Weekly Report for Week Ending April 13, 2000


 Exec. Comm. Agenda
Highlights
LSC
Administration
Hanford Observatory
Livingston Observatory
MIT
Caltech
Detector
40 Meter
TNI
LASTI
Data Analysis
LIGO II/Adv. R&D
Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  April 17, 2000 will be:
 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

  1. Announcements
  2. LSC Issues (Weiss)
  3. Comments on Weekly Report
  4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)
  5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
  6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)
Executive Committee only 11:30 - noon
 

Special Items:


Special Announcements:


Weekly Report Highlights
 


LSC Issues (Weiss)


LSC Access to engineering data:

Keith Riles, chair of the LSC Detector Characterization group, has
written a letter to Barry that is a template for LSC groups to gain access
to the engineering data. The letter will be posted on the net and includes:
the work to be done on the data, the demands to be placed on Laboratory
hardware and people, and the names of the people working on the data with
their responsibilities.
 

People in the Laboratory working on the engineering data will also be
asked to give corresponding information to Barry. This too will be posted
as a way for the entire collaboration to maintain knowledge of
what is being done.
 

Organization of the LSC software development:

A mechanism for tighter coupling between the LSC and those in the Lab
responsible for the LDAS are the "Mock Data Challenges". The LSC data
analysis committee chairs are being asked to organize the software
development in their groups to synchronize with these activities.


LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration


LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Jasnow)

A site telecon is scheduled for Thursday, April 13, 2000. Budget adjustments for site operations for FY 2000 is on the agenda. The list of current actions revised to reflect actions assigned during the meeting may be found at ACTION LIST.  The end of March data was distributed last Friday.  The monthly financial reports can be found on the network in .pdf format.


PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>

Assisted the Detector Group (M. Fine) with the packing and shipping of two boxes of hardware to Astro Pak (B. Ekstrand), Downey, CA. Account Number P96916.

Assisted the Quality Assurance Manager (B. Tyler) with  arranging transportation for previously loaned  equipment to Walker & Sons being returned to LIGO, Pasadena. Account Number LIGO.5F500 2.2 NSFLIGO.5F5000.

Assisted the Systems Administrator (L.Wallace) with shipping of a Gateway Computer to the LIGO Livingston Observatory (T. Evans) via UPS. Account Number  LIGO.5N.500 2.13 NSFLIGO. 5N5000.

Assisted the  LIGO Livingston Bakeout / Vacuum Manager with arranging transportation for four (4) Transformers being returned to the LIGO Hanford Observatory (M. Lubinski) via United Motor Freight.


DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

From: the DCC <dcc@ligo.caltech.edu>

Web pages for the DCC give simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database. Take a look. . .

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

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.


COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Akutagawa, Kaufman)

From: Esther Cunningham <esther@ligo.caltech.edu>

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>

There was a meeting held on Monday, April 10th, attended by various Acquisitions and LIGO personnel regarding concern of the Oracle printouts.  The consensus was that we would send out a brief one-page form on change order modifications to new subcontracts rather than mailing the P.O. printout from Oracle.  The purpose of the new form is to reduce creating confusion on the part of the supplier as the new form is very brief while the Oracle P.O. can get very lengthy as it includes prior change orders and cancellations of lines.  An exception would be made for some existing subcontracts where the vendor is familiar with the Oracle form and it would be best to continue sending them the Oracle form.

Right now, I am working on Galli and Morelli where it looks like we will try to put through the change order funds on an old poeta (FY 1997 funds) rather than a current poeta as a test to see if this can be done in Oracle.

From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>

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

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)

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



Support (Wood)

Irene Baldon

Worked on preparing the paper work for 16 new trips taken recently or upcoming (20 Payment Requests and 4 Advance Requests). There are approximately an additional 11 new trips in various stages pending completion of travel arrangements before the paper work can be completed.

Completed 15 Expense Reports, some of which were extensive, involving 2-3 or more pages each. There are 30 Expense Reports still to be done. I'm holding 2 completed Expense Reports which require a check from the Traveler before sending to Travel Audit to clear.

Rita continues to try to fit into her schedule some time for travel. She has 6 Expense Reports to be done at the present time.

Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement. Continued to research several items for Travel Audit in regards to Encumbrances not removed from Travelers records. Will continue to work with Travel Audit on this ongoing problem.

Prepared the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for the Week of April 10, 2000.

Dorothy Lloyd

Processed invoices, requisitions and receiving on-line. For more detail see "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham.

