Extreme Light Infrastructure


The Extreme Light Infrastructure is a Research Infrastructure of pan-European interest and part of the European ESFRI Roadmap. ELI hosts the most intense beamline system worldwide, develop new interdisciplinary research opportunities with light from these lasers and secondary radiation derived from them, and make them available to the international scientific user community. ELI aims to be the world's biggest and first international user facility in beamline and laser research.
The facility will be based on four sites. Three of them are presently being implemented in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, with an investment volume exceeding €850 million, mostly stemming from the European Regional Development Fund. In Dolní Břežany, near Prague, Czech Republic, the ELI Beamlines facility is developing short-pulse secondary sources of radiation and particles. The ELI Attosecond Light Pulse Source in Szeged, Hungary is establishing a unique facility which provides light sources within an extremely broad frequency range in the form of ultrashort pulses with high repetition rate. In Măgurele, Romania, the ELI Nuclear Physics facility is focusing on laser-based nuclear physics. The location of ELI's fourth pillar, the highest-intensity pillar, is still to be decided. Its laser power is expected to exceed that of the current ELI pillars by about one order of magnitude.

History

The Extreme Light Infrastructure project started as a bottom-up initiative by the European scientific laser community and the network of large national laser facilities, LASERLAB-EUROPE, in the context of the preparation of the first European ESFRI Roadmap in 2005. From 2007 to 2010 ELI entered into a European-Commission-funded preparatory phase, comprising 40 laboratories from 13 countries. Gérard Mourou, the initiator of the ELI project, was the coordinator of the preparatory phase.
At the meeting of the Steering Committee on October 1, 2009 in Prague, the ELI Preparatory Phase Consortium officially gave the mandate to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania to proceed towards the construction of ELI. On December 10, 2010, at the end of the preparatory phase, the project was fully handed over to the ELI Delivery Consortium, consisting of representatives from the three host countries. ERDF funding of the ELI-Beamlines facility in the Czech Republic was granted by the European Commission on April 20, 2011, followed by ELI-Nuclear Physics in Romania on September 18, 2012. Funding for the ELI-ALPS facility in Hungary was granted in early 2014.
The ELI Delivery Consortium International Association was founded on April 11, 2013 as an international non-profit association under Belgian law. It promotes the sustainable development of ELI as a pan-European research infrastructure, supports the coordinated implementation of the ELI research facilities, and preserves the consistency and complementarity of their scientific missions. It also organises the establishment of an international consortium that will be in charge of the future operation of ELI, preferably in the form of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium. The ELI-DC International Association is open to membership by institutions from all interested countries.

ELI research centres

ELI Beamlines

The main goal at ELI Beamlines is to create the most advanced laser equipment in the world. This will be accomplished and implemented through research projects covering the interaction of light with matter at intensities that are 10 times higher than the values that are currently achievable. With ultra-short laser pulses that last only some femtoseconds and performances of up to 10 PW ELI will bring new techniques and tools for basic research as well as for areas such as medical imaging and diagnostics, radiotherapy, new materials, and X-ray optics.
ELI Beamlines Laser Center is a unique top-class device built for Czech and international scientific research – for users who carry out basic and applied research experiments using four ultra-intensive laser systems, which are gradually put into full operation.
ELI Beamlines is designed as a high-energy and high-repetitive pillar of the European ELI project. The main objective of the project is, in accordance with the ELI White Paper , to create a high-energy beam device that can develop and utilize ultra-short pulses of high energy particles and radiation stemming from relativistic and ultrarelativistic interactions. The ELI Beamlines Center strives to address one of the “major challenges”, namely generating ultrashort pulses of energy particle beams and radiation generated by compact laser plasma accelerators. They are expected to support the ultra-high science science, ie to achieve an ultra-relativistic regime.
More at: www.eli-beams.eu
Building opened in 2015
User experiments started in 2018
ELI Beamlines laser systems
L1 ALLEGRA - TW laser, 100 millijoule, 1 kHz - in operation
L2 AMOS - 100 TW laser, 2 Joule, 50 Hz
L3 HAPLS - 1 PW laser, 30 Joule, 10 Hz - in operation
L4 ATON - 10 PW laser, 2 KJoule - in operation

ELI-ALPS

Located in Szeged, South-east of Hungary the main objective of ELI-ALPS, the attosecond pillar of the Extreme Light Infrastructure, in accordance with the ELI White Paper is 1) to generate X-UV and X-ray femtosecond and attosecond pulses, for temporal investigation at the attosecond scale of electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, plasmas and solids; 2) source developments.
The ELI-ALPS lasers have matchless parameters that enable the generation of unique attosecond pulses and pulsetrain in the VUV and X-ray spectral regions that are not available elsewhere.
ELI-ALPS Laser Technology
ELI-ALPS offers more than just the use of a novel class of state-of-the-art laser systems. The unique combination of the outstanding laser pulses with the pioneering secondary sources technologies will open up new opportunities in experimental research. This places ELI-ALPS as one of the leading lights in ultrafast physical processes as well as a world-class centre for generating outstanding biological, chemical, medical and materials science results.
Key characteristics include:
More at: https://www.eli-alps.hu/
Building opened in 2017
User experiments started in 2018
ELI-ALPS laser systems

Laser SourceCentral WavelengthPulse EnergyPulse DurationRepetition RatePeak PowerAverage Power
HR 11030 nm1 mJ7 fs100 kHz200 GW100 W
HR 21030 nm5 mJ6.7 fs100 kHz1 TW500 W
SYLOS 2900 nm35 mJ7 fs1 kHz5 TW35 W
SYLOS ALIGNMENT850 nm40 mJ12 fs10 Hz3 TW0.4 W
HF PW800 nm34 J17 fs10 Hz2 PW340 W
MIR2.8-4 μm150 μJ40 fs100 kHz3 GW15 W
THz pump1 μm500 mJ500 fs50 Hz1 TW25 W

ELI NP

The ELI NP Research Centre is an under construction facility in Măgurele, Romania, that will host the world's most powerful laser. The laser technology might be used to destroy nuclear waste and provide a new type of cancer radiotherapy called hadrontherapy. The largest scientific project in Romania, ELI-NP will be the only European and international centre for high-level research on ultra-high intensity laser, laser-matter interaction and secondary sources with unparalleled possibilities. ELI-NP is a very complex facility which will host two machines of extreme performances:
The building will be built on seismic shock absorbers and will have two solid bodies – one for lasers and one for the gamma beam, totaling an area of 11,010 m2. In the same building will be integrated a body of laboratories, with an area of 2,396 m2. The body dedicated to the lasers will have eight underground levels, while the other one will have 12 underground levels. The complex dedicated to this project will also have an office building, on an area of almost 970 m2, in which vicinity will be a guest house with about 30 rooms, occupying 642 m2.
The inauguration of works to the infrastructure of this project took place on 14 June 2013. The laser was made in France and tested in Paris and will be brought to Romania.
On March 13, 2019, Măgurele held the public communication of the ELI-NP high-power laser system test results, which was also a demonstration test, confirming the achievement of the power of 10 PW. Achieving the 10 PW at the ELI-NP laser is a milestone for world-class research, Europe owning for the first time through Romania, the world's most powerful laser. The ELI-NP laser thus becomes the most powerful laser system ever made.