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

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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.