Ion beams and x-ray scattering for materials physics and a little bit of gravitational waves

在许多物理系，“凝聚态”和“材料”学科被视为仅仅是应用物理学，对“纯”或“基础”科学几乎没有贡献。我一直不同意这种观点，并对提高我们对原子结构和材料性质之间相互作用的理解感到纯粹的喜悦和满意。我的科学的实际应用是一个额外的好处，这个提议中大约有一半是对材料的这种“基础”研究的例子，这些材料在温度(如重离子径迹)或压力(如“负压”)方面远离平衡，这些研究旨在提高我们的基本理解，但仍与更好的设备和工艺的工程相关。另一半则在应用方面与基本方面完全相反：事实证明，非晶态材料的一个神秘方面(所谓的“低能两能态”)限制了用于探测引力波的仪器的质量。很难想象还有比引力波和黑洞合并领域更“纯科学”的学科了，但我们在这里，材料科学家被招募来改善LIGO天文台。

In many physics departments, the “condensed matter” and “materials” disciplines are viewed as merely applied physics with little contributions to “pure” or “fundamental” science. I have always disagreed with this view and found pure joy and satisfaction at improving our understanding of the interplay between atomic structure and materials properties. The actual application of my science is an added bonus and about one half of this proposal is an example of such “fundamental” research into materials far from equilibrium either in temperature (as in heavy ion tracks) or pressure (as in “negative pressure”), research that is aimed at improving our basic understanding but nevertheless is relevant for the engineering of better devices and processes. The other half is the exact opposite in terms of applied vs fundamental : it turns out that an esoteric aspect of amorphous materials (so called “low energy two-level states”) are limiting the quality of the instrument used for the detecting of gravitational waves. It is hard to imagine a more “pure science” discipline than the fields of gravitational waves and black hole mergers, but here we are, materials scientists being recruited to improve the LIGO observatory.