Weekly Report for Week Ending October 18, 2001

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  October 22, 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)
• Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
• Administration (Lindquist)
• Sites (Raab, Coles, Shoemaker, Sanders)
• Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
• Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
• Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

"Dear GW scientists,

 We are happy to announce that the recent 1000-hour data run of
 the TAMA300 gravitational wave detector was a great success.
 Please visit the following web site for the details:

 http://tamago.mtk.nao.ac.jp/tama/recom/recom3/

 Best greetings from Tokyo.

 Yoshihide Kozai
 PI of the TAMA project"

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration

There was a teleconference on Thursday, October 18.  Items discussed included:

• Staffing Plan--a staffing plan for FY 2002 has been distributed for comment. So far comments have been received only from Livingston. These comments will be incorporated and the plan redistributed.
• The projected carry-forward excluding commitments for FY 2001 remains at $2.6 million, which will cover FY 2002 operations for a bit over a month.  An account numbering scheme for FY 2002 has been prepared and approved by Project Accounting (Finance).  The accounts will not actually be opened until we get our funding from the NSF.  We are still waiting for the new Cooperative Agreement.  We had a brief discussion concerning the establishment of Fabrication Accounts in parallel with some of the site accounts for materials being incorporated into the facility.  We will need asssitance from the site managers in setting up these accounts, and we are preparing a request for information.  Account Request forms for the non-Fabrication accounts have been prepared and will be given to Barry for his signature. Action #103 below is closed.
• The contract for the OSB East Building at Hanford has been submitted to the NSF for their review and approval.
• Handling of the Weber Bars has been handed off to the Property folks at the University of Maryland.  They are still building crates.
• At Livingston, progress on the Staging Building seems to have accelerated.
• I will distribute for discussion during the Executive Committee Meeting the policy statement concerning notification of the individual responsible for an account when procurements are made against that account by someone else (See action #93 below.)  Note that the handling of charges made against P-Cards will still be an issue.

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

• Nothing significant to report.

>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

• Helped Ed Chargois convert data from three separate access databases into Excel spreadsheets.
• Significant progress has been made in converting archived financial records to .pdf files on separate CD's.  Nearly 30 electronic folders were made into .pdf files and bookmarked.  These represent nearly all of account charges for 1995.  As soon as the CD is burned, nearly four large boxes of paper will be destroyed.  Another 3-4 boxes have been copied and are in the process of being scanned and bookmarked.  When this portion is completed, about 25-30% of the total task will be finished.

ACTIVITY

• processing of electronic submitted documents remain steady.
• progress continues on converting old financial files to electronic form.

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

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

• Added funds to the blanket PO's to Pasadena Eye, and Air Liquide.  Funds were also added to Washington Crane for a hoist modification.
• Processed change order no. 4 to Brunt Construction which added funds for the computer room and A/C catwalk, and change order no. 12 to WavePrecision.
• Have begun the transfer of funds to FY2002.  University of Michigan, University of Oregon and Northwestern University have been moved to the new Visitors' Program account number.  University of Florida will be moved after the pending invoice has been paid..

• Have received approval of the account numbering plan for fiscal year 2002 Ops & R&D from Federal Accounting.  The next step is to submit the Request Forms to Sponsored Research so that the new accounts can be set up.  I will be submitting forms for the on-campus and offsite accounts today.  I will then begin working on the account set-up for the Capital (Fabrication) accounts, which will require a two step approval process, from Property Accounting and then Sponsored Research.
• Prepared a summarized report for the Detector Group.
• Prepared an analysis of Indirect Charges since inception on Detector accounts, including an estimate for Indirect Charges for items classified as Supplies.
• Received approval for a new Fabrication account for the Seismometers at the two sites.  LIGO.00004 Task # 1.8.1 NSFLIGO.000002.  Submitted Cost Transfer Requests to clear out charges for the Seismometers which had previously been charged to Management Reserve.

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

• VME ADC Module Solicitation: The solicitation process was terminated on the basis that none of the proposers responding to the VME ADC Module RFP could meet the stated performance objectives.  Proposers were notified accordingly.
• HPD: An informational copy of the CO No. 04 with supporting procurement documentation was forwarded to NSF.
• Wave Precision: CO No. 12 for additional 125 pieces of superpolished fused silica substrates was released to Purchasing.

• Traffic consultants from LSU will be reviewing the Livingston access road to see if there are methods that can be used to slow down traffic.  There have been three accidents on the road so far.

SUPPORT (Wood)

• I continue to try to keep everyone in LIGO informed wherever and whenever possible on the latest airport security measures, flights, ground transportation to/from airports, etc.  It does seem to be getting better little by little.
• Processed the paper work for twelve (12) new/revised trips (including Advance Checks written and hotel/car rental authorizations filled out and FAXed to appropriate vendors in various locations).  I have nine (9) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done.  Worked on several trips that were extensively changed or modified and assisted several more travelers with questions regarding their existing or potential travel.
• Jim Covington continues working five (5) expense reports.  I completed twenty-three (23) reports (including a couple of very involved/time consuming foreign trips) and there are ten (10) reports to be done.  I'm holding five (5) reports that need additional information from the traveler before submitting.  I spent a considerable amount of time contacting travelers who have very old outstanding trips still open.  I will continue to contact these and other travelers as time permits.  Some progress is being made.
• Reconciled twenty-five (25) 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 Itineraries for October 15, 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.

