A Brief History of the Megagauss Conferences 1965-2006
Megagauss-XI is the latest in the international series of Megagauss Conferences that began at Frascati in Italy in 1965 when, under the auspices of Fritz Herlach and Heinz Knoepfel, the main theme was the explosive-driven generation of ultrahigh magnetic fields. Although highly successful, the Frascati Confernce, later known as Megagauss-I, was not followed up for some fourteen years, probably due to the secrecy of the topic and conditions prevailing during the cold war era not allowing Russian scientists to travel abroad and present their work. However, in the late 1970s, and on the initiative of Peter Turchi, a breakthrough in the cold war barrier became possible. This enabled the second Megagauss Conference to take place in Washington in 1979, when the short-forms titles MG-I and MG-II were introduced. The main themes of the Conference remained unchanged, but Russian colleagues were now able to attend and present work undertaken mostly at VNIIEF. The 1983 Conference, MG-III, was organised by Vladimir Titov and Gennady Shvetsov at Novosibirsk in the USSR and began a run of Conferences in which the venue traditionally alternated between Russia (USSR) and the USA. During this time the scientific base was widened, and in addition to describing the generation of magnetic flux densities in excess of 10 MG, papers were presented on the production of very large electrical power by the use of high-current opening switches and transformers in the conditioning of current pulses. Helical generators developed at LANL and the Air Force Weapons Laboratory and with an output of 10 MJ were also described, together with the first results obtained at ISSP-Japan using electromagnetic flux compression.
In 1986 Max Fowler organised MG-IV at Santa Fe on behalf of LANL, when many papers were devoted to MCGs (FCGs) and their use as sources of pulsed power in large-scale experimentation. Titov and Shvetsov collaborated again in presenting MG-V at Novosibirsk in 1989, when LANL described the design for a 16 MA plasma flow switch experiment. The most powerful FCG, the disc generator, also made an appearance here, with a unit produced at VNIIEF and having an output of 100MJ/ 10 TW being detailed. The traditional themes were maintained at MG-VI in 1992, when Bill Cowan was responsible for a Conference at Albuquerque that was notable for the considerable input from Russian colleagues.
The 1996 MG-VII Conference was organised by Vladimir Chernyshev. It began in the closed Russian city of Sarov, and continued aboard a boat travelling from Nizhni Novgorod to Moscow. In addition to thermonuclear target compression due to rapidly growing magnetic fields, the MAGO project, considerable interest was evident in the description of joint work by colleagues from the USA, Russia, Japan and Australia in the ‘Dirac’ experiments conducted at Los Alamos and using VNIIEF magnetic field generators. In 1998, the MG-VIII Conference was held at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Florida under the chairmanship of Hans Schneider-Muntau and naturally produced an increased number of contributions in the area of non-destructive pulsed magnets capable of operation up to 80 T. Descriptions were also given of both the continuation of the increasingly complex Dirac experiments and the similar series of ‘Kapitza’ experiments performed at VNIIEF.
In 2002, the first Conference of the new millennium returned to Russia, where Victor Selemir organised MG-IX on board a boat travelling from Moscow to St Perersburg. In addition to the traditional topics, emphasis was given to developments in high energy density and megagauss physics. Considerable interest in the same areas was again evident at 2004, when a break with tradition saw the Conference appear again in Europe after an absence of almost forty years. Delegates from thirteen countries attended MG-X organised in Berlin by Michael von Ortenberg, where, in addition to well-established topics relating to MCGs (FCGs) and electromagnetically-driven implosions, a number of papers dealt with solid state physics under ultrahigh magnetic field conditions.
Following the decision made by the International Steering Committee in Berlin, the MG-XI Conference will be in London in 2006………
Ivor Smith and Bucur Novac |
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