The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, December 22, 2008 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

1. Announcements

2. LSC - Reitze

3. Focus Topic

Gas exploration near LLO (B. O'Reilly)

Financial review highlights of LIGO Operations through end of November (Lindquist, if time permits)

4. Change Control Actions

There are no open Change Requests for LIGO Operations.

5. Advanced LIGO

Overall - Shoemaker
Project Management - Wilkinson

6. Enhanced LIGO - Adhikari / Zucker

7. Sites

Hanford - Raab
Livingston - Giaime
MIT - Shoemaker / Fritschel

8. Caltech

Administration - Lindquist
Engineering
Optical and Mechanical - Coyne
Control and Date Asystems - Bork
Lab Computing - Anderson
Instrument Science - Gustafson
Data Analysis and 40M - Weinstein

Calendar of future Executive Commitee Meetings

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights:

LSC Issues (Reitze)

The final LSC-Virgo meeting of 2008 took place this week, hosted by the University of Maryland. The focus of this meeting was data analysis, with two days of face-to-face meetings by the L-V search groups and two days of presentations. Over 100 people were in attendance. Much of the first day of the meeting was dedicated to preparations for S6/VSR2 running, including search group latency requirements and status of online analysis development as well as discussions of online vetoing and data quality flagging. In addition, many completed or maturing S5 results were presented to the L-V collaboration, as were plans for developing external collaborations with a wide class of astronomical modalities. One of the highlights of the meeting was the 'opening of the box' on several GRB searches. Finally, the LSC Executive Committee approved two papers, the S5 first year CBC low mass CBC search and the S5 stochastic isotropic search subject to some revisions in the paper drafts.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

Eotvos University was approved and signed by the LSC Spokesperson and submitted to the Director of LIGO for review and approval.
For status of MOUs see here.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

>From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>

Processing a very large batch of Optical Mode Cleaner DCNs.
Continuing to deal with various DocDB issues.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Oracion)Press Here

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY .

>From: Karl Oracion <koracion@ligo.caltech.edu>>

Corrected various charging errors via cost transfers and labor distribution adjustments.
Requested equipment/subcontract expenditure type corrections.
Partial funding for Advanced LIGO year two has been received and budgeted in OGM.
Worked with pcard services to change all of LIGO pcard default poetas to the new LIGO Operations Poetas.
Link to FY2009 LIGO Operations poetas: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/docuserv/FY2009_LIGO_OPs_PTAs_v3.pdf
Link to Advanced LIGO poetas: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/docuserv/FY2009_Advanced_LIGO_PTAs_v1.pdf
Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Arvizu, Jasnow, Salone)

>From: Rudy Arvizu <arvizu_r@ligo.caltech.edu>

The contract for MIT Operations is complete, but being revised to reflect the latest proposal numbers from MIT. These numbers reflect the reduction in Operations funding from the NSF.
See Advanced LIGO report.

>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>

See Advanced LIGO report.
The Operations contract with the University of Florida will be extended at no cost to cover their Advanced LIGO R & D work and the two FTEs at Livingston. A new contract for Operations is being prepared that will cover the two FTEs at Livingston.
Receipt of proposals for the 40-meter suspension upgrade has been moved to January 15, 2009. This was requested by one of the receivers of the RFP.

>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

See Advanced LIGO report.
Steve Marroquin is scheduled to report to work on Monday, December 22, completing the team for subcontract administration. Steve will have signature authority up to the NSF subcontract threshold.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

The monthly report for the end of November was submitted to the NSF.

CHANGE REQUESTS (Lindquist)

There are no open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

>From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>

The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 12, 2009.
All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu

No report this week.

