Weekly Report for Week Ending May 18, 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  May 22, 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

Mode cleaner and PAM magnets at LLO
 


LSC Issues (Weiss)


No report.


LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration


LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Jasnow)

The list of current actions revised to reflect actions assigned during the site telecon held on May 18, 2000 may be found at ACTION LIST.   The monthly financial reports can be found on the network in .pdf format.  See Cindy Akutagawa for the password to access these files.


PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

Assisted the LIGO Livingston Facility Manager (G. Stapfer) with a short term lease of a GSA vehicle (Oldsmobile) with several more vehicles to follow within the next two weeks.

Assisted the Seismic Attenuation Group (R. DeSalvo) with the preparation of a Commercial Invoice, U.S. Customs Declaration and transportation of the Monolithie Geometric Anti-Spring Filter to Galli & Morelli (Carlo Galli) of Acquacalda (Lucca) Italy.  Account Number:  LIGO.00002-3-NSFLIGO.504800.

Assisted the Seismic Attenuation Group (V. Sannibale) with the preparation of a Letter of Authorization to transport through U.S. Customs to Italy  a VME/VSB VBeX ADC816C  Data Acquisition Board Serial Number 06. Account Number P157718.

Assisting the Caltech Property Accounting Division with Support Documentation concerning the Class Action Settlement of all perviously purchased or leased Toshiba Laptop Computers.

Submitted  disposition documentation (Standard From 120) to the National Science Foundation to dispose of the excess property located at the LIGO Hanford Observatory.


DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

NOTE:  Linda will be having surgery next week and will be out on disability beginning Tuesday, May 23rd.  She hopes to be back in the office around July 1st.  Cleveland will be covering  the DCC.  Linda will be checking in, as she can, to help with any non-routine issues.

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>

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>

  • Discussions are ongoing between Caltech and Demco to resolve the issue of Demco accepting P-cards for payment of electric bills.  At issue is the 2% surcharge added by the credit card company.  A backup plan is to use wire transfers to make the payments.


  • Support (Wood)

    No report this week.


    LIGO II (Frey)

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

    Progress Period from  5.12 to 5.18

    Accomplishments:

    Schedule: Anticipated Challenges: Corrective Action:

    WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)

    Reports (Lindquist)

    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.  Material for the End of May Quarterly Report is hereby requested by Friday, June 9.  Thanks! I have distributed draft copies of the text and budgets for the Advanced R&D Annual Report and Request for Continuing Funds. We are finalizing this material  for entry into FastLane.  There is some additional detail that is needed.  Elizabeth or I will be contacting some of you for this information.  Your assistance is appreciated.


    Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)

    The following change requests have been submitted:
     

    CR-990028 WBS 1.1.3 Beam Tube Enclosure Closeout F. Asiri
    CR-000005 WBS 1.2.1 Upgrade Pre-stabilized Laser S. Whitcomb
    CR-000006 WBS 1.2.1 Re-polish Core Optics Components S. Whitcomb
    CR-000007 WBS 1.2.2 Replacement of Optical Lever Lasers S. Whitcomb

    Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.


    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>


    Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

    No report this week.


    LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)


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

    The completion of LIGO-I seismic isolation was celebrated this week at the Rattlesnake Mountain Brewery. Alignment of the mode cleaner and interferometer resumed the following day. COS installation work is ongoing. Currently, a split shift crew is working on measuring reflectivities and transmissions for the 2K recycling mirror, which requires the LVEA to be cleared of other activities.
     

    Last Friday night, there was a "Science Night" held at Gladstone High School in Oregon, where ~30 students gave presentations to parents and community members on their projects as part of the LIGO Scientist, Student, Teacher program.
     

    We continue to have increasing requests for tours of LIGO (>100 visitors this week).
     

    Bake Oven:
    ----------
    (K. Ryan)
     

    Vacuum Bake Oven A load #90, consisting of Arm Cavity Baffle parts, was released on 5-8-00.
    These were Allied Engineering parts that were not cleaned onsite.  This load required rebaking.
     

    Load #91, consisting of Arm Cavity Baffle parts, was released on 5-12-00.  These were Allied
    Engineering parts that Bartie recleaned onsite and did not require a rebake.
     

