Weekly Report for Week Ending July 5, 2001


 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  July 9, 2001 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   Topics:

Special Items:


Special Announcements:


Weekly Report Highlights
 


LSC Issues (Weiss)


no report


LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)



WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration


LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

Since many of the key site teleconference attendees were bound for Australia for the Amaldi Conference, the teleconference scheduled for Thursday, July 5, was cancelled. The next site teleconference is scheduled for Thursday, July 12.

The list of current actions last revised to reflect open actions assigned through June 21, 2001 may be found at ACTION LIST.


PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

  • Nothing significant.

  • DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

    >From: Linda Turner - turner@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. . .

    ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  • I continued to work through Fred Asiri's document leftovers.  A little more than two file cabinets are left.  I'm trying to work an hour or so a day.
  • Prepared an article for LIGO's June newsletter.
  • Participated in a planning meeting for documentation and logistics at the LSC meeting in August.
  • For the month of June, a total of 103 new documents were brought on-line, while 128 documents were added to the database.  The breakdown by category is:
  • >From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>

    ACTIVITY

  • Scanned a couple more documents for electronic access.
  • Progress continues on auditing of PSI drawings.
  • Electronic document submittals remain steady.
  •  
    Packages Faxes
    In 39 34
    Out 9 36
    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>

  • Shanghai Institute, Brunt Construction, Goodrich, U.S. Civilian, and Galli &Morelli are completed and have been mailed to the vendors.
  • Working on Excel; awaiting receipt of vendor's letterhead to have the vendor's name and information updated in the Oracle vendor file before the change order is completed.
  • On the change order to Ray Beausoleil, I have notified Mr. Beausoleil of the change order and am pending receipt of a completed W9 to update the vendor's Oracle file so that the change order can be completed. He does not have access to a fax machine, so the W9 will be submitted by mail.
  • A draft has been submitted for the Triad TSEP contract which needs to be finalized addressing our specific needs and requirements from Triad.
  • From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>
  • Started working on monthly reports for June.
  • Attended meeting at Sponsored Research regarding methodology to be used in entering the $2.7 million R&D award into Oracle.  One side-light of the meeting was a clarification of terminology - the term 'Funding Realignment' will be used when budgets need to be moved in Oracle (at the Project Level) to permit billing NSF,  and the term 'Budget Realignment' will be used when budgets are moved for internal LIGO reporting purposes from or to Management Reserve, or from one task to another, due to revised spending estimates.
  • We have been notified that two new Expenditure Types have been created for LIGO equipment purchases.  Equipment being defined as any tangible item that has a useful life of two years or more and a total acquisition cost including freight and taxes of $5000 or more.  'LIGO Equipment-Caltech' for all equipment that will be owned by Caltech, and 'LIGO Equipment - Government' for all equipment that will be government owned - generally  equipment purchased at or for the sites.  These are the only two expenditure types that should be used for outright LIGO equipment purchases. However,  If equipment is to be fabricated, assembled or constructed, then an Equipment Fabrication account should be requested.  All costs charged to an Equipment Fabrication account are free of Indirect Charges.  An equipment fabrication account acts as a holding account; once the fabrication, assembly or construction of the equipment is completed, the costs accumulated in the fabrication account will then be transferred to one of the two LIGO Equipment Expenditure types - Caltech or Government.  There is an interim period until October 1, 2001 when purchases of equipment with a cost of $500 but less than $5000 will be charged to 'Equipment-Not Capitalized'.  Items charged to the 'Equipment-Not Capitalized' category will be exempt from the Indirect Charge but only until October 1, 2001.


  • SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

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

  • MIT: CO No. 13, allocating the remainder of FY'01 funds (through Sept. 30) was released to Purchasing. MIT Office of Sponsored Programs was forwarded an advance copy. Their concurrence with funding allocation was obtained.
  • From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>
  • No report this week (vacation).

