Solid state experiments in megagauss fields

This paper presents a brief review on recent experiments of solid state physics in very high magnetic fields up to 550 T produced by electromagnetic flux compression and the single-turn coil technique, focusing on magneto-optical spectroscopy in semiconductors, low-dimensional magnetic systems and superconductors. The topics to be discussed include infrared cyclotron resonance in semiconductors, polaron effects in II-VI compounds and the spin splitting in 2D and 3D electron systems of GaAs, the magnetization and the ESR in a spin-Peierls system, CuGeO3, and the high frequency conductivity in high-TC superconductors, BiSrCaCuO and YBaCuO. (orig.)