Weekly Report for Week Ending December 6, 2001

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  December 10, 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:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Operations--Administration

A Site Teleconference was held on Thursday, December 6, 2001.  The following items were discussed:

• The Weber Bars (action 99) have been delivered to the sites.  A new action is assigned to prepare display materials to support the exhibits of the Bars.  This is a longer term (spare time) action.
• A draft policy concerning procurements (action 102) has been prepared and was presented during the safety audit.  A safety audit action (not tracked here) was assigned to get the draft edited and out for approval.  Action 102 is complete.
• Communications with the NSF indicate that the new cooperative agreement is close to being awarded but is still sitting in the NSF Division of Grants and Agreements.  The hold up seems to relate to whether the full or a partial amount will be awarded.  Less than $1 million is left, as of the end of November, of the old Cooperative Agreemenet.
• A new Post Doctoral has been hired at Livingston with an anticipated start date around March 1.

Barry is convinced after visiting Hanford and reviewing their operating procedures that additional operators will be required to provide 24/7 operation of two interferometers.  Two additional operators have been added into the budget for FY 2002.

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

• Assisted the Seismic Isolation Engineer (V. Sannibale) with packing , shipping, and Customs Documentation for the followings items: one (1 each) Accelerometer, two (2 each) Accelerometer Drivers,  four (4 each) Coil Drivers, two (2 each) Printed Circuit Boards and connector Cables, to the University of Pisa (Alessandro Bertolini). Account Number LIGO.00002 - 3 - NSFLIGO.504800.
• The Weber Bars were delivered to both Observatories. Purchase Order is being processed to pay for the Rigging and Transportation. As of 12-05-01 LIGO has not received a charge form the University Of Maryland concerning any other expenses.

>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

• Progress continues on the conversion of archived financial records to .pdf files.
• The scanning of all IFIS budget reports, 1991 through 1998 continues.  Out of a total of 47,000 pages already 25,000 have been scanned, representing nearly 4GB of data.  Once all scanning is completed, the files will be burned onto CD's.
• Running the core optic certifications/specifications .pdf files through OCR continues.
• Converted numerous PAC presentations into .pdf files for DCC processing.
• Processed 8 DCN's for distribution.
• Preparations continued for the LIGO Christmas party, only a few days away (that's hard to believe....)

ACTIVITY

• electronic document activity was heavy for this period with numerous PAC presentations being submitted
• some more time was spent tracking down a missing package for Riccardo Desalvo from Galli & Morelli and the package was finally found!
• progress continues on converting old charge accounts to electronic form

 

12-06-01	Packages	Faxes
In	43	34
Out	5	37

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>

• Working on Change Order 11 to CSIRO.
• Transferred funds on 14 PO's from various construction accounts to three new construction account numbers set up for Hanford and Livingston.
• Closed out PO's which show up on OGM which do not have activity and have been paid.
• Completed updating the list for the PWC auditors.  Provided the University of Florida file to the PWC auditors.
• Working with Norman Gordon to obtain $15k in taxes paid out for LHO on Inland Asphalt.

• Completed and posted the Operations report through November 2001 on the network.

Completed and posted the Construction report through November 2001 on the network.
• Worked with Ruth and Dot to transfer encumbrances to the new Fabrication accounts for Detector and Site improvements.
• Worked with Jill and Bonnie to implement the reduction of Petty Cash accounts at the sites.
• Prepared a schedule of inappropriate charges to Equipment accounts so that corrections can be made.

 
• The reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

• Heraeus: CO No. 06, for 2 additional pieces of glass (to be used in the 40M interferometer), is in Detector group review.
• CSIRO: CO No. 11 was updated to re-state the subcontract effective Dec. 01, 01 and to start a new running Total (for allocation of funds) effective CO NO. 11.
• Butler: CO No. 19, adding the FY'02 funding increment, was processed to Purchasing.
• G&M: CO No. 16, adding funds for mechanical parts and assembly of a CNC 3-axis machine, is in Advanced Seismic Isolation R&D group review. The CNC 3-axis machine will be installed at the Univ. of Pisa in support of a joint Univ. of Pisa/LIGO Lab advanced optics processing program.
• EGO: Request for NSF approval of proposed agreements (between EGO and LIGO Lab), for a joint R&D program including a subcontract to initiate collaborative investigations into advance optics coating process, was processed to NSF.