Reviewed payments processed by Esther during the week of April 3. Payments were entered in contract summary sheets and the LIGO database by Jim and me.

Tracked and followed up on invoice problems.

Monitored contract and blanket order funding levels and alerted task managers where supplements needed to be made.

Jim and I continue to work on updating the PO Log Books as time permits.

Rita Torres

For I. Petrac did letters to Louisiana Tech, Louisiana State, and IAP-Russia to transmit copies of various MOU Attachments for their files. FedExed to Carleton College for signature MOU and Attachments A, and Z. Obtained Oracle requisition numbers for CSIRO, change order No. 7, and Galli & Morelli, change order No. 9. Formatted 8/99 Attachment B, and 2/00 Attachment B for University of Colorado.

Formatted Letter of Interest for Development & Fabrication of LIGO II Lasers. Over two days called 11 potential respondents to verify names, titles, addresses, etc., before sending out via FedEx. Did internal distribution.

For P. Lindquist distributed agenda for CCB scheduled for 4/11/00. Spent more time auditing Expense Reports. Usual P-card activities, reconciled some, chased invoices. Did site trip updates.

Elizabeth K. Wood

Continued with preparations for the NSF site visit and the Oversight Committee meeting on April 21.

Dealt with personnel issues.
 


LIGO II (Frey)

From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>

Progress Period from 4.7 to 4.13



WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)


Reports (Lindquist)

The Quarterly Report for the end of February is being sent to the NSF.  I think we have a good report this quarter. Thanks for all the contributions.  See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~phil/Distribution/M000135.pdf

We are preparing a schedule for the support that is going to be required for proposals, work plans, and reports for the last half of FY 2000.  Clearly there is a lot of information needed, and there is a lot of overlap in the schedules that will have to be spread out given limited resources.



Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)

The following change requests have been submitted:
 

CR-990028 WBS 1.1.3 Beam Tube Enclosure Closeout F. Asiri
CR-000001 WBS 1.1.4 Fencing Road at Livingston (Information Only) G. Stapfer
CR-000002 WBS 1.4 Project Office Close Out K. Duncan
CR-000003 WBS 1.1.4.3 Erosion Control--Livingston Observatory G. Stapfer
CR-000004 WBS 1.1.4 Protection of Concrete in LVEA at Hanford O. Matherny

A meeting of the LIGO Change Control Board was held Tuesday, April 11, 2000. The following change requests were approved:

Minutes are being distributed.

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.  This list should be reviewed and revised.


COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Duncan, Akutagawa)

From: Kris Duncan <kris@ligo.caltech.edu>

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

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)

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

CONSTRUCTION

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

No report this week.


LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)


Announcements:
--------------
(F. Raab)
 

The one-arm test ends at close of business Sunday, April 16. We are still
on the hunt for noise sources manifested in the one-arm tests and will
continue this as possible (see laser work, below). Daniel Sigg is rushing to
milk the last drop of understanding from the length servo. Doug gets "hero of
the week" honors for rescuing us from the extra magnet on one the mirrors (see
optics, below).
 

Our community relations efforts are heating up as the demand for tours of
facilities increases. Next week, for example, we will have four separate groups
of visitors coming for site tours, some from as far afield as Portland, OR.
LIGO commissioning activities made the front page of the local newspaper, which
will undoubtedly up the requests from visitors. Fred Raab has teemed up with a
local middle school teacher and officials from Educational Service District 123
to produce an interactive science program for broadcast to participating schools
on the WA State K20 Telecommunications Network. The program illustrates how the
scientific method works by resolving a simple question: "Does gravity cause heavy
objects to fall faster?" Armed with a coffee can, C-clamps, steel wire, some
nails, marbles and a bag of sawdust, Fred and students will rediscover the
equivalence principle and make the world safe for Einstein.
 

Bake Oven:
----------
(K. Ryan)
 

LHO Vacuum Bake Oven A load #83, consisting of the last LHO BSC bellow, 4K IO
Baffle components, misc. Pick Off Telescope and Beam Dump parts, misc. stainless
steel hardware and HAM 6, HAM 12 and BSC purge air fittings, was released on
3-27-00.  This load failed its initial post bake scan and had to be rebaked.
 

Load #84, consisting of Arm Cavity Baffle components, was released on 4-4-00.
This load failed its initial post bake scan and had to be rebaked at 150 C
(default is 120 C for these materials). The RGA was baked during this rebake as
it had been contaminated by being valved into the dirty load to take the failed
post bake scan.
 

