- Un experimento paneuropeo tiene como objetivo crear un láser que ayude más eficazmente a luchar contra el cáncer y a eliminar residuos radiactivos.
- El láser que se espera entre en funcionamiento en 2015 estaría situado en el Instituto de Física Nuclear de Magurele, 15 kilómetros al suroeste de Bucarest.
- En el proyecto participarán 40 instituciones de 13 países europeos, entre los que se encuentra España.
- La Unión Europea financiará el 80% del proyecto que tiene un coste inicial cercano a los 350 millones de euros.
Crear el haz de luz más potente jamás producido es
el objetivo de un experimento paneuropeo que se espera sirva para luchar
más eficazmente contra el cáncer, eliminar residuos radiactivos e
incluso abrir nuevas puertas a la física de materiales.
Este láser, que se espera sea el más potente del mundo cuando entre
en funcionamiento en 2015, se instalará en el Instituto de Física
Nuclear de Magurele, a 15 kilómetros al suroeste de Bucarest, un centro puntero en su día dentro de lo que fue el bloque comunista, y que espera recuperar su importancia con este proyecto.
La instalación se llamará ELI-Nuclear Physics Facility (ELI-NP) y formará parte de un proyecto más ambicioso, el ELI
(Extreme Light Infrastructure), en el que participan 40 instituciones
de 13 países europeos, entre ellos España, y que tendrá otras tres
ubicaciones.
ELI tiene como objetivo conseguir intensidades láser lo más elevadas posible y pulsos muy cortos.
En Rumanía, dos láser de 10 petavatios y un potente emisor de rayos gamma se combinarán para experimentar tanto en el campo de la física fundamental como en aplicaciones médicas y sociales.
Lucha contra el cáncer
La tecnología puntera se beneficiará en un futuro del láser (ELI-NP)
para aplicar protonterapia, un tratamiento que permite atacar los
tumores de forma más agresiva y potente, al tiempo que se reduce el daño
a las zonas sanas adyacentes.
Una terapia que aún resulta cara y requiere de un gran despliegue tecnológico, pero que podría ser muy eficaz en el futuro.
Además, esta tecnología mejorará la eficacia de la radioterapia, al obtener nuevos radioisótopos, y de la quimioterapia, gracias a la producción de un isótopo de platino radiactivo.
“Cerca de una cuarta parte de los pacientes tratados por quimioterapia reciben un tratamiento inútil, ya que la sustancia utilizada no va directamente al tumor”, asegura el científico.
Otras aplicaciones
Otras de las aplicaciones del nuevo láser será en la física de materiales y en la nanotecnología.
Este láser también tendrá aplicaciones en el control del tráfico de materiales radiactivos.
“Su uso puede facilitar el trabajo a los funcionarios de aduanas que deben escanear rápidamente para revisar los remolques de transporte”, precisa.
Incluso, se podría utilizar este haz de luz, aplicado a otras tecnologías, para eliminar en segundos los residuos dejados por plantas y centros de investigación de energía nuclear, acelerando un proceso que ahora dura décadas.
Física nuclear
Pero más allá de estas aplicaciones prácticas, el láser de ELI-NP abrirá la puerta a fascinantes experimentos en el campo de la física fundamental, asegura el científico.
El laboratorio rumano estudiará la interacción del láser y las radiaciones electromagnéticas con la materia, para abrir la puerta a experimentos con un láser aún más potente.
“Se pretende concentrar una enorme potencia de energía en un punto para producir materia“,
cuenta Zamfir sobre los planes de construir un láser 20 veces más
potente que permita crear electrones y positrones al fracturar el
“vacío”.
Zamfir asegura que los investigadores “están emocionados con la idea de generar materia a partir del vacío”.
“Hay modelos que muestran que a una intensidad extrema de potencia del láser se produce materia en el vacío”, indica.
El coste inicial de este proyecto ronda los 350 millones de euros, de los que la Unión Europea (UE) financiará un 80%.
Junto al laboratorio rumano funcionarán en el marco del proyecto ELI una instalación en República Checa, dedicada a alta energía, y otra en Hungría,
centrada en pulsos de attosegundo (la trillonésima parte de un
segundo), que funcionarán de forma autónoma aunque colaborando con los
objetivos comunes de la iniciativa ELI.