    Load #92, consisting of Arm Cavity Baffle parts and reworked "H" tubes, was released on 5-16-00.  These were Allied Engineering parts that Bartie recleaned onsite and did not require a rebake.
     

    Load #93, consisting of 4K Pick Off Mirrors, Steering Mirrors and Temporary Optical Lever Mirror Spacers, was released on 5-18-00.  This load was approved for an early release and did not complete it's scheduled bake as a heater blanket failed and could not be repaired in situ.
     

    I have been given the OK to acquire a second, smaller, vacuum bake oven, heretofore referred to as "Vacuum Bake Oven B".
     


    LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)



     

    Mode cleaner commissioning: We have continued to investigate why we see more angular motion in the LLO mode cleaner output than at Hanford. We have seen that the problem lies in the mixing of pitch and yaw modes, but also longitudinal and side pendulum modes. This arises from the presence of the PAM magnets that introduce new non-orthogonal forces to the mirror motion. This was verified by setting up a test mode cleaner suspension and measuring the effects of moving the PAM magnets close to the mirror.We will continue to investigate the effect of LLO seismic noise on the mirror motion and then perform measurements that must be completed before the vent in early June. (Joe Kovalik)

    Mode matching calculations: (Sany Yoshida): I calculated the locations of mode matching lenses on the PSL to give the best
    mode matching to the MC. The calculation indicates that when the mode matching lenses are placed at the following locations, the best mode matching is obtained.

    Best locations:
    z1      z2      z3      zMC     w0
    110"    12"     30"     12.5 m 1.62 mm
    where
    z1 = EOM waist (center of 2nd EOM) to MML1
    z2 = MML1 to MML2
    z3 = MML2 to MML3
    zMC = EOM wasit to the waist of beam going into MC
    w0 = waist size of beam going into MC (i.e., spot size at zMC)

    I also calculated how much zMC and w0 change if mode matching lenses are moved, for the following cases:

    (1) when MML1 only is moved
    z1      z2      z3      zMC     w0
    112"    10"     30"     13.2 m  1.7 mm (move MML1 toward MC by 2")
    108"    14"     30"     11.8 m  1.55 mm (move MML2 toward EOM by 2")

    (2) when MML2 only is moved
    z1      z2      z3      zMC     w0
    110"    14"     28"     11.5 m  1.5 mm (move MML2 toward MC by 2")
    110"    10"     32"     13.2 m  1.76 mm (move MML2 toward EOM by 2")

    (3) when MML3 only is moved
    z1      z2      z3      zMC     w0
    110"    12"     40"     13.0 m  1.45 mm (move MML3 toward MC by 10")
    110"    12"     20"     13.2 m  1.75 mm (move MML3 toward EOM by 10")

    (4) when all 3 lenses are moved
    z1      z2      z3      zMC     w0
    120"    12"     30"     12.2 m  1.20 mm (move MML1-3 toward MC by 10")
    100"    12"     30"     10.0 m  2.02 mm (move MML1-3 toward EOM by 10")
    I am planning to improve the mode matching by relocating the lenses based
    on this calculation.

    Test influence of PAM magnets to SOS (Sany Yoshida): We set up a spare SOS in optics lab and investigated the influence of the
    PAM magnets to the small optics's motion. We measured power spectrum of OSEM photo detectors and an optical lever. We also shook the optical table by a shaker and measured the transfer function of the shaker input to the optical lever signal. We found that insertion of the PAM magnets change peak frequencies of pitch and yaw (the new frequencies correspond to combination of pitch and yaw). For further details of these measurement, see Tom Nash's LLO E-log entry on May 16 and S. Yoshida's entry on May 12)

    GDS: (Szabi Marka): Installed fiberoptic cable from mass storage room to computer users room. Installed PacketEngines FDR 12 gigabit repeater.
    Installed gigabit net/card/software on GC machine in computer users room.

    OPTICS: Cleaning and baking of COS components continues. Several hands-on demonstrations for our student outreach display are being assembled as time permits.

