First Research Trip to MAIZE

It’s been an exciting two weeks! Jack and Thomas are back from the PUFFIN group’s first experimental trip to the MAIZE facility at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They spent a fortnight working on pulsed-power experiments to study magnetic reconnection in a guide field. Using an externally-powered Helmholtz coil in conjunction with the MAIZE pulsed-power facility, they tested a scaled-down dual exploding wire array load, similar to experiments previously conducted on the MAGPIE pulsed-power facility at Imperial College London. We are very grateful for the support provided by the MAIZE team, and we look forward to getting back to MIT and properly analyzing our results!

Thomas and the MAIZE team installing the load hardware before a shot.

Using MAIZE, we wanted to study how an external magnetic field--produced by a Helmholtz coil--affected magnetic reconnection. Here are two exploding wire arrays installed within the Helmholtz coil, with a B-dot probe off to the left-hand side of the image.

At MAIZE we use some of the most advanced vacuum systems in the world. :)