ELI-NP Centre in Bucharest visited by the President of Romania
On February 19th, 2015 Klaus Iohannis, President of Romania, paid a visit to the ELI-NP (Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics) Research Center under construction in Bucharest-Magurele, on the premises of the “Horia Hulubei” National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering.
ELI-NP will create a new European laboratory to consistently investigate a very broad range of science domains, from new fields of fundamental physics, new nuclear physics and astrophysics topics to applications in material science, life sciences and nuclear materials management.
ELI-NP will be a very complex facility which will host two machines of extreme performance:
– A very high intensity laser, where beams from two 10 PW lasers will produce intensities of the order of 1023 – 1024 W/cm2 and electrical fields of 1015 V/m. The High Power Laser System is being built by Thales Optronique SA and SC Thales System Romania and will be operational in 2018.
– A very intense (1013 γ/s), brilliant γ beam, with a bandwidth of the order of 0.1%, with variable energy up to Ev 19MeV, which is obtained by Compton back scattering of laser light off a brilliant, intense, classical electron beam (Ee =720MeV) produced by a warm linac. The High Intensity Gamma Beam System is being constructed by the Consortium EuroGammaS, led bythe Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics INFN with the participation of several prestigious research institutions and high-tech companies from 8 European Countries: Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia, UK, Denmark, and Spain.
President Iohannis appreciated that the scientific laser project in Bucharest-Magurele is extremely ambitious and would certainly place Romania on the map of the countries where fundamental research is done. He underlined that ELI-NP, with its very high qualified specialists, fits into his concept of education in Romania as well and that many Romanian researchers are returning in the country to work for this project.
Considering the status of the project, the President was confident that the implementation will be successfully performed. Expressing his full support for this very important project for Romania, the President declared that he is looking forward to the inauguration of the new European center for scientific research in 2018.
The visit constituted a great event for the Romanian Physics Community.
