Laser science has recently made an important advancement. One of the most sophisticated centres in the world, the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Beamlines, has been built at Dolní B?ežany, near Prague. Our local subsidiary VCES was part of a consortium that carried out the construction of the future European research hotspot.
Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) is a research infrastructure identified as one of the priority European projects at the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). This large installation will house the strongest lasers in the world in four research centres that will be operated in an integrated manner, in Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic.
The construction of ELI Beamlines was finalised at the end of 2015 and the centre’s final phase, the installation of high-tech equipment, is currently being prepared. With a unique laser system, the project was developed in cooperation with the Lawrence Livermore laboratory, one of three research nerve centres in the US.
The ELI Beamlines centre was financed by 40 institutions from 13 European Union member states, making it a leading centre for cutting-edge, pan-European research. Its lasers and the secondary sources they will generate will offer unprecedented multidisciplinary research opportunities to the international scientific community. There will be multiple practical applications, such as bio-medicine, development and testing of new materials, medical imaging, optics, and nanotechnologies, encouraging collaboration between European researchers from different disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, biology, etc.
An exceptional worksite for an exceptional project: during construction, the teams discovered one of the biggest Neolithic sites in central Europe and vast archaeological excavations were carried out on the site. The complex will be commissioned in January 2018 and it is hoped that it will be the CERN of laser research.
