Engineering pulsed magnetic fields: Designing and building a pulsed magnetic field circuit for a faraday rotation experimental setup

Faraday rotation (FR) is a useful optical technique to investigate magnetic properties of solid and liquid samples. FR refers to magnetically induced birefringence whereby a substance rotates the polarization of a light beam passing through it, in the presence of a magnetic field. While FR experiments commonly employ either a DC or an AC magnetic field, obstacles exist for some samples with these setups. Overcoming some of these difficulties, a pulsed field setup has been designed and tested that allows for investigating magnetic response to short intense fields on the order of 1.5 Tesla and lasting 30 to 50 milliseconds.