* The HLD project has been jointly submitted for funding by the Forschungszentrum Rossendorf FZR, the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, and the Institute for Solid State Physics of the Dresden Technical University in 1998. It is jointly funded for installation by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany and the Saxon Ministry of Science and the Fine Arts.
]]>Further, the manifold magnetic effects in nature and in particular the magnetic properties of matter are a rich source for technological innovations. Historically, there is an immense number of inventions like the compass, electro motor, generator, relay, magnetic brake, levitating train, nuclear magnetic resonance tomograph, hard disk drive, magneto-electric random access memory. Nowadays, in transport, energy production, medicine, communication, data storage, and other areas of daily live, magnetic systems, components, and properties are used in a large variety.
In the last decades, the application of high magnetic fields became a powerful research tool. Especially in solid state physics important discoveries like the integer quantum Hall and fractional quantum Hall effect, both honoured with the Physics Nobel Prize, are based on experiments in very high magnetic fields.
In order to establish a large modern user facility with unique experimental possibilities for science in high magnetic fields and in order to provide an easy access for the high field community in Europe, the Dresden High Field Project has been created. Since 2003 this facility is under construction. In this paper, we give a snapshot on the status and some recent achievements in the course of the project. The Dresden High Field Laboratory for nondestructive pulsed magnetic fields up to 100 T will open its doors as a user facility in January 2007.
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