New light in nuclear physics: The extreme light infrastructure

Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP), to become operational in 2019, is a new Research Center built in Romania that will use extreme electromagnetic fields for nuclear physics research. The ELI-NP facility will combine two large equipments with state-of-the-art parameters, namely a 2 × 10 PW high-power laser system and a very brilliant gamma-beam system delivering beams with energies up to 19.5 MeV. The laser and gamma-beam systems under construction and typical proposed first-phase experiments are described.