No report this week (Ed is our representative at Vandenburg AFB for a satellite launch.)

SUPPORT

• Processed the paper work for ten (10) new/revised trips.  I have four (4) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done.  Worked on several trips that were changed or modified for various reasons.
• Completed eighteen (18) Expense Reports (including a couple of very involved/time consuming trips) and there are five (5) reports yet to be done.  I am holding one (1) report that needs additional information/receipts from the traveler before submitting and six (6) that need a check from the traveler before submitting.  I continue to contact travelers with outstanding trips as time permits.  Some progress is being made.
• Reconciled twenty-three (23) items on my P-Card.  These required telephone calls to vendors who do not enter the traveler's name on their charges.
• Spent a considerable amount of my time trying to work out various problems with Hertz Corporate Office, Rudy Arvizu, and those travelers involved.  Hopefully we can get all these glitches resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itineraries for December 3, 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.

• Provided "End User" and/or "Requester" name for report Florence Kaufman is putting together for Alan Weinstein on each of his POs processed during the period 1999 through 2001.
• Received and processed invoices for payment on-line. The total incoming invoices received for this 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 November 26.
• 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 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and supports Linda and Cleveland (DCC) the remainder of the week.

• Scanned several GEO documents, and updated the LSC database with info from their 13-page Attachment Z.  Prepared a summary (showing current location) of the 2001 GEO documents, which were submitted by different people at different times.  Sent copies of summary to I. Petrac and V. Kondrashov.
• Formatted the Oregon progress report submitted by email.  Their troublesome .pdf version would neither print, nor convert to text.  The report is in review.  Many thanks to Mike Pedraza who attempted to get the bad file to print.
• Prepared a few more electronics travelers to include with boards after obtaining DCC numbers.  Updated the database with board information.   With D. Lloyd, arranged payment to Casco Circuits.  Casco does not take credit card and so we paid after delivery.
• Met and T. Frey et al. to discuss purpose and scope of the LIGO central personnel database.  Followed up with C. Akutagawa on the LIGO roster part.  We discovered that Cindy did not have write rights; this should be remedied soon.
• Updated site trips.  Established 2002 schedule/database for both sites; will appear on the web page after 1/1/02.
• Placed several Pcard orders, chased the paper work to reconcile.  Arranged telecons for: Sys. Admin, LSC lasers, and the Susp. Working Group.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 11.30 to 12.6

Accomplishments:

• Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting was not held this week.  Next meeting TBD.
• 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.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• PSL - Issued cost and resource loaded reports and awaiting comments.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• AOS - Work on action items continues.  Inputting data provided by David S.  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.
• ISC - Received data from David Shoemaker for ISC and reviewing.
• 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 11.30.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 12.14.01.
• Initiated communication between Phil Willems, David Shoemaker, and Eric Black to co-ordinate Q measurements of TNI Sapphire before and after coating.
• Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 11.30.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 12.14.01.
• Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 11.30.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 12.14.01.
• Continue to test the Cost Book Tool.
• ROSTER DATABASE:
• Continue working with Rita and Cindy to input the roster data.
• Executed meeting on November 30th at 1pm at the LSCR.
• Prepared meeting minutes and issued for comment.
• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• Continue to run tests on reports using other sub-system data.
• Verifying and checking business rules for cost loading.  Went through 2 more iterations and discovered some orphaned records.  Sent data to BK to review and comment on total differences.
• Mapping and formatting of OPS cost data for input on hold pending finalization of co-operative agreement.
• Followed-up on incident with Primavera regarding actual finish dates for finish milestones being dropped from the update files through email.
• 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

• Out of the office on Monday the 10th.
• 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. (New data from David to be input).
• 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.
• ISC - Finish review of data.  Input data and change WBS as requested.
• 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 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Will Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• 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.
• Meeting scheduled for Friday the 30th at 1pm to go over the roster database.
• BK will be in the office on Friday and I will work with her on any outstanding action items.
• Continue to work with roster database development and 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.

Reports (Lindquist)

We are doing a standard Annual Report for the Construction Project as of the end of November.  I have requested contributions from Task Mamagers by Friday, December 21, 2001.