Load #85, consisting of Arm Cavity Baffle components, was released on 4-8-00.
 

Load #86, consisting of Arm Cavity Baffle components, failed its initial post
bake scan.  Presently, this load is being rebaked at 150 C along with the RGA
as the RGA was once again contaminated when valved in.
 

Theories:
 

    1)  The majority of the parts in each of these failed loads was received
from the vendor (Allied) as having been cleaned and, as such, were not cleaned
here at LHO as would normally be done.
 

    2)  The vent gas used to vent a load after the post bake scan is the
source of contamination to the Vacuum Bake Oven.  This could show up as a dirty
load the next time the RGA is valved into the Oven.  We are investigating this.
 

PSL-IOO Mount Resonance Study:
------------------------------
(M. Landry, D. Ottoway, R. Savage, R. Schofield)
 

Investigated resonances associated with PSL and IOO NewFocus mounts. Mounts were
driven with small PZT shaker and resonances identified in PSL monitor/MC error
signal.  Both (PSL) center and (IOO) corner mounts have resonances in the
200Hz-1.7kHz range.  When shaker not applied, acoustic noise couples to the
mirror mounts and is observed as narrow resonances in the PSL Monitor signal.
Primary acoustic noise sources are dust monitors (~133Hz), RGA controller p.s.
(~645-650Hz), and the purge air compressor (~650Hz), all visible as frequency
noise in the PSL monitor/MC actuator signal.
 

Swapping out of mounts in favour of stiffer mounts is recommended.
 

For a more detailed update, including figures, please see the Detector Elog
entry for April 13, 00 at http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ilog/
 

Optics:
---------------------
(D. Cook)
 

We were successful in removing the stowaway magnet without a catastrophe. The
magnets had oxidized at the joint making it much tougher to separate them. We
reset all the PAM magnets to equal distances, to the nominal starting point. We
also remeasured the open light voltages of the OSEMs and reset them to their 60%
open light values. These optics will be realigned during the next vent. The FMy
optical lever is off the diode. Both the ITMy and FMy are on their safety stops
until we complete the arm baffle installation.

The ITMy-2k Optical Lever was rezeroed and calibrated when we realigned ITMy-2k
~3/28/00. Calibration results were averaged from 3 separate measurements using
the "break-out" box.
 

Seismic Systems:
----------------------
(H. Radkins, C. Gray & M. Guenther)
 

BSC9, 4K ETMx: To date the Downtube/Optics Table is installed and the Expansion
Bellows are on. The internal hardware is supported by the external hardware
rather than fixturing and the Isolation stack is complete. The optic's control
cabling and counterweights will be installed shortly along with the In-Vacuum
Accelerometer for tranfer function measurements.


LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)



 

FMCS: The C code to convert the data generated by Building control software to a compressed data format is finished. Juilien will integrate
the compressed data into the DAQ system next week.

Detector installation: 3 core optics suspended and awaiting installation (RM, BS & ITM-y).  Resonant frequencies measured per E970154-C. Second load of COS material in bake oven. 4x10' optical table and 3 new cabinets arranged in LVEA for COS assembly. ISC optical table prepared in lab for buildup of ISCT3 next week. Sheet metal brake and shear ordered for shop. Small bake oven commissioning is in progress.

Facilities: The erosion control work along the south arm has started. The slope on backside has been re-established and the contractor is starting with the placement of the mats which will hold the dirt in place during downpours.

Bake Oven:  Joe Hanson and Harry Overmier are learning to run the bake oven so we will have several people able to operate it. We are in the middle of baking several loads of telescope parts for Mike Smith.

General computing: We have received and are installing the PC we intend to use for AutoCad applications.We have also received our network monitor laptop.

Commissioning: Nothing to report beyond what is in the electronic logbook.

Community relations: Christine Casteel (Chief of Staff for Congressman Baker) spent Tuesday at LLO helping to prepare a proposal for an educational outreach center suitable for presenting to likely donors. Congressman Baker is offering to lead that effort. Three classes of eighth graders from Runnels School (Baton Rouge) toured LIGO on Tuesday, had a science lesson, and added to our collection of murals on the beam tube enclosures.
 


