below 5.5 degrees Kelvin, or negative 450 degrees
Fahrenheit. That’s about a 520-degree drop, and
it took about two weeks to bring the temperature
down,” said Thomas. “The whole process has been
nerve-racking. Once the magnet was installed, you
would think we would breathe a sigh of relief, but
we were still holding our breath as we watched
the temperature drop. We charted the temperature
every four hours or so. The critical temperature
point is 6.4 Kelvin. Once we get there, the magnet
fields become superconductors. We breathed a big
sigh of relief once the temperature was right, and at
that point, we energized the thing.”
On April 15, the Magnet Lab energized the
magnetic fields for the first time. By the end of
the following day they had successfully charged
the magnet to their primary target of a 2.0 Tesla
field strength. Over the next few months, the
team will slowly raise the field to its maximum of
around 4.0 Tesla, marking the finale of a five-year
development, design and installation process that,
despite his no-stress-mantra, left Thomas with a
few new grey hairs.
The Auburn University team of scientists will
spend the next several months better familiarizing
themselves with the Magnetized Dusty Plasma
Experiment Laboratory and conducting
experiments that have never been done before in
the area of dusty plasma. Plasma, which is one of
the four states of matter and the most abundant
in the visible universe, is what makes up a bolt of
lightning, most stars, and it is a primary component
of the sun. A plasma that contains electrically
charged micro-particles, or dust grains, can form
a “dusty” plasma. The rings of Saturn and the long
tails of comets are examples of dusty plasmas
in nature.
“Some of the things we hope to discover are how
to control the growth, formation, and trapping
of dust. If we can control the behavior of dust,
then we can see how to use dust as a tool. Only
a few experiments in the world have looked at
the charged, magnetized particles, and that is
the primary mission of the device,” said Thomas.
“The other part of the device’s mission is to study
the fundamental physics of strongly magnetized
plasmas. Because of the magnetic field strength
that we can produce, and because that magnetic
field can be produced in steady state, meaning
the magnetic field strength remains constant, we
can perform long-duration experiments at high
magnetic fields, which is something fairly unique in
the plasma physics community.”
The process of making the Magnetized Dusty
Plasma Experiment a reality began with a
series of conversations between Thomas and
his collaborators at the University of Iowa, the
University of California-San Diego, and the
National Science Foundation.
the idea for this unique American facility where
we could actually study highly magnetized dusty
plasma came up. After a series of conversations
over the course of two years, we were in a position
to apply for a National Science Foundation Major
Research Instrumentation award,” said Thomas.
Thomas secured an MRI award from NSF in 2011.
The total amount awarded was $2.1 million, which
included a 30-percent cost-sharing by Auburn
University. The funding represented one of the
largest MRI projects ever awarded to Auburn
University. For the next two-and-a-half years, the
award allowed the group at Auburn to design the
new laboratory facility and, in collaboration with
private industry and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology Plasma Science and Fusion Center,
design and construct the superconducting magnet.
“We have worked very
hard to establish a team
of collaborators. We have
potential partners from
Europe, from Asia, and we
are continuing to build our
partnerships with our U.S.
collaborators. It is our hope
that by the end of 2014 to
early 2015, we will provide
an opportunity for the first of
those collaborators to come
to Auburn and begin doing
experiments here,”
said Thomas.
“This device, in its conception, in its design, is really
unique. I am fairly comfortable saying there is no
other experimental configuration quite like this - to
explore the physics that we are trying to do - in the
world. We are quite proud of the fact that we think
we have built something that is a really unique
research instrument for the entire plasma physics
research community.”
The new Magnet Lab is one component of the
Plasma Sciences Laboratory, which is run jointly by
Thomas and Uwe Konopka, an associate professor
of physics. For more information on Thomas, visit
his website at this address: http://www.auburn.edu/
cosam/faculty/physics/thomas/index.htm. For more
information on the Plasma Sciences Laboratory at
Auburn, go to this web address: http://psl.physics.
auburn.edu/.
“We were at a meeting, and we were talking about
new types of plasma physics experiments and
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