The following change request has been submitted:
 

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

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

• Attended a LIGO Roster Database meeting (if interested refer to DCC M010332-00-A).
• Worked with Rita  on learning about updating the LIGO Roster file
• Assisted Florence Kaufman when needed with accounting details
• Various personnel/payroll related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

Distributed list (draft) of the Hanford Safety audit actions items/recommendations for discussion at weekly site telecon.  The draft list was accepted as distributed. The final audit summary report is in work and will include the AI/recommendation list.

Requested cost estimates from the Caltech Engineering and Estimating (E&E) group for the LDAS proposed modifications of room 215, Synchrotron.  Cost estimates have already been obtained from other vendors for the same room modifications.  It is planned to review all of the cost estimates with Caltech E&E next week to select a recommended design approach and cost.
 

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

Interferometer: The common mode servo was installed and is ready for check out (Kovalik). We have been having problems with the thermal stabilization of the PSL reference cavity with the new high gain temperature measurement board - the system oscillates unacceptably when it is implemented. Rich Abbott and Flavio have been here this week working on it and have  proposed fix which we will test as soon as there is a point in the commissioning where we can do this with minimum disruption. The intensity stabilization servo is installed. We are making measurements of the noise at the coil monitors of the ITMs and ETMs to assess the electronic noise in the LSC. See the ilog for details.

GC: Installed office 2000 on the machine in Bonnie's office. Investigated some leftovers of the Nimda worm. Worked on price quotes for various needed equipment in the new building here. Gave Ed Daw access to one of my "testing" computers here so that he can try and build LDAS on a RH 7.1 system without affecting the machine that he uses on a daily basis. Contacted hummingbird software to ask some questions about our license/maintenance renewal. Thinking about the advantages/disadvantages of using cygwin to replace hummingbird. It would be free to use (GPL'd) rather than paying ~$1100 annually for license renewals.

LDAS: Finished troubleshooting the backup script on LDAS. The problem was with the permissions on one of the ssh files. The backup script now works as it is supposed to.Once I edit the configuration, backups can be added to the cron on admin.
Shannon Roddy

Safety Issues: Optics and Installation: Programming of the Laser Safety Interlock system is (still) ongoing. Hopefully we'll be issuing cards soon to begin system testing using LLO staff. Gerry and I are preparing the LLO Personal Accountability SOP for the Laser Safety Interlock System, as well as a Safety tutorial for the Machine Shop.  Jonathan Kern

Other: Igor Yakushin is at Caltech this week to learn more about the LDAS system.

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• PSL (Abbott, Ugolini, Vass, Smith, King):
• Dennis has completed a final draft of the 40m PSL Test and Commissioning Report (T010145-00).
• Dennis and Steve recalibrated the beam angle sensor using microscope slides held at 45degrees.
• Steve will obtain and deploy microphones and temperature sensors for the PSL enclosure, and get them into the PEM system.
• Lenses for improved mode-matching of all beams on the PSL table have been ordered. Mounts, mirrors, pickoffs, shutters, etc, required for the final layout of the PSL table will be ordered soon.
• Optics (Billingsley): We still await receipt of polished MC optics. We had hoped to have them delivered back to us by mid-November. IFO core optics are at CSIRO for polishing. We still must decide on the schedule for polishing both the MC and core optics.
• Input mode cleaner sensing (Smith, AJW, Heefner, Abbott): Mike has enumerated the power levels for all beams exiting the IFO, to aid in designing safety equipment. Mike will shortly will compile a list of all optics for the mode cleaner sensing beams (reflected and tranmitted), and finalize the design of all custom equipment (mainly, the periscope from the PSL to the IFO).
• Optical lever telescopes (Smith): Mike continues to work on the design of angle-sensing telescopes for the optical levers for the LIGO beam-splitters. These will be used for all seven optical levers at the 40m.
• STACIS (Ugolini): Random STACIS channels continue to fail, recover, and fail again. Source continues to be unknown, but we suspect excessive sensitivity of the controllers to the EMI environment (and, well, flaky electronics). We have tried to read out two of the STACIS controllers into the EPICS system: one attempt caused a controller to go nuts; the other controller could be read out with no problem. Argh.
• Facilities (Vass, Jones, Smith, AJW):
• Optical viewports newly made by Cascade Optical do not have the specified wedges. They were sent back to have the wedges put on; expect them to come back in mid-January.
• Until we have the wedged optical viewports in hand, we can't specify the exact dimensions of the flanges being built at CES to hold them (at 2.5degrees).
• Larry Jones reports that we still await receipt of fluorel liners for the in-vacuum cable clamps, the electrical feedthrough flanges and cable connectors (we've received some, not all), or the custom Cooner cable. CES is almost finished with the other cable clamp parts.
• Larry will design the enclosures on top of all the sensing optics tables, and beam tubes that connect them. We envision small, light, light-tight boxes fitting snugly on the table tops, covering all the optics. They should be easy to lift off and out of the way for table-top work, by 2 people.
• Steve and Larry will make sure we have the cameras, camera mounts, and monitors, to view the input mode cleaner suspended optics.
• The 34" long "nipple" (mode cleaner vacuum tube extension) was shipped by MDC to Hanford for clean/bake, but they are having problems, so they shipped it to LLO.
• Advanced LIGO Optical Configuration and Prototyping Effort, P010042, has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 4th Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, Classical and Quantum Gravity Special Issue. The originally submitted paper, containing much more detail on the status of the 40m upgrade and on simulation tools, was deemed unnecessarily detailed and technical. Thus, it may be of more interest to you.

