This award provides for 54% of the acquisition costs for a Brillouin spectrometry system to be installed and operated in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Stony Brook. The SUNY system is committed to providing the remaining necessary funding. Brillouin scattering is one of the most important tools available for obtaining elastic constants of microcrystals of the high-pressure mineral phases considered to exist at depth in the Earth's mantle. These, in turn, can be related and compared to the elastic wave velocities calculated from earthquake measurements which are significant "finger prints" for deducing the nature of the mantle. The Stony Brook laboratory has pioneered the use of Brillouin spectroscopy for defining the elastic properties and seismic velocities of mantle materials, and the new Brillouin spectrometer system will allow a new generation of these critical measurements to be made at elevated temperatures and pressures approaching mantle conditions.