ADVANCED LIGO SAFETY IS BEING REPORTED UNDER ADVANCED LIGO, BELOW

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)

Summary of Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory
(compiled by M. Landry)

We vented EY (Tue) and EX (Thu) to install new baffles downstream of the end mirrors. The intent was to block scattered light from the rear viewport, a surface which is not seismically isolated. A before and after photo shows the effect of the baffle placement. There was some concern about the bright t-bar surface at the base of the baffle; it was confirmed this is out of the clear aperature of the ITM so it is not a problem. Other (isolated, at least, but) bright surfaces visible in the photo are the optic cage and the telescope downtube.
Other vent work included the replacement of an oplev viewport (EY only), photo sessions of the test masses and surrounding area, and drag-wiping of the optics (removing a particularly bad streak on ETMY). Considerable dust, contamination was reported (here, and here).
Output mode cleaner photodiodes were investigated for oscillations. Earlier investigations had vindicated coupling from the PZT as a source of the observed oscillations.
PSL work: an ailing PMC card was swapped out for the spare, and powers that had trended downward for some time were topped up via realingment.
Work has begun on restoring the noise budget code to working order, having become stale and requiring additional measurement schemes after modifications to H1 for DC readout, etc.
Acoustic coupling studies suggest we may need to vent HAM6 and make accelerometer studies in air (and possibly in vacuum thereafter) to identify the source of resonances in our eLIGO spectrum at higher frequencies.
SEI(C. Gray): With help from N Smith, J Kissel, and D Barker, got the new & improved HAM6 ISI Watchdog running. Will test it today and should have it up and running by this evening (Thursday). Also worked on document for upcoming HAM ISI FDR (Friday).

Astrowatch (A. Mullavey)

Over the last week, H2's uptime was a little down on the average at 42.7%, and its science time was 12.5%. The inspiral range has also been below the nominal value, hovering around 7Mpc.
The IFO was down over the entire weekend. Eventually, it made it back up without us locating the problem, however we believe that its related to the recent drop in temperature in the Hanford area.
We've seen a drop in the PSL power that coincides with the drop in the LVEA temperature. The LVEA heaters were turned up but the PSL remained at a lower power. Also the folding mirror alignment shifted and therefore also shifted the IFO alignment.
Pinkesh gave a talk at this weeks LVC meeting about Astrowatch, and the possible candidates for GW searches. He got a big response from the LSC. A point of discussion that has come up is how long H2 will continue running for. The current plan is to shut it down when the S6 run begins, and use it as spare parts for H1. However, there seemed to be a consensus at the meeting that H2 should keep running during S6. I'm sure we'll hear more on this matter in the following months.

Outreach (D. Ingram)

LHO hosted ~10 21st-Century Schools site coordinators on 12/12 for a tour and a discussion of LIGO's educational resources.
LHO outreach partner ESD 123 in Pasco holds two 21st-Century grants that support after-school enhancements for students in a number of small communities in our region.

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Giaime)

General: Brian O'Reilly has prepared a presentation to be shared with the Exec Comm on Monday regarding our response to a planned mineral exploration in the area.

General Operations (Rusyl Wooley):

The material for the beam tube enclosure repairs is scheduled to arrive next week. The work will begin the first week of 2009. We have started tagging the joints that will be repaired. The facilities modifications are coming along at a very good pace. The studs are up as well as a fair amount of drywall. The air conditioning contractor is also on site installing new air ducts. We have the drawings and price estimate for the new offices on the second floor of the staging building. This includes the rework of the old LDAS area as well as providing space for the soon to be relocated tape robot. We have been steady preparing for the mini-run this weekend. Gary has updated many of our control room procedures and is in the process of posting them. We have cleaned out the area in the high bay where the large suspension for aLIGO will be assembled. This was done now in preparation for the building of a quad school next month. Keith and Jeremy are working on getting all the facilities monitoring channels into the frames - and making very good progress.