MIT (Shoemaker)


MIT: all activity reported in other categories


Caltech (Sanders)


All activity reported in other categories


Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)



 
 

DETECTOR

Installation:
Hanford
Livingston
Commissioning:
Hanford
Livingston
Other Science/Engineering
Activities

1.0 INSTALLATION (including fabrication and subsystem test)

see also the Installation web page

1.1 LHO

Suspensions

Doug Cook, Larry Jones, Betsy Weaver
We were successful in removing the stowaway magnet on FMy without a catastrophe. The magnets had oxidized at the joint making it much tougher to separate them. We reset all the PAM magnets to equal distances to the nominal starting point. We also remeasured the open light voltages of the OSEMs and reset them to their 60% open light values. Both the ITM and FM are on their safety stops until we complete the arm baffle installation.

Seismic Isolation

Larry Jones, Corey Gray, Hugh Radkins, Gerardo Moreno, Mike Landry
The downtube assembly was installed at WBSC 9 (X end), along with the bellows and V blocks. The springs and leg element stacks were installed and the downtube was rotated into position. This is the last of eighteen chambers at LHO to have seismic components installed.

Three of the bases of the air bearings at WHAM 9 were rotated to facilitate installation of Z Pivot Clamps. Improper planning led to a lifting of the NW cross beam end by approximately 1.5 cm before it was realized that the scissors table needed to be constrained in order to relieve the load on the first air bearing base for rotation. There is no evidence of permanent damage seen. The other two bases were rotated without incident.

PSL

Peter King
The following two main tasks are expected to be completed during the up-coming vent period:
        i.  installation of new pre-modecleaner (PMC)
        ii.  installation of reference cavity and tidal actuator hardware
        iii.  bug fixes for existing PSL EPICS routines
Upgrades to the PSL electronics will occur in May.

Lee Cardenas
-finished hanging and aligned the new upgraded  Ref. Cavity that will replace the existing one at the 2K Interferometer in LHO.  Pictures and measurements provided.
-turned it on and tested the MOPA # 107  10watt Laser the one that I installed in the optic Lab at  LHO.   I have checked all the parameters and I let it run for a whole hour.  the power is 10.65 watts. Lightwave claims 11.6 watts as the optimum power.  It needs small alignment to get the power wanted. All the optics inside the MOPA are well secured.  I have not found  nothing loose.
-made some sketches and working on the drawing for the new Periscope that will replace the existing  ones  for the beam output from the Laser at LHO,  as well as the ones close to the reference cavity.
-have taken apart the old PMC ( small PZT) and I will clean the optics as well as the cavity. I will assemble one completely and will be sent to LLO.
 

ISC

Mike Zucker
Video cameras: preparing orders to backfill for borrowed/damaged/missing Hanford video cameras, lenses and filters for completion of 2k chamber video system during the shutdown.

Participated in planning for reconfiguration & test of ISCT10 and ISCT9 at LHO to "full interferometer" configuration.  MZ will be at LHO 4/19-28 to help David Ottaway get under way on this and help with COS installation alignment.

Ken Mason
The ISC assembly and installation drawings are being updated to reflect changes to optical levers, ETM transmission monitors, camera locations, and final ISC table layouts. These will be completed for Hanford prior to the planned shutdown.

Rolf Bork, Dave Barker
In process of installing digital equipment part of LSC at Hanford. It is now running in the MSR and plan to move it into the LVEA tomorrow. Ran into some difficulty, as the PMC boards mounted on the PentiumIII processor decided to map themselves into different memory space than our other units and we had to reload and rebuild a new vxWorks kernel to accomodate this.

Wrote a preliminary version of the ISC supervisor code necessary to communicate with the LSC front end. This was done, for now, as an extension to the previous ASC supervisor code. It should be sufficient to allow initial checkout of the front end software.

Barker has installed automatic backup and restore for the ASC system. This will require removing a fair amount of initialization software from the ISC supervisor code. This will be done tomorrow.

Daniel Sigg, S. Whitcomb
Installed and aligned new ETM transmission assembly in X-mid station.
 

COS 2 km interferometer Assemblies

Mike Smith, Ken Mailand, Betsy Weaver,  Janeen Hazel
PO Telescopes and PO optical train:
A new HAM viewport alignment fixture has been designed and is being fabricated.

Arm Cavity Baffle:
Assembly and installation drawings are complete and have been sent to LHO.

Faraday Isolator:
One baked magnet assembly and half-wave plate arrived at LHO.

COS Alignment Procedure:
Alignment targets for the ITM, FM, BS, RM, MMT3, and MMT2 optics support structures are being designed; drawings will be sent to several machine shops to fabricate the parts by 4/21.

