The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC
EU

E2: Hard X-Ray Science

The experimental hall E2 is located at the basement of the ELI Beamlines building and will be dedicated to the generation of ultrafast and bright hard X-ray beams for user experiments.

In the E2 hall, a PW-class laser is available at a 10 Hz repetition rate. The X-ray beam lines rely on focusing the L3 laser into a gas jet or a gas cell. For an appropriate choice of experimental parameters (laser intensity, laser spot size and duration, and electron density in the gas), electrons are accelerated to relativistic energies by plasma wakefield acceleration and wiggled by the plasma itself (Betatron source) or by a second laser pulse (Compton source). This results in the emission of intense femtosecond X-ray or gamma-ray beams emitted from a micron-size source. The features of the radiation that is produced will depend on the needs of the end user. It will be possible to deliver either narrow spectrum (10% energy spread) or broadband radiation in a spectral range from keV to a few MeVs.