Partners - GSI

Description: The Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI is an accelerator laboratory financed by the
federal government (90%) and the state of Hesse(10%). GSI is member of the Helmholtz Association. The
PHELIX laser presently permits two types of operation: Pulses of a duration between .0.5 ns and 20 ns with a
widely variable pulse shape and energies up to 1 kJ, and short pulse petawatt-class operation. As a secondary
use of the facility compressed 10 J, 500 fs pulses from the front-end are available together with an X-ray
laser installation.

Excellence: The unique feature of PHELIX is the combination of the laser with the GSI heavy-ion
accelerator facility. The accelerator features the exceptional combination of the linear accelerator UNILAC,
the synchrotron SIS and the storage ring ESR, delivering heavy ions with energies up to 1 GeV/u. The ESR
heavy-in cooler-storage ring is the only facility world-wide which provides high-quality cooled beams of
highly-charged heavy ions in a broad energy range, with long storage times and single-ion detection
sensitivity.

Main tasks: Within LASERLAB EUROPE PHELIX is participating in networking activities by active
collaboration with the partner institutes in the direction of an improvement of technical feasibilities, the
better use of the present facilities. PHELIX is providing Access for national and international Users, and is
active in the JRA concerning X-ray sources.

Previous experience: Within the plasma physics and atomic physics departments at GSI, strong backgound in
experiments with lasers and heavy ions is given. Two virtual institutes centered on laser ion acceleration and
dense, hot matter, are sponsored at GSI by the Helmholtz Association. PHELIX is operative with kJ-class
output since 2006, and performed a first experiment with compressed pulses in 2007.

>>> Access facility GSI

Address:
Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung mbH
Planckstr. 1
64291 Darmstadt
Germany

Phone +49 (0) 61 59/71-0

www.gsi.de