High-field Superconducting Magnets: Science and Applied Mathematics

Superconductors are promising options for high-field magnets. Among them, rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) materials, a class of high-temperature superconductors, are the most promising option for such a high-field system, as they offer high current-carrying capacity in high fields and robust mechanical properties against high stresses. Indeed, the MagLab at FSU completed a 32 T level superconducting user magnet facility, thus now developing a 40 T level facility using REBCO insert magnets, while on the R&D side, challenging the highest magnetic field every year as breaking world records via a 'Little Big coil' testbed. However, despite such excellence compared to other superconductor counterparts, we are facing several technical issues for stable and reliable high-field superconducting magnets, even in the design stage. The Applied Superconductivity Center (ASC) of the MagLab at FSU aims to address such issues with detailed conductor modeling and numerical simulations. In this talk, I briefly introduce REBCO-coated conductors for high-field superconducting magnets and the key technical issues, present what lessons we learned from high-field REBCO coil tests in recent years, and discuss how science and applied mathematics are used to address such issues.