• Received and processed 54 invoices (10/12-18) for payment. The total incoming invoices received for that period can be seen in  "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham. Tracked and followed up on various invoice problems.
• Processed the usual requisitions and change orders on-line.
• Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of October 8.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database and supports Irene (travel) in the mornings and Linda and Cleveland (DCC) in the afternoons.

• Met with V. Kondrashov and I. Petrac to discuss LSC reporting process.  Veronica will now do web maintenance tasks previously done by Barbara.
• Scanned documents from GEO, submitted these to the DCC out box.  Formatted February report submitted by Univ. of FL, the report came in three sections via email.
• Placed onto the small web page for review the progress report, and Attachment A, for CaRT.
• Prepared forms to accompany boards, these help to track the work flow.  Also helped to fold the accompanying schematics.  Updated the database with board information, and prepared some labels.
• Placed Pcard orders, and as always, chased after the paperwork to reconcile.  Did 22 this period.

• Mostly worked on personnel issues this week, hiring and working through some visa issues.  The good news that the International Scholars’ Office has hired a director who will start in November.   It only took three years.  Starting on October 22, all LIGO Visa and employment matters will be handled through Ed Jasnow.
• Phil Willems will be moving to room 354B, same extension, 3883.
• The new pcard travel enhancement has been installed on most, if not all, computers.  Please let Criselda know if you run into any strange phenomena.  With the pcard travel enhancement, not on your travels.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 10.12 to 10.18

Accomplishments:

• Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting not held this week.  Updated meeting minutes from meeting of the 8th and issued for comment.
• Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)
• Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.
• Continue to pursue all other sub system schedules.
• Updated web site with latest data.
• The following is a summary of status by sub system:
• COC - Work on action items per second review continues.  Followed up with GB and will schedule a meeting for end of October.
• PSL - Issued cost and resource loaded reports and awaiting comments.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• AOS - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• IO -  Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• SUS - Working with SUS group to incorporate current comments.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• SEI - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• All other subsystems have yet to be scheduled for their first review.  These dates are pending per direction from Gary Sanders and Dennis Coyne.
• Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 10.12.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 10.26.01.
• Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 10.12.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 10.26.01.
• Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 10.12.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 10.26.01.
• Met with Garilynn and went through the COC schedule in preparation for review meeting.
• Attended review meeting of October 18.
• Continue to test the Cost Book Tool.
• Continue to work on coding changes to the resource database to accommodate resource loading and leveling by discipline.
• Continue to run tests on reports using other sub-system data.
• Verifying and checking business rules using PSL cost loading as pilot effort.
• Mapping and formatting of OPS cost data for input on hold pending additional changes to budget data per NSF re-submit.
• 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.
• See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

• Next weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting to be determined.
• Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority Task)
• Highest priority is the development of the Cost Estimate.
• Will continue to pursue all other sub system schedules.
• PSL - Will schedule next meeting.
• AOS - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• IO - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• SUS - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• SEI - Continue inputting changes and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• COC - Work in action items by Garilynn continues.  Anticipate schedule changes prior to next meeting TBD.  Meeting to be scheduled for end of October.
• Will import cost data and complete schedule integration.
• Will Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 10.26.01 and  post to site by the 30th.
• Will Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 10.26.01 and  post to site by the 30th.
• Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 10.26.01 and  post to site by the 30th.
• Cost Book Tool development continues.  (Highest Priority Task)
• Will continue ops cost data input when available.
• Will continue to work with BK importing data and executing action items.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Web Site.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.

WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)

The end-of-August Quarterly Progress Report is ready to be sent to the NSF.

There are no change requests currently in the queue.

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

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

• No report (not feeling very well).

.
• Florence Kaufman and I have decided to put all the reports into one place (for your convenience)...so they can be found at:

http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

• Construction on the Livingston Staging Building is finally accelerating, and is making up some of the lost time.  A change request will be submitted to cover the projected overruns.
• The contract for the Hanford OSB East Building is still at the NSF for review.  A meeting of the Coordinating Committee is scheduled for Friday, October 19, at which time it is hoped that the contract will be approved.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report this week.
 

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

General Items:
--------------
(F. Raab)
 

No visitors from LIGO Lab this week, so commissioning is being worked entirely by resident staff. A bit like being thrown into a very cold lake, but it leaves lots of opportunities for learning the machine and operational practice.
 

WA2K is busy with tidal compensation and mode-cleaner leveling work. WA4K is getting monitors straightened out and troubleshooting arm-locking issues. An amusing feature apparent on a long-term (50-day) trend of H2:IOO-MC_L_MON is that we are still seeing relaxation from the 40C bake of the LVEA (see seismic report, below).
 

We have previously noticed on WA2K that there have been periods when the locking is easy and periods when the locking is hard. No obvious correlation has been identified although several people have suggested it is related to small variations in alignment. We have also noticed that very strong violin resonances (with sidebands!) also come and go, and these can lead to saturation in the electronics. For some configurations of the cavities, we have succeeded in making these come and go with small changes in electronic gain. Of course, overall gain is a product of optical and electronic parts, so alignments can also affect these gains. We are trying to steal time from other investigations to explore this further. Turning lemons into lemonade, this also gives a good opportuniy to catalog violin modes.

We are having more problems than usual with CDS instabilities this week. Unfortunately this coincides with mode-cleaner leveling, which requires long stretches of stable data acquisition.
 

