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

在许多物理系，“凝聚态物质”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，并在提高我们对原子结构和材料性质之间相互作用的理解中找到了纯粹的快乐和满足感。我的科学的实际应用是一个额外的奖励，这个提议的大约一半是对温度（如重离子轨道）或压力（如“负压”）远离平衡的材料进行这种“基础”研究的一个例子，这些研究旨在提高我们的基本理解，但仍然与更好的设备和过程的工程有关。另一半则在应用与基本方面完全相反：事实证明，非晶材料的一个深奥的方面（所谓的“低能二能级态”）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，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.