Extreme Light Infrastructure
The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) is a proposed high energy laser research facility of the European Union. The facility will host an exawatt-class (1018 watt) laser, that will enable scientists, through relativistic compression, to produce intensities of 1023 W/cm2.
The project is currently in its preparatory phase (ELI-PP). The aim of the preparatory phase is to bring the project to the level of legal, organizational and financial maturity required to implement the project.
The competitors for hosting the facility were: the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Romania and United Kingdom.
At the meeting of the Steering Committee on October 1st 2009 in Prague, the ELI Preparatory Phase Consortium officially gave a mandate to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania to proceed towards the construction of ELI. Fully supported by the European Commission, the decision to implement ELI as a distributed infrastructure will lead to the construction by end 2015 of three facilities dedicated to three of the scientific pillars of the project (attosecond science in Hungary, beamline generation of secondary sources in the Czech Republic and laser-driven nuclear physics in Romania). The location of the fourth one – the ultra-high intensity pillar – will be decided in 2012.