Seismic Systems
---------------------
H.Radkins, D.Barker, F.Raab
 

Tidal Compensations
Check out the medm at http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/screencapture/
One of the GIF images shows the current tidal strains at the LHO site and runs from the past 12 hours to the future 12 hours. You may need to cycle through the various images to find the correct one. This image is updated each minute on the medm, and Dave Barker captures it every 5 minutes.  Many thanks to Dave for guidance in the very useful 'waveform' record.  If LLO would find this useful now, Hugh would be happy to get that going for them.
 

The fine actuator drive continues to run on the Xarm of the 2k system.  Over the weekend a 14 hour single arm lock stretch was achieved.  We appear to be over correcting by about 20%.  The limits of CARM_CTRL knocked us out of lock, a result of a linear trend possibly attributable to continued LVEA slab cooling from the heat-up 6 weeks ago and or reference cavity temperature drift.  This is still being investigated.
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

Detector Commissioning: Work continues nearly round the clock to achieve a full lock of the interferometer. The "zippy" controllers for the ITM's are now being modified and hopefully will be installed early next week. Two staff are working full time to make these changes. We have also assigned two control room staff from 8 am until 2 am each day, although in practice the work seems to continue until 4 am (today until 6:30 am). Special thanks to the marathon efforts of Nergis to assist us with getting the full interferometer to lock. We are also attempting to lock the interferometer during the day in state 2 and 3 and characterize its operation with the hope that this will facilitate the overall effectiveness of the lock acquisition software. (all)

Detector Installation: Acoustic Systems in Austin, Texas has been selected to manufacture the LLO, PSl acoustic enclosure and a PO has been requested. Expected delivery following Thanksgiving. Laser Safety Interlock hardware installation is completed in the VEAs. Crew is now terminating cables in Mass Storage and Control Room.

Szabi & I have received heavy equipment leveling feet to install under the PSL table, in order to replace the 'gimpy' leveling screws now used. HEPA fans have been removed from the PSL enclosure and are being modified so that they will not interfere with the acoustic enclosure.  Jonathan Kern

Last Fri. we conducted an interferometer locking school in the control room to disseminate the lessons learned from our commissioning activities of the previous week. A follow up school was held on Monday afternoon.  We all had a chance to do a hands on lockup of the apparatus with with one-on-one tutoring from Rana. We will do more of these as appropriate. Rich Riesen

We are in the process of setting up video-conferencing in the Conference Room. (Tom Evans)

Facilities: We are examining the power distribution from the panels throughout the facility to understand why we have an unbalanced load on the 480 V distribution. There is about 60 A of imbalance and it is believed that may degrade the electrical environment somewhat since this can produce ground currents and perhaps contribute to the 60 Hz pickup in the electronics.
 

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

See also the daily electronic logs for the installation and commissioning activities:
Hanford Detector Log
Livingston Detector Log

1.1 LHO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

2km Commissioning

Locking the interferometer ran into problems with the wire resonances.  If the gain in the PRM loops is too high these resonances ring up to the point where they cause saturations and a broad noise bump around 500 Hz.

Began the work to level the 2 km modecleaner.

Continued training of operators to align the interferometer.

4 km Commissioning

Beam alignment and cabling to ISCT4 (BS and ITMX pickoff beams) and ISCT3 (ITMY pickoff beam).  Began measuring rf phases for the various photodetectors.

Tri-Net Seismic Station

1.2LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

4 km Commissioning

Work is progressing on installing the common mode servo for the interferometer. The wavefront sensor system for differential angular motions at the antisymmetric port is being characterized.

A run was made using the recombined Fabry-Perot interferometer to measure the coefficients for the microseismic feed forward system. The coefficents are currently being calculated from the data and the predictors will be tried in another run this coming weekend.

A second attempt to lock the entire recycled interferometer began last Monday. The work, unfortunately, is still being carried out primarily at night when the seismic noise is small. The hope is that once the locking parameters have been established, it will be possible to operate in the day with the new controllers.

Misc.

SMA actuator for active seismic isolation: I built the and tested the prototype of the controller board. The driver side of prototype tested out OK. The ADC side still needs to be tested.

2.0 OtherEngineering and Scientific Activities

2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

Modeling

1) no SB imbalance when the field may be characterized by one only mode and this can be obtained by different ways, for example simulating a configuration with a non-degenerate cavity but also making calculations according to the geometrical optics rules and checking the results with Melody limiting to one the number of modes. All data are as expected and the dark port power is zero for zero Schnupp asymmetry and grows for the two sidebands if the Schnupp asymmetry is increased.

2) no SB imbalance when the field is characterized by several modes BUT using no Schnupp asymmetry. Again there is a signal at the dark port but this is the same for the two sidebands.

3) if the Schnupp asymmetry is non-zero AND many modes are allowed to model this situation the dark port and the bright port values of the two sidebands are not the same.

I have been making perturbation theory calculations and I understood a lot about my runs.

Bill Kells
Erika, Ray and I have been pushing for final understanding of the SB+/- imbalances observed in both Melody and FFT simulation with [themal lensing] distortions. We are very close and at least hope to summarize the situation in a section of the draft paper on the Melody/FFT comparison.

Have also been discussing Core optics with Jordan, Dennis, Garilynn, et al.

Core Optics

The specification for "Surface Figure, measured over the central 200 mm diameter"
Changes from:
Surface 1: Flat.
The parabolic sag of the reflected wavefront is required to be between 14 nm and -50nm
Astigmatism: < 16 nanometers (surface peak to valley)

Changes to:  ...reflected wavefront is required to be between 39 and -25 nm...

