ELI
The Extreme Light Infrastructure
ELI is a new Research Infrastructure (RI) of pan-European interest and part of the European ESFRI Roadmap. It is a laser facility that aims to host some the most intense lasers world-wide, develop new interdisciplinary research opportunities with light from these lasers and secondary radiation derived from them, and make them available to an international scientific user community.
The facility will be based on four sites. Three of them are presently being implemented in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, with an investment volume exceeding 850 Mio. Euro, mostly stemming from the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF). Their scientific profile will be complementary, while the operation, starting in 2018, will be unified under one single legal umbrella of an European Research Infrastructure Consortium ELI-ERIC.
The present implementation phase, following a 3-year Preparatory Phase 2007-2010, is coordinated by the ELI-Delivery Consortium International Association, an international non-profit organisation after Belgian law (AISBL). It supports the three pillars during the constructions phase, ensures the character of ELI as one unified pan-European project, conducts the negotiations towards the ELI-ERIC and prepares the establishment of ELI's fourth pillar, planned to push the frontiers of laser power by yet another order of magnitude into the sub-exawatt regime.