In the three years since the foundations of the unparalleled research centre were laid, as part of the European Strategic Forum of Research Infrastructure (ESFRI), on a site previously occupied by a defunct Soviet military base, three large laser facilities where built which demonstrate state-of-the-art capabilities.
These large laser facilities enable to us to pursue a series of new research objectives not just limited to physics, but with applications in chemistry, biology, medical sciences, pharmaceutical research, and many additional interdisciplinary areas. ELI-ALPS (Extreme Light Infrastructure Attosecond Light Pulse Source) will be the first open laboratory facility in the world, where light-matter interactions can be studied with the highest attosecond time-resolution to date.
The new building complex of ELI-ALPS was inaugurated on May 23, 2017. We were witness to a ground breaking event in the history of Hungarian science policy. ELI will become one of the most important laser research infrastructures in Europe.
The ELI-Story
The history of ELI began in 2008 with the ratification of the collaborative and support action agreement for the ELI Preparatory Phase Project (ELI PP) within the European 7th Framework Program, with the participation of 13 countries. The participants agreed to set up a total of 3 research centres for laser research in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania.
The Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics (SZFKI/RISSPO), the organization coordinating the Hungarian participants, had long standing traditions in the areas of laser physics and laser applications – it should suffice to mention that the first Hungarian laser was built at this centre back in 1963, not long after the invention of the laser. Furthermore, it was at this institute that soon after produced a series of first-of-their-kind lasers later adopted around the world.
These inventions gave rise to many innovative applications ranging from widely used interferometry techniques within the field of optical measurement, medical and pharmaceutical applications, environmental studies, and even healthcare related applications, just to name a few. In order to realize this current large research infrastructure project in Hungary, crucial and indispensable roles where played by Norbert Kroó, Ferenc Krausz, Ilona Vass, István Kocsis, Tivadar Lippényi, scientists of the University of Szeged, and the colleagues of SZFKI, Győző Farkas and Csaba Tóth, who pioneered the theory and development of attosecond impulses.
SZFKI, one of the predecessor institutes of the MTA Wigner Research Centre for Physics (Wigner RCP) played a defining role in the project starting from the search for a Hungarian site to the design and deployment of large pieces of equipment.
Many colleagues took part in the designing of the first plans, the large equipment, as well as the development of the various part components.
The ELI Laboratory was formed in the Wigner RCP, where many experiments are performed based on large capacity laser equipment related to ELI-APLS, among others the lab features an attosecond source.
During the same period, at the Particle and Nuclear Physics Institute, the other member institute of Wigner RCP, a related laser program began with international cooperation. This program uses light to accelerate particles, and quickly joined the ranks of centres performing cutting edge research in the world. In collaboration with CERN, the Max Planck Physics Institute, and numerous Asian research centres, laser-plasma experiments are performed on site, which facilitate the development of new methods to accelerate charged particles.
An important goal of ELI-ALPS is to repatriate numerous Hungarian researchers working abroad, so that the research centre will become truly international. The success of research centres such as CERN, the NIF, and ILL are not merely dependent on domestic research but on international collaboration. In the case of ELI much more needs to be accomplished in this regard, yet currently we are proud to announce our first success story in strengthening our national scientific community, an embodiment of the triumph of peaceful research, which in our case also holds symbolic significance; today science and technology has a stronghold at the site of a previous military base, where now scientists work with international support. Let ELI be an example of successful European scientific cooperation over the divisions caused by military bases.
written by Aladár Czitrovszky
Translation: Valéria Blázsik
