Robert C. Liebermann

Distinguished Service Professor - Department of Geosciences
President of COMPRES (COnsortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences)

B.S., California Institute of Technology, 1964
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1969
Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University, 1970-76
Faculty Member at Stony Brook since 1976
Docteur Honoris Causa, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, 2004 Visiting Professor, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, 1983-84
Visiting Professor, University of Tokyo, 1984
Visiting Professor, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, 1990
Visiting Professor, Australian National University, Canberra, 1991-1992
Visiting Professor, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, 2002-2003

Office: Earth & Space Sciences Room 167
Office Phone: (631) 632-1968 or 8214
Fax: (631) 632-8240
E-mail: Robert (dot) Liebermann (at) stonybrook (dot) edu

Geosciences Department Faculty Page
Ultrasonics Group Website

Full List of Publications
Complete Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

Professor Liebermann's research interests are in the field of mineral physics, which is dedicated to understanding how the physical and chemical properties of minerals and rocks control their geological behavior, especially at high pressures and temperatures.

In 1984, with support from the Instrumentation and Facilities Program of the NSF Division of Earth Sciences and the University at Stony Brook, Liebermann and Professor Donald Weidner acquired and developed two types of multi-anvil, high-pressure equipment for the new Stony Brook High-Pressure Laboratory. These facilities were the first of their kind in the geoscience community in the United States and include a DIA-type cubic anvil apparatus with a 250-ton hydraulic press (SAM 95) and uniaxial split-sphere apparatus o f the Kawai-type with a 2,000-ton hydraulic press (USSA-2000). The latter apparatus is now being utilized for synthesis experiments to pressures of 250 kbar and temperatures of 2500 K, whereas SAM-85 has been interfaced with the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory for in situ X-ray experiments. These unique facilities formed the core of the Stony Brook node of the NSF Science and Technology Center for High Pressure Research (CHiPR) from 1991-2002.

Special interest is now focused on the role of polymorphic phase transformations in minerals in large-scale dynamic processes in the Earth's interior. Polycrystalline specimens of the low- and high-pressure polymorphs of mantle minerals are synthesized in the USSA-2000 apparatus. These specimens are then used for ultrasonic measurements of the elastic wave velocities as a function of pressure and temperature; these acoustic experiments were initially performed in a 1000-ton uniaxial split-cylinder apparatus by Baosheng Li (research faculty colleague) in collaboration with Dr. Ian Jackson of the Australian National University. Later, our team has successfully adapted these techniques for use in SAM-85 installed on the superconducting wiggler beamline (X17B) at the (NSLS) and in other multi-anvil apparatus at the Advanced Photon Source of the Argonne National Laboratory. This has provided the opportunity to peform sound velocity measurements in polycrystalline and single crystal specimens at simultaneous high pressures and temperatures using ultrasonics in conjunction with synchrotron X-radiation determinations of the equation of state (see papers below by Ganglin Chen, Joseph Cooke, Kenneth Darling, Fréderic Decremps, Lucy Flesch, Gabriel Gwanmesia, Jennifer Kung, Baosheng Li, Jun Liu, Sally Rigden, Yegor Sinelnikov, and Jianzhong Zhang.

A program studying the kinetics and mechanisms of phase transformations in silicate minerals and their analogs has used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) as the principal analytical tool. The most recent studies, in collaboration with research assistant professor Yanbin Wang, postdoctoral associate Isabelle Martinez, and visiting professor Francois Guyot, focussed on the transformation of natural olivine to the perovskite + magnesiowstite phase assemblage at pressures corresponding to 720 kilometers depth.

In addition to the colleagues mentioned above, Liebermann has had ongoing collaboration on diffusion in minerals with the late Olivier Jaoul at the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France. This collaboration has been carried out with a series of graduate students and postdoctoral associates, including Yves Bertran-Alvarez, Paul Raterron and Frédéric Béjina, who have been studying the effect of pressure on Fe-Mg interdiffusion and Si self-diffusion in olivine.

Liebermann is also a founding member the Committee on Mineral and Rock Physics and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Mineralogical Society of America. In April 2004, he received the degree of Docteur Honoris Causa from the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.

Since September 2003, Liebermann has served as President of the Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences [COMPRES]. The headquarters of COMPRES are in the Mineral Physics Institute of Stony Brook University.

Selected Publications (1996-2007)

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