INFOESPANA
Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP)
By Ovidiu Tesileanu and Nicolae-Victor Zamfir
‘Horia Hulubei’ National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering,
Bucharest-Magurele, Romania
The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI)
is a major European Infrastructure project that is to be carried out
in three European countries - the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania.
The Nuclear Physics pillar, ELI-NP,
located in the Magurele Physics Research Campus, near Bucharest,
Romania, will be funded from Structural Funds provided within the
framework of the Sectorial Operational Programme called Increasing Economic Competitiveness.
When it starts up, the ELI-NP will be
the most advanced research facility in the world focusing on the study
of nuclear physics studies and its applications - a task it will
accomplish with the help of two 10PW, ultra-short pulse lasers and the
most brilliant tunable gamma-ray beam machine currently available in
the world. This €290M project will be built between 2012 and 2016. The
facility will be dedicated to working in fields such as frontier
fundamental physics, new nuclear physics and astrophysics, as well as
on applications for studying nuclear materials and radioactive waste
management, materials science and life sciences.
The brilliant gamma
ray beam that provides tunable energy of up to 20 MeV, which is obtained
by the back-scattering of optical photons on electrons from a LINAC
beam that generates energy of up to 720 MeV. This machine will open
up new possibilities for high resolution spectroscopy at higher nuclear
excitation energy levels. With their many doorway states, damping
widths and chaotic behaviour they will lead to a better understanding
of nuclear structure at a large range of excitation energy levels.
With regards to ion acceleration, this
high power laser allows the production of 1015 times denser ion beams
than are currently achievable with classical acceleration. The cascaded
fission-fusion reaction mechanism can then be used to produce very
neutron-rich heavy nuclei for the first time, which are relevant for
analysis of nucleosynthesis.
The gamma beam itself
can be used to map the isotope distributions of nuclear materials or
radioactive waste remotely via Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence (NRF)
measurements. At lower energy levels of around 100 keV the high
resolution of the beam is very important for protein structural
analysis. In addition, it will produce low energy, brilliant, intense
neutron and positron beams, which will open up new research
possibilities in the fields of materials science and life sciences.
Compared to former
gamma-ray machines, the much improved bandwidth of this machine is
decisive to the functioning of this new facility. Several experiments,
like a parity violation experiment, only become possible thanks to this
much improved bandwidth.
In addition to
enabling the carrying out of a wide range of fundamental physics
projects, ELI-NP will also facilitate a variety of other applied
research projects. The new production schemes for the production of
medical isotopes via (γ,n) will have high socio-economical relevance.
ELI-NP will be implemented in this field using the highest
concentration of researchers from Central and Eastern Europe
specialised in the laser and nuclear physics. The high density of
innovative companies located in the region, as well as top-ranked
universities in Bucharest, will provide the basis for the creation of a
pole of excellence and an innovation cluster at the facility. ELI-NP
will thus impact positively not only fundamental science, but also on
the industrial community at both a local and international level. Its
social impact in Romania is of major importance to counteract the
country’s brain drain, by providing the motivation for top young
researchers - who might otherwise seek to go abroad in search of better
professional opportunities at large scale research centres - to remain
in Romania.
ELI-NP will allow for
applied R&D in unrivalled conditions, which will prove important
for companies active in the fields of medicine (radionuclides and
hadron-therapy), telecommunications (materials in high intensity
radiation fields), engineering industry (non-destructive testing),
security (scanners based on nuclear resonance fluorescence of sensitive
nuclear materials) – to name just a few.
Collaboration with
universities in Romania and abroad are - and will be - established, for
the mutual benefit of the community and of the infrastructure, by
providing staff and students of academic institutions the opportunity
to work in a cutting-edge facility. The facility will also provide
staff and students with a chance to receive specialised training within
the scope of ELI-NP.
The policy of access to ELI-NP, as well
as to the other ELI centres, will be on eof open access, free for
members of the scientific community. Paid access will be granted to
companies.
The buildings will be
completed by the end of 2014 and the new facility will inaugurated in
2016, with the operational phase starting at the beginning of 2017.
Employing over 200 full-time researchers and engineers (including 60
PhD students), ELI-NP will be visited by a large number of external
research teams each year, teams selected by an international committee
based exclusively on the quality of their research proposals.
ENS NEWS.
