INFN-LNF Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati
A new strategic alliance between European accelerator-based ‘super-microscopes’ has been forged in Brussels on Monday. The League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources or LEAPS aims to offer a step change in European cooperation, through a common vision of enabling scientific excellence solving global challenges, and boosting European competitiveness and integration. Representatives of 16 organisations from across Europe approved the Consortium Declaration in the presence of Robert-Jan Smits, Director General for Research and Innovation (RTD) at the European Commission.
The new form of collaboration between the participating institutions is supposed to ensure that the large European research infrastructures can be used even more efficiently in the future and that major scientific and technological challenges can be tackled jointly. This will not only benefit fundamental and applied research, but also industrial research carried out at accelerator-based photon sources.
INFN, through the Frascati Laboratories, is an active member of the consortium with its infrastructures and facilities. The DAFNE synchrotron light and the SPARC_LAB THz radiation are available for internal and external users. LNF is also projected to the next frontier in this field with its participation to the EuPRAXIA Horizon 2020 design study, which is planning to build, in a near future, a Free Electron Laser European facility based on beams operated by plasma acceleration.
Translation by Camilla Paola Maglione, Communications Office INFN-LNF