Recent news on European laser research......

ELI – Extreme Light Infrastructure

• A European project aiming to create facilities for studying the physical nature of things on the frontiers of science, financed by EU from 2010 to 2020, with structural funds to the tune of some 80% of a total cost of some 850 Mio EUR.

• Spread across 3 different locations in the Czech Republic (ELI-Beams), Hungary (ELI-Attosecond), and Romania (ELI-NP), each accounting for about 1/3 of the investments. They are purportedly specialized in three differing aspects of advanced high power lasers, namely provision of reliable all-purpose beams for users, provision of ultra-short pulses, and investigations into extreme high-energy physics.

• All three facilities are operational, and programmes are ongoing to develop planned facilities to the full. There have been several open user calls for experiments to make use of the advanced research capabilities on offer. 

• The challenge is to upgrade facilities to provide light beams with the required characteristics to further study frontier physical phenomena. A planned facility of the Laboraratory for Laser Energetics at Rochester University, USA, called OPAL  aims to provide two beams of  25 PW. It is based on Optical Parametric Amplification.