Dennis will give a colloquium on LIGO and the 40m, at CSU Dominguez Hills, this Friday.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

>Since our last report, we have made considerable progress in both lock
>acquisition and data analysis.
>For lock acquisition, we had been using a servo that took around two
>hours to catch but was quite stable thereafter.  We had successfully
>increased the bandwidth of the servo, reducing the average acquisition
>time to around nine seconds, but we had also encountered some rather
>serious, unexpected unity-gain frequency oscillations.  Up to that time
>we had been modelling our servos almost entirely algebraically, using
>pen-and-paper calculations to predict unity-gain frequencies and phase
>margins.  These models were very quick to develop and use, and they had
>nearly always accurately predicted the behavior of the system.  Now,
>however, we had begun to push the unity-gain frequency up into the
>region where our passive notch filter begins to eat phase, and we needed
>a more precise, quantitative model to understand the system.
>
>Last week we began to develop a computer model that describes both the
>behavior of the servo and the calibration of the instrument.  As soon as
>the model was ready, we tested it by locking the system in an old
>configuration (with a two-hour lock acquisition time but no
>oscillations), measuring the open-loop transfer function, and comparing
>the measurement with the prediction of the model.  The agreement between
>the two is quite good, and the improved resolution of our model in
>phase-margin allowed us to understand two previous puzzles:  "Why
>couldn't we simply push the gain of the old servo up to increase its
>bandwidth?", and "What causes the apparent unity-gain frequency
>oscillations in our wideband servo?"  The answer to both questions is,
>"The passive notch filter eats more phase than our pen-and-paper model
>predicted."  Once we understood this, we were quickly able to modify our
>new servo to eliminate the unity-gain frequency oscillations, preserving
>the ~10 second lock aquisition time.  This is a major breakthrough.
>However, we have now begun to excite some higher-frequency internal
>modes.  Our first active notch filter, built by Flavio Nocera, performs
>admirably, neatly removing the first modes at 27.5kHz.  It is apparent
>that we need some more of these filters to remove additional resonances
>at 30.7kHz and possible around 40kHz.
>
>Another thing our new model allows us to do is to quantitatively
>calibrate the instrument accross a wide range of frequencies.  (We had
>previously been limited to approximately 900Hz to 5kHz.)  This week, we
>took data from 10Hz to 100kHz and, using the calibration obtained with
>our new computer model, converted it to displacement sensitivity.  The
>resulting curve agrees well with our previous data in the 900Hz to 5kHz
>range, and it allows us to see where the seismic wall appears at low
>frequencies and where electronic noise limits us at high frequencies.
>
>This displacement noise curve shows some interesting features.  First,
>it appears to scale approximately as f^-0.5 in the decade of 300Hz to
>3kHz, just as we expect internal thermal noise to do.  Second, it is no
>more than a factor of three above where we expect to see thermal noise,
>based on the Q of one of the mirrors as measured by the ringdown time of
>its lowest-frequency internal mode (f0=27.5kHz).  The attached plot
>shows the displacement noise in the South Arm cavity of the TNI, along
>with two estimates of the mirror internal thermal noise.  The red curve
>is the expected thermal noise in the South Output mirror, based on its
>measured Q of 100,000.  This should be considered a lower bound.  The
>green curve is the thermal noise that would be produced by two identical
>mirrors with Q's of 21,000 each, or a single mirror with a Q of 15,000.
>This should be considered an upper bound on the thermal noise in this
>cavity.  These estimates of the thermal noise are based solely on
>internal Q's and do not take into account coating losses.
>
>It's too early to say with certainty that we have observed thermal
>noise, but it does look like we are at least close.

