Abstract
The emergence of a new era reaching beyond current state-of-the-art ultrashort and ultraintense laser technology has been enabled by the approval of around € 850 million worth of structural funds in 2011–2012 by the European Commission for the installation of Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI). The ELI project consists of three pillars being built in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. This challenging proposal is based on recent technical progress allowing ultraintense laser fields in which intensities will soon be reaching as high as I0 ∼ 1023 W cm−2. This tremendous technological advance has been brought about by the invention of chirped pulse amplification by Mourou and Strickland. Romania is hosting the ELI for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) pillar in Măgurele near Bucharest. The new facility, currently under construction, is intended to serve the broad national, European, and international scientific community. Its mission covers scientific research at the frontier of knowledge involving two domains. The first is laser-driven experiments related to NP, strong-field quantum electrodynamics, and associated vacuum effects. The second research domain is based on the establishment of a Compton-backscattering-based, high-brilliance, and intense γ beam with Eγ ≲ 19.5 MeV, which represents a merger between laser and accelerator technology. This system will allow the investigation of the nuclear structure of selected isotopes and nuclear reactions of relevance, for example, to astrophysics with hitherto unprecedented resolution and accuracy. In addition to fundamental themes, a large number of applications with significant societal impact will be developed. The implementation of the project started in January 2013 and is spearheaded by the ELI-NP/Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH). Experiments will begin in early 2020.
Highlights
The era of modern-day high-power laser systems was instigated by the groundbreaking technological breakthrough of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) developed in 1986 by Strickland and Mourou,1 who were honored with the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work
At the Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELINP) laboratory, facilities that are capable of supplying the highest focused laser intensity I0 are currently being implemented, characterized by light pulses in the petawatt (PW) regime lasting for tens of femtoseconds
With the unique possibilities provided by the Variable-Energy Gamma Ray (VEGA) system at ELI for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP), nuclear theory will have the opportunity to be informed by high-resolution data stemming from photon-induced excitations and reactions
Summary
The era of modern-day high-power laser systems was instigated by the groundbreaking technological breakthrough of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) developed in 1986 by Strickland and Mourou, who were honored with the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. At the Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELINP) laboratory, facilities that are capable of supplying the highest focused laser intensity I0 are currently being implemented, characterized by light pulses in the petawatt (PW) regime lasting for tens of femtoseconds Exploiting these highest human-made intensities, particles and γ photons will be produced that are characterized by hitherto unreachable quality parameters with regard to, for example, coherence, brilliance, and spectral features relating to the energy and time distributions of the induced radiations.. Exploiting these highest human-made intensities, particles and γ photons will be produced that are characterized by hitherto unreachable quality parameters with regard to, for example, coherence, brilliance, and spectral features relating to the energy and time distributions of the induced radiations.2–6 Such intense beams are relevant to nuclear physics, allowing the exploration of new regimes, extending research based on traditional accelerator technology. Some selected inaugural commissioning campaigns and newly developed instrumentation are discussed
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