  • SUPPORT (Wood)

    Dorothy Lloyd

  • On vacation.
  • Irene Baldon
  • Please note that this report is for four (4) days due to 4th of July Holiday.
  • Process the paper work for four (4) new trips (including Advance Checks written and hotel/car rental authorizations filled out and Faxed to appropriate vendors in various locations).  I have twenty (20) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing.  Worked on several trips that were changed or modified and assisted several more travelers with questions regarding their existing or potential travel.
  • Jim Covington returned seven (7) expense reports and has eight (8) of the original twenty-two (22) reports he has been working on.  I worked on three (3) that were problems and clarified a few more that Travel Audit or the traveler were having trouble with.  I completed twenty-four (24) reports and there are twenty-one (21) reports to be done.  I'm holding six (6) reports that need checks or P-Card Transaction Reports from the traveler before they can be completed.
  • Reconciled fifteen (15) items on my P-Card which required telephone calls to vendors who do not enter the traveler's name on their charges.  Assisted a few travelers with their reconciling and/or data entry.
  • Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for July 2, 2001.  Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement.  Also performed miscellaneous duties as requested by various members of  the LIGO Project here at Caltech as well as from members of the staffs of each of the two (2) sites.   I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.
  • Rita Torres
  • Obtained Oracle requisition number for MIT, change order No. 13.  Arranged an AT&T telecon.  Formatted the Vehicle Usage Policy, submitted for review.  Arranged a few Pcard purchases.  Obtained a quote from Sonic Mill.
  • Otherwise, I've been busy moving from 357WB to 251WB.  Currently working out of two offices at once.
  • Elizabeth K. Wood
  • I’ve been working with Criselda in getting the new pcard travel module set up for campus-wide distribution.
  • The NSF asked Gary to submit a revised budget for the Management School proposal, so with Phil’s numerical input, I utilized the user-friendly FastLane system (TM, all rights reserved).  Maybe I’m just getting used to it---it seems to be getting easier each time.

  • Advanced LIGO (Frey)

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

    Progress Period from 06.29 to 07.05

    Accomplishments:

  • Spent Friday, June 29th, in transit from LLO.
  • Wednesday July 4th was a Holiday!
  • Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting held Monday the 2nd at 1pm.  Focus of the meeting was the Cost Book Tool reports formatting.
  • Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)
  • Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
  • Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
  • Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.
  • Continue to test the Cost Book Tool.
  • Development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guidebook continues.
  • Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.
  • Schedule 07.06 to 07.12:
  • Next weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting scheduled for July 12th at 1pm at LSCR.  Focus of the meeting will be the second review of COC MRE Cost and Schedule.
  • Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority Task)
  • Will Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
  • Will Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
  • Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule and incorporate any changes.
  • Cost Book Tool development continues.  (Highest Priority Task)
  • Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Web Site.
  • Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.
  • Anticipated Challenges:
    None to report at this time.

    WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)



    Reports (Lindquist)

    The end-of-May Quarterly Progress Report is due.  I have received contributions from the Detector Group, the Data Analysis and Computing Group, and from the Project Controls Group.  I have not started assembling the report yet.

    We have provided NSF revised budget forms and justification for 2002-2006 Operations.



    Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)

    The following Change Request has been submitted:

     
    CR-010006 WBS 1.1.4 (OPS) Roof Shelter for Concrete Pad Adjacent to Erosion Control Pond (Livingston) M. Coles
    Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

    COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Duncan, Akutagawa)

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

  • Completed and distributed for review the 2nd Draft of the NSF Quarterly Report Cost/Schedule Reports.
  • Continued with the reconciliation of the Contingency Liens Log and remaining CSSR contingency.
  • Continued with the LIGO 1 construction contract/budget close out.
  • Continued with the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) incorporating the change request's approved for the May 2001 Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB).
  • From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>
  • I am gathering all the information for the monthly reports on the Construction and Advanced R&D accounts for June 2001. Since the Advanced R&D report has been put into a new format, I will no longer send out the details at a later date. Everything is put on the network at the same time.
  • Florence Kaufman and I have decided to put all the reports into one place (for your convenience)... so they can be found at
  • I received the twonk for the month of May, 2001. As soon as I receive the invoice from MIT I will submit the data for payment.
  • I continue to reviewed the open encumbrances on the Construction and Advanced R&D accounts to see if the requested removals have been made. I will continue to review these accounts weekly until all encumbrances have been removed (Remember, I can only get these errors corrected if the Task Managers point them out to me).
  • Reminder: An updated list of all OPEN LIGO account numbers have been posted on the LIGO internal bulletin board. Please use these lists when you need a LIGO account number (or make yourself a printed copy for quick references).


  • SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow)

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

  • No report this week.

  • Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

    No report this week.


    LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)


    General Items (F. Raab)

    We have closed the doors on the last optic to be installed in LIGO I!  (Reinstallations don't count.) Our SURF program is in full swing: all the students have given their first seminars on their work. This week we added three teacher-interns, who will spend the month of July improving our educational outreach offerings.

    End of Installation (D. Cook)

    The ETMy-4k core optic and ETM telescope installation was completed today and the end station is being pumped down. This concludes the 4k installation at Hanford. We have a few loose ends to clear up on both the 2k and 4k IFOs, but the commisioning crews will now have their hands full.  We'll spend some time cleaning, reprocessing institu tooling and fixtures, and stowing the hardware used for the installations.

    2k PSL Intensity Stabilization (Rick Karwoski, Paul Abbott, Rick Savage)

    The prototype intensity stabilization servo has been installed on the 2k PSL.  As a result, the relative intensity noise of the beam directed toward the pre-modecleaner has been reduced by about a factor of 100.

    The unused sample beam from the 10-W laser was directed to a 50% beamsplitter, generating 15-20 mW beams that were directed to modified PDA-55 photodetectors. The response of the PDs is about 0.75 V/mW.  The DC levels on the PDs is about 8 V. Only the inner loop of the 2-loop servo was closed. The plot, http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~rick/Temp/2kiss.PDF, shows the free-running (upper traces) and stabilized signal levels for the inside-the-loop PD (upper window) and the outside-the-loop PD.

    The free-running relative power fluctuation level is about 6-6 deltaP/P/rtHz.  More than 40 dB of suppression (outside the loop) is achieved from about 50 Hz to more than 1 kHz. The suppressed level is below 3-8 deltaP/P/rtHz at a few hundred Hz.

    With the laser intensity noise now reduced by about a factor of 100, we will proceed to measure the relative power noise down stream to and after the modecleaner with the goal of eventually closing the outside loop utilizing a photodetector located after the modecleaner.


    LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)


    Detector

    Optics and Installation: Gary Traylor and Harry Overmeyer setup the 4w COS laser autocollimator on the X-axis, and retro reflected from ITM-x.  The ITM-x is now intentionally misaligned, and the RM has had its OSEMs replaced and has been realigned using the COS autocollimator.  MMT-3 is in the process of having its OSEMs replaced and being aligned. Sany and Lee Cardenas completed the in-air alignment of the mode cleaner, and checked that the input beam on HAM-1 is properly centered in the Faraday.  (Jonathan Kern)

    We aligned MC, SM, MMT1 and MMT2. PSL beam now goes through the center of FR (Faraday Rotator) and hits the center of MMT3. We will adjust the alignment of MMT1 and MMT2 when the core optics alignment beam becomes available in HAM1 so that the PSL beam is aligned to the core optics. (Rana Adhikari, Lee Cardenas, Joe Kovalik, Joe Langdale, Doug Lormand, Dave Ottaway, Gary Traylor, Sany Yoshida)

    As soon as MMT-3 is ready, we will check the alignment of the IO by using the PSL beam if the forward direction, and the back projected 4w COS-LAC into the Faraday.  The only core optic in the vertex which remains to be aligned is the BS.

    Computing

    We have ordered two Sun Blade 1000s, with delivery expected within two weeks. Our intention is to make one Blade a dedicated server. The second Blade will be available for the general use of the GC users, and will be available as a backup for the dedicated server, if necessary.

    We have notified LSU that we wish to proceed with the installation of the second T1 line, and we are discussing the details of the installation with them. We will probably be able to use most of the hardware we already have for the first T1 line, so there should not be much disruption during the installation. (Tom Evans)

    Shannon Roddy installed a NAT router for DHCP clients.  This replaced a software router/firewall that he had installed a couple weeks ago.  The software solution was dropping packets for some reason.  I have the identical setup at home and have had no problems, no dropped packets etc. so I am not sure if this is something to do with a different configuration at LLO or something else.  I am performing a security audit on all computers at LLO using a very good tool called nessus (www.www.nessus.org).  It is still running, but as soon as it is finished I will mail the results to Larry and other parties that need to see the results. Tom Evans has ordered a blade 1000 this week to replace our E3000.  I have worked out a disk solution to replace the disks that are almost full.  I will have nearly 1/2 TB for about half the price of a D1000.  It consists of a rack mounted enclosure and 3 or 4 (depends on price, whether we use RAID5 etc) standard Seagate 180 GB SCSI drives.  There is room for nine drives in the enclosure, so there is a lot of expansion room.  This will allow for a total of 9 X 180 GB drives (1.62TB) in one 4U enclosure. (Shannon Roddy)

