FELIX Laboratory officially opened on October 30

On Friday October 30, Sander Dekker – the Dutch State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science - officially opened the FELIX Laboratory and the neighboring Experimental garden on the campus of Radboud University.

The festivities on October 30 consisted of an open house in the FELIX Laboratory, several short lectures, speeches by Sander Dekker and Gerard Meijer - the president of the executive board of Radboud Universty - and an official opening act. See the pictures below for an impression of the day.

Open house in the FELIX Laboratory (credits: Radboud University, Joeri Borst)

Facility manager Britta Redlich guides Sander Dekker through the FELIX Laboratory (credits: Radboud University, Joeri Borst)

Facility manager Britta Redlich guides Sander Dekker through the FELIX Laboratory (credits: Radboud University, Joeri Borst)

Sander Dekker during the official opening act (credits: Radboud University, Joeri Borst)

Sander Dekker during the official opening act (credits: Radboud University, Joeri Borst)

A bit of history

The FELIX Laboratory is a merger of the free electron lasers and staff from the FELIX facility in the FOM institute, previously located in Rijnhuizen, and the FLARE laser which has been developed in Nijmegen and is operational since 2011. The new, combined facility has been open for users since 2013 - however, with some limitations - and has become fully operational just recently.

In the summer of 2015, the FELIX Laboratory was connected to its neighbor, the High Field Magnet Laboratory HFML which hosts some of the most powerful magnets in the world. The combination of these continuous high magnetic fields with light from the FELIX lasers offers scientists the possibility to study matter and materials in conditions that cannot be found anywhere else. Although the beamline between FELIX and HFML has only recently been completed, the first successful measurements have already been done.