Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania won a joint bid for the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project in October 2009. Investment from the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) in projects at the three locations is expected to top €850 million.

The ELI-ALPS will be devoted to “taking snapshots in the attosecond scale of the electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, plasmas and solids”; an attosecond is defined as a billionth of a billionth of a second, or 0.000000000000000001 seconds. The ELI-ALPS will “also pursue research with ultrahigh intensity lasers.”