Abstract
Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) is a pan European research initiative selected on the European Strategy
Forum on Research Infrastructures Roadmap that aims to build a European Large-scale Facility devoted
to ultra intense laser and gamma beams interaction with matter. We report on the status of Extreme
Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) facility, one of the three ELI pillars under
construction, to be operational in 2018. Placed in Romania, ELI-NP has as core elements a couple of
new generation 10 PW laser systems and a narrow bandwidth Compton backscattering gamma source
with photon energies up to 19 MeV. ELI-NP will address nuclear photonics, nuclear astrophysics and
quantum electrodynamics involving extreme photon fi elds. Applications in nuclear medicine, in detection
and characterization of nuclear materials and in material science with positron sources are foreseen.
