On October 3-4, 2022 the first selection of user experiment proposals took place at ELI-NP, marking the transition of ELI-NP from implementation of the project to operation as user facility.
The selection was made by the International Program Advisory Committee (PAC) of ELI-NP that consists of 7 expert scientists from Italy, Germany, USA, UK, Japan and Israel.
ELI-NP has successfully completed the commissioning experiments with expert users at the power levels of 100 TW and 1 PW and opened, for the first time, its doors to general users. Experiment proposals were evaluated by the International Committee and ranked according to their scientific merit and relevance to the high power laser system at ELI-NP.
The experiment proposals were submitted following a joint call with ELI ERIC for experiments to be performed at the ELI research infrastructures in Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary between October 2022 and March 2023. Following the call, 45 experiment proposals were submitted, of which 17 for ELI-NP. Out of the 17 proposals for ELI-NP, 4 proposals had principal investigators from Romania, and the others were from France, Italy, Germany, India, Canada, UK, Spain, Poland, Israel.
This high number of experiment proposals proves already from the first call for users the high scientific attractiveness of ELI-NP for the international research community.
