Abstract
The goal of the XCELS project in Russia is establishing a large research infrastructure ‒ the Exawatt
Center for Extreme Light Studies. The core of the planned infrastructure will be a new unique source of
light having the power of about 0.2 Exawatt. This source constitutes a 12 channel × 15 PW laser system
based on technique of optical parametric chirped pulse amplifi cation (OPCPA). The corresponding
laser architecture was developed at the Institute of Applied Physics in Nizhny Novgorod where the fi rst
Petawatt-class OPCPA laser in the world, called PEARL, was launched in 2007 and a multi-Petawatt
system is now under construction. The fundamental processes of laser-matter interaction at Exawatt
power belong to an absolutely new branch of science that will be the principal research task of the infrastructure.
There will open up opportunities for studying the space-time structure of vacuum, nonlinear
QED phenomena and unknown processes at the interface of the high-energy physics and the high-fi eld
physics.
