| Petawatt laser facilities in Romania: CETAL and ELI-NP N. Banu, L.M. Munteanu, A. Scurtu, D. Ursescu, R. Dabu, M. Toma, D. Martin, C. M. Ticos National institute for Laser, Plasma, and Radiation Physics (INFLPR), Str. Atomistilor Nr. 409, 077125 Bucharest, Romania The Center for Integrated technologies (CETAL) and the Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Pillar (ELI-NP) are major facilities which will be commissioned during the next 5 years in Romania. While CETAL is more of a national project hosted by INFLPR, ELI-NP is a European infrastructure based on an international scientific collaborative effort. Both facilities will host pulsed lasers with peak powers in the Petawatt regime: a single laser delivering 1 PW for CETAL and two lasers each with 10 PW. The CETAL building is currently under construction, and the state-of-the art laser is due to be installed in 2013. ELI-NP is under evaluation by the EU commission and it is expected to be funded starting with 2012. These two unique facilities will perform cutting edge research by bringing together several fields of physics such as high-power lasers and optics, relativistic plasma physics, particle physics, nuclear physics, ultrahigh pressure and nonlinear physics. Major scientific breakthroughs in these fields are expected with the potential of applications in particle accelerators, nuclear pharmacology, oncology, X-ray and gamma-ray imaging and radioactive waste management. Among the 4 branches of ELI (Ultra-High-Field Science, Attosecond Laser Science , High-Energy Beam Facility, Nuclear Physics Facility) ELI-NP will be particularly devoted to studying the interaction of ultra-intense laser pulses with accelerated electron bunches with energies up to 600 MeV which will generate brilliant gamma beams (up to 19 MeV) for nuclear and particle physics research. |
|