Construction of the most powerful laser in the world began in Romania

On June 14, 2013, the construction of the Extreme Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) research center began in Magurele near Bucharest, which should be operational in 2017. This is one of the three centers of the European infrastructure megaproject ELI (Extreme Light Infrastructure) , within the framework of which laser installations will be built at the maximum achievable power level.

Other parts of the project ELI-Beamlines and ELI-Attosecond will be built, respectively, in the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The main scientific instrument in the Romanian ELI-NP center will be a laser installation of two Apollon-type lasers of 10 petawatts each, on titanium-sapphire crystals. Due to the use of the chirped pulse amplification method (CPA, Chirped pulse amplifi cation), the installation should show the laser pulse intensity up to 10 ²⁴ W / cm ² and the electric field up to 10 ¹⁵ V / m. The laser beam is focused on a spot with a diameter of several wavelengths. Ultra-high peak power is achieved due to the concentration of relatively small energy (several kilojoules) in ultrashort time intervals (about 15 femtoseconds).
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Work in ultrashort time intervals opens up fundamentally new opportunities for science. For example, high-brightness X-ray beams at such time intervals will allow to obtain four-dimensional images with subatomic resolution, i.e. Record the dynamic changes in the microscopic structure of a substance with a picometer resolution in space and attosecond resolution in time ( source ).



The Romanian facility will be used in experiments on nuclear physics, since it can operate as a source of hard photons and high-energy charged particles with previously unattainable characteristics. Within the framework of the ELI infrastructure, experiments will be organized in new areas of science - relativistic optics and relativistic microelectronics. Lasers help explore the fundamental effects of nonlinear quantum electrodynamics and the general theory of relativity.

For more information about experiments in nuclear physics at the ELI-NP facility, see the brochure prepared by the ELI-NP working group, as well as a presentation by A.M. Sergeev, starting on p. 38.

The cost of the research center ELI-NP is 356.2 million euros, of which 83% is financed by the European Union, and 17% by Romania. In general, the ELI project unites more than 40 research teams from 13 countries of the European Union and Russia.