The establishment of ELI ERIC, a new legal entity that enables the membership of member countries, the successful integration of two of the ELI facilities, ELI Beamlines in Dolní Břežany (Czech Republic) and the ELI ALPS facility in Szeged (Hungary), and the effective transfer of direct operational responsibility to ELI ERIC represent foundational achievements of IMPULSE. The handover of the ELI Beamlines Facility, involving the transfer of all activities, staff, assets and liabilities was successfully completed effective 1 January 2023. The legal integration of the ELI ALPS Facility took place in January 2024 by means of the acquisition by ELI ERIC of a controlling share in ELI-HU Non-profit Ltd, the company responsible for the operations of ELI ALPS. In addition, an Access Agreement was signed with ELI-NP, the third ELI facility, located near Bucharest (Romania), to organise its inclusion and participation in the calls for proposals organised by ELI ERIC. Following Romania’s accession as a Founding Observer in ELI ERIC as of January 2024, work continues beyond IMPULSE on the preparation of ELI-NP’s integration.
The process of establishing ELI ERIC, and expanding its membership, is political and outside the scope of IMPULSE, but the IMPULSE activities facilitated that process and anticipated opportunities and risks related to it. Also, IMPULSE helped accelerate decision-making on common policies to ensure faster integration. In that regard, IMPULSE is a clear success, putting 15 statutory and other policies in place in months, where this took years to other ERICs.
As IMPULSE reached its end, it brought significant results for ELI as a whole, establishing ELI as a leader in high-power, high-repetition rate laser research. WP3 established standard operating procedures to align practices across the 3 Facilities, set up a database for the spare parts data management and accessibility (ELI PANDA) across the ELI sites and gathered the scientific community and industrial partners to agree on common approaches to the standardisation of metrology procedures for lasers and secondary sources (STAMPLASS). WP4 delivered unique coating capabilities at the ELI Facilities, that will help the long-term sustainability of key optical components for high-power laser facilities, pushed forward developments in standardised target design for experiments, established guidelines for optimisation of LIDT of key optical components, and employed machine learning to improve operational efficiency. WP5 established an ELI-wide User Office and successfully launched the Joint ELI User Programme. This was made possible with the development of a dedicated User Portal, common processes and guidelines, and a unified training system to make sure that the same high-quality user access and services are provided at all the ELI Facilities. In total, the first four user calls organised by ELI gathered a total of 341 proposals involving close to 1,200 unique applicants from 36 countries. Launching 4 User Calls within 2 years achieved a core mission for ELI and opened the Facilities for scientific users. Finally, flagship experiments were implemented, demonstrating ELI’s capacity to deliver world-class science. WP6 developed an ELI-wide ecosystem for innovation with the ELI Innovation Board and the ILO (Industry Liaison Office) network to enable further engagement with industrial partners. ELI will build on the shared approach to knowledge transfer and industrial access to maximise ELI’s impact in the future.
Outreach activities were implemented based on the IMPULSE communication and dissemination strategy. While there was active engagement at conferences, seminars, etc., ELI also hosted several key events for outreach and promotion of ELI ERIC membership, internationalisation, and establishment of strategic partnerships. The IMPULSE and ELI websites, main external communication tools for the sharing of results and providing visibility to the partners and their activities, are regularly updated and have been viewed by circa 48,000 visitors.
