SLIC facilities typically provide 900 experimental laser days per year. LUCA annually offers 540 days whereas UHI and PLFA provide 180 days each. On average, more than 85 scientists access SLIC facilities every year. Most of the available beamtime is used internally by CEA scientists (so-called “internal access”), often in collaboration with external researchers. SLIC facilities are also open to external scientists through the allocation of “national access” to French research groups outside CEA and “European access” which, since 2004, is offered within the LASERLAB-EUROPE consortium. Companies are also regularly received on SLIC facilities. Statistics on these different kinds of access to SLIC facilities are summarised in Table 2
Besides operating the lasers at their best performances, the SLIC laser group also supports users with many aspects of their experiments. The quality of this support is often emphasized by our users. For instance, all our users who filled in the LASERLAB user assessment form have given the highest mark for the overall appreciation of the services provided at SLIC and of the facility operation.