Measurement of minimum quench energy in a superconducting winding using a YAG laser Original Research Article

Laser heating technology has been applied to evaluate the minimum energy to induce quenching in a superconducting winding. After calibration of the actual energy absorbed by the conductor, it was irradiated with YAG laser light while increasing the power step by step. The minimum quench energy (MQE) determined by an average of the absorption energies in and just before quenching was in good agreement with the calculated one. Further, reproducibility within 5% was obtained. It was concluded that the laser heating method is valid to measure MQE of the winding.