Extreme Light Infrastructure Preparatory Phase
(ELI-PP)
Final Report
1.11.2007 – 31.12.2010
I.- EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The first laser shot in 1960 was a Copernican event that touched all parts of science and technology. In science, the laser has been extremely effective to improve our understanding of the atomic and
molecular structure of matter and the associated dynamical events. However, it was quite inefficient in probing the subjacent strata formed by the nucleons and their components the quarks or to dissociate the vacuum in its elements. Nor the laser photon energy or its electric field were large enough or its pulse duration sufficiently short to conceive decisive experiments. A few years ago, a new type of large-scale laser infrastructure specifically designed to produce the highest peak power and focused intensity was heralded by the European Community. The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) will host the first exawatt (one billion times GW) class laser, where this gargantuan power will be obtained by producing kJ of energy over a pulse duration of 10 fs. Focussing this power over a micrometer size spot, will bring forth the highest intensity. By producing, first, the highest electric field, second, the shortest pulse of high energy radiations in the femto-zepto second (10-15-10-21s) regime and third, electrons and particles with ultrarelativistic energy in the GeV regime, the laser signals its entry into Nuclear Physics, High Energy Physics, Vacuum Physics and in the future Cosmology and Extradimension Physics.
In October 2009, only two years after the launch of the preparatory phase, the ELI-PP consortium made landmark decisions on the conditions of implementation of the project. The Steering Committee decided that ELI would be implemented in two phases as a distributed infrastructure. First, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania will commission by end 2015 facilities specialised in three of the four scientific pillars of the project identified during the preparatory phase. The “Attosecond Light Pulse Source” facility (Szeged, Hungary) will be designed to make temporal investigation at the attosecond scale of electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, plasmas and solids; the “Beamlines” facility (Dolni Brzezany, Czech Republic) will mainly focus on the production of ultra intense and ultra short sources of electrons, and ions, coherent and energetic X rays; the “Nuclear Physics” facility (Magurele, Romania) will be dedicated to laser-based photonuclear physics and will allow combined experiments with high-power lasers and a very brilliant beam. The aim of these facilities is to construct ultra-high-power lasers with focusable intensities and average powers far beyond the levels reached by the laser systems currently under construction (APOLLON, Vulcan, PFS). In the second phase, the location of the fourth and emblematic pillar devoted to Extreme Field Science will be decided in 2012 upon review of the performance of the technological solutions available at that time.
The scientific and technological developments undertaken for the implementation of the first phase will make significant contributions to this ultimate objective of the project. This fourth facility will explore laser-matter interaction up to the non-linear QED limit and allow the investigation of vacuum
structure and pair creation. The four facilities will be jointly operated in conditions offering excellent standards of access for external users for revolutionary experiments unconceivable up to now. The successful development of ELI from a concept to a mature project on the verge of being implemented results from a particularly fruitful environment characterised by the considerable attention of European nations to optics, photonics and lasers, by very productive scientific communities in these areas, and certainly by the international coordination triggered and funded by the EC. All this contributes to strengthening Europe’s leading position in high-intensity laser research and will give new opportunities to the European photonic industry. Finally, the location of the ELI facilities in Central and Eastern European countries represents a remarkable contribution to the development of the European Research Area promoted by the European Commission. It builds on the scientific and technological potential of new EU-member countries and will lead to immense improvements of their research capacities, while supporting the European integration process and mobility of researchers.
II.- PROJECT CONTEXT AND THE MAIN OBJECTIVES
II.1 Project context
Today’s top specifications of high power pulsed laser systems are characterized by a peak power between one and two petawatts at very low (sub Hz) repetition rates, this being
unchanged over more than one decade now. The majority of high intensity systems, however, still rests at the 100 TW level. ELI and its national predecessor projects like ILE and Vulcan-10 PW will boost the peak power of single lasers (modules) into the 10 PW or multi-10 PW regime at much higher repetition rates, constituting an evolution of more than one order of magnitude in both of these parameters. In addition, the high intensity pillar of ELI aims atanother order of magnitude in peak power, into the 100 PW regime, by coherent combination of several such modules. With these parameters ELI will certainly lead the international high power laser scenario. ELI is, however, means much more than a world recorder facility. It is the chance to test a new paradigm where for the first time nuclear physics, high energy physics, vacuum physics could be done using the laser field amplitude and not high energy particles as it has been the case until now. If this challenge were to be met the 21th century would be the photon century, even for high energy physics which has usually been dominatedby particles. In this sense ELI is in science a serious game changer. In this context the theinteresting questions to be asked are: Why now? And why in Europe?