The rest of the specification, including transmitted wavefront remains the same.

This is based on comparative analysis of our post-coating measurements and CSIROs pre-coating measurements (analyzed over 150mm... it's great to have the raw data!!). We find that the sag changes an average of -14nm (toward cx), with a standard deviation of 7 nm, when measured over 150mm for the 5 Beamsplitters we have had the opportunity to measure.  This corresponds to an average sag change of -25nm over a 200 mm diameter aperture.  We are therefore biasing the specification by 25 nm in anticipation of the changes due to coating induced stress.

IOO PERISCOPE

PSL

I have been putting pieces of the frequency stabilization servo (FSS) Pockels cell driver together in a PSpice simulation, with a view towards understanding PSpice and what affects the bandwidth of the FSS.

40m Lab PSL -- Spent some time going through the frequency servo with Dennis Ugolini.  The FSS mixer monitor signal looked decidedly off, when the discriminator slope was displayed.  Part of the problem might be caused by insufficient output by the 21.5 MHz frequency reference card.  Certainly the output of the 40m Lab card was about half the expected value.  At the time I left, 3 components were under suspicion: the FSS card, the 21.5 MHz oscillator or the RF photodetector.  A recent comment by Dennis Ugolini, leads me to suspect that the RF photodetector is most likely faulty.

Sander Liu
Putting finishing touch to the acceptance test procedure for the FSS Servo card.

Suspensions

LSC

Rich Abbot, Mohana Mageswaran, Flavio Nocera

• 75% of the required test procedures have been written and are in the review process.  Once the procedures are finished, we can resume the task of shipping out the PCBs we have manufactured
• The results of Flavio's test of the timing system board show that is suitable for our needs and plans are underway to build 50 of these new units to retrofit the sites and to provide spares.
• We are still working on the photo-diodes to ship to MIT.  We have a couple ready and more coming out of the tuning process.

EO Shutter Controller

• In the process of preparing DCN to incorporate terminating resistors for the daughter board as requested by LLO.
• In the process of ordering long lead items to repair units to be returned from the field and build one/two new ones

New ADC/DAC modules

• 7 of the 8 low distortion models have at least one noisy channel regardless of sample frequency. On 6 of the 7 modules, channel 5 and/or 6 is noisy. Noisy here corresponds to ~60uV/rtHz. Good channel have output noise voltages less than 3uV/rtHz.
• The 3 older penteks do not have noisy channels and consistently have output noise in the range of 15uV/rtHz.

The code used to test the DACS can be used to test the DACs at the site in-situ. We are developing similar test code for the ADCs.

It is clear from the tests that we can not run the DAC clock at 1MHz as in the past. To this end we have developed a prototype circuit that will allow us to use a 16384 DAC clock with a programmable offset from the ADC clock. This will allow us to minimize phase delay in the system and also ensure that we do not jump across clock boundaries. The circuit will be tested in the next week.

Data Monitoring Tool

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

October 19, 2001

• The 40m team presented its conceptual design to an internal review board on Thursday morning, October 18, in a marathon 4 hour session. The sequence of talks, and transparencies, are near the top of the 40m web page. There exist three Design Requirements & Conceptual Design documents:
• 40m Conceptual Design (T010115-DRAFT, pdf, 2.7 MB, 68 pages)
• 40m Optical Systems and Sensing Design Requirements Document & Conceptual Design (Smith, T010117-00-D, pdf, 800 KB, 95 pages) or Word.
• 40m Auxiliary Optics Support System DRD (T010120-00-D, Smith, pdf, 465 KB) or Word.
Many thanks to all the speakers (AJW, Larry Jones, Dennis Ugolini, Garilynn Billingsley, Janeen Romie, Ben Abbott, Mike Smith), the review committee (chaired by Dennis Coyne), and all the patient attendees. We welcome comments (sent to AJW ajw@caltech.edu or to Dennis Coyne, Coyne@ligo.caltech.edu) from any/all interested parties.
• PSL (Abbott, Ugolini, Vass, Smith, King):
• Dennis and Ben have has remeasured the transfer functions and in-loop servo noise in the frequency stabilization and PMC servos. The PMC looks fine. The FSS looks very bad. This is believed to be related to the bad error signal, whose origin remains to be discovered (but we got some good ideas on what to look for, from Stan and others). Details in Dennis' talk on 40m Subsystems.
• Otherwise, the PSL has been running, in lock and stably.
• Proper beam dumps have been placed in a couple of places where they were really needed.
• Optical layout and scattered Light control (Smith): Mike has prepared two very detailed design requirements and conceptual design documents, referrred to above. Open questions in the scattered light analysis are the need for an attenuator in the ETM transmitted light, and the need for a (very expensive) large-aperture faraday isolator in the antisymmetric port beam.
• Optics (Billingsley): GariLynn is finalizing the specs for the coating of all the 40m suspended optics, and these specs are being reviewed by AJW, Dennis Coyne, Mike Smith.
• Suspensions (Romie): Janeen has colleced all the SOS suspensions and all the wire, magnets, etc, for shipment by Ed Chargois up to Hanford for baking / cleaning.
• Suspension controllers (Ben Abbott, Heefner): Ben has reviewed the Simulink models for the LIGO-I SOS and LOS suspension controllers, and has (with Jay) made several modifications for them to work for the 40m TM suspensions (1.3 kg optics). He finds it easy to meet the specs: dynamic range of 27 um pk-pk in length and 1.5 mrad pk-pk in angle, with noise below 1e-20 m/rtHz above 75 Hz. The Simulink model, as well as detailed electronics drawings for the 10 suspension controllers, are presented in his Design Requirements & Conceptual Design talk on the 40m suspension electronics.
• Facilities (Vass, Jones, Smith, AJW):
• Larry's talk on the 40m Recent 40m Lab Infrastructure Upgrades.
• Our last optical table (5'x12') has arrived.
• Anchor nuts to allow us to bolt the optical tables to the floor, and then remove the bolts reliably, have been identified and will be purchased.
• Caltech promises to do an inspection and leak test of our lab roof next week (before the rains come).
• A leak has been found in the newly installed output optic chamber annulus valve, and is being dealt with.
• Larry plans on ordering the in-vacuum cables (Cooner wire, 12 twisted pair, braided shield) this week.

