LIGO Weekly Report

The next site telecon is scheduled for Thursday, January 25, 2001. The list of current actions revised to reflect open actions assigned through January 18, 2001 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

Irene Baldon

Twelve (12) new trips were started and I have fourteen (14) trips pending final approval before tickets can be issued. Most of these trips required Advance Checks to be written as well as hotel and car authorization forms to be filled out and FAXed to the appropriate locations.
Reconciled fifty-six (56) items on my P-Card this week.
Worked on and completed twenty five (25) Expense Reports. I have twenty-eight (28) Expense Reports to work on and I'm holding three (3) reports which need a check from the traveler before processing.
Please use the new Expense Report form, particularly if you are using the Pcard for your travels. If you do not have a copy of the new expense report, please let me know and I’ll resend it immediately.
I would like to remind all travelers that if your flight is considerably delayed or completely canceled, and Gina or I are not available to personally assist you in rearranging your itinerary or notifying the hotels and car rentals of your delay (i.e., after working hours here in California or on the weekends), you as the traveler are responsible for calling either the number listed on your Itinerary, their 800 number, or even a local number (or airport desk) for the vendor. Please let them know that you will either be late or a "No Show" otherwise you will be charged a "No Show Fee" and you could lose your reservation completely.

Rita Torres

Converted to MS Word the Attachments B, C, and D for Stanford to update for the next period. Edits to the Advanced SEI Mechanical Structure RFP for G. Stapfer. Obtained DCC numbers for 25 drawings to accompany the RFP, listed this numbers and titles in the document.
Arranged eye exams, and upcoming training session. Obtained information to prepare requisition with IFR Americas. Arranged for telecon on Friday for LIGO 2 systems. Took a nice walk to Sponsored Research to obtain a signature.
Ongoing activity: Chased information associated with Pcard purchases. No sooner do I reconcile a group in Passport when more appear to be done; reconciled 24 this period. Completed the updates to PO log for D. Lloyd.

Dorothy Lloyd

Image by C. Akutagawa

Processed the usual requisitions, invoices and receiving on-line. For more detail, see "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham.
Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther for the week of January 8, on contract summary sheets and LIGO database.
Continued to work with Florence and Ruth on transferring encumbrances to new fiscal period.
Continue to monitor contract and blanket order funding levels and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
Jim continues to do data entry in the LIGO database and help out in the DCC.

Elizabeth K. Wood

Submitted to the NSF the final report for the Amaldi conference.
Continuing with preparations for the NSF Review at the end of the month.
Along those same lines, at some point I will begin asking the presenters for the review to get me their transparencies so I can put them in binders for the reviewers. Just thought I’d let you know about my nagging in advance.

Advanced LIGO (Frey, Petrac)

Annual Report: The Annual Progress Report for the LIGO Construction effort as of the end of November 2000 has been sent to the NSF. An electronic version should appear shortly in the DCC under LIGO-M0100003-00-P.

A visit to the third A/E candidate for the Hanford Support Building is scheduled for Wednesday, January 24, at the contractor's facility in Glendora, CA. A decision on the selection is scheduled before the end of the month.

The letter to the NSF requesting approval for Phase I of the LDAS procurement has been completed in its first draft. This is being reviewed and edited. It will be submitted when the vendors have been selected for all of the different components comprising Phase I.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

Our valiant commissars have made a major breakthrough in extending locking times
for the full 2-km configuration to one minute! (Undoubtedly there will be more
crowing about this elsewhere in this report, so I will say no more.) On another
front, we began installation of optics for the X End into the vacuum chamber.
Alignment was proceeding as of the afternoon of 18 Jan. A number of changes
have been made to controls and there are moves afoot to improve the acoustic
isoaltion of the PSL.

Upgraded CDS main server hanford1. Replaced internal disk drives and
upgraded operating system to solaris 2.7.

Recabled CDS/GC ethernet and ATM networks in the control room and mass
storage room. Updated all cable labels and brought drawings up to
date.

Worked on web server blue, trying to get apache to serve elog to all
hosts while keeping access control to other CGIs restricted to LIGO/LSC.

Fixed DAQ fibre optics problem with the 4k Y End station. EY ADCU now
keeps in sync with other 4k units. The failure of the 4k automatic bypass
board means that the 4k system is currently running on manual bypasses
only.

Worked with Hugh to setup an EPICS test stand for the PSL tidal
correction software.