    LDAS

    Installed BigBrother on the LDAS system.  There is still some discussion about the proper configuration for it, but it is functional.  I have been looking at some security issues with BigBrother this week, and I think that it will be very easy to secure it.  (Shannon Roddy)

    CDS

    Will be pruchasing an AIT2 tape drive to replace the GC tape drive that is "borrowed" from GC.  I have sent off for quotes, and plan to purchase within the next week. (Shannon Roddy)


    Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)


    Installation& Commissioning:
    Hanford
    Livingston
    Other Science/EngineeringActivities:
    Design/Analysis/Fab
    Issues/Concerns
    See also the Installation web page

    1.1 LHO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

    4 km installation

    Doug Cook, Hugh Radkins, Betsy Weaver, Gerardo Moreno, Mark Lubinski, ...
    ETMY, the last in-vacuum optic for the 4 km interferometer, has now been installed and aligned!  The alignment was done from behind using the PLX reflector, which required a little extra effort for the COS transmission telescope.  We ran into some small problems with the COS alignment laser power supply. The power supply keys were missing so we jumped the switched and then we were getting error signals that didn't make sense. After cranking up the current the error signals stopped and it began to lase. The transmission monitor pier had to be moved to align it. The baffle is aligned with the optical level path working ok. The satellite box readings or ok. The final checks are complete. We will need to drill the floor to clamp the transmission monitor etc. We still need to verify the photon calibrator path and confirm before the last door goes on, but it doesn't look like there there will be a problem(looking from the inside out visually). The doors are about to go on and we will be able to pump.

    2 km commissioning

    Bill Kells, Robert Schofield, Richard McCarthy, Josh Myers, Dave Barker, Stan Whitcomb
    Most of the work last week was in getting the ISC tables cleaned up, cabling labelled, etc.  Everything looks ready to go for locking the interferometer.
    Robert Schofield set the damping gains on all the 2 km core optics using the now famous "Peter Fritschel method".
    A new timing board was installed on the 2 km DAQ system and the exception of a couple of channels with funny gains, everything seems to be working.

    4 km Commissioning

    Corey Gray, Stan Whitcomb
    ISCT1 was completed and moved into its approximate location.
    The pointing into the vacuum system underwent an as-yet-unexplained excursion.  Friday morning the MC was found to be out of lock and the reflected beam on IOT1 significantly misaligned.  MC1 was exonerated, and the most likely candidate miscreant is PZTM1.  Good alignment could be restored by a 20 V adjustment of the pitch on PZTM1, and the modecleaner locked with good visibility.  During the subsequent 6 hours or so, the alignment began to drift back, and we kept adjusting PZTM1 to keep the visibility high. By middle of the afternoon, the voltage on PZTM1 was back near where it began. This will need to be watched in the future.

    1.2LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

    OSEM Replacement and Re-alignment

    Dennis Coyne reporting
    The OSEM replacement and re-alignment was completed late last week. The Y-end station is under vacuum.
    The input optics re-alignment was begun. It was discovered that there is apparently a difference in the left/right convention for orienting wedge angles for the small optics between Hanford and Livingston. This has led to more re-alignment work than expected for the mode cleaner. The procedures are being reviewed to remove ambiguity and ensure consistency in the future, and to document the as-installed orientation.
    The alignment of the ITMy core optic was re-confirmed. It has remained stable for almost 2 weeks. The ITMx alignment was re-visited and the OSEMs ‘tweaked’ in position to their mid-light levels.

    The APS output beam was aligned through the center of the Faraday isolator and out the APS viewport on HAM4 by moving weights on the table to tilt the HAM4 optical table. The APS beam was clipped by the ISC periscope, and the periscope mirrors will have to be repositioned.

    PSL

    Peter King
    The installation of the IO optical train on the PSL table was completed. The positions of the modecleaner mode-matching lenses will have to be adjusted, as it was reported that the beam inside HAM1 was too large.
    Both the pre-modecleaner and frequency servos were locked. Their settings have yet to be tweaked and the performance characterized.