October 12, 2001

• PSL (Abbott, Ugolini, Vass, Smith, King):
• Dennis has completed his measurements of the beam profile coming out of the MOPA laser. It appears to be a bit different from the measurements made by Peter during installation. This will impact the new mode matching solution being developed by Mike Smith.
• The polarization cube used to attenuate the beam before it gets to the PMC reflected photodiode was grossly misaligned, making it ineffective at attenuating the beam and making PMC locking less robust. This was fixed, and now it attenuates the beam sufficiently. Beam dumps will be placed in all the appropriate locations on the table.
• A couple of our steering mirror mounts are failing: the fine adjustment screw does nothing.
• Peter says that the steady degredation in MOPA output power from 10.5 watts to 9.5 watts over the last 3 months should not be surprising. He's seen worse. He suggests we temperature tune the laser.
• Dennis measures power into the PMC is around 9.2 watts, with 5.0 watts getting through.
• The frequency stability cavity visibility was measured to be 93%, and the PMC cavity visibility was measured to be 64%. We don't understand why the former is so high (given the relatively poor mode matching) and why the latter is so low (given the relatively good mode matching).
• Dennis and Ben are measuring the transfer functions for the FSS and PMC servos, are re-optimizing gains, and will measure the noise in the frequency servo, PMC servo, intensity, and pointing.
• Afterwards, we will pursue a small change in the layout: picking off light from the main beam exiting the MOPA, after the cylindrical lenses and periscope, for the frequency stability path, rather than using the low poer beam exiting the MOPA. We'll employ a new mode-matching solution at that time, and put in misc. other stuff: beam dumps, beam tubes, etc.
• Ben has ordered new magnetic switches to replace the broken ones on our PSL enclosure.
• We continue to await a heating jacket for temperature stabilization of our frequency reference cavity. We also await new mirrors for the PMC; Peter reports that the batch he received were coated incorrectly.
• Facilities (Vass, Jones, Smith, AJW):
• Dennis has tested flexibility of the prototype in-vacuum cables which were twisted and braided by Santa Fe textiles (after a month of waiting for Santa Fe). He took transfer functions of our small seismic stack (using a shaker and HP spectrum analyzer) without and with the cables clamped on. No difference. Even doubling them up. Larry concludes that we can go ahead with even stiffer cable to ensure good yield, ease of attaching connectors, and good electrical tolerance. We'll use Cooner wire (as is used for the OSEM pigtails). Cooner will twist the wires and braid the shielding to our specs: 12 twisted pair, 5 tpi, of 65/46ga with 0.005" FEP jacket; braided shield of 24X7/38ga, copper, 90% coverage. Larry has a schedule for ordering the cables, attaching the connectors, testing, producing the clamps, cleaning and baking all parts, PGA scan, and installing all cables in the vacuum chamber in February.
• Larry expects our last (5'x12') optical table next week, and the custom supports the following week.
• Steve has received the 12 "camera"-quality optical viewports (7056 glass), newly AR-coated for 1064 by Cascade optical. We still await 9 new optical-quality (BK-7) viewports, AR-coated for 1064 and for broadband.
• The South Annex is being cleaned up to bring it up to high cleanroom standards. It will be used by Todd Etzel for assembling the OSEMs.
• Optical layout and scattered Light control (Smith): Mike continues to work on his 40m optical systems design requirements and conceptual design requirement, in preparation for the 40m design review next week.
• Mike notes that we do not yet have a design for the electronics required for controlling the steering mirrors for stewering the beam into the input mode cleaner, interferometer, and output mode cleaner.
• Suspension controllers (Ben Abbott, Heefner): Ben has completed his ProTel drawings for the 8 digital suspension controllers in the vertex area, and is starting on the two end-station controller drawings.
• Computing (Bogue, Ugolini, Bork): John Zweizig has installed ROOT, DMT, LIGOTOOLS, and associated software on the 40m online computers (The shared disk on op140m). Many thanks!

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

Thermal Noise Interferometer:
        This week we installed and optimized the OSEM heads for the North Arm
Cavity with the new, lower-finesse mirrors, and we aligned both the North
and South cavities to the main beam.  Both cavities now damp in all modes
with Q's on the order of 5-10, and both exhibit flashes as they pass
through resonance.  Transmitted and reflected beams are also aligned to
diagnostic cameras and rf photodiodes, respectively, and we have observed
error signals from both cavities as they pass through resonance.
        We spot-glued the wire standoffs on all four test optics, and we expect to
close the vacuum chamber and pump out once this epoxy has set.
 