Autoburt new feature programmed. PVs can be marked to be backed up, but
not restored to IOC.

Put FMCS controls pc onto CDS network, allows backup of fmcs data onto
hanford1 for archiving.

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

Commissioning (Joe Kovalik) LSC and ASC now work both in the LVEA and end
stations. The GDS excitation engine works in the end stations. Work is going
on in diagonalizing the actuators for the large optics.

Both ISCT1 (symmetric) and ISCT4 (anti-symmetric) are aligned. The
photodiodes are installed and the demodulated outputs are now operational.

LSC (Ed Daw and Szabi Marka)We added D.C. offsets at various points in the
LSC servo block diagram to do rudimentary tests of individual servo
components. We found every control we tested was working.
We measured the transfer functions of parts of the LSC digital servo and
associated analog pre and post digital signal conditioning. See LIGO
Livingston e-log entries, 17th Jan 2001.
We measured the dynamic range of the Lm LSC servo as a function of
frequency. We observed glitches in the output of the servo when saturating
below frequency of ~100Hz. See e-log entries, 18th Jan 2001.

Facilities (Gerry Stapfer) The Contractor (Brunt Construction Inc.) has
started work on the renovation of the Staging Building.

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

Installation& Commissioning: Hanford Livingston	Other Science/Engineering Activities: Design/Analysis/Fab Issues/Concerns

1.1 LHO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

2km Commissioning

With that under our belts we tackled locking. We measured the lock acquisition parameters for Matt Evans code, getting similar numbers to what we had gotten in the past. The rf phase for the reflected port ended up about 7 degrees different (and in my opinion, better), but most other numbers did not seem to be changed by much.

The interferometer locked robustly in all of the subconfigurations (including a new one: one arm and a half-Michelson). The we tried the full interferometer. Initially the results were similar to what had been achieved in the past: buildups in the arms indicative of "recycling gains of 7-10, but durations typically 0.1 second. One striking feature of these brief locks was the similarity of the signals from attempt to attempt; one frequently had to really examine traces in detail to see that two printouts of the timetraces were from different events. This lead us to believe that the action was dominated by what we were doing to the optics via the servos and not by random forces or initial conditions.

At that point we turned off the angular suspension damping from the OSEMs; it had been turned way down when the optical lever damping was implemented, but typically left on at a low level for those occasional times when the optlev goes out of range (typically during the alignment process). Lock duration immediately leaped to 0.3 seconds. After a good night's rest, the interferometer was ready to go for 2.5 seconds and encouraged by the occasional passerby, these locked stretches gradually extended to more than one minute. Slight improvements to the alignment have brought the recycling factor up to about 15. We had to reduce power on a couple of photodiodes to eliminate saturation.

The figure below shows key images from four locations in the interferometer: on top the two transmitted beams through the two arms, below, the "dark port" and a pickoff inside the recycling cavity. These are more or less the same ones as in background of the first lock photo of Rai on the webpage, but note that the saturated nature of the images indicates the increase in power in the interferometer (of order 500 for the transmitted beams).

Core Optics

COS

IOO

1.2LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

Commissioning

ISC

Performed functional checks of all I&Q demodulator boards due to poor detection linearity. Problem was found to be an improperly set LO drive level. Fixed the problem and now all channels have I relative to Q phase of 90 +/- 0.5 degrees, and I relative to Q magnitude balance of better than 0.5 %

Changed all elements of the frequency distribution system to incorporate the RF decoupling capacitors. This should improve RF leakage from the cabling. A measurement is to be performed today to check the field strength against the numbers obtained by Rai.

Rolf Bork
Finished up at LLO Friday. The intermittent problem withthe ASC/LSC front ends turned out to be a bad Pentium CPU in the ASC crate. This was the problem that I had been looking for since the first installationand appeared to be a problem with the X end station, as system would crashdue to non-numeric data (0xffff everywhere) randomly showing up in the Xend reflected memory. This would cause one or more of the three CPUs on thisnet to crash. Finally found the problem Thursday night while monitoringall three CPU on my laptop from the hotel. With no software running, suddenly0xffff ate thru the memory of the ASC processor reflected memory board. Replaced that CPU on Friday, and problem has not reappeared.

Jay Heefner
A new set of schematics showing the LSC wiring and cross connects has been generated. The previous version had many mistakes, was hard to follow and did not incorporate changes needed for lock acquisition. Once the drawings are checked the new version will be released.

