Consortium:
The project consortium is composed of nine partners:
GSI and FAIR operate a heavy ion accelerator complex located in Darmstadt, Germany. When ion beams from the accelerator are focused onto targets, they deposit energy densities of 100 kJ/g, which is enough to drive samples of matter to a state called warm dense matter, similar to conditions found in the core of planets. To diagnose such states and make high-precision measurement of the properties of these samples, high-energy lasers can be used as drivers for very versatile sources of radiations and particles. Because of the unique features of this field of application, GSI develops lasers tailored to FAIR and prepares the next generation of high-energy lasers.
The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) performs – as an independent German research center – research in the fields of energy, health, and matter. It focuses on answering the following questions: How can energy and resources be utilized in an efficient, safe, and sustainable way? How can malignant tumors be more precisely visualized, characterized, and more effectively treated? How do matter and materials behave under the influence of strong fields and in smallest dimensions?
To help answer these research questions, HZDR operates large-scale facilities, which are also used by visiting researchers: the Ion Beam Center, the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the ELBE Center for High-Power Radiation Sources. HZDR has also developed and operates the high-power DRACO and PENELOPE Laser Facilities (Dresden) and the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) at the HED Instrument of the European XFEL (Schenefeld).
HZDR is a member of the Helmholtz Association and has six sites (Dresden, Freiberg, Görlitz, Grenoble, Leipzig, Schenefeld near Hamburg) with almost 1,500 members of staff, of whom about 670 are scientists, including 220 Ph.D. candidates.
CNRS is among the world’s leading research institutions. The organization is covering all scientific fields to meet the major challenges of today and tomorrow. Two CNRS joint research units are implicated in THRILL:
LULI is dedicated to the study of dense and hot plasmas created by intense lasers. With its infrastructure LULI2000 and Apollon, it is offering to the whole community access to laser systems with different durations from nanoseconds to a few tens of femtoseconds, and to fully-equipped experimental areas, allowing versatile experiments of laser-plasma interaction and theirs applications.
LCF is a laboratory covering a broad spectrum of topics in optics and photonics and their applications.
The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC is the world’s most advanced high-power laser research infrastructure. ELI, ESFRI Landmark, operates as a single multi-site organisation made up of two complementary facilities each with different capabilities in terms of lasers and secondary sources: ELI Beamlines in Dolní Břežany (Czech Republic) and ELI ALPS in Szeged (Hungary).
ELI Beamlines Facility is a leading laser research centre and part of The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC, pan-European research Infrastructure hosting the world’s most intense lasers. ELI provides unique tools of support for scientific excellence in Europe. ELI Beamlines has developed and operates four leading edge high-power femtosecond laser systems reaching unprecedent intensities. ELI Beamlines offers to its users unique femtosecond sources of X-rays and accelerated particles. These beamlines enable pioneering research not only in physics and material science but also in life science, laboratory astrophysics, chemistry with strong application potential.
Currently, several of the main laser beamlines are operational and are being expanded and upgraded to reach their full performance and maximum availability. Other laser beamlines are in commissioning and new cutting-edge laser sources are in the design and development phase. The ELI Beamlines Facility builds on 350 researchers, engineers and other professionals from more than 38 countries.
Laserlab-Europe AISBL is an international not-for-profit association, bringing together 47 leading laser research infrastructures in 22 European countries. Jointly, they are committed to coordinate operation and R&D efforts in order to facilitate the development of advanced lasers and laser-based technologies, and to promote the efficient utilisation of advanced laser facilities by users from academia and industry. The majority of the members provide open access to their facilities to scientists from all over the world to perform experiments in a large variety of inter-disciplinary research, covering advanced laser science and applications in most domains of research and technology.
The European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) delivers 27,000 X-ray flashes per second with a brilliance that is a billion times higher than that of the best conventional X-ray sources. Housed at European XFEL’s Hamburg site, and host to seven scientific instruments, the facility opens up new opportunities for science. Research groups from around the world are able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, and study processes such as those occurring deep inside planets.
GSI and FAIR operate a heavy ion accelerator complex located in Darmstadt, Germany. When ion beams from the accelerator are focused onto targets, they deposit energy densities of 100 kJ/g, which is enough to drive samples of matter to a state called warm dense matter, similar to conditions found in the core of planets. To diagnose such states and make high-precision measurement of the properties of these samples, high-energy lasers can be used as drivers for very versatile sources of radiations and particles. Because of the unique features of this field of application, GSI develops lasers tailored to FAIR and prepares the next generation of high-energy lasers.
https://www.gsi.de/en/researchaccelerators/fair
Created in 2001, Amplitude Laser Group manufactures and commercializes ultrafast lasers for scientific, medical and industrial applications. Leading the international market since its beginning, Amplitude offers a large range of products: diode-pumped ultrafast solid-state lasers, ultra-high energy Ti:Sapphire ultrafast lasers and a full line of high energy solid state laser products. The group consists of three manufacturing locations and several commercial offices in Europe, Asia and North America. Its 400 employees are committed to create and develop innovative lasers, manufactured compliantly with ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 certification standards.
The Laboratory for Laser Energetics of the University of Rochester is a unique national resource for research and education in science and technology. The Rochester area has a history of innovation and provides a unique setting within a technologically sophisticated community. The Laboratory was established in 1970 as a center to investigate intense radiation interactions with matter. The Laboratory’s mission is to conduct implosion and basic physics experiments, to operate the National Laser Users’ Facility, to develop new laser and materials technologies, to conduct research related to high-energy density phenomena, and to provide graduate and undergraduate education in these areas.
https://www.lle.rochester.edu/
Observer:
ESRF has been added as an observer to the project.
ESRF is a leading research centre for X-ray science and materials science, with 44 beamlines and a new generation of high-energy synchrotron source: ESRF-EBS.
Among these 44 beamlines, ID24-ED, the Dispersive Energy branch of ID24 is dedicated to time-resolved pump/probe experiments and hosts the High Power Laser Facility. HPLF couples a 50J ns-laser, supplied by Amplitude Laser Group, to X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy. This unique combination worldwide offers both XANES and EXAFS measurements on laser-driven dynamically compressed samples with a time resolution down to 100 ps.