Photothermal Effect:
        We are currently testing the thermal performance in an all-aluminum test
mirror in a fixed-length Fabry-Perot cavity. A polished Al mirror has a
reflectivity at 1064nm of 92%, so quite a bit of the laser power in the
cavity is scattered or absorbed by this mirror.
        We had a problem that the scattered light was being absorbed by the
cavity's aluminum spacer block. This leads to some long-term drift of the
cavity's resonant frequency, but also to a systematic error, as the cavity
spacer responds somewhat to the chopped pump beam (see last week's
report).
        To reduce this, we lined the inside of the spacer block with layers of
Ameristat (plastic) and aluminum foil. The foil absorbs or scatters the
light scattered off the test mirror, and the Ameristat insulates the foil
from the spacer block.  Now, we have virtually no thermal coupling between
scattered light and the spacer block.
        Because of this, the sign of the long-term drift of the cavity has
changed, because the aluminum test mirror, which is bolted at its
back to the spacer block, is also expanding as it heats up from absorbed
laser light. We can compensate for this by adjusting the servo that locks
the laser to the cavity to have a greater low-frequency response.
        With the new servo, the unity gain frequency of the open loop transfer
function is a mere 50 Hz, well below where we want to measure the
photothermal effect, from 100 Hz up. We estimate the RMS laser frequency
noise to be 50 Hz/rHz at 150 Hz, and about 1 Hz/rHz at 1 kHz. There is a
120Hz peak in the noise, even with the overhead cleanroom lights off,
which we need to reduce.
 

LASTI (Zucker)

no report

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

E2E Physics meeting
-------------------
Stan gave a talk: "Some questions I wish someone had time to explore
(by simulation or otherwise) and give me some answers" and we got the
highest turnover ever.

LISA
----
Hiro attended the LISA Science / Engineering Workshop #2 on October
17th. at Courtyard Marriott, Pasadena. He gave a talk about the LIGO
End to End model and lessons learned which will be useful for LISA
modeling. The talk is available as DCC document, G010386.

Modal Model
-----------
(Biplab) Calculated and included m+n=4 order terms in e2e's alignment
 matrices (both tilt and mode-mismatch). Got improved results.

LSC Characterization
--------------------
(Luca) We began to work with e2e to include the LSC Matlab model.

e2e installation
----------------
(Ed Maros)
 - Updated Caltech to e2e-1.7.2
 - Updated MIT to e2e-1.7.2

Alfi
----
(Bruce)
 - Working on Alfi 5 port and connection widgets.

(Melody)
 - Continued working on displaying member nodes in alfi5. Worked on the
   display of the node ports and also the sizing and placing of the nodes.
 - Working on the schedule for the deliverables.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)

This week was dominated by fixes to source code identified in the
pre-release testing. Much of the new functionality was incomplete
and lacked integration testing prior to the pre-release testing.
As a result a large number of files in the managerAPI, frameAPI,
dataConditionAPI had to be debugged and fixed. The final phase of
testing is currently underway and we are optimistic that a release
can still take place by the end of this week.

Once this release is available, LDAS will have for the first time
the ability to generate a pseudo-data-quality time series channel
for use in search coded based on a query of the DMT tables. The
release will also be the first to support sending arbitrary query
results as an "N-Tuple" of sequences to the search codes. There is
also new functionality for conversion of processed data from the
dataConditionAPI into frame files on output.

Several meetings were held to outline the correct handling of
data dropouts in the frameAPI and the dataConditionAPI. This is
not functionality which will appear in this release but should be
available in the near future.

The decision to move forward with the newer libtools by the LAL
and LALwrapper developers caused several problems for the LDAS
installation procedure. This was identified at several of our LSC
development sites before first being seen here. A patch to the
libtool is now in place and seems to have fixed the installation
problem.

An LDAS bootstrap problem was identified in the managerAPI which
was causing all of LDAS to completely lock up. This was traced and
has been fixed just in time for the new release.

The memory leak in the dataConditionAPI which has been seen at MIT
and at UWM has been identified and fixed for this release. Also the
dataConditionAPI's overall memory usage has been reduced by an
average of 50% through some minor changes in the TCL layer.

The dataConditionAPI now supports the LSC standard one-sided PSD
and CSD data objects. A clean up of old source code was also started
in the dataConditionAPI's C++ directories.

Added environment variable WRAPPER_RESOURCE_FILE to allow other
than $prefix/bin location for the resource file used by the wrapperAPI.
 

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)

Tested 50 micron fibres for both FC and GigE connections.  Both were
successful.

Checked CIT T3-6 for odd behavior of disk on boot after disk firmware
upgrade as had happened in Livingston.  Disk behaved normally.

HPSS: dealt with fallout from running out of tapes (e.g. answering user
questions about why they can't store data).

QFS/T3 testing:

Determined that single port HBAs (in 66MHz 64-bit slots) max out at
93Mb/sec (streaming to 3 T3s).

Tested QFS ls/ls -l performance by filling the root directory of a T3
with 6m files:

     ls -l:  1m4.87s
ls:     0m2.57s

And then moving them into separate directories, 1000 files per directory:

        ls -lR: 1m2.27s
ls -R:  0m47.31s

Analyzed data and prepared graphs of QFS testing both for SIRTF meeting
and for a summing up of QFS/T3 results.  Did a few more test runs as
reality checks on earlier results.
 

(Al Wilson)

memory that was order about a month ago for the alpha has been
shipped.

(10/18) been upgradeing kernel on the test system.