Mode Cleaner

Haisheng Rong, David Ottaway
Preparation of the MC2 replacement is progressing: The spare MC curved mirror has been glued and balanced. It's ready for vacuum bake (re)scheduled on Friday. We balanced this mirror at zero tilt angle within 0.2 mrad.  A modified (shorter) SOS suspension tower has been assembled.

1.2 LLO

Anti-aliasing Filters

Sander Liu, Paul Russell
Received and shipped to LLO 100 Frequency Devices Filter module. Shipped one BNC version data acquisition system (DAQ) antialiasing filter chassis to LLO last Monday.

2.0 COMMISSIONING (incl. diagnostics and characterization)

2.1 LHO

Engineering Data Run

John Zweizig
I have been continuing preparations for a joint LDAS/DMT offline trigger run. This is meant to generate triggers that may be useful in analyzing the engineering run data as well as to test the software for generating triggers and for logging them into the meta-data base. The run will hopefully take place around the end of this week or the beginning of next week.

The monitor I've been working on most recently looks for jumps in either the signal value or its sigma at 1/16th second boundaries where the DAQ system switches front-end buffers. This was brought on by a 1/16th second glitch that Daniel noticed in the engineering run data where uncorrelated data had apparently been inserted. At present the monitor generates triggers at a rate of about one per 10s  of input data (for all engineering run channels). This still seems to be dominated by false triggers (wildly swinging channels) so there is some hope that I can reduce the trigger rate. If not, the LDAS database will get a little more exercise.

Julien Sylvestre
The first 8 hours of the engineering data run of 3-4 April (E1) have been passed through the software I developed in the last few weeks, in order to identify transient events. Special attention was paid in this analysis to the transients that were correlated with the seismometer channels. The most interesting and intriguing type of burst that I've found is a "chirp" with monotonically decreasing frequency that last ~80 seconds, with frequency going from ~105Hz to ~50Hz, and amplitude increasing for the first 40 seconds, and then decreasing below the detectability threshold. This type of burst is observed at least in the two seismometers, the accelerometers located in BSC5 and BSC7, and the control and error signal of the cavity, with delays of the order of 5 seconds between the corner and mid-station instruments. At least 6 such bursts were seen in the MX seismometer data over the 8 hours analyzed, and 2 of these 6 bursts are clearly visible in the control and error signals (the other 4 have not yet been examined in detail). No correlations were found between these bursts and control changes recorded in the Epics control logs.

Many other correlated bursts in the seismometers and the error and control signals, but with less "structure" and generally lower frequency than the type described above, were also observed. The "data crunching" of the remaining 12 hours of data is expected to be completed by the end of this week, and will be followed by the classification and the characterization of the transients detected.
I also started working on implementing the algorithm used to obtain the results above and a simple match filtering algorithm for the Data Monitoring Tool.

Input Optics

Haisheng Rong, Guido Mueller, David Ottaway, David Reitze, David Tanner
A new data set of MC cavity linewidth measurements has been taken and is being analyzed. We will use these baseline data to determine any changes after the MC2 mirror replacement and MC cavity realignment during the vent.

Guido has correlated and for the most part understood all of the modematching data, including recent beam profile measurements by Stan. While there are some loose ends (mostly due to uncertainties in measurements and fitting), the mode matching into the arm cavity is good (< 90%).  Based on this, the distance between MMT2 and MMT3 is roughly 8 to 10 mm to large and recommend to move MMT2 by 8mm closer to MMT3 (and MMT1, but that doesn't matter).

One Arm Cavity Studies

Peter Fritschel, Nergis Mavalvala, Daniel Sigg, Dale Ouimette
One of the focuses over the last week on the one-arm testing has been the implementation and testing of the 'common mode' servo. This is an analog servo which primarily controls the laser frequency (making it follow the arm cavity resonance), rather than making the arm cavity follow the input light frequency, as the servo we have been using to date does. The one-arm configuration gives us a relatively simple system in which we can test the common mode servo modules that Dale has produced (in it's final form this servo will use digital controls for the slow arm cavity length feedback; here this piece is also analog).

After some work with adjusting gains and making minor modifications to the servo modules, we succeeded in getting the cavity locked and controled with all three servo paths: feedback to the ITM at low frequencies; feedback to the mode cleaner length at intermediate frequencies; and feedback to the mode cleaner error point at high frequencies. As with the feedback to the ITM, we found it necessary to electronically notch out the mode cleaner mirror internal mode (though only the first, drumhead mode at 28kHz). The unity gain frequency of the servo was increased up to 7-8 kHz, very close to the design value of 10-15kHz (we ran out of gain). At this point the most striking thing is that the 2km cavity residual error signal is extremely small -- it is at the level of noise floor of the DAQ ADCs. Some further characterization of the relative gains in the feedback paths will be pursued in the remaining time before shutdown.