Enh LIGO Commissioning (Valera Frolov):

The intermittent laser intensity noise was investigated. The electrical parameters of the AOM and RF cable inside of the MOPA were measured and appeared to be nominal and unaffected by taping or blowing hot air from the heat gun. During the investigation an intermittent connection was found in the frequency stabilization servo which is located next to the intensity stabilization electronics but not directly connected. Nevertheless both FSS and ISS have been running stably after the cable fix. We will continue to monitor the ISS saturations and will try to replace the AOM if the problem comes back.
The noise investigations continued this week. The laser frequency and intensity noise couplings to DARM were remeasured with the interferometer locked on RF and on both sides of the DARM fringe when locked on DC. The measurements were automated using the awgsteam to inject the excitation. The oscillator phase noise coupling was also remeasured.
The initial measurement of the Barkhausen noise (up-conversion in the test mass magnets) showed that coupling is much smaller now that ETMs are retrofitted with new magnets. More measurements will be done to either measure the actual up-conversion or establish the upper limit.
The response of the OMC photodetectors as a function of the total detected photocurrent was measured. The response at both DC and AC appears linear up to photocurrent of ~100 mA which is close to the nominal range and is planned to be extended by increasing the photodiode bias.

LLO CDS Software (Keith Thorne):

Commissioning Support:

Added OMC Epics , Fast Channels to frames (Sam Waldman).
BC Servo change to MMT1 (Rana Adhikari).
GDS IOC finally running on clearwater (Sam Waldman).
Still working to get OMC channels seen by conlog.
Coordinate effort for upcoming mini-engineering run.

Sys-Admin Work:

Got all CPUs working on Nesslin node.

Upgrades:

Fixed NTP issue on BCS test stand (Jay Heefner, Alex Ivanov).
Received cables, host adapter for LDAS upgrade.

Livingston Outreach

(Kathy Holt)

2 school visits with a total of 79 students, and 49 parents.
2 homeschool visits with a total of 26 students and 13 parents.
8 docents participated in school and homeschool visits this week.
Worked with Marcia Carter and Lori on improvements to the flyer for the upcoming teacher workshop.
Compiling a list of supplies and materials needed for the classroom.
Searched for additional stools for the exhibit hall. I would like to purchase at least 10.

(Amber Stuver)

Met the Gabe Popkin from the APS for final comments about the document on gravitational waves and LIGO I was invited to write for them. The text for this document is finalized and Gabe is currently conferring with the APS education office about the proper media in which to disseminate this information.

LIGO computing and network security (Roddy)

Reported under General Computing, see below

General computing and LDAS admin (Giardina)

Reported under General Computing, see below

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis & computing (Yakushin)

Storage/Condor/LDAS admin:

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis:

Reported under Data Analysis activities, see below

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Adhikari)

No report this week.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

We spent most of this week taking data for Fabrice’s model analysis. He has some very nice data and has prepared a preliminary report for the SEI and SUS groups. He will release the final report soon. Some early results are the lowest Quad-structure mode is at 81Hz and the 45Hz mode that we are seeing on the ISI sensors is still not identified.

Quad Prototype

No News.

SEI

The HEPI actuators have all been reinstalled on the X-end HAM and it is currently under going testing to see what the effects of the new beams are. The preliminary results seem to be matching Andy’s initial calculations.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

______________

Drew Keppel:

Polishing the S5 1Yr Low Mass paper.
Comparing the differences between the V3 and V4 calibration with the errors on the V3 calibration.
Attending the LSC meeting

______________

Amber L. Stuver:

Traveled to and attended the December L-V meeting at the University of Maryland. While there, I was able to meet face-to-face with the other attending members of the LIGO Web Committee and met with my APS contact regarding the educational document about gravitational waves and LIGO I was asked to compose for them.
Applied for the Professional Skills Development Workshop, and associated travel support, taking place just before the APS April Meeting.

______________

Kipp Cannon:

Attending LSC-Virgo meeting and F2F's in Maryland.

______________

Cristina Valeria Torres:

Attending Maryland LVC meeting.
Finished sample runs showing proof of principle for glitch group tracking, using AUTOTRACK algorithm, in a sample of S5 data.
Submitted finalized S5 data quality segments for WFS_EXCESS and WFS_EXCESS_ELOG.
Begin working with followup team (C. Torres, R. Gouaty, S. Caudill, C. Hanna) for integration of current followup pipeline into iHope pipeline.