All modules, wiring and software for the ASC and LSC systems are installed and operational. This does not include any additions that may come from the lock acquisition studies at LHO.

2.0 OtherEngineering and Scientific Activities

2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

Optical Metrology

Optics Modelling

PSL

A prototype board for the high power photodiode was fabricated and stuffed. After some bemusement about the circuit's behavior, the cutting of a few traces ... the photodiode was placed in the laser beam. The output of the photodiode was consistent with there being about 115 mA of photocurrent. Unfortunately the photodiode bandwidth was not as high as hoped for. The measured bandwidth was only 70 kHz, compared to the hoped for 70 MHz. Measurements of the feedback resistor and capacitor confirmed that they were the proper values, so I don't quite understand where all the bandwidth went.

Lee Cardenas
Work on the Laser. Complete re-alignment and Beam scan for both lasers, the npro as well as the amplifier is on going. Since we are replacing the mount for the EOM with a goniometer.

Preparing an station to mount the reference cavity so we can be able to do optical contacting on the new reference cavities.

Rick Karwoski, Paul Russell, Ben Abbott
All four boards composing the Frequency stabilization sub-system have been bench tested, system-tested at Lauritsen, and shipped to Hanford for installation.
Modulated OSEM DesignJay Heefne r
Five stabilized oscillator satellite amps are operational and in final test. The boxes for the boards are late from the vendor. We can ship the boards and test them with no boxes if the LHO commissioning team needs them. Richard McCarthy is checking with Stan.

New OSEM Heads

Janeen Romie
Helena and I cleaned the 120 acid etched heads from Orbit Technology. Rapid Prototyping will receive them tomorrow morning for metallization. The assembly specification is being updated.

Digital Suspensions

GDS

Helped tracking down two problems with mini-nds and the rds writer. The reduced data set writer can now be started and stopped from the control room. It has an internal buffer to store frames for several seconds. This made it possible to implement a snap shot feature which saves frame files to disk around the time someone presses the rds snapshot button. For example, if the operator sees an interesting feature with the data viewer, the event can be saved to fortress by taking a snap shot.

DMT

Data Acquisition

2.2 IssuesConcerns

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

We are currently in the process of characterizing and experimenting with
our successfully locked test cavity, and we are debugging and repairing the
fast inputs on two of our OSEM controllers. Shanti is also working on
materials for his candidacy exam next week.

LASTI (Zucker)

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Yamamoto)

Biplab kept working on the systematic study of the effect
of angular fluctuation on the lock acquisition process.

Lock acquisition with misalignments: studying tolerance
of various stages of the lock-acquisition procedure towards
levels of angular fluctuations in mirrors.
Studying power fluctuations at desired states of various stages.

Although it may sound obvious, it has been observed from
simulation runs that the statistical quantity
"average lock-acquisition time" increases with the level
of angular fluctuations.

Hiro worked in the noise modeling. In order to simplify
the PSD analysis, primitives calculating psd and some
low pass filters will be provided.

Virginio has reassembled and completed the first version of the
quad suspension model for LIGO II, based on the work done by
Akiteru and himself using MSE by G.Cella. The top blade is not
implemented yet, and he will discuss with Peter Fritschel and
Giancarlo Cella to find out the most effective way of implementing
the blade. Hiro is working to complete the interface between MSE
and e2e.

Having the thread-safe queue and a looping algorithm completed,
Tavio and Hiro designed the testbed which has an interface identical
to the real simulation program as to the module arrangement and
execution. Future effort will be concentrated to the algorithm
development to arrange the module execution using optimal number
of thread in this testbed.

Tavio and Hiro tried semaphore synch mechanism under the assumption
that it's being simple and (probably) having a kernel implementation
would make it faster that mutexes & cond variables. Unfortunately,
same long delay (~50 micro seconds) was observed as was the case
using mutextes & cond variables.

A new released has been installed at CIT and LHO, and a tarball is
made available from the webpage. Copy&Paste and new setting front
end is coming.

In order to simplify using remote computers (like CACR) as computation
engine, a program will be written to merge all box files keeping only
minimal information in it.

LIGO Data Analysis System

General Computing (Wallace)

Livingston:
-Working on a number of system maintenance items. Discussed reconfiguring the
Big Brother program to accommodate a few other tasks.
-Larry has sent another message to Bellsouth to try and get the information that
they promised to deliver by the first of the year.