New alignment matrix (Rolf Bork, Dick Gustafson, Daniel Sigg)
We previously recognized that the alignment and centering servos were operated in a rather peculiar state. The centering gain (QPDX to beam splitter) was much higher than the alignment gain (WFS to ITM/ETM). However, the sensor/actuator matrices (2x2 for WFS and 1x1 for QPD) assumed that the other way around. In order to obtain a better behaved servo the matrix was extended to a true 3x3 matrix (9x9 in reality to account for all degrees-of-freedom eventually used in the full LIGO) with coefficients separate for pitch and yaw. The rms alignment fluctuations are now about a factor of 2 better than previously. In particular, they don't show any gain peaking around 2-3Hz. All together indicating that the new matrix settings are superior.

2.2 LLO

Mode Cleaner (MC)

Peter Saulson, Joe Kovalik, Sany Yoshida
This past week has been mostly a skill-building week for the LLO commissioning team. In the course of various tests, we had allowed the state of the PSL and IOO to walk away from a well-characterized state; we spent this week learning how to find what had been misadjusted and bring the system back to a state in which it locks robustly in the intended mode. Gains, offsets, alignment and polarization all had to be checked and adjusted.

The alignment of the MC was lost when power to the PZT alignment mirror tip tilt stages was lost; unfortunately, re-biasing the PZTs at the operating voltage did not bring them back to their original position. We are ordering new PZT tip tilt stages with built in strain gauges which will insure that a loss of power to the MC alignment mirrors on the PSL table will allow a quick recovery of the alignment.
 

3.0 Other Engineering and Scientific Activities

3.1 Design/Analysis

CDS Software

Rolf Bork
LDAS has now set up an initial set of directories under CVS for CDS. Plan is to move Hanford code into this structure over the next few days, and continue with the Livingston system next week.

PSL

Rich Abbott & Peter King
PK visited Stanford last Friday to obtain a status report on the slab amplifier.  The UPS's for the slab amplifier have arrived and a number of pump diodes need to be checked out.  Noise measurements are expected to commence after the up-coming CLEO conference (around mid-May).

The PMC servo in the PSL Lab was debugged.  Inspection of the error point showed a strong signal at 540 Hz.  This peak was also present in the frequency servo error point.  It was observed that Lee Cardenas's radio (tuned to 108 MHz --- the 200000th harmonic) dropped out depending on the frequency servo common gain setting.  The cause of the peak was traced to a pair of jumpers inside the 10-W laser, that enabled/disabled access to the FAST actuator via the system interface.  Once these jumpers were removed, the peak disappeared.

The PSL has been operated with a new configuration in which the beam to the reference cavity is picked off after the PMC.  The operation of both the PMC and frequency stabilization servos is not as independent as before.  Whilst lock acquisition was easier than expected, adjusting the frequency servo common gain showed a small effect on the PMC servo error point.  Adjusting the PMC servo gain affected the frequency servo error point.  The dynamic range of the phase-correcting Pockels cell was mostly taken up fighting the PMC PZT resonance.  Both the PMC and frequency servo remained locked in the test configuration for 4 days.

Intensity stabilization did not appear to have any effect on either the PMC nor frequency stabilization servos.

All three servos have been operated concurrently.  The performance is summarized as follows:
        -frequency noise (in-the-loop) approx. 10 mHz/Sqrt[Hz]
        -intensity noise approx. 3e-7 per Sqrt[Hz]
        -power throughput 5 W (for 6.9 W incident)

Anti-aliasing Filters

Sander Liu
Finished circuit design for both antialiasing filter boards for the seismic system . Fred is in the process of designing the printed circuit boards (PCB) as well as the front panels.

Core Optics Metrology

GariLynn Billingsley
I have received feedback from Rai Weiss, Michael Hrynevych, Kathy Creath and Chris Evans on proposed upgrades to the Veeco Interferometer.  There is good agreement among this group as to the upgrades we should be looking for.  Our Veeco contact is out of the office this week, so I will be discussing the upgrades with him next week.

The temperature in the Metrology lab has been out of control for the past several days.  This is probably due to the weather change.  Mike Segal, our physical plant contact, is retiring at the end of this month.  I hope to have a fix in process before he leaves.

Suspensions

Janeen Romie
Received all three quotes for new osem heads. Will forward to Peter Fritschel.