______________

Antony Searle:

Worked on PRC figures of merit.
Participated in LVC meeting (esp. S6/VSR2 Omega planning).
Joined HEN ExtTrig proposal.
Preparing AAS poster

______________

Diego Fazi:

Compared results from PTF and SPA bank simulations with spinning injections.
Kept working on implementing a Chi-square veto for PTF

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

Still working to get the loaner STK10000A drives shipped back to Sun.
Continued work on rearchiving data to T10KB format tapes.
Opened case with Sun about CAM not working at LLO (ongoing).
Worked on ldas-sw-backup's 3510 configuration.
Attended meeting with Don Crouse, SAM-QFS expert.

(Phil Ehrens)

Added new rules to log_mon.tcl to allow the lowest grade of reported events to be turned on and off as a group. All events are still published on the webpage.
Investigated and implemented support for htdbm style Apache group access control for the DCC. Apache has a poorly documented line length limit of 8k characters for all config files, and the DCC group entries are quite large. The AuthDBMGroupFile directive offers a way around this. Full documentation can be found in the LDAS sysadmin wiki.
Created a VMware CentOS instance that replicates the ligo.org ldap and allows ldap searches.
No fans failed on the cluster this week.
No unusual MCE logging occurred this week, but node287 has been reporting corrected ECC errors several times per week for the past three weeks.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

Some disk problems pcraid9, fixed. looking at LDR on ldas ...

Livingston

(Doug Lormand)

On Wednesday I power cycled the 6140 after idling staging and archiving. After the 6140 came up I ran staging again but left achiving idle. * Also rebooted ldas-pcdev1 and watched for boot up error messages.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

Consolidating servers: installed meetingmaker, squirrelmail on new emvogil-2 (as redundant); sendmail with sasl/pam authentication, (building sasl/sendmail etc), and dovecot (imap) on tubera (again: redundant).
Sorting out solidworks licenses -- converting one node- locked to floating license.
Applied cis solaris security benchmarks to ligo, tubera.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

Minimal work on parts DB.
Support of LSC-Virgo conference.
Cleared spam trap daily.

Hanford

(Larry)

Minor work on backups and mail filters.
Going over different items with Jonathan.

(Jonathan)

Caltech orientation.
Work on mail aliases.
Cleaned up a few of the old accounts.
Maintenance on DHCP server.
Getting familiar with the LHO network.

(Mike)

Continued work on managing the dhcp server.
Worked on freeing trapped spam.
Went over with Jonathan on some of the work that I have been doing out there since Christine has been out. Larry has ask me to turn a number of items over to Johnathan.

Caltech

(Mike)

Loaded 2 Engineering workstations for new hires. I also setup their cubicles with these workstations. I did whole lot of clean up work getting out old computer equipment out of these cubicles.
Loaded some applications on a new mac to get ready for a new hire.
Added multiple new mac addresses to our wireless access points. Also did some clean work by removing old mac addresses.
Continued work on managing the dhcp server, freeing up expired ip numbers, and assigning permanent ip numbers to certain users.
Other onsite/phone user support and additional sysadmin tasks.

(Veronica)

User assistance with setting up the Safety webpage. Updated links at the Internal Bulletin Board.
Updates of the LSC-related databases and pages.
Updates of the LIGO website.

(Christian)

Riccardo Desalvo - Installed new 24-inch monitor.I'm also working on getting Riccardo's acquisition card and Labview working correctly.
Tested and deployed new MS security patches to Ligo users.
Installed new 3-1 printer for Julie Hiroto and Dorothy Lloyd.
Gina Salone - Installed and configured new laptop for Gina.
Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Melody)

Worked on enhancement requests and bug fixes for the new DCC.

