High-performance magnets have been vital to many DOE-supported science priorities for decades, so naturally LBNL had developed multiple areas of magnetics expertise. Now they are together under the aegis of the Berkeley Center for Magnet Technology (BCMT), an ATAP-led joint venture with Engineering Division.
BMCT has expertise in all kinds of magnets — permanent magnet arrays, normal-conducting and superconducting electromagnets, pulsed specialty magnets, and hybrid designs. It offers an unparalleled degree of “mesoscale to magnet” capabilities that are vertically integrated from the underlying materials science up through magnet design, fabrication, and testing.
Our goal is to serve as the go-to laboratory for state-of-the-art magnetic systems throughout the DOE Office of Science. Organizations that benefit from the BCMT prominently include not only the DOE’s Office of High Energy Physics, but also the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, whose research portfolio depends critically upon advanced magnets for storage-ring and free-electron-laser light sources. A wide variety of other present and potential customers will benefit from this centrally coordinated pool of expertise.
To Learn More…
The July 2015 special issue of the Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division newsletter gives an overview of BCMT circa its launch.
Then-BCMT head Stephen Gourlay was among the authors of the recent survey paper, “Superconducting magnets for particle accelerators,” IEEE Trans. Nuc. Sci. 63, 2 (April 2016), pp. 751-776, which deals with one of BCMT’s important areas of endeavor.
