The ELI (Extreme Light Infrastructure) Beamlines facility will be formally opened on October 19, 2015, in the Prague International Laser Research Centre in Dolní Břežany. The event will be attended by representatives of the international scientific community, along with representatives of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the ELI Delivery Consortium, and key partners from the Czech Government.
ELI Beamlines houses lasers with intensities 10 times higher than those currently achievable. Conceived as a research campus within a landscaped setting, ELI Beamlines consists of four separate buildings, offices, laboratories, a multi-functional space with lecture theatre and a café, and a concrete box comparable in size to a soccer field, housing the laser hall itself.
The ELI Beamlines facility will develop a high-energy, high repetition-rate laser providing pulses from four laser systems (L1-L4). To meet the requirement for high repetition rates--three (L1-3) of these lasers will employ diode-pumped solid state lasers (DPSSL) for driving broadband amplifiers. The fourth (L4), multi-kilojoule laser will use a newly developed flash lamp technology with an actively cooled gain medium.
Designed by Bogle Architects (London, England), ELI Beamlines will conduct experiments involving ion and electron accelerations, a relatively new field of physics that is rapidly evolving thanks to the continuing development of high power laser systems enabling investigation of the interaction of ultra-high laser intensities (> 10^19 W/cm2) with matter. In the future, laser accelerated electrons will be used to build compact electronpositron colliders or a full-optical X-ray free electron laser (XFEL), while laser accelerated ions will be fundamental in the development of full-optical hadrontherapy facilities for cancer treatment.
Related article:The Extreme Light Infrastructure: The ELI aims to break down the vacuum by Jeff Hecht, contributing editor
Source: ELI Beamlines