The Central Laser Facility (CLF) in the UK is building a new 10 Hz petawatt laser application centre - a £81.2 M facility that will use CLF's patented diode-pumped laser technology (DiPOLE) to drive plasma accelerator beams of particles and x-rays for academic and industry users - for imaging industrial components and biomedical systems, for fundamental discovery science, & for supporting innovation. The Extreme Photonics Applications Centre (EPAC) will build a unique innovation ecosystem with academia, industry and security communities. CLF’s DiPOLE100 (100 J, 10 Hz) laser is currently being used for laser shock peening (LSP) at the HiLASE facility in Czech Republic and a 10 J version (DiPOLE10) is being utilised for a LSP R&D station at CLF, exploring pulse shaping and advanced configurations.

EPAC will bring together world-leading interdisciplinary expertise to develop and apply novel, laser-based, non-conventional accelerators and particle sources which have unique properties. A 10 Hz laser delivering 30 J in 30 fs pulse width will be focussed to achieve relativistic intensities (> 10^18 W/cm^2) on gas and solid targets for exploring high energy density plasma science, extreme quantum electrodynamics phenomena, and astrophysical events. The same laser can also be configured to drive plasma accelerators that produce bright, fs flash beams of GeV electrons, MeV x-rays, ions, or neutrons beams for fundamental or applied science applications such high resolution tomography or spectroscopy.