A - CEA - CNRS - ENS - ENS lyon - joint dynamo experiment, funded by ANR

The VKS Collaboration

An experimental dynamo using liquid sodium

The VKS experiment (Von Karman Sodium) has been designed to achieve magnetic field self generation in a conducting liquid. It is a joint experiment run at CEA Cadarache as a collaboration between physicists based at CEA Saclay - SPEC, ENS Paris - LPS and ENS Lyon - LP. The flow is a von-Karman type flow, where liquid sodium is stirred by the counter-rotation of two bladded disk in a cylinder. A first version of the experiment was run between 1999 and 2002 (VKS1) and was significantly improved ( VKS2 runs from 2005). Self generation of magnetic field in a turbulent flow was first achieved in September 2006.

Scientific as well as broad-audience publications can be downloaded from this web-site.
Data from 2009 on are made avalaible to the scientific community (refer to the data section).
Photos of the experimental device can be viewed in the media section.

Académie des Sciences award

François Daviaud, Stephan Fauve and Jean-François Pinton received "Grand Prix du CEA"for setting-up the VKS experiment