Cleaning up the cfdef perl script.
 

(Stuart Anderson)

Met with SIRTF system engineers to exchange information on the Sun T3 RAID
systems and data storage architectures.

Certified Solaris patch to fix xntpd problems.

Verified improved functionality of the new NTI SUN-USB keyboard converter
when used to connect new Sun USB based computers to the existing NTI
kebyard-video-mouse switches.

Removed ATM OC-12 interface card from U30 workstation in anticipation
of installing in an LDAS E450 at Caltech to make better use of the
high-speed connection between CACR and LIGO.
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)

create users accounts on ldas-pcdev1
ordered cables
tabulated BTU stats for new equipment as well as future planned equipment
made mount changes from ldas-pcdev1 to the metaserver

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)

1) Worked on knownpulsardemod DSO code. Successfully uploaded and
rsynced DSO onto LHO LDAS system. Successfully ran LDAS jobs using this
DSO on the LHO beowulf cluster.

2) Ordered 4 QFS licenses for LHO.  The order shipped Oct 17. QFS will
allow LDAS and CDS servers to share local file systems mounted on the
Sun T3 disk farm.

3) Working on changes to backup script to turn off xntpd while running
fssnap on Solaris hosts. (Fssnap is a Solaris utility that creates a
static read only snapshot of a file system which allows a live file
system to be backed up without corrupting the backup.)
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
(Vicere')
 I kept working on analyzing phase data from the electrical
  grid, in an attempt to model the fluctuations and to understand
  their effect on LIGO sensitivity.

(Charlton)
FCT: not much progress this week. Continuing with coding for overlap but
am finding that the Fourier transforms of Teviet's time-domain templates
do not line up well with frequency-domain templates generated from the
stationary-phase approximation. I'm still unsure if this is due to
breakdown of the approximation, or some convention mismatch, or
something else.
 

Lazzarini
The semi-annual GriPhyN Collaboration meeting took place early this week at USC/ISI. The LIGO-Applications group (CACR/LIGO/ISI/UWM) presented the status of a prototype/demonstration interface between the "Virtual Data Toolkit (VDT)" and LDAS that will allow an external user to request an LDAS job using the standard interface that has been developed for grid computing, The demo will be able to retrieve data from one of several mirrors of a small LIGO engineering run subset (at USC, CACR/HPSS, UWM). Eventually, the intent is to request conditioned data via LDAS from a grid application.
 

The last day of the meeting was a kick-off meeting for the second component, the international Virtual Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL). Discussion focused on how to organize this activity, which working groups are needed to develop a definition of the iVDGL, protocols and practices, etc.
 

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:
-Investigated Portmaster 2e communication server
 setup modems for MIT PPP dial in service
 testing equipment and acquiring cables etc...
 tbd: user accts and testing on various client platforms
-Moved wireless hub to third floor for better coverage
of offices - ran ethernet cables through ceilings back
to router.
-Investigated acrobat licenses (need to order 1)

Livingston:
-Working on setting up videoconferencing at Livingston.
-Sent in a software renewal for Algor for another year.
-Still doing some cleanup after the failure of our W2K
server. We are looking at the possibility of setting up some
backup servers to increase reliability, but until that is
operational and tested we do not intend to use the server.

Hanford:

- Continued work on the Windows 2000 server setup and on setting up the
backup software to backup both the UNIX user accounts and all the office
PCs.  Also, exploring the possibility of using the Samba software or Sun
PCNetLink software to act as a Windows domain server.
- Tracking down some problems with purchases made several months ago
that have not yet been charged.
 

CIT:
(Lisa)
- Upgraded p-card software for all those who are testing out the travel
stuff.
- Installed SunPCI2 in Janeen's workstation. The new driver set has solved
most of the problems we were having.  We still have an issue with solidworks
crashing.  I believe it might be related to the fact that this software
uses a hardware key.
- Worked on a problem with the forte 6.x compilers and posix code.  This
looks like it is a compiler bug and a bug report was submitted to sun.  We have
a work around, so it is non-critical.
- Fixed the cdr on the 3rd floor pc workstation.  People can burn CD's
without any trouble now.
- Stuart got a funky message from the Solstice Backup software after
performing a restore.  I'm still trying to figure out why or what it means.
- Helped Phil Willems move into a new office (but Mike did all the heavy
lifting).
- Resolved a cadence problem for Jay
- In the middle of rebuilding an ultra30 to become the new frame
broadcaster in 40m martian net.
- More than the usual round of account/user support.

(Mike)
  IBM laptop T22 series,
-This came pre loaded with win98se, which wasn't going to work for me due
to security reasons. I had to get win2000 loaded on this machine; I formatted
the hard drive and perform a clean install which I had problems accessing
the drivers for PCI bus & DVD, all other drivers were accessible threw
IBM's web page. The operating system ran okay but the errors were coming
up upon booting. I called IBM tech support and they mentioned that the
hardware is the same for win98 & 2000 for this particular model, but
recommended that we this laptop back and get one with the 2000
configuration instead. They gave me some links to look at that included
upgrade instructions or for a clean install for win2000. The clean install
was exactly how I performed the installation from the start. I then
proceeded to upgrade which work out perfectly. I have this laptop running
win2000 pro, with know new problems.

-I had multiple users that I still had to install the updated patches for
office 2000 security holes within excel and power point.
-Going over administration documentation by Barbara, just getting familiar
with tasks she has currently running on the NT4.0 administrative servers.

