This report presents the conceptual design of a new European research infrastructure EuPRAXIA. The concept has been established over the last four years in a unique collaboration of 41 laboratories within a Horizon 2020 design study funded by the European Union. EuPRAXIA is the first European project that develops a dedicated particle accelerator research infrastructure based on novel plasma acceleration concepts and laser technology. It focuses on the development of electron accelerators and underlying technologies, their user communities, and the exploitation of existing accelerator infrastructures in Europe. EuPRAXIA has involved, amongst others, the international laser community and industry to build links and bridges with accelerator science — through realising synergies, identifying disruptive ideas, innovating, and fostering knowledge exchange. The Eu-PRAXIA project aims at the construction of an innovative electron accelerator using laser- and electron-beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration that offers a significant reduction in size and possible savings in cost over current state-of-the-art radiofrequency-based accelerators. The foreseen electron energy range of one to five gigaelectronvolts (GeV) and its performance goals will enable versatile applications in various domains, e.g. as a compact free-electron laser (FEL), compact sources for medical imaging and positron generation, table-top test beams for particle detectors, as well as deeply penetrating X-ray and gamma-ray sources for material testing. EuPRAXIA is designed to be the required stepping stone to possible future plasma-based facilities, such as linear colliders at the high-energy physics (HEP) energy frontier. Consistent with a high-confidence approach, the project includes measures to retire risk by establishing scaled technology demonstrators. This report includes preliminary models for project implementation, cost and schedule that would allow operation of the full Eu-PRAXIA facility within 8—10 years.

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Multi-messenger astronomy requires the use and development of telescopes and detectors for temporal observations across all the electromagnetic spectrum. The interest of our team is towards time-domain (or longitudinal, in the jargon of storage ring diagnostics) detectors able to make observations over the time rather than transversely by making photographs or spectrographs. The FAIRTEL (Fast InfraRed TELescope) experiment wants to build a very fast detector in the Mid InfraRed (MIR) to be used in time-domain astronomy. The experiment is oriented mainly toward the search of fast astronomical transients in the Galaxy, similarly to what has been observed in different electromagnetic ranges with the discovery of the FRBs (Fast Radio Burst) and the GRBs (Gamma-Ray Burst). In the last years, time-domain astronomy is growing in interest and intends to study events on time scales that can go from hundreds of milliseconds to microseconds and even shorter. The detector proposed by the FAIRTEL experiment, is based on HgCdTe semiconductors and on the experience done in the diagnostics for storage ring developed at DAFNE, the Italian e+/e− circular collider. The detection system design is in progress at the LNF (Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati) of INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) while the telescope will be a standard reflecting type, like a Newtonian, a Cassegrain or a Ritchey–Chrétien telescope. The detection apparatus is under test at the IR synchrotron beamline SINBAD at DAFNE and it is foreseen to be implemented at the OPC (Osservatorio Polifunzionale del Chianti). It should be able to observe events with transients down to the nanosecond. A further development of the project involves the extension from ground-based observations to those by using balloons for scientific studies.

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