The answers to these questions appear to be strongly correlated. They both lie in the observation that
ELI will be the first laser research infrastructure which is the result of a co-ordinated effort of a multi-national scientific laser community. Other communities (high energy physics, synchrotrons, astronomy etc.) have long standing traditions in the operation of international user facilities. Lasers, having evolved 50 years ago from small table-top devices, are only now at the edge of such mode of operation, and ELI is the first installation world-wide to make that step.
Fig. II.1: World map of high intensity systems in 2006 (left) and the current situation in Europe, Russia and Indiaby the end of 2010 (right). Taken from the “International Committee on Ultra-High Intensity Lasers” (ICUIL,www.icuil.org).
In this context it is illustrative to view the global distribution of high-power laser systems beyond 100 TW peak power, and its temporal evolution, particularly in Europe.
Figure II.1 shows the world map of high intensity systems in 2006 and the current situation in
Europe, Russia and India by the end of 2010. The left part of the figure shows that high power lasers are pre-dominantly located in three global regions at moderate northern latitudes: North America (US and Canada), Europe (including Russia), and the Asian-Pacific region (including India). This general feature has not changed since 2006 except that now (in 2010) the overall number of such systems has considerably increased (c.f. www.icuil.org). The increase, however, was most dramatic in Europe (c.f. right part of figure II.1). Perhaps not surprisingly, the recent increase in European high-power laser systems parallels the increase in national laser laboratories within the EC-funded European network
LASERLAB-EUROPE (www.laserlab-europe.net), now comprising 27 of Europe’s most important laser research infrastructures from 19 EU countries. It shows (and this is part of the answer to the above questions) that the European nations and the European Commission both pay particular attention to the scientific field of lasers, optics and photonics. In fact, besides operating a multitude of national laser research infrastructures several European nations have large funding programs in optics and photonics. The EC has recently counted optics and photonics as one of the five key enabling technologies to tackle the Grand Societal Challenges
of the 21stcentury.
Hence, Europe appears as a particularly fertile ground for laser technologies, laser development and laser applications at the national level. ELI, however, goes beyond the national capabilities of most countries. Here it helps that the European Commission has, over more than a decade now, established and funded networks of large national research infrastructures with three essential elements: 1) Joint Research Activities (including device development), 2) Trans-national Access to the benefit of a broad user community, and 3) Networking among national infrastructures. In laser science the relevant network is
LASERLAB-EUROPE which, during its current funding period, concentrates its research activities among others on the development of high-power lasers (including those with high average powers), attosecond physics and applications. There is a coordinated approach to meet these challenges by investigation of new techniques as for example the development of high average power diode pumped solid state laser, parametric conversion to high peak power and coherent multiple aperture beam combination. While this research was mostly carried by the top national laboratories with their individual funding, it was the co-ordination through LASERLAB-EUROPE which added considerable value to these efforts and lifted them beyond the national level. Hence, the ground was laid for revolutionary new laser projects like
ELI and HiPER when the European nations, as the final ingredient to the process leading to ELI, called for proposals for pan-European Research Infrastructures in the context of theESFRI process.
What is ELI’s future within this international context? Given the dynamic evolution of European and global national laser facilities as shown in fig. 1 it is not surprising that theycontinue to develop top-of-the-line laser facilities themselves. Figure II.2 shows the European state projects (already under development) towards the PW regime; similar projects exist in the other global regions. The following conclusions may be drawn from this observation: (i) the top-of-the-line in high power lasers is slowly, but steadily shifting from the 100 TW to the 1 PW level, while singular projects (especially the ELI predecessor projects) attain similar powers as the ELI 10 PW modules. ELI’s multi-100 PW facility seems to remain largely unchallenged for the next one-two decades.
(ii) Such a development, although tending to close the gap between ELI and its national companions and competitors, is much more of an opportunity than a threat. Without the availability of a large number of comparable high-power systems (even if an order of magnitude less powerful) the international user community could not be sustained which is necessary to exploit all the new physics that ELI provides
ii) The only threat, however, may lie in the lack of human resources needed to complete all these projects in time. This is why ELI, together with LASERLAB-EUROPE and other allies (HiPER, EOS, Photonics21) is actively working to develop the international community of laser scientists, engineers and technicians.
Información de : eli.
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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