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