(Larry)

Worked a number of purchases that will continue into next week. We will be getting a couple of new servers as upgrades to existing servers. Still working on some better pricing for one of them. Updated and purchased a couple of s/w licenses.
Worked on a couple of EVO items with different people. It looks like we may have something that will be a good tie-in with a A/V system. We should be able to test it out after the holiday.
Worked a number of account issues. Mainly, modifications for new accounts.
Minor work on equipment moves. Helped Phil E. get some of his equipment put into the surplus pile.
Multiple correspondence with the network people at the hotel the March LSC-V meeting is scheduled. They are trying to get things in place and tested well before the meeting.
Some minor work on data recovery and transfer.
Regular user support.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

Business Office

From: Phil Lindquist <lindquist_p@ligo.caltech .edu>

Steve Marroquin is scheduled to report to work on Monday, December 22, completing the team for subcontract administration. Steve will have signature authority up to the NSf subcontract threshold.

Advanced LIGO Systems

From: Calum Torrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>

Gold Barrel Sleeve:

The latest "unapproved" concept for the gold barrel sleeve can be found at the following location. I say unapproved as it really starts making things very complicated and in previous revisions of the gold barrel sleeve concept SUS were fairly happy with the interface. This latest concept will be compared to the previous concepts (also available at the following links) and then a trade off can be done to see how far we need to push the design. T0810011 https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=60 and T080332 https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=61.

Acoustic Mode Dampers (AMD's):

Please find links to the latest layout of the AMD's wrt to the ring heater, gold barrel sleeve etc ... The AMD's now have a 15mm diameter by 10mm thick. As you can see in T080332 we are restricted to go much larger in thickness due to the structure. (The structure has already been manufactured for advanced LIGO). The thickness of the AMD could of course be pushed a little further if you were only used 2 locations above the CG. I have included dimensions for the AMD's in T0810011. T0810011 https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=60 and T080332 https://dcc.ligo.org/
cgi-bin/private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=61.

Doc DB https://dcc.ligo.org/

At the systems meeting this week we ran a session on Engineering workflow (for mechanical engineers). all of the information presented is available at the following link: https://dcc.ligo.org/
wiki/index.php/Engineering_Workflow. We obtained a lot of useful feedback and the session I believe was well received.

TM Layout (on-going):

We heard a talk this week from the UK on the Violin Mode Dampers and Russell Jones released his concept for the fibre guard. The list of items on or around the test mass is now large. I am working on a layout that includes: - acoustic mode dampers, ring heater, fibres, fibre guard, e-stops, gold barrel sleeve, violin mode dampers , first contact and the lever arm clamps.

2 layer coating FEA (on-going):

Liam Cunningham and I continue to work on this. As we push the mesh tighter the computers get slower so work I had hoped would be ready this week won't be available until at least the end of the week.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

COC Design (Hiro)

The trade study of COC design was extended to cover all 4 combinations, PRM-XARM, PRM-YARM, SRM-XARM and SRM-YARM. The loss of the CR in the arm and the loss of the signal SB in Michelson cavity was quantified. The effect of the beam off-centering was simulated by sliding the BS. The contrast defect was also quantified. The design with the beam size of 5.3cm on ITM seems to be favored to reduce the loss in the Michelson cavity and to reduce the contrast defect. All results are summarized in G0810029, presented at the COC meeting.
In order to suppress the power unbalance in two arms and the contrast defect, a baffle design was suggested to make the effective clear aperture of BS to be the same for the pair of coupled cavities ( PRM - BS - XARM and PRM - BS -YARM, SRM - BS - XARM and SRM - BS - YARM ). The quantitative study is underway.
Bill Kelles warns the large loss due to the accidental resonance of a higher order mode in the arm. He studied LG40 mode in a symmetric advLIGO arm. This was extended to cover more modes, up to the node number 9 with non cylindrically symmetric modes, for 3 candidate ROCs designs, wITM = 5.3cm, wITM = 5.55cm and wITM = 6.0cm. Accidental degeneracy of higher order mode occurs for LG24, LG32 and LG40 (node number 8) and LG07, LG23 and LG31 (node number 7). The study of the details of the effects of these modes and the surface requirement to suppress these unwanted mode is underway.

