LIGO also is pushing the limits...
I dont know if this is still true, but when I was at my last job LIGO had a lot of presentations and internal research online on their site... They studied the optical, thermal and vibrational characteristics of materials to a degree never before done. I found much of use on that site, and I can think of 1 occassion their documents helped me solve a fairly serious problem, and a few more where they were useful references.
Check out their site- it was really fascinating...