The latest project of the National Centre for Nuclear Research – PolFEL – was presented during the 15th Symposium on Laser Technology.

Last week, the 15th Symposium on Laser Technology (STL 2026), organized by the Military University of Technology, was held in Rumia. The event featured a presentation of the PolFEL project, aimed at building Poland’s first free-electron laser together with the associated infrastructure for research into the ultrafast dynamics of matter. The project has been carried out since 2019 by a consortium of Polish research institutions led by the National Centre for Nuclear Research. It is now entering the implementation phase, which will result in an advanced research facility being made available to the Polish and international scientific community.

The Symposium on Laser Technology is an event that brings together experts from academic centres, research institutes and industry.

This year's edition of the Symposium was devoted to presenting research results, exchanging information, and disseminating scientific and technical knowledge in the fields of laser technology, optoelectronics and photonics in the broadest sense.

The PolFEL project was presented during a special session by Dr Paweł Krawczyk, who discussed the progress of work on the infrastructure currently being commissioned, as well as the research achievements of the Consortium's partners developed in recent years. Dr Paweł Czuma then presented the infrastructure's experimental stations in greater detail, along with the conventional laser systems working with them.

An important part of the session consisted of presentations by representatives of the Military University of Technology, one of the members of the PolFEL Consortium. Prof. Fiedorowicz's team presented achievements related to the development of EUV radiation sources based on high-harmonic generation (HHG), intended, among other applications, for ARPES spectroscopy. Prof. Norbert Pałka, meanwhile, presented issues related to the PolFEL terahertz beamline.

PolFEL is not only the infrastructure currently under construction, but also the joint achievements of the teams forming the consortium – radiation sources developed over the years, laser systems, solutions for individual experimental stations, and research expertise that will be used in the facility's future activities.

The event provided an excellent opportunity to present the current stage of development of the PolFEL infrastructure to the wider laser technology community and to show how its individual components – from radiation sources and laser systems to experimental beamlines – come together to form a research platform for ultrafast processes being developed in Poland.

The PolFEL project is being implemented with funding from the Operational Programme Intelligent Development, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and a grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.