    Last weekend, we suffered a major contamination incident. Visitors and staff alike, working in both the vacuum prep and optics laboratories introduced contaminated material which elevated particle counts in the laboratories to > 12,000. Aggravating the elevated particle counts, a dirty shaker and accelerometer was placed within a flow bench adjacent to a cleaned and baked SOS, contaminating it. Fortunately, 4 core-optics which were in proximity to the contaminated material were bagged and covered with aluminum containers. The weekend's activity occurred without the submission and approval of a work-permit. This setback emphasizes the need for everyone to submit a work-permit before beginning any activity in the laboratories. (Jonathan Kern)

    The optics on ISCT3 are layed out and aligned. We are working on getting the polarization correct. (Anthony Rizzi)

    Installation: Optical Lever Tables in LVEA were steam cleaned and oxysolved, removed legs and rotated for proper lateral adjustment, reinstalled. Placed both X & Y tables in proper position and dog eared down. BSC#2 Optical Lever mounts installed. ISCT4 was received  and inspected O.K., installed legs, assembled and installed cover, placed at BSC#3 inside portable clean room. Control Room video monitors and speakers were suspended from the ceiling to free up table top space at the consoles. Installed clocks (pacific, central & universal times) Ran 4 common computer lines for lap top use. (Rich Riesen)
     


    MIT (Shoemaker)


    No report


    Caltech (Sanders)


    No report


    Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)



     

    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

    PSL

    Peter King
    The optical layout of the PSL Lab's PSL was re-laid to be the same as that employed at the sites to facilitate testing of the frequency stabilization servo.  The Rev. C. servo is currently undergoing testing in the PSL Lab.  Both the measured FAST path and Pockels cell path transfer functions agree with the Cadence model.

    In running the servo, the new servo seems to exhibit most of the characteristics of the old servo.  Should the beam to the reference cavity be blocked and unblocked the servo re-acquires without oscillating. Something that doesn't happen with the LLO version of the same card.

    As this report goes to press, a comparison is about to be made with the old servo card.

    Rich Abbott
    Continuing to test and work through the rev C upgrade of the FSS that was brought back from LHO.  We have made quite a bit of headway in the test area in the basement of Lauritson.  More work is needed before we are confident enough to ship.

    COS Alignment

    Mike Smith, Doug Cook, Betsy Weaver, Garilynn Billingsley, Larry Jones
    All of the optical train elements for HAM9 and HAM10 were roughly installed. The APS , ITMx, ITMy and BS PO telescopes were installed; the PO mirrors were adjusted and all telescopes were aligned with the COS autocollimator beam projecting from behind the RM. The optical train for the ITMx PO telescope on HAM9 was aligned out to the viewport target, and the reflected viewport ghost beam was dumped on the viewport beam dump.

    The RM ghost beam beam dump for HAM9 has been installed and aligned. The viewport beam dump on HAM9 was installed and aligned. The APS telescope baffle was installed. The y-manifold and x-manifold arm cavity baffles were installed and aligned. The cavity beam dumps in BSC7, BSC8 and BSC4 are in the process of being
    installed and aligned.

    Mode Cleaner

    Haisheng Rong, Dave Ottaway, Corey Gray
    Faraday Isolator (FI) has been aligned. We achieved 40dB (power) isolation and (90+/-1) % transmission.

    MC reflected and transmitted beams for IOT7 table are aligned and centered to their viewports using COS viewport targets. We noticed that the height of the viewport center is 40mm lower than the standard beam height on HAM7 table. We also used a retro-reflector at FI output to mimic the reflection from the recycling cavity and aligned the FI rejected beam for ISCT7 table

    MMT alignment is halfway through. We centered the beam on all SMs and MMTs. Searching for the returned beam from RM is the next.

    1.2 LLO

    ISC

    Matt Smith, Ken Mason, Myron McInnis
    ISCT4 arrived in Livingston Monday, 3 days early and with the crate intact. Myron is in Livingston to assist in the final assembly and installation of this table. Myron will also help setup all optical levers in the LVEA in preparation for the initial alignments in June.

    COS

    Mike Smith
    Parts are being cleaned and baked in preparation for installation during June/July.

