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Romania: the place where the most powerful laser in the world is being put into operation
Extreme-Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP), a scientific research centre where the world’s most powerful laser has been put into operation, has become the most important in Romania.
When it will operate at full capacity, ELI-NP will be the most advanced research infrastructure in the world, focusing on the study of photonuclear physics and its applications in a wide range of fields, from medicine to space missions.
The ELI-NP infrastructure
is located in Măgurele, just
12 km away from the centre of Bucharest, therefore its users will benefit from all the infrastructures and services provided in the metropolitan area. Concentrating 8 research infrastructures of national interest, Măgurele
is the place with the highest scientific visibility in Romania, with five national research and development institutes (Nuclear Physics, Physics
of Lasers, Plasma and Spatial Sciences, Physics of Materials, Optoelectronics, Seismology), a Physics Faculty and two engineering companies (optoelectronics and design of nuclear infrastructures).
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The ELI-NP infrastructure covers an area of approximately 33,000 m2 with high-quality and energy- efficient buildings, mostly allocated to the high-power laser system, the high- intensity gamma system
and the instrumentation for experiments.
From a technical point of view, the research equipment in Măgurele comprises a high- intensity laser system with two 10 PW laser arms capable of reaching intensities as high as 1023 W/cm2 and electric fields of 1015 V/m. It also includes
a very intense bright γ beam, with Eγ up to 19.5 MeV, which is
obtained by incoherent Comton backscattering of photons
from a laser beam onto a
very bright, intense electron beam produced by a classic accelerator.
From a scientific point of view, such technical specifications will allow for experiments in the fields of fundamental physics, nuclear physics and astrophysics, as well as in materials science, nuclear materials management and life sciences.
From a logistic point of view, this is a EUR 300 million project currently employing about 140 researchers, which will certainly be a milestone in global research in the field.