High field magnet program at Brookhaven National Laboratory

The magnet program at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is focussed on superconducting magnets for particle accelerators. The effort includes magnet production at the laboratory and in industry, magnet R&D, and test facilities for magnets and superconductors. Nearly 2000 magnets-dipoles, quadrupoles, sextupoles and correctors for the arc and insertion regions-were produced for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which is being commissioned. Currently, production of helical dipoles for the polarized proton program at RHIC, insertion region dipoles for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and an insertion magnet system for the Hadron-Elektron-Ring-Analage (HERA) collider at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) is underway. The R&D effort is exploring dipoles with fields above 10 T for use in post-LHC colliders. Brittle superconductors-Nb/sub 3/Sn or HTS-are being used for these magnets. The superconductor test facility measures short-sample currents and other characteristics of samples up to 1 m in length, in liquid and superfluid helium, in dipole fields above 7.5 T at 4.2 K (8.7 T at 1.9 K), and up to 25 kA. This facility performed the short-sample testing of the productions runs of NbTi wires and cables for the HERA-p and RHIC magnets, and is preparing for similar work for the LHC project. The staff also tests samples of superconductors from government laboratories and industry around the world.