    Mode Cleaner

    Sany Yoshida
    I calculated the locations of mode matching lenses on PSL to give the best mode matching to MC. Repositioning of the MMLs is underway. Also calculated sensitivity of mode matching to position changes of the MMLs.

    A special (small footprint) beam block for the Faraday has been fabbed and sent to LLO for baking and installation.  New SOS alignment targets have been designed which incorporate irises for more accurate beam positioning.

    GDS

    Szabolcs Marka
    Installed fiberoptic cable from mass storage room to computer users room. Installed PacketEngines FDR 12 gigabit repeater.  Installed gigabit net/card/software on GC machine in computer users room.

    LIGO-TriNet Seismic Monitoring Station

    Szabolcs Marka
    Made preperations to attach EpiSensor to spare DAQ channels to conduct long term test.

    2.0 COMMISSIONING (incl. diagnostics and characterization)

    2.1 LHO

    Recyling Mirror

    Luca Matone, Eric Black, Doug Cook
    We have setup the equipment for the measurement of the recycling mirror transmittivity.

    2.2 LLO

    Mode Cleaner and PSL

    Peter Saulson, Joe Kovalik, Sany Yoshida, Gabriela Gonzalez, Mark Barton, Rai Weiss, Nergis Mavalvala, Szabi Marka, Tom Nash

    Issue #1 is finding out the reason for the large motion of the transmitted mode cleaner beam, of order 10 times larger than at LHO. LLO's larger seismic noise at 1 Hz may account for a factor of 3. The beam jitter at the MC input probably doesn't contribute much, because of the filtering action of the MC.

    We attempted to make the diagonalization program work on these suspensions. The previous attempt had foundered because of the "non-sensical" responses of the OSEM outputs at various modes. A combination of new detailed modeling and experiments on a spare SOS suspension revealed the reason: the PAM magnets cause strong perturbations to the mirror motion, so that the true normal modes have none of the symmetry that a PAM-free suspension has. (For further details of these measurement, see Tom Nash's LLO E-log entry on May 16 and S. Yoshida's entry on May 12.) In principle one might model these modes in detail and push the diagonalization program through to completion, but the mode shapes depend sensitively on parameters that are hard to measure well, such as the depth of PAM insertion and perhaps on installation errors.

    This insight also goes part of the way toward explaining why the different modes of the mirrors aren't equally well damped -- the whole modal picture that is the basis of our controller design bears little resemblance to the actual modes. Nevertheless, we found several ways to adjust the controller gains so that all modes are well damped.

    We hoped that by damping all of the modes we would be able to reduce the motion of the MC beam. This worked to the extent that peaks corresponding to undamped modes can be pulled down as those modes are damped. But the dominant contribution to rms motion comes from a peak near 1 Hz that does not get reduced as the 1 Hz modes in the suspension are strongly damped. At the moment, all we can think of is that the response of the SEI stacks are not what they ought to be, and perhaps have a peak near 1 Hz. We have started to make transfer function measurements, and hope they might confirm or refute this hypothesis.

    What should be the fate of the PAMs? Even though the modal problem doesn't appear to be the cause of the large beam motion, it may still be better if they could be removed. Diagonalization will be much harder (if not impossible), so reducing length-to-angle coupling will be hard to achieve. One question is whether alignment can be achieved without them. Two of the MC mirrors as hung now have large pitch errors (of order 7 and 4 mrad) that are corrected by the PAM screws. They would eat up large amounts of controller dynamic range, although perhaps they could be rehung.  One recommendation is clear however: if we persevere with PAMs on the SOSes at LLO after the next opening of the vacuum (as opposed to say increasing the range of the controllers as at LHO), the spacing in the initial neutral position should be much greater than it is at present, e.g., 13 mm between PAM magnet and optic magnet faces as opposed to the current 8 mm. This still gives an adequate adjustment range of about +/-10 mrad in 4 turns of the screws, but enormously reduces the cross-coupling.