Hanford:
-Getting elog mirrored to the Observatories main web server.
-Larry is working on the procurement for the FORE cards to connect the
Observatory with PNL using an ATM link.
This is part of the project to get the OC3 connection going at the Observatory.

CIT:
(Larry)
-Working on getting things started with the DCC in preparation for the upcoming
LSC meeting. Mainly working on equipment and software purchases they will be
needing.
-Cleaned out a number of defunct aliases on the e-mail server.
-A number of hours spent with procurement related issues. Includes resolving
problems with existing procurements as well as placing more orders.
-Working on a number of LDAS related issues.
-Just as a note to remind everyone to be careful on any programs they download
or install on their computers. Be sure they are virus free. Please, download
only what is necessary and if you find it is a junk program be sure to remove
it.

(Lisa)
- Created users in the new modem pool. I am only a day or two away from
switching to the new pool. I still need to get a free block of IP numbers on
the 125 subnet and chase down a couple of more people who need accounts created.
- Updated an ultra1 on the 6th floor of Milliken to solaris 8
- Rebuilt Paul Russell's pc with a new hard disk.
- Swapped in a new ultra 10 for Hongyu in Wilson House.
- Have been dealing with lots of little laptop issues that have cropped up as a
byproduct of the modem pool upgrade.

(Barbara)
- Completed and installed changes to CostBook system for equipment line
items, contingency override, and subcontract overhead calculations.
- Updated LDAS database links and the green-map images.
- Tried several possibilities for a DCC report for David Shoemaker.
- Worked with Lisa on executing jobs when TimeTarget is installed as a
service.
- Attended roster meeting with Liz and Gary.
- Made a number of web site changes to Publications and Talks pages.

(Suresh)
-Resolved the network connection in one of the cubicles in third floor west
bridge.
-Fixed Erika's mailserver connection problem from her workstation. Helped Paul
Russel with some applications.
-Worked on some printer maintenance.
-Working on new PC set up for Ken Mainland.

(Sam)
-Talked with Phil about his computer difficulties.
-Did some ip stuff
-Answered a few random questions

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

LIGO II PSL
I am still working on a new costing for the PSL. Mostly incorporating
updates for the cost of fabrication of the 200-W laser.

Completed the design requirements document for the seismic isolation
system, and sent it out to the committee which will be reviewing it next
week (Wednesday, 24 Jan).

Silicate bonding
We may have an answer for the "ferns" seen in most of the bonds.
There is a well studied model for pattern formation, "diffusion-limited aggregation", that explains this phenomena.
The "fern" patterns, called "fjords" in the literature, form when colloidal particles undergoing Brownian motion adhere on contact with one another.
If the density of the particles is quite low, the aggregation process occurs one particle at the time, and explains why we do not see these formations right away but maybe hours after the bonding took place.
In our case, we observed that the cleaner the substrate is before bonding, the more faint is the pattern seen.
Now, the bonding solution, which is a mild etchant, may dislodge some loosely attached fused silica particles coming from the top "superpolished" layer of the substrate. This may explain the changing bonding behavior on different substrates.
Surface tension also plays an important role in this pattern formation.

Digital Electronics (IDED)
Digital cards coming along
DME crates available
NIM crates still late

Alessandro
Accelerometers I n construction, 6 for the 2 IP, 2 for Szabi and 2
spares.
Coils shipped
Linear electronics waiting for NIM boxes

Virginio, Akiteru
Testing Alessandro’s new accelerometers on old IP (3 for controls and 1
for monitor).
Testing introducing asymmetry with parasitic springs.

Galli&Morelli
The weak IP joints remade within 8 hours, they are cooking since Friday
together with the filters new blades. End of cooking and shipping on
Wednesday the 17th.
Hexawire half shells shipped.

Kenji.
Tuning F0, bystable with original blades, stabilized by shortening
blades and adding tuning parasitic springs.

Edwin
measuring mini-GASF blades to select them and install in top mass of
multiple pendulum.

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

	Packages	Faxes
In	34	27
Out	16	32

CR-000018	WBS 1.1.4	Curbing for Service Roads at Livingston	G. Stapfer
CR-000019	WBS 1.2	Additional Lab Equipment	D. Coyne
CR-000020	WBS 1.1.4	Staging Building and Renovations to Existing Building--Livigston	F. Asiri

Weekly Report for Week Ending January 18, 2001

Special Announcements:

LSC Issues (Weiss)

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)