LARGE PIONNERING SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT PROJECT ELI and particle beamlines and ELI Beamlines( Czech Republic) for high-peak and high-average power laser pulses and secondary sources; and the Nuclear Physics( NP) facility( Romania) for combining ultra-intense lasers with brilliant gamma beams. The complementarity of ELI’ s facilities support a particularly wide range of science and joint technology development. ELI has also strategically invested in critical building coating facilities for the development of high-damagethreshold optical components required for petawatt-class systems. The ELIAS Coating Laboratory is among the most advanced worldwide, producing large-aperture, high-damage-threshold optical coatings up to 1.2 m in diameter for petawatt-class systems. ELI’ s User Programme offers a single access point to ELI’ s capabilities. Access is competitive, international, free of charge and based on scientific excellence. Since launching the ELI User Programme in mid 2022, ELI has opened two Calls per year. With each Call more instruments and equipment become available to the user community, and the technical capability of the equipment continues to ramp up to full scope. ELI has received a total of 733 proposals from 41 countries, involving over 1,800 individual applicants. Of these, 467 have been awarded beamtime, nearly 70 % of experiments have been completed 1. In pursuit of its broader objectives to advance societal progress through cutting-edge research and innovation, ELI has also introduced mission-oriented access calls targeting strategic challenges such as Inertial Fusion Energy( IFE) to support research on IFE concepts and to promote the development of laser-powered IFE technologies. A pilot call attracted 76 institutions from 18 countries. Additional calls are planned.
Figure 1. Layout of the main laboratory building of ELI ALPS with the driver lasers and their target areas.
ELI Attosecond Light Pulse Source( ELI ALPS)
The ELI ALPS Facility showcases a unique combination of state-ofthe-art ultrashort pulsed lasers, secondary particle and radiation beamlines and specialised end-stations for studying dynamic processes in atoms, molecules, condensed matter and plasma on the femtosecond and attosecond timescales. Installation of research technology started in 2017, following completion of the specially engineered buildings, including 4,000 m 2 cleanroom facilities with vibration isolation, thermal and humidity control and radiation protection. Following the end of construction and commissioning of the research instrumentation ELI ALPS’ s instruments were made available to the external user community through ELI’ s joint open calls for user experiments. To support a wide variety of laser-based fundamental and applied research in physical, biological, chemical, medical and materials
1
ELI User Portal: https:// up. eli-laser. eu /
68 www. photoniques. com I Photoniques 137