    Optical Lever Monitoring

    Ed Daw
    This week I installed a monitor for motion of the south endstation end test mass optical lever at Livingston. This was requested by Joe Kovalik for looking for long term drifts in the suspended mass position. Currently the optical lever outputs are read out by a PC with an ADC card and labview. My software uses the data monitoring tool libraries and runs on delaronde.ligo-la.caltech.edu . The optical lever outputs are temporarily connected to currently unused DAQ channels L0:PEM-BSC4_ACCZ and L0:PEM-BSC4_ACCY .

    3.0 Other Engineering and Scientific Activities

    3.1 Design/Analysis

    Optical Metrology

    GariLynn Billingsley
    A flow control valve was installed on the chilled water line in the Metrology lab.  We're trying to get the right position and settings for the sensor.

    Metrology mounts from Bryan Loucks have been delivered.  These will enable us to measure optics in a horizontal orientation.

    Achim Leistner, who is in charge of polishing the LIGO optics at CSIRO has been awarded the David Richardson Medal by the Optical Society of America, for distinguished contributions to technical optics, including the LIGO Optics. Read more in "Optics and Photonics News"  May, 2000, page 17.

    Helena and I will visit General Optics on May 22.  The purpose of the trip is to discuss test coating runs for R&D purposes and to discuss metrology on the 4 ETMs which GO will repolish.

    Optical Coatings

    Helena Armandula
    Contacted Gary de Bell from MLD. They are preparing a quote for the coating of 4 silica substrates to Caltech specs.
    G.O also own and operate 2 ion beam sputtering chambers. Next Monday we'll discuss G.O's  possibility of making LIGO coatings. G.O seems very interested in working with us.

    DAQ

    Sander Liu
    Seismic System Antialiasing Board: First article checkup is now complete. Found a few mistakes on the PCB. The errors were corrected and new boards ordered. Expect to begin delivering the boards to the field in about four weeks.

    LSC CDS

    Dale Ouimette, Mohana Mageswaran, Flavio Nocera
    Mohana has finished testing the two Anti Aliasing filter boards, will be testing it again with a Whitening Filter once the components are stuffed in.

    Rich Abbott
    LSC/ASC Frequency Distribution: Prototyped the AM Stabilizer Daughter card and locked the amplitude of one of the boxes used to drive the EOMs.  A schematic for a real board has been completed, and a board has been layed out.  Will send this board out on 18 May for rapid turnaround.  This will allow the LHO Frequency Dist system to set the modulation index remotely with a voltage.

    ASC/LSC/Suspension

    Jay Heefner, Bill Kells
    .- The schematics for the universal dewhitening board are 90% complete. Board layout should begin by the end of the week. Boards should be available for LHO testing by mid to late June. The fast turn around required by the LHO schedule has not allowed the prototype to be fully tested. In particular, the dynamic range required by the full LSC has not been tested and verified. In addition, the configuration required to interface the board to the LOS controllers will compromise the output noise. Jay will continue to test the prototype and play with different filter configurations in the hopes that all requirements can be met for the full up digital suspension/ASC/LSC.
    - The transfer function for the anti-imaging board has been chosen to be a 4th order, 7570 Hz, 4 dB ripple, 60 dB attenuation elliptic low pass filter. The schmatics for the board should be started by the end of the week and boards should be available for LHO testing by md to late June.
    - Bill Kells volunteered to tune the WFS PD amps needed for LHO and LLO. He currently has the 68.8 MHz amps tuned (LHO) and is working on the 24 MHz amps (LLO).

    PSL

    Peter King
    Quotes for components of the 40m Lab PSL have been obtained for the CCD monitoring equipment.

    Two new suppliers of beam dumps have been found.  In one case the beam dump should be able to handle the laser power without getting too hot to the touch.

    Lee Cardenas
    Continuing the drawing for the 40m. Lab. Enclosure.  Made alignments from the sample beam from the Laser into the Ref.Cav. Chamber. Enquire and placed order on detection cards, Beam detector(ceramic type) for the CW  ND:YAG Laser.  Made some  SMA cables and arrange the cabling on the laser enclosure.

    Suspensions

    Janeen Romie
    New Osems: PRs placed with Superior Jig and Spacecraft Specialists, three and four week lead times. Working with Oliver on pigtails and brackets. Made a new PAM bracket drawing.

