As material design becomes more sophisticated, ever more powerful probes are needed to complete the feedback loop between processing, structure and performance. New high resolution probes are being used within SUPA's CMMP Theme to explore semiconducting materials and devices; magnetic storage materials and associated sensors; nanoparticles for a range of applications (e.g. for magnetic storage media and for biological probes); biomolecules; quantum dots; and colloids. In many of these areas, materials and devices are engineered on an atomic scale: characterisation of structure, composition, chemistry and properties such as magnetism is required on this scale. Major multidisciplinary centres of instrumentation and expertise for such characterisation are hosted at Glasgow, Strathclyde, St Andrews and Edinburgh. Much of this activity has links with SUPA's Photonics Theme.

Research within SUPA also makes use of major international facilities, in the UK and overseas, such as neutron and muon sources. These are used, for example, to probe the magnetic and structural properties of thin-film nanomagnetic arrays derived from colloidal and other self-assembly routes.

This thriving area of research addresses "the physics of gloop"! Many materials, including putty, mayonnaise, hair gel and (unmentionable) biological fluids exhibit strong changes in flow and other properties response to weak external fields or stresses. This responsiveness is essential in many everyday applications and an equal number of high-tech ones (drug delivery, liquid crystal displays, sensors). Yet, in many cases, the basic physical principles linking the macroscopic behaviour to the microscopic structure remain poorly understood. One unifying theme is the presence of mesoscopic objects (polymers, colloids, cells, domains) at a scale where physics, rather than molecular chemistry, controls the behaviour. Mastery of this unexplained physics will bring new ways of controlling soft materials across a wide range of applications areas.

This work is now expanding upwards in length-scale to collections of "active" rather than passive objects (called "agents"), where issues range from bacterial motion to the flocking of birds; and also downwards towards the nanometre scale (see our New Nanocolloidal Materials initiative).

Within SUPA, a world leading group in Soft Condensed Matter is based in Edinburgh, with strong activity also in St Andrews and Strathclyde.

When atoms or molecules in a solid are put under extremes of pressure, temperature or magnetic fields, extraordinary things can happen. Not only can the crystalline structure change from one state to another, but so can the atoms themselves! For example, if an element such as Rubidium is subjected to high enough pressure it converts itself spontaneously into a completely new kind of material: a self-alloy where two different sizes of Rubidium atom (with different electronic states) occupy different positions in a "guest-host" structure.

Within SUPA, staff at Edinburgh's multidisciplinary Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC) has discovered many examples of new atomic and molecular materials, by applying pressures previously encountered only at the heart of giant planets such as Jupiter. One major ambition is to recover some of these new materials to ordinary conditions without losing the new structure and properties. Nature has set an outstanding example of exactly this process: the formation of diamonds.

When large numbers of atoms or electrons in a solid interact, their local quantum mechanics can be very complex. But sometimes strikingly simple collective properties appear, such as magnetism or superconductivity. These properties cannot exist for single atoms, or even small collections of them: they emerge at a higher level. Understanding this emergence is a central issue of modern physics, whose global pursuit has led to many Nobel prizes, most recently Anthony J Leggett FRS of the University of Urbana Champaign. Quantum ordering is also an industrially significant area: digital storage media, medical imaging, etc. are all based on magnetism (and often require superconductivity also). New emergent phenomena, as yet undiscovered, may spawn the IT industries of tomorrow.

Within SUPA the main strengths in superconductivity and magnetism are at St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh with smaller units at Heriot Watt and Strathclyde. SUPA is affiliated to ICAM, an international forum for researchers into emergent phenomena.

Theme Leader: Stuart Reid (stuart.reid@strath.ac.uk)

Physics often plays a fundamental role in developments within the life sciences. To the lay person Physics is perhaps perceived to have its greatest responsibility in the development of advanced technology for medicine. However, our vision for PaLS goes significantly beyond this generalisation. We wish physics to challenge the way that life scientists perceive and understand the biological world and for life scientists to challenge physicists to develop new and exciting technology and techniques to enable novel research. Thus the relationship is synergistic to the benefit of both sciences.

Photonics is the field that encompasses the properties, generation, manipulation and exploitation of light. It extends from fundamental quantum physics through device physics and technology and systems engineering to applications across a broad spectrum of modern life including science, medicine, most sectors of industry, and in everyday consumer products and services. Photonics underpins areas as diverse as Bose-Einstein condensation, broadband telecomms, gravity wave detection, eye surgery, audio/video consumer products, quantum cryptography, and advanced manufacturing.

Theme Leader: Victoria Martin (victoria.martin@ed.ac.uk), Edinburgh

Particle physics research in Scotland is a thriving activity with world-class groups in theory and experiment at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Particle Physics is the study of the fundamental particles from which all matter it is built, the forces through which they interact with each other and the mechanisms that result in the present structure of the Universe. The overarching aim is that of finding new physics and developing new theories that describe the Universe at a deeper level than our current theories can, with important consequences for our understanding of how the universe developed from the Big Bang.

Theme Leader: David O'Donnell, University of the West of Scotland

Modern Nuclear Physics aims at extending our understanding of the atomic nucleus chiefly in two directions: towards smaller distances by investigating the structure of the constituents of nuclei, nucleons and mesons (more generally, hadrons), and at larger distance scales by exploring the very limits of nuclear existence. Major breakthroughs are expected over the next decade when the large-scale facilities that are being built in Europe, Japan and North America become operational. The world-class Nuclear Physics research in Scotland spans topics from nucleon structure and spectroscopy to nuclear astrophysics.

Areas of strength within the Nuclear Physics theme:

• Hadron structure and spectroscopy
• Exotic hadrons
• Exotic nuclei
• Nuclear astrophysics

Nuclear Physics initiatives in SUPA:

Theme Leader: Donald MacLaren (donald.maclaren@glasgow.ac.uk)

Condensed Matter and Material Sciences (CMMS) is a thriving area of physics, in Scotland and globally. Its goal is to connect the emergent properties of large numbers of strongly interacting particles (atoms, molecules, grains…) to their fundamental interactions. The fruits of such work are visible all around us: every laptop contains a magnetic hard disc, an LCD screen, and a smart polymer touchpad, not to mention its 'brain' (central processor): none of these would exist without CMMS research.

In order to create a Smart Grid, monitoring the grid state variables is an essential requisite. Since either a complete monitoring of the power grid variables is not feasible, the goal is then to determine the kind and amount of data that must be collected from a power grid in order to reconstruct and predict the dynamics of the whole production-distribution system. 

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