    Acoustic Noise SURF Projects

    Szabi Marka
    We set up homepages for the projects. The current status and results are posted at:
    Acoustic Detection and Triangulation of Thunders around the LIGODetector:
    http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~lcoots/

    PSL Acoustic Noise Attenuation:

    http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~kwilliam/

    LLO TriNet

    Szabi Marka
    Power and Network installed at LLO-TriNet (LTL) vault!
    The basic infrastructure installation for the LTL seismic station was finished last Thursday (06/28/2001). The contractors did a nice job laying down the optical fiber between the X endstation and the X 3000Km point and the vault. They also installed a step-down transformer and provides us with 2 110V outlets at the X 3Km mark. They also tested and neatly terminated the 6 fiber connections between the X 3Km mark and the endstation as well as 6 additional fibers to the vault.
    As soon as the contractor finished the testing and released the installation to the laboratory, we started to install our networking equipment and battery backup power system for the vault and beamtube.  The network connection was up and running promptly after the installation of the media converters and network hubs. By Thursday evening we could access the internet from the beamtube as well as from the vault. The battery+charger installation, which provides power to the vault was also a smooth job.

    By Friday morning we had live network and stable DC power in the vault. We moved, installed and rebooted the seismic system at its new place in the vault. Again, this preliminary installation was a straightforward job and we had the station up and running slightly before the usual afternoon thunderstorm. The thermal insulation and magnetometer still needs to be finalized.

    I would like to thank Rus Wooley and the contractor for their nice work.

    2.0 OtherEngineering and Scientific Activities

    2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

    SnowMass 2001

    Sazabi Marka
    We had the main LIGO sections Tuesday and Wednesday. The interest from the audience was considerable; ~25% of the available time was used for answering good and relevant questions. The non LIGO/LISA affiliated audience was ~30 for the plenary talks and ~15 for the parallel sessions. This is a slightly above normal attendance level when compared to other sections we attended. The homepage of the Gravitational Wave (P4.6) section is posted at:
    http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~smarka/Snowmass2001/P4.6.Gravitational.waves.html.
    It will be continually updated during the time of the conference. I would like to thank Nergis, Peter Bender, Rana and Keith Riles for their excellent and very positive contribution! Well done!

    PSL

    Peter King
    After being told by Mindrum Precision that they have partially completed super-polishing a batch of 1 in. diameter substrates, I tried to get a count of just how many out of the 100 substrates ordered have been completed.  So far only 35 substrates comply with the flatness specification, the sub-Angstrom surface roughness specification has yet to be qualified.

    Lightwave Electronics have apparently started repairing NPRO #259 (intended for LASTI).

    Paul Russell and I checked the LASTI PSL wiring harness. All the connections checked out okay.

    Minco Products no longer support an output voltage option that is currently being used on the PSL PID process controller. I will have to start looking at alternative suppliers for an equivalent to this part, for the 40m Lab and LASTI.

    Rick Karwoski

    LASTI Efforts
    We have been coordinating with the MIT folks regarding the upcoming PSL installation. The Cross-connect panel was completed on Thursday last and buzzed out on Friday by Peter and Paul. A Euro-cage has been assembled and the custom electronics is ready to go. VME modules are already on-site, and we will be boxing up the other stuff for shipment by weeks end. Looks like we'll be heading out in two weeks.

    40m.
    The 40m. PMC servo card malfunctioned last week and was replaced with the LASTI-slated unit last week. The card was repaired and will be part of the LASTI suite.

    ISS
    Circuit refinements in process.

    LSC

    Rich Abbott, Mohana Megeswaran, Flavio Nocera

    Optical Modeling

    Erika D'Ambrosio
    I am trying to disentangle the effects due to diffraction and to mismatch when the Fabry-Perot cavity is misaligned. The perturbation causes new eigenmodes to be the stable states in the cavity and the driving beam may be decomposed as a combination of such modes, each of them resonating according to the proper Guoy phase and reflected back.
    The diffraction losses are very important since they affect such new modes in a different way, so that their recombination carries less power when going out of the cavity than the driving beam had when entering. To have a better control of all losses, I have been running the FFT-code with T=0 for the ETM mirrors and I used L=0 for every surface, with a view to a simpler extraction of informations from the numerical output.

    IO Periscope Re-design

    Mike Smith, Ken Mailand
    Preliminary ACAD layouts of various design concepts for a light-weight, stiff periscope/mirror structure have been drawn and are being analyzed.

