pulsed-power accelerator tagged posts

Sandia National Laboratories technician Eric Breden installs a transmission cable on the silver disk that is the new pulsed-power machine’s central powerflow assembly. Credit: Randy Montoya

A new Sandia National Laboratories accelerator called Thor is expected to be 40X more efficient than Sandia’s Z machine, the world’s largest and most powerful pulsed-power accelerator, in generating pressures to study materials under extreme conditions.”Thor’s magnetic field will reach about one million atmospheres, about the pressures at Earth’s core,” said David Reisman, lead theoretical physicist.

Though unable to match Z’s 5 million atmospheres, the completed Thor will be smaller—2,000 rather than 10,000 square feet—and will be considerably more efficient due to design improvements that use hundre...