Stationary Interferometer Simulation (Hiro)

There was a question asking how to simulate a cavity with thermal effects. The SIS manual was modified to include a section explaining this case, and a set of codes are prepared so that one can simulate the case easily. The document and the tar file containing the example are available at the SIS Wiki page.

Mechanical Simulation for Advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

Continued working on the Angular Sensing Control (ASC) with Wave front Sensor (WFS) for our AdvLIGO Input Mode Cleaner model. The initial version of the model with the WFS did not take the ground motion properly. Found the bug and fixed the problem. At this point, the WFSs are set up only for MC1 and MC3. Have confirmed that the WFSs model are controlling these two mirrors, but the resultant frequency noise on the transmitted light has not been improved.

Safety

From: David Nolting dnolting@ligo-la.caltech.edu

AdL Safety is in discussions with LLO site safety and the design team for the Quad SUS Assembly that is scheduled for two weeks, starting on 1/26/09 at LLO. Safety issues are being reviewed and preparation is beginning to ensure support by the LIGO safety team.
Safety support documentation for Critical Lift Planning and Electrical Safety is almost complete, and will be distributed after the holidays for review.
AdL Safety continues to be active in design reviews for the Triple SUS and SEI.

Quality Assurance

From: Mick Flanigan flanigan_m@ligo-wa.caltech.edu

Parts DB work is currently on hold while our programming person is attending a conference.
JIRA is coming along nicely, team at Hanford is starting to load projects and components. Received All SUS projects and am programming these in this week as well.
Attended DocDB training this week for opto-mechanical teams.
Participated in Triple PDR this week and sent a few follow-up questions to the team on the types of wires used, thanks to Dennis and Norna for the great responses.
Travel this week to CIT was canceled due to weather, will reschedule trip for early next year.
HAM ISI FDR documents look good, still a little concerned about the GS13 rework and the need to have these in hand mid summer 2009. Would like to see a bit more concrete plan documented on what will be done, results of tests on the changes, and how all these will be done in time for ordering.
Working with Betsy to develop a plan for inspecting a component that is running quite late from a supplier, ensure that we get what we need in time for the training planned with RAL team at LLO in January.

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

From: John Worden <worden_j@ligo-wa.caltech.edu>

LLO Warehouse work- The metal wall stud installation is complete and drywall installation is ready to begin.
Electrical rough in is 40% complete.
Plumbing rough in for the parts washing station is complete.
All construction submittals have been approved and all hardware is on order.
LHO Staging Building work- Metal framing is complete, drywall installation is 50% complete; contractor is waiting for door frames in order to finish drywall. LIGO is reviewing submittals.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

SEI Project Activities

HAM ISI Design and Documentation:

Everyone has been putting in long hours preparing documentation for the HAM ISI Final Design Review scheduled for 12/19/2008.

HEPI Procurement:

HEPI Pump Stations, procurements, and Actuator build status pump stations--No significant changes, still awaiting Manifold, Resistor Washers near Lapping stage, final tube fittings in production. Compared noise of Original motor to new batch, looks fine, see Hanford Elog. Spending time now on house plumbing.
Actuators -- For latest shop update see LIGO-T0810036 (Dec11). Received Holster Micrometers.
Counter wound Springs -- 8 units have shipped to LLO; 17 more expected to ship next week to LLO & LHO. Shop waiting on material.
Crossbeam Foot -- Shop has material; predicts first shipment mid January.
Hydraulic Housing -- Material in, 22 welded, 4 stress relieved; Stiffeners--50% completed. ~ Hugh

SEI Electronics Design and Fabrication:

A system schematic for the new HEPI installations is being created.
Research is being done on components that are low-noise at low frequencies for the readout electronics for the seismic systems.
Working on the Pump Servo schematic. ~ Ben

HAM Crossbeam Redesign:

Acquired preliminary modal frequency data for new Crossbeams - so far, the results are in line with expectation. Working on design change list for HAM ISI. ~ Andy

