wires and magnets will be manifold in fusion science, in advanced MRI, in materials science and pharmacology, and in accelerator-based fundamental physics. It is hard to see how progress can be made in some of these areas without major efforts in the development of high-temperature superconducting wires and magnets. A leading set of recommendations from this report will be that multiple agencies should collaborate to invest in next-generation superconducting wires and magnets, because a collective effort advances all their programs. A concerted effort from multiple agencies will bring both scientific and commercial advantages for the United States. Without higher magnetic fields, we will not have compact fusion devices, next-generation MRI, high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), or the muon collider.¹

NMR is one of the key experimental tools for chemistry, materials science, biology, and medicine, generating information about atoms and molecules which cannot be obtained by other means. Low-field instruments are ubiquitous but gains in precision rise rapidly with increasing field frequency (particularly beyond the natural proton frequency of 1 GHz). The United States has fallen far behind its international competitors in making such instruments available to the science community. Very few are available in the United States compared to Europe, as is discussed in Chapter 8 (Figure 8-1). This report recommends significant investment in high-field commercially manufactured instruments, as well as mechanisms for access to facilities that align with those used at other national science facilities: competitively peer-reviewed proposals and no-cost at point of access. If nothing is done, capability and expertise will be further lost in the United States.

The United States has led the world in access to the highest (steady and long-pulsed) fields for science at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL), which supports a large user community that continues to generate ground-breaking science. Over the past decade, provision of similar facilities in Europe, China, and Japan has grown, often following the U.S. model, with headline capabilities that now match that of the United States. Some benchmarks largest steady field and highest pulsed field have not shifted in a decade, despite not being limited by technology. While international competitors have caught up, the United States is not yet surpassed, but there are opportunities to produce new magnets based on existing technologies that will regain its lead, and there are strong science cases for pushing the boundaries.

This report recommends the construction of several new world-leading magnets, particularly those with solenoid designs, such as a 120 Tesla (T) pulsed magnet; a 60 T steady field magnet; an all-superconducting 40 T NMR system; a 28 T magnet for small animal imaging; a 14+ T large bore magnet that will serve

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¹ Nature Editorial, 2024, “US Particle Physicists Want to Build a Muon Collider—Europe Should Pitch In,” Nature 625:423, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00105-9.

as a test bed for key design methods and technology with potential application to MRI, fusion science, and particle physics. The committee proposes these fields be selected by funding agencies to enable the United States to become competitive, regain leadership, and open new areas of scientific discovery with facilities accessible to research communities.

Training the next generation of scientists, engineers, and technical staff is critical to long-term success. Continuing a regular schedule of new solenoid magnets helps develop and attract talent in key relevant engineering disciplines. Expanding the availability of NMR instruments with research support in the university system is necessary to attract talent that would otherwise be diverted to other disciplines.

The United States has an unparalleled system of national facilities, including NHMFL, but also light sources from infrared to hard X ray, both pulsed and continuous, and neutron sources both reactor-based and spallation sources. These facilities support tens of thousands of users from academia and industry. Providing high magnetic fields on the light- and neutron-source beamlines with necessary instrumentation development for measurements should be a priority. Again, the United States has been slow in these developments in comparison to its competitors in Europe and Asia.

This report also addresses issues in the supply chain. Liquid helium is a critical, nonrenewable resource that has limited supply, and this supply chain has had massive worldwide disruptions in the past two decades that have affected the communities addressed in this report. The scientific community, and especially the smaller consumers such as universities with just one or a few superconducting systems, are most sensitive to cost and marketplace disruptions that have occurred and will continue to occur. Research users often do not have funds to deal with sudden price changes, which anecdotally has resulted in loss of research, and perhaps more importantly, loss of a talent stream from the undergraduate to the professor level. There are other concerns. The suppliers of high-field NMR instrumentation are limited and are not U.S. based. High-temperature superconductor wire technologies started in the United States but are now largely foreign. And some specific material technology for high-strength, high-conductance wire is sole sourced to a Russian company. The committee’s opinion is broadly that a public–private investment in a set of related areas around solenoid magnet and wire technology could enable the development of industry activity that will coalesce once “proof of principle” is determined.

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