    New OSEMs for 40m, LASTI, TNI

    Janeen Romie
    Gave 7 new sensor/actuators to TNI on tuesday. Received 48 pigtails from Southern California Braiding on Tuesday

    DMT

    John Zweizig
    This week I wrote a trigger directed data analysis environment class. This allows people familiar with the programming interface for DMT monitors to write off-line analysis programs for studying data tagged by GDS triggers.  The trigger environment (TrigEnv) class is very similar to the familiar DatEnv class except that it reads data off-line from a series of epochs rather than from the infinite online stream handled by DatEnv. The data epochs are defined relative to a set of triggers provided to TrigEnv as an xsil table (e.g. from guild). As each trigger is read in, it is passed to a user supplied (virtual) method which examines the trigger and based on this information, selects or deselects the corresponding data epoch for processing. The data from each selected epoch are then passed to a second user provided function (ProcessData) for analysis.

    This will be released with the new combined GDS software version currently being assembled.


    40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)


    Here's some recent pictures of the PSL and other aspects of the 40m upgrade.

    PSL (Abbott R., Abbott B., Ugolini, Vass, Karwoski, Russell):

    Optical configuration (Mike Smith): Mike has completed a set of detailed table layout drawings for all of the out-of-vacuum ISC (interferometer sensing and control) for all of the output beams, with detailed parts lists. This will be reviewed, and we can begin procurement!

    Vacuum control (Vass, Ugolini): After some months of pumping on the 40m vacuum, the total pressure was reduced to ~2-7 torr, still dominated by water and air. It was established that the ion pumps, while they pump air efficiently, are actually a source of hydrocarbons. It's not a significant effect, however, and we think we can live with it. The 40m was vented last week with dry air, and a suspension with osems was removed for shipment to LHO. The 40m will remain vented until the vacuum envelope modifications are finished by the end of July.

    Vacuum envelope (Jones, Vass):

    Cabling (Larry Jones): Larry continues to pursue development and testing of limp in-vacuum cabling material. We expect to receive a 1000-foot spool of polyimide-coated wire for RGA testing on July 18th.

    DAQ (Rolf Bork): Rolf set up the DAQ "auto-start" last week and the DAQ can now be stopped, reconfigured, and re-started on demand.
    Facility (Vass, Jones): The 40m control room desks, chairs, and computers are now all in place. Still need video monitors, and a display projector.

    SURF Progress:


    Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


    This week we are pleased to announce first lock of the thermal noise interferometer.  After constructing a crude, passive notch filter to remove what appear to be mechanical resonances in the mirrors, we were able to extend our longest lock times in both arm cavities to five minutes or more. This allowed us to measure the open-loop transfer function and determine the unity-gain frequency, which in turn allowed us to characterize the lock. In the South cavity we observed a unity-gain frequency of 440Hz, somewhat lower than expected, and a phase margin of only a few degrees. We then modified our lead compensator, moving its zero down to 100Hz from 1kHz in an effort to improve our phase margin, which greatly improved both the acquisition rate and the stability of the lock. The duty cycle for both arms approaches 50% late at night, and the instrument now locks reproducibly during the day. This morning (Thursday) at 10:35 we were able to lock both arms simultaneously for about 15 seconds, which we are declaring "first lock."  This was with a notch filter in the North arm path only, and we expect the inclusion of a notch in the South path will improve our lock time. Both cavities locked in high order modes as well, and we may have to adjust the alignment to get TEM00 modes.

    The next step will be to refine and lengthen the lock, and Flavio Nocera is helping us with that by building notch filters with narrower linewidths and greater attenuations than the one we are currently using. The alignment of the cavities has drifted somewhat over the past few days, and we are also planning to correct that.


    LASTI (Zucker)


    LASTI (MacInnis, Miller, Romie, Torrie, Robertson, Miller, Shoemaker, Rollins,  Mittleman, Harry, Ottaway, Mason, Mason, Zucker):

    PSL: Optomechanical assembly is continuing (Dave O., Jamie R.).  Rick K. reports completion & test of electronics rack crossconnect & analog module suite at Caltech.  We're working out a schedule for electronics installation & test (DAQ and EPICS infrastructure are already in place, see last week's report).  The laser proper may not be ready for a bit (still at Lightwave) so we are contemplating a "dry" test run to start.

    Jamie & Dave made a significant simplification to the injection setup which allows better use of space, cleanroom access etc. around the HAM chambers, avoids the need to move the PSL between experimental phases, and improves safety and alignment ease by using the beam tube reducer ports we added at the last minute during our vacuum envelope construction.

