The Advanced Attosecond Laser Infrastructure (AALI) will operate from two sites, in Dongguan in Guangdong and Xian in Shaanxi, and will generate light pulses lasting several billionths of a billionth of a second.
These pulses will act like a super slow-motion camera capable of capturing the movements of the smallest building blocks of the universe, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
It will become the second laser of this type after the attosecond light pulse source in Szeged, Hungary.
Of the facility’s 10 beamlines, six will be built in Dongguan, and the other four in Xian.
“Dongguan is home to several other large-scale scientific facilities that can collaborate with AALI to advance overall research in attosecond physics,” Wei Zhiyi, chief project scientist at the Institute of Physics, told CCTV on Friday of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Meanwhile, Xian is home to many universities with strong research capabilities and well-established technological infrastructure, he added.