Members of the Institute for Gravitational Research (IGR) and the School on Engineering have published an article in Nature titled: “Measurement of the Earth Tides with a MEMS Gravimeter”. The Earth tides are the elastic deformation of the Earth caused by the changing phase of the Sun and the Moon, and the Glasgow microelectromechanical system – or MEMS - is the first such device to measure this phenomenon (see figure 1). This measurement was possible because the device has an incredible stability compared to existing MEMS accelerometers or seismometers. Consequently it is the first MEMS accelerometer that can be classed as a gravimeter. The MEMS device is etched from a single piece of silicon and consists of a central proof mass suspended from three arched anti-springs (see figure 1). The proof mass moves in response to changing gravitational acceleration and the motion is monitored using a simple optical shadow sensor (see figure 2). The combination of the soft springs, the heavy proof mass, and the accuracy of the motion sensor allows the device to measure changes in little g of 40 parts per billion in an integration time of 1 second (40 μGal/√Hz).

March 2016

In 2014, Photonics21 published a “multiannual strategic roadmap”, setting out a strategy for European photonics to solve the grand societal challenges and to generate sustainable economic growth in Europe. On a practical level, this document outlined priorities for Horizon2020 funding calls between 2014 and 2020. Photonics21 has continued to refine and update this priorities and propose call topics to the European Commission since then. On the 1st and 2nd March this year, the Photonics21 annual meeting kicked off the process to propose the final photonics calls of Horizon2020, with SUPA and the UK photonics community very much involved.

Recognising the importance of European funding for Scotland’s universities and their industrial partners, the Scottish Funding Council has provided funding, known as PEER, to allow SUPA to compete for EU monies. The funding can be used to provide consultant support for proposals, and to travel for pre-proposal consortium meetings and networking events. Working with the UK Photonics Leadership Group, SUPA made strategic use of the funds for the Photonics21 meeting to ensure that the 7 different Photonics21 Work Groups were covered, and to allow SUPA academics to gain experience of the process by which calls are developed.

The Ultra-low vibration (ULV) labs in St Andrews are the most advanced of its kind in the UK and one of just a handful worldwide. The facility achieves vibration levels which are about two order of magnitude better than the best industry standard. They will allow for atomic scale characterization of the electronic states and magnetic structure in quantum materials. Since opening of the facility in May last year, three bespoke scanning tunnelling microscopes, which were developed by the research group of Dr Wahl, have been installed. The microscopes are operating at very low temperatures down to 7mK and in magnetic fields up to 14T, providing an energy resolution up to 10μeV. For characterization of the materials, a metal tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope is brought within a few atomic radii of a surface and held there with a stability on the order of picometers. It is this stability, which is required over extended periods of time, which necessitates the complex vibration isolation. The research carried out in the facility will aim at understanding unconventional superconductivity in quantum materials. In particular, the group of Dr Peter Wahl has, using these instruments, recently succeeded in imaging the magnetic structure of quantum materials at the atomic scale.

Dr Francisco J Perez Reche, of the Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology has recently published work in nature.com on models inspired by statistical physics to explain explosive social contagion (why things go viral) which has been enthusiastically picked up by the media following the University of Aberdeen’s press release: (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/8744/).

Dr Perez-Reche told us: Some ideas or products are accepted just because they are very convenient. In contrast, other phenomena might not be too appealing at first sight but they end up being accepted by many people overnight. The model suggests that the initial reticence of acquaintances is a key factor for social phenomena to become explosively viral.

Are your friends hesitant to accept an idea? Be ready… it could suddenly catch on!

I'm an STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow working in galaxy evolution and observational cosmology at the School of Physics and Astronomy in St Andrews. I did my undergraduate and PhD at Edinburgh, after which I moved to Portsmouth as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation for 5.5 years. I moved back to Scotland in March 2014 when I took up my current fellowship in St Andrews.

I remember that as I filled in the application form it became clearer and clearer in my mind that I didn’t have much of a hope in receiving the award. But the format of the application is actually quite useful, and similar to applications for other prizes in that it invites you to review significant achievements to date separately to the more typical research proposal. Aware that practice makes perfect, and frankly desperate for some extra research money, I carried on regardless (with, I remember it well, a sick child on my shoulder the whole time). I was delighted to be shortlisted and that boosted my confidence enormously. The interview day, at the Royal Society in London, was a lot of fun in spite of my initial reservations.

Since passing on the SUPA baton to Alan in May I seem to have been busier than ever, mainly in the area of contributing to international planning for the future of the gravitational wave field but also in helping with the preparation of our collaborative consortium grant application to STFC and spending time - but not enough yet - in the lab with our graduate students, with me being taught how to do experimental research in the computer automated era.

So I am back to my old area of helping to measure mechanical loss, and am learning about how to measure thermal conductivities of bonded silicon elements at cryogenic temperatures, as well as solving wave equations for determining the elastic moduli of thin silicate bonds using ultrasonics.

This lab activity is real fun, at least for me – not sure about how the grad students find it (: .

The CM-CDT is a doctoral training partnership between SUPA Condensed Matter physics activities at St Andrews, Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities. The CM-CDT has a threefold purpose: to provide students with a rigorous, broad graduate education across the spectrum of Condensed Matter Physics; to train them in skills that equip them for the workplace, be it industrial or academic; and to foster a vibrant, diverse research environment for their PhD projects.  This endeavor is supported by EPSRC, University, Scottish Funding Council and other funding sources.

Introduction 

 SUPA physicists have had pivotal roles during the first year of operations of the LHC detectors during Run 2, at 13 TeV proton-proton collision centre-of-mass energies. After the discovery of the Higgs boson, the main goals have been to characterise the main Standard Model processes at 13 TeV and to search for phenomena beyond the Standard Model. There was great excitement on 15 December 2015 when ATLAS and CMS presented their preliminary results from the 2015 data taking at a CERN seminar*, in which both experiments observe an unexpected excess in the two-photon resonant channel at around 750 GeV. The ATLAS and CMS results are consistent with a 3.6 sigma and 2.6 sigma excess, respectively (see for example Figure 1). When one looks in a wider mass window (the “look-elsewhere effect”), the global significance of the excess is smaller (2.0 sigma and 1.2 sigma for ATLAS and CMS). While the theoretical community is very excited at the prospects for new physics beyond the Standard Model, the experiments are cautiously suggesting that we should wait for the 2016 results to check whether this is a statistical fluctuation or not.