3.2 Issues Concerns

Optical Lever Lasers Reliability

Mike Zucker, Ken Mason
Optical levers: continued correspondence with vendors for proposed upgrade to improve laser diode reliability.  Improved accuracy of calculation to linearize optical lever readouts away from null by including finite detector size effects (corresponding revision to T990026 will be issued shortly).

Seismic Cable Sag Test

Larry Jones
A test has been started to measure the potential for seismic/LOS ribbon cables to sag with time, which could short their isolating function by causing touching with structure or another cable. Measurements are being taken daily for the first week, then weekly for about six months. A study was made of the effects of the various bench assembly variables to assure that the weakest combination would be tested.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)



Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


>
>Last week at this time we had all three mirrors of our mode cleaner
>suspended and successfully damped, and we were beginning to align the
>cavity to our laser.  We first tried alignment with the mirrors held in
>place by their earthquake stops, and that proved surprisingly easy.  We got
>the 00 mode resonating with no difficulty, and we are now in the process of
>extracting an error signal in preparation for attempting a lock.
>
>We have also been working on our PSL to verify that it is in good working
>order before trying to lock our mode cleaner.  We have no problems with a
>narrow-band lock, implemented with an SR560 as the filter/amplifier, but
>our broadband servo appears to be problematic: lock is relatively difficult
>to acquire (which it was not before), and the system does not stay locked
>for long (it used to stay locked for days).  We are currently in the
>process of debugging this stage.


LASTI (Zucker)


LASTI (Zucker, Kruzel, Shoemaker)
---------------------------------
Vacuum system:
Completed and tested annulus system on MHAM21.  Turbo
and ion pumps are working very well; gas load from the O-rings
(water and N2, presumably)
is still too high to cross over, but results looked
good enough to finish the other 3 annuli the same way.  HAM13 is
done/ready to test and BSC0 and HAM20 nearly so.
 

RGA system was installed and tested OK.  Plan is to expose it
to the system tonight or tomorrow morning to get a quick peek
at what's inside.
 
 

Lab infrastructure:  Particle counts took a hit when contractors
arrived to repair our outer rollup door, which had a burned out motor.
Fortunately nothing critical needs to be opened for a while.
 

The construction activity nearby has worsened considerably and moved
even closer to the North end of the high bay. As evidenced by our
resurrected seismic RMS logger, they are still only working 8-hour
shifts.


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


Data Analysis and Computing (Blackburn for Lazzarini)
 

Simulation and Modeling
 

Lock Acquisition:
 

Matt Evans gave a summary talk of his lock acquisition study in a
tele conference with LSC/ASC and e2e people attending. The view
graph is available http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~mevans/vg000412.pdf
 

Simulation Code:
 

The 3d mirror model is developed and is now being tested and improved.
The thermal noise issue is also being studied.
 

Alfi:
 

Internal structure has been changed for a more robust handling of box
files for the new and demanding directory structure.
 

Upating alfi component tree code to use the more stable alfinode tracking
system Ed and I have worked out. This will also allow for the resolution
of the absolute vs. relative path question.
LIGO Data Analysis System - LDAS
 

LDAS Software (Blackburn):
 

This week was spent making changes to the LDAS software that came out of
the experiences using the system at Hanford during the one-arm-test run.
The problem of not being able to handle null fields in the LIGO_LW data
sets the DMT generated has been fixed in both the metadataAPI and the
lightweightAPI. Early testing indicates that we are able to handle these
types of LIGO_LW documents now. Work on the managerAPI and the under
development controlmonitorAPI will also resolve the issues of consistently
starting up the LDAS system that were identified at the engineering run.
 

The new version of the FrameCPP library has successfully been integrated
into the frameAPI. The library supports the TOC but support for this
library has not yet propagated into the frameAPI. Still tests with the
new library show that the frameAPI is working as before. Also, frames
were generated using the new library and shared with VIRGO. Benoit Mours
identified some bugs in our format and the library was changed to correct
these issues.
 

The LDAS webpage has a new look and feel this week. Barbara's efforts
to make the presentation of LDAS information more easily navigated have
paid off. Several new feature still need to be added, like links to the
new web-based read only access to the LDAS CVS respository and the LDAS
software itself needs to present the needed API log files to these pages.
 

