Diffusion of a megagauss field into a metal

Abstract

The plane one-dimensional problem of the diffusion of a megagauss field into a metal wall is solved taking into account heat conduction and radiation transfer. At the interface, the magnetic field is assumed to be constant, and in this sense, the problem is close to the self-similar diffusion problem with parameters dependent on the self-similar variable x/\(\sqrt t \). It is shown that if heat conduction and radiation transfer are taken into account, in megagauss fields (in the examined formulation for fields B > 1.6 MGs) there is no loss of conductivity of the material evaporated by the magnetic field because of the formation of a plasma layer at the interface with a temperature in the electronvolt range. However, the role of the plasma layer in the structure of the skin layer remains insignificant up to fields B ≈ 10 MGs.