-Janeen Romie, Lisa installed a new PC card on her sparc and now I must
load all General Computing software plus engineering packages.
Solid Works is having a problem running, it crashes the PC card when you
extract a file, I am still working on this problem.

-Virus problem, ^A'W32Nimda.enc' corrupted OS reloaded win98 and General
Computing software.
Virus ^A'W32Nimda.enc' Norton detected this virus but after looking
further in to this problem, I notice that this virus created a bunch of
unrecognizable files. Norton quarantined all files. I then looked into the
backup tapes to see if there was any match up to these files on tape, but
turned up a blank. This virus just generated these files at random but
they were all quarantined.
-Help Lisa relocate Phil to another office and then surplus the old
equipment that was in Phil's new office.
-Onsite & phone support that included loading additional software,
updating patches and printer support.

(Veronica)
- Spent the week getting familiar with the structure of the LIGO
website. Worked with Lisa and Larry on computing procedures. Met with
several people regarding various tasks related to the website maintenance.
- Kept working on the webpages for the Management School workshop: wrote
the scripts and created graphics. Tested various layouts and
graphics. Working on a submit form.
- Updated the LSC MOU's page: posted new Attachments for ACIGA and UWM.
- Looking how to set up a video camera.
- Worked on CaJAGWR website: compressed the talk by Arthur Kosowsky and
posted it at the CaJAGWR website. Did usual upkeep.

(Bruce Sears)
-Gnats maintenance:                               (1.5 days)
        - Ongoing attempt to set up gnats for the detector hardware group.

(Larry)
-Spent the end of the week dealing with procurement and financial related
items.
-Working on swapping out servers in the computer room. Bill T. had some
new shelves made up that will be installed. Started shuffling computers to
accommodate the new units.
-Cleaned up a number of file systems and the usual account maintenance.
-So far the SANS conference has been helpful. One of the big issues that
has come up is security for home computers. A number of new problems have
come about because of people working from home and not keeping their home
computers secure.
Will report on a number of other items, brought up at the conference, next
week.
 
 
 

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

From Peter King:
 

AdLIGO PSL
I emailed Shally Seraf, the Stanford graduate student now working
on the high power laser, about upgrading the 10-W LIGO laser to 20 W. I
haven't received a reply yet as to what they hope to do etc. Once that is
determined, I will contact Lightwave about what will be involved.
 

The VxWorks EPROM for the Motorola 262 IOC was created.
 

From Rich Abbott:
 

In the last stages of testing on the voice coil actuator. The design has been brought up to maximum internal power dissipation (100 watts per channel), and we are evaluating the minimum requirements for heatsinking. The driver has successfully operated into its design load with a square wave signal and shows no overshoot tendencies.
 

Worked with the vendor of the capacitance position sensors to arrive at the best tradeoff between cable lengths and resultant increase in system noise floor. We are ordering the chassis for the electronics this week.
 

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

Advanced LIGO Suspensions
Identified a company willing to cast the "large" heavy glass shapes needed for the penultimate suspension masses.
Sem Com is located in Toledo, Ohio.
They were not able to work with one of the glass formulas recommended by the Glasgow folks because of the (toxic) Cadmium content, however, they will be willing to melt and shape the other glass types.
Sem Com will melt and shape frit that we purchased from Viox into 1/2"dia. substrates.
These substrates will be used for bonding experiments.
 

I am still looking for a polishing house able to handle and willing to polish the heavy Advanced LIGO penultimate masses.
 

Silicate Bonding
Making a fixture to be able to bond fibers with ease to our testing chunk of glass with bonded "ears".
 

"Q" measurements
The substrates sent to Lyon should be back shortly, they have been processed.
There are 3 more thin substrates being measured by Steve Penn at Syracuse;  G. Harry at MIT has the fourth one.
Four 1" thick parts are being measured at Glasgow.

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

@ Hongo
Akiteru
Steady slow advance
 

@ Caltech
Chenyang
First tests of the AC electrostatic drive sensitivity to external
dielectric constant perturbations.  Will obviously need the phase lock
circuit to automatically lock on the peak of the resonance or on the
side of it.
 

Charlotte, Virginio, Riccardo
Preparing to upgrade creep facility.  Designed totem suspension systems
with a single central maraging wire, all parts in preparation at G&M.
Also new LVDT spools being made, Alessandro will get them spooled at
UNIPI.  Cut new blades for next round of testing.  Assembled the
external suspension structure for the totem while waiting for the
maraging wire.  Richard Karwoski designed new low pass filtering cards.
Changed oven working temperature from 30 to 40 centigrades.  Maybe we
will be able to put an upper limit of creep even with this stumbling
setup before we will receive the parts for the new setup.
 

Charlotte, Riccardo, Gianni
Designing flex joint samples for Q measurement in cryostat.  Aim is to
isolate the diving board from lossed using mini isolator stages.  For
now concentrating on Maraging and exotic metals, sapphire samples will
be designed after initial tests.
 

Charlotte
Studying flex joint optimization, still problems with effective bending
point.
 

@ Pisa
Alessandro
water jet cutting sapphire made,  now transferring the rods for
ultrasound shaping of the flex joints.
Ready to make order for NC-Ultra-Sound milling machine.  Riccardo to
come to Pisa to finalize.
Made new differential sensors for accelerometers @ 10^-12m noise.  The
accelerometer performance below 100 mHz should improve by a factor of
30, to be tested.  Will be good for Hongo’s IP.

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