  Magnetic materials, both hard and soft, are used extensively in several
components of particle accelerators. Magnetically soft iron-nickel alloys are
used as shields for the vacuum chambers of accelerator injection and extraction
septa; Fe-based material is widely employed for cores of accelerator and
experiment magnets; soft spinel ferrites are used in collimators to damp
trapped modes; innovative materials such as amorphous or nanocrystalline core
materials are envisaged in transformers for high-frequency polyphase resonant
convertors for application to the International Linear Collider (ILC). In the
field of fusion, for induction cores of the linac of heavy-ion inertial fusion
energy accelerators, based on induction accelerators requiring some 107 kg of
magnetic materials, nanocrystalline materials would show the best performance
in terms of core losses for magnetization rates as high as 105 T/s to 107 T/s.
After a review of the magnetic properties of materials and the different types
of magnetic behaviour, this paper deals with metallurgical aspects of
magnetism. The influence of the metallurgy and metalworking processes of
materials on their microstructure and magnetic properties is studied for
different categories of soft magnetic materials relevant for accelerator
technology. Their metallurgy is extensively treated. Innovative materials such
as iron powder core materials, amorphous and nanocrystalline materials are also
studied. A section considers the measurement, both destructive and
non-destructive, of magnetic properties. Finally, a section discusses magnetic
lag effects.