A strong effort was made this week to prepare a version 0.0.11 release of
LDAS which will be used in a simulated run in conjunction with a run of
the DMT to generate triggers from the one-arm-test run and ingest the
results into the LDAS database. The needed changes for this run are almost
complete and we hope to have the software mirrored to the sites for the
test by Saturday.
The licensing problem with DB2 at the sites has been resolved. It turned
out that the upgrade process from 5.2 to 6.1 left packages supported under
the old license but not integrated into the new license. Simply removing
several files resolved the problem.
Peter has added to the engineering run webpage instructions on how to
remotely access the data from the run.

Transients Identification (Julien Sylvestre):

The first 8 hours of the engineering data run of 3-4 April (E1) have
been passed through the software I developed in the last few weeks, in order
to identify transient events. Special attention was paid in this analysis
to the transients that were correlated with the seismometer channels. The most
interesting and intriguing type of burst that I've found is a "chirp" with
monotonically decreasing frequency that last ~80 seconds, with frequency going
from ~105Hz to ~50Hz, and amplitude increasing for the first 40 seconds, and
then decreasing below the detectability threshold. This type of burst is
observed at least in the two seismometers, the accelerometers located in BSC5
and BSC7, and the control and error signal of the cavity, with delays of the
order of 5 seconds between the corner and mid-station instruments. At least 6
such bursts were seen in the MX seismometer data over the 8 hours analyzed, and
2 of these 6 bursts are clearly visible in the control and error signals (the
other 4 have not yet been examined in detail). No correlations were found
between these bursts and control changes recorded in the Epics control logs.
 

Many other correlated bursts in the seismometers and the error and
control signals, but with less "structure" and generally lower frequency than
the type described above, were also observed. The "data crunching" of the
remaining 12 hours of data is expected to be completed by the end of this week,
and will be followed by the classification and the characterization of the
transients detected.
I also started working on implementing the algorithm used to obtain the
results above and a simple match filtering algorithm for the Data Monitoring
Tool.
 

LDAS Hardware (Anderson)

The LDAS data conditioning API quad-processor SMP box has arrived and
is undergoing initial system integration and testing in preparation for
LDAS software development and the first LDAS Mock Data Challenge
during the first week in August.
 

The CIT LDAS AIT-2 tape drive has arrived and been successfully used
to read the April LHO engineering run data on to disk. They will be archived
in to HPSS shortly and along with the already available CDS trend frames,
be available via ftp hpss.cacr.caltech.edu. See the eng.2000.apr rows in
the LIGO archive table at http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/sba/ligo/hpss.
 

There is an ongoing struggle with IBM and Lucent to obtain replacement
parts for a key network switch at CACR that provides the fast ATM data
link between LIGO and CACR. Reliable access to HPSS is now obtained
via the fast Ethernet connection, i.e., hpss.cacr.caltech.edu. Connections
to hpsssw.cacr.caltech.edu (i.e., ATM) are currently at some risk
of corrupting user data.
 

General Computing

CIT:
 

(S. Singh)
 

    Installed a video switch in PC server room at basement of west bridge.
    Connected three NT workstations to a single monitor through the switch.
    Ran 2 ethernet cables for 125 and 115 subnet each from main server room
    to PC server room and put those NT's in the network.
    Setup 4 new user accounts for new employees at Livingston laboratory.
    Fixed some printing problems.
    Did some paperwork for purchasing new hardwares and supplies.
 

(B. Kratochwill)
 

     Installed software on the new server for the public web applications.
     Copied over the public DCC search tool and cost book.
     Set up a weekly process to compact/repair the DCC document database.
     Began efforts to make the cost book look like Primavera.
     Fixed a problem searching by Year in the public document search tool.
     Continued work on the new home page.


LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)



>From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>
>Subject: Weekly Report - Billingsley
>
>A change order has been submitted to purchasing for the homogeneity
>measurement of 2 m-axis sapphire blanks by CSIRO.
 

From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>

Because conflicting schedules at REO, the calibration coating run of
sapphire substrates have been delayed by one week.

From: Sam Richman <srichman@ligo.mit.edu>
Stiff isolation system (S. Richman)

A major focus of this week's efforts was integration of the broadband
seismometers.  Open-loop transfer functions were made of both horizontal
and vertical channels.  The three upper stage vertical loops have been
closed using a combined sensors comprising relative position sensors (DC -
50 mHz), broadband seismometers (50 mHz- 15 Hz), and geophones (15 Hz - 50
Hz).  With the initial controller, there is about a factor of 5 isolation
at 200 mHz.

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>

Sorry yesterday we were too busy to look into the new TAG questions, the
entire meeting went,  we will have a double weekly report next  week,
 


For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu