days, we have for the first time successfully operated our 5-T high-temperature superconducting magnet on our QUOKKA small-angle scattering instrument. Construction of the magnet was a joint project between ANSTO and the New Zealand company HTS-110.
The experiment, devised to study skyrmion lattice dynamics (by a team led by Taku Sato from Tohoku University, in Japan), required an excellent control of a low magnetic field (up to 500 Oe) parallel to the neutron beam, with temperature finely controlled around 40K and with an applied high voltage (up to 10kV).
The HTS-100 magnet allows excellent control of low magnetic fields, since it is very linear at low currents and can be mounted with the field parallel or perpendicular to the incoming neutron beam.
Thanks to the wide warm bore, it can accommodate a range of cryostats. In this specific case a cryocooler equipped with a high-voltage feed-through allowed the experiment under vacuum at the requested high voltage and low temperature.
The HTS-100 magnet is a flexible piece of equipment to be used for complex experiments requiring the combination of multiple parameters at fields up to 5T.