    Initial SOS suspensions: Fred Miller has done an inventory of SOS parts and is doing fit checks and cleaning for assembly of the first two test cavity suspensions destined for HAM13.

    Vacuum system: Final number on our leaking BSC bellows came out at 10-7 T-l/s, which will definitely need fixing at a later date but will not interfere with operations for some time.  Now doing punchlist/cleanup tasks on the pumping and annulus systems and arranging shipping of SEI installation equipment back to LLO.

    Quad pendulum prototype: Norna, Callum and Myron are making rapid progress on assembly of the quad prototype.


    Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


    Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

    Simulation Code
    Biplab and Hiro worked together to validate the simulation of the mode mismatch of fields and cavities. The simulation result was compared with analytic calculations, and found that they are in good agreement. The validation for a FP cavity is done, and we will go to PRM.

    Hiro worked in improving the simulation code to support expanded macro capability and various other features. These will be part of the next major release of the e2e package, which is expected to be sometime this month.

    System modeling
    Luca, Peter King and Hiro met to discuss the laser noise model. Peter pointed us to some of the existing data. Luca, during his trip to LHO until the end of next week, he will gather information and do measurements if necessary and if time allows, to obtain (1) the frequency and amplitude noises before and after MC and (2) LSC of MC. Once these are in our hand, we can (1) simulation MC and study the MC output noise, and (2) generate noisy laser which can be used to simulate the realistic noise noise curves in the COC output.
    Mechanics modeling (V. Sannibale)
    Virginio is going to mit from the 16th to the 22nd for the AdvLigo suspension modeling.

    LIGO Suspension - Suspension simulation for ligo is working reasonably well.  Cross-checked with the osem's psd.  Using the nominal parameters, resonances frequencies agree quite well with experimental data (within about 20mHz).  LIGO suspension simulation module ready to be integrated into e2e.

    LIGO Stacks - Integration of the ligo stack hytec models under study.

    Adv LIGO - Working on the minor modifications needed to fit better the mechanical simulation to the adv. ligo suspension prototype.

    Alfi
    As has been announced before, we are going to transit to a new alfi based on JAVA. Right now, alfi is very sensitive to the OS (one version runs on Solaris 8, but not on Solaris 7, e.g.). Adapting JAVA, this kind of problem will disappear.

    Ed is making a final touch to alfi4 (current alfi) to make it work smoother, which will still be used until the next alfi is completed.

    Hiro is writing the new alfi requirement and implementation document. T010069-00-E.

    Bruce is designing the infrastructure of the new alfi with Ed, Melody and Hiro. The design includes the interfacing between the alfi object (corresponding to physical object) and GUI object (visible on screen) provided by JGo software library.

    Melody is working with Bruce to develop the new alfi. She has started developing some base classes which are known to be necessary based on the current alfi and on the discussing for the new alfi.

    LIGO Data Analysis System

    Software Systems (Blackburn)
    The missing functionality which allowed LDAS jobs using the meta-DataAPI has been added. Now jobs which are killed by the managerAPI will correctly remove the threads of that job from the metaDataAPI as well.

    The summ_spectrum and summ_csd database tables were updated this week to include more useful metadata with regards to the spectra which are stored in the BLOB (binary) format in the tables. This was needed to allow spectra to be re-used in later processing of dataPipeline commands.

    Several enhancements were made to the controlMonitorAPI's client to allow it to display resources. The interface is aware of which variable are read/write and which are read only.

    Even though we have not moved over to using the new GCC 3.0 compiler from GNU, we have made all the modifications necessary to allow LDAS to compile with either GCC 2.95.3 or GCC 3.0. There are several severe bugs in the new compiler which we will wait on the fixes for before committing to that development tool.

    The dataConditionAPI is still crashing when run on the new hardware at the sites with the Redhat 7.1 installation. Debugging of the problem has turned up several bugs in our code which were fixed but did not completely solve the problems. The next level of problem tracking has placed the source of the crashing in the ingestData routine in the dataConditionAPI (others may follow). We will try to have all the LDAS issues resolved by the week of July 16th or move back to Redhat 6.2 at the sites on the new hardware.

    Hardware Systems (Anderson)

    CIT

    LHO

    LLO

    MIT

    General Computing (Wallace)
    MIT (Keith)
    (Lisa)

    LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)


    No reports this week.


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