    ISC

    Ken Mason, Matt Smith
    The ISC Equipment Layout drawings for Hanford have been updated and are in final checking. They will be filed this week. The Livingston drawings are now being updated.

    Mike Zucker
    Issued RFQ and received bids on remaining video cameras and lenses to complete chamber and ISC table video installations both sites. Will issue PO shortly.
     

    E2E model for the recycled Michelson

    Luca Matone
    I've been working both on the recycled michelson e2e model and Matt Evans's e2e model for Lock Acquisition. In particular, I have been adding the angular motion of the mirrors to the two models but I have encountered problems which I still need to resolve.

    GDS/DMT

    Daniel Sigg
    The following features have been added:
    - an import tool which can read both binary and ascii files. This option can be used together with the export feature to write a trace to file, modify it with an external program and then bring it back into the viewer.
    - plot settings can now be stored and restored. By default the viewer saves the settings of the standard pads together with the data. When the file is reopened the data will be displayed with the same option settings. Furthermore, restarting a measurement won't reset the settings anymore.

    John Zweizig
    I have been working on preparing a new release of the dmt software and incorporating packages from LSC, et al. I expect that I will have it ready to install by early June when I visit LHO.

    Sander Liu
    Completed preliminary signal processor schematic design. Currently working with vendors to get quotes for long lead items.

    3.2 Issues Concerns

    Optical Lever Lasers Reliability

    Mike Zucker, Ken Mason
    Optical lever lasers: reflectance scans from COC witness samples look pretty bad for 670 nm.  Engaging one more round of discussion with laser mfg. to see if there is a compromise wavelength we can choose which will reflect adequately and still give acceptable laser MTTF.

    Worked on modification to optical lever calibration procedure to treat calibrations done when beam is far from null (i.e., normal operation).  New lookup table will permit interpolation of "central" (nominal) sensitivity and/or inversion of nonlinearity.
     


    40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)



     



    Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


    No report


    LASTI (Zucker)


    Commissioning last of 4 annulus systems (BSC missing one small part
    on backorder).

    Rigged equipment for inner O-ring test to commence
    Friday or Monday (backfill each annulus in turn
    and look for air signature in main volume).

    Discussed technical (noise) goals & optical
    topology for test interferometer with
    D. Shoemaker, P. Fritschel and others.


    Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


    Simulation and Modeling

    simulation code development

    Matrix class was improved to speed up the Michelson cavity simulation
    by factor of 2.
    Suspdended 3d mirror primitive is completed, tested and documented.

    RSE

    Matt studied the signal characteristics of Jim's RSE configuration
    in order to find a different signal for better locking.

    Alfi4

    alfi4 is available now. This is still beta, but looks pretty stable.
    This version supports multiple directories and easy handling of
    heavily nestedt boxes. Further improvements will be included in
    the next release on Monday. These will make the new features
    more useful.

    LIGO Data Analysis System

    There were two problems within LDAS software which are proving
    difficult to solve this week. Threads were originally implemented
    in several of the LDAS commands made available to the TCL layer.
    These functions were either insufficiently tested in the distant
    past or as the results of changes in compilers, OS, and code have
    stopped functioning perfectly. At present, it is possible to start
    several hundred threaded processes before a thread hangs. There
    are non-threaded versions of these functions so not having thread
    support is not critical to the existing LDAS APIs. However, the
    new dataConditionAPI will definitely need working threads at a
    much higher reliability than the roughly 399 out of 400 working
    now. The other problem is with memory management and usage of the
    widely available memory leak checking packages available. The
    main memory leak is in the frameAPI. Attempts to attach three
    different leak checkers has failed do to a host of differing
    reasons with each tool. Some improvements in the memory management
    were implemented by code reviews however, to solve the ultimate
    failure of an API, the managerAPI was beefed up to support the
    termination and restart of an API which exceeds a preset amount
    of memory usage. In addition we were able to integrate a memory
    management package (dlmalloc) which allows the APIs to use the
    shared memory instead of heap for dynamic memory so that used
    memory can be returned the the system.