BSC ISI Development:

We have been doing the experimental modal analysis on the Quad structure and the optical table. We are currently post-processing the data. Preliminary results seems to show that the Quad structure has a very big mode at 80Hz, but is probably not responsible of all the modes we can see in the ISI transfer functions. We continue analyzing the data and cross-correlating with ISI TF. ~ Fabrice

Suspensions

From: "Greenhalgh, RJS (Justin)" <justin.greenhalgh@stfc.ac.uk>

ALUK held its latest Project Management Committee on 17 Dec 2008 (See LIGO-M0810012-00-K). A brief activity summary follows:

RAL: Contract let for FM/BS manufacture. Parts relevant to EQ stops being held up as far as possible. Training session in UK went very well (using blades made by rapid prototyping the week before); some minor mods to the design were identified and have been implemented, just before manufacture.
Quad OJEU process status as follows:
- Machined items - Deliveries to RAL continue.
- Weldments - Continue to liaise closely with manufacturer; current issue is ensuring that RGA testing is being done to LIGO requirements. A second vacuum tank has been made to allow progress to be accelerated once the RGA testing is sorted out.
- Blade springs - Blade manufacture continues – hope to have first batch for testing in January.
- Glasgow - Fibre pulling machines etc now signed off as operational; some documentation outstanding. A way has been identified to gain time on the prism groove process. The ear redesign is complete; blank material has been delivered and an order placed for manufacture of a run of 60 ears for tests. A second vendor will do the flame polishing. Work in hand to prepare for suspension tests (using metal masses with glass inserts) in March 2009.
- Birmingham/Strathclyde - 24 BOSEMs are ready to ship. Harness manufacture in hand (shielded harness for tests icw quad assembly training Jan/Feb 09). Manufacture and preparation of BOSEM production parts continues. Work continues on the quad test-stand electronics; the first UIM unit has been delivered to the USA.
- Overall - Steady progress on production of parts and completing remaining design tasks.
From Janeen Romie and Norna Robertson
(romie_j@ligo-la.caltech.edu, nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu)

Operations Work

HAM Suspensions for Advanced & Enhanced LIGO:

Participated in the Triple Suspension PDR on Tuesday. The review was for mechanical and electrical aspects of the small and large triple US suspensions. We expect a report soon. Work is ongoing for the large triple mechanical and small triple structure stiffening.

BSC Suspensions for Advanced LIGO:

RAL has reported that the box with the training quad parts will not leave RAL until 5 January with a proposed delivery to LLO 7 January. The parts will undergo cleaning and baking per E960022, Class B. Although this is not a production quad, and will not be installed in a chamber, the training session will be conducted as if it were.
The test stand shop had given us a later date for delivery than we can support for the training session. After talks with LIGO Procurement, it has been agreed that an asembled, unpainted test stand will be delivered before the start of training, 26 Jan. It will have to be returned at a later date for painting.
Work ongoing in the high-bay area of LLO to prepare for the training. A task list with dates has been circulated detailing the preparatory work.
Alignment of personnel for the quad wire hang, the PDMWorks class and the training session is almost complete. Folks are starting to fill out TARs.

Project-Funded Activities

The PO for the second solid stack, used for quad production assembly work, will go out this week.
RFQ data for the remaining quad assembly tooling is with the LIGO Procurement department.
Again reviewed the Risk Register and provided input to Project Management.

Core Optics

From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>

Development

Hiro has reported on effects of changing the beam size in the vertex G08100029 at https://dcc.ligo.org/
cgi-bin/private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=138.Increase in thermal noise due to the smaller spot size on the ITM, is balanced by better contrast defect. The contrast defect could be ~1/2 with the smaller beam size as compared to the larger beam size baseline. There is also more positioning tolerance with the small beam size. Systems is considering all of the information and will reach a decision before next year.
We appear to be running close to a degeneracy with LG [4,0] with our current Guoy phase. Bill Kells has been studying this. Find the loss vs. change in ROC plot at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/
~gari/Temp/Document18.pdf.
And from Muzammil, futher exploration of the change in Guoy phase given different radii of curvature. http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~gari/Temp/Gouyphase.pdf.

Project

At the request of one vendor the Polishing RFP deadline has been changed to January 20th.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>

Work Under Project Budget

Mike is in the process of revising the ETM telescope and Transmon table with the newly designed refractive ETM telescope.

TCS:

Phil reports that: Cheryl Vorvick is consulting with Ruth Brambila to organize the procurement paperwork to swap out the TCs chillers and replace them with the chillers we actually ordered.
Both LHO and LLO have now observed TCS noise in the DARM channel, so it is time to start intensity stabilization of the TCS tables. Cheryl has activated the ISS at LHO and achieved about 10x noise suppression on TCSY and lesser suppression on TCSX. We are now working on calibrating the TCS fast channels prior to improving the ISS performance.
Carl Adams has installed the TCS viewport protection at LLO and has been implementing the laser safety interlocks for the viewport temperature and chiller flow.

Work Under Operations Budget

ELLIPTICAL BAFFLE SUS:

Virginio and Ken took ring-down data with a modified baffle suspension having a series of stacked Viton o-rings to provide isolation in the vertical direction. The approach seems to provide vertical isolaton with damping . A few more tests of the Elliptical Baffle Suspension should be completed this week.

ETM TELESCOPE SUS:

Riccardo has readied a Gauss meter for measuring the stray magnetic fields in the vicinity of the eddy current magnets that might affect the ETM Quad suspension. Tests of the ETM Telescope suspension are expected to begin next week.

ETM TELESCOPE:

Mike has a preliminary optical design of a refractive ETM telescope that is diffraction limited at the dual wavelengths, 1064 and 532 nm, and shorter than the off-axis parabolic telescope. He is redesigning the pupil relay optical system and the Transmon optical table layout to incorporate the refractive telescope.

OPTICAL LEVER:

Eric is revising the optical lever damping analysis to include the case where the optical lever signal is taken from the surface of the final hanging mass, rather than from the motion of the penultimate mass.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Adv LIGO R&D

We measured the half-wave voltage of AdvLIGO modulators in a parallel modulation MZ experiment, using DC voltages across the crystal. We also investigated absorption in (rejected) Enhanced LIGO modulator crystal. (Volker)
We have analyzed the thermal effects at low power for Advanced LIGO given a smaller beam size of 5.3 cm compared to the baseline beam size of 5.5 cm. The mode matching loss does not change significantly as a function of the thermal lens in the ITM substrate. Here we are assuming low power operation at 30 W without TCS. (Muzammil)
We have ordered a new material from Schott (SF57) that to study its suitable as an adaptive element in the IOO chain for thermal compensation. This glass provides a larger focussing range for a given heat input. (Muzammil)
We worked on coating damage testing experiment. This includes mounting pick-off wedges and lenses to collect the incident and reflected signals and optimized signal levels on PDs. WE also modified the arrangement in the vacuum chamber to collect the strongly diverging transmitted beam and direct it to a PD. Battery-opperated PDs were adaped to be connected to power supply to allow long-term continuous operation at high photocurrents. The PDs will then be connected to a PC via DAQ board for continous signal monitoring. (Rodica)

Adv LIGO Procurement

Bids for polishing the first batch of IO optics are finaly out. The bid package was modified to remove the PMMT substrates, on account of the present uncertainty in their ROCs. Innstead, it includes the IMCF for which the specifications are final. This bid package contains the following substrates: IMCF, IMCC, F-IMCC and SM. (Rodica)
We are updating IO Schedule Progress for December, early on account of the holiday. (Rodica)

Prestabilized Laser

From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>

Operations

Components to bring a spare intensity servo up to the current revision have been ordered. The values chosen for the resistors are unfortunately out of stock at Mouser Electronics and have a lead time of 10-12 weeks.