ARMS: A Successful European Program for an 80 T User Magnet

ARMS is the acronym for Advanced Research Magnet Systems, a project under the European Union´s 5th Framework Research Infrastructures program (HPRI-CT-1999-50007). Eight partners throughout Europe cooperated in ARMS, which was coordinated by the University of Oxford, UK. The objective of the project was to build an 80 T user magnet to be installed at LNCMP, Toulouse, France. The approach chosen was the coil-ex/coil-in method, whereby a large outer coil was energized by LNCMP´s unique, 14 MJ capacitor bank. The inner coil was energized by a fast, 100 kJ bank at the peak of the outer coil´s field. In this paper the evolution of the coils, the conductors and other materials is outlined as is the testing and ultimate, successful use in physics experiments up to 76 T. A view of the future direction of high pulsed fields in Europe, post-ARMS, will also be given