    The wrapperAPI now only needs to support for the command passing
    with the mpiAPI and the internal flow control to be ready for
    integration with the shared objects being developed by the LSC.
    The UWM group is nearly finished with the first test shared
    object and we expect to begin integration and testing the first
    of June.

    The remaining activity for the group was preparation of a new
    procurement plan for LDAS hardware in response to the NSF review
    actions. A draft for this plan should be ready by the end of the
    week.

    Anderson:

    Placed an evaluation order for a large Ethernet switch to be tested at
    Caltech as a candidate for the main LDAS computational switch.

    Proposed an integrated CACR/LIGO HPSS growth plan to triple the amount
    of tape storage available to LIGO.

    Additional research for the LDAS procurement plan.

    General Computing

    Larry has been working on a procurement of Sun equipment
    for various components of LIGO Laboratory.
     


    LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)


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

    Contacted Gary de Bell from MLD. They are preparing a quote for the coating
    of 4 silica substrates to Caltech specs.
    G.O also own and operate 2 ion beam sputtering chambers. Next Monday we'll
    discuss G.O's  possibility of making LIGO coatings. G.O seems very
    interested in working with us.
     

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

    Helena and I will visit General Optics on May 22.  The purpose of the trip is to discuss test coating runs for R&D purposes and to discuss metrology on the 4 ETMs which GO will repolish.
     

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

    Delayed removal to upper section of Synchrotron while waiting for the
    space to move in to be cleared.

    Szabi, Riccardo
    Tested oil bearing with 1 ton load mounted asymmetrically over three
    bearings.
    Designed and started production for two platforms for LIGO and TAMA SAS
    after removal; made DAQ software for thermometers and Keithley.

    Alessandro
    Making coils for TAMA prototypes in Pisa.  Updating accelerometer design
    with EDM company, getting new batch started.

    Virginio
    Automatisizing MIMO diagonalization procedure, next week going to Elba
    conference, there he will compare our MIMO technique with the Virgo one.

    Akiteru
    TAMA suspension description first draft document.  In suspension design
    will need some vertical springs for the intermediate mass wires to
    control thermal noise.  Considered the bellow springs used by TAMA so
    far and small MGASFs.  Built a small prototype in normal spring steel
    (12 cm across, 1.2 Kg load, 500 mHz resonant frequency) that works OK.
    It seems to satisfy all requirements to suspend the 1 Kg mirror, 1 Kg
    recoil mass and 2 Kg intermediate mass of the proposed suspension.  Need
    to make a maraging version of it.

    Hareem, Soy
    Measured MGASF blades at low frequency and found low hysteresis.  The
    hysteresis is strongly sex dependent.  If a strong male tightens the
    screws it is much better.  Tightening too much flexes the cross beam and
    is not better.  This problem will go away in the first prototype with
    wedged clamps.  It was not observed in the old GASFs.
    Made thermal measurement of MGASF blades, the measurement was too fast
    and must be remade because the thermometer on the body heats at half the
    rate than the thermometer on the blades, however measured 0.3 mm/oC at
    250 mHz.

    Flavio
    Marconi concept and development scheme first draft.

    Riccardo
    Modified elastic joint base for future IPs to eliminate a small residual
    hysteresis that probably came from the same reason of the MGASFs
    hysteresis.
    Small MGASFs for Akiteru’s needs.
    Shipped MGASF to Elba conference.

    Chenyang
    First draft of on actuator report.

    G&M
    TAMA SAS was to be ready to ship end of this week will be delayed a
    couple of working days.  LIGO SAS new counterweights may be a few more
    days late due to material procurement.  Same for spare MGAS filter.

    PROMEC
    Checkout of parts to be shipped.  Including last corrections from
    Alessandro to accelerometer design.
     

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

    The high-frequency filters in the lower stage horizontal loops were
    improved, allowing a factor of 3 increase in gain.  The position sensors
    signals were also rolled off better, and there is now a small band of
    coherence around 8 Hz between horizontal ground motion and lower stage
    motion with all 12 loops closed.  The isolation in this band is about 45 dB
    (63 dB in the vertical).  We are now returning to the issue of integration
    of the broadband seismometers, to reduce the rms motion of the system.
     


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