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Bayer, Fritschel, Goda, Harry, Laliberty, MacInnis, Mason,
Miller, Mittleman, Ottaway, Phinney, Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
=======================================================================
HAM13 SOS INSTALLATION:  Dave O., Myron, Fred and Jamie got both SOS
optics for the short test cavity installed in HAM13.  Their OSEMS,
wiring and feedthrough connections are installed and checked.  The
stack optics table was counterweighted and rebalanced. One door has
been replaced on the HAM and coarse alignment is proceeding well, using
a visible diode laser pilot beam.
 

HYDRAULIC ACTUATORS:  Ken continues detailing the actuator structural
interface design and would like to hold a design review in the next few
weeks.  Joshua moved the prototype pump/accumulator skid setup out of
the machine shop into the student lab to improve cleanliness, and is
continuing experiments to understand its dynamics.
 

CDS/DAQ/GDS: No significant problems to report.
 

PSL:  This week and last we've been fortunate to have had the expert
support of Lee Cardenas from Caltech, working with Dave O., Myron and
Jamie.  The 10W Lightwave Laser has been installed and tested; its
output power has only marginally degraded during shipping (still above
spec, though). The reference cavity has been installed and its vacuum
chamber pumped down.  MZ and Jamie have ordered components and test
equipment to support commissioning and upgrade of the frequency
stabilization controls, and are collecting a rich dossier on regional
and historical variants.
 

        #MZ Reminder for Visitors: the LASTI high bay is a DUAL-
        WAVELENGTH laser hazard zone when warning signs are
        illuminated.  Contact Mike ( zucker_m@ligo.mit.edu ) to be sure
        your personal eyewear is suitable if you're planning a visit;
        if it isn't, we can help you out.  We run a 10 W Nd:YAG MOPA
        at 1064 nm and a 15 W CO2 laser at 10.6 microns, often
        simultaneously.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E Physics Meeting
---------------------------
Hiro talked about a number of new features added to e2e. For example, a hard switch, a  rotational
operator, bundle for data set, direct macro settings and macro handling etc.

Han2k seismic model
-------------------
(Hiro) At LHO, Hiro worked with Bill to use Bill's seismic motion model in Han2k
by writing a module to rotate coordinate systems. Bill made a configuration for
the Mode Cleaner with LSC and correlated seismic motion. This was developed to
study the frequency noise of MC due to the seismic motion.

Documentation
---------------
(Hiro) e2e primitive manual was updated to reflect various recent changes, all of
which are necessary for the next major rewrite of Han2k.

Installation
------------
(Ed Maros) Built latest version of E2E for Hanford

Alfi
----
(Bruce)
- Continuing work on model for updating bookkeeping objects from changes the user
  makes in the GUI.

(Melody)
- Continuing on the node settings dialog.
- Also updating the member node widget implementation to fit it in with the event-listener model.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

The periodic MDC being carried out at Hanford is nearing its completion. The MDC
did, as usual, generate a number of problem reports. However, it is being
considered a tremendous success in that the scope outline by the MDC plan
was completed successfully with only minor issues which will easily be fixed
in the next couple of LDAS releases.

The group at Hanford also began working on a new search code to run under
LDAS which will search for coincidences between gamma ray bursts and GW
bursts. This code will be integrated into the Burst Upper Limits Group's
strategy.

LDAS is planning a new code development freeze this Friday, December 7th. It
is in anticipation of the next release of LDAS which will be used during the
E7 run and is being closely coordinated with the LAL/LALwrapper release. Due
to time constraints, we have determined that it will not be possible to have
a diskCacheAPI in this release. The option to allow data decimation using an
FIR filter in the upstream frameAPI may also have to be removed from this
release. If we are able to get this into the release, then there are two very
nice advantages to this release:

1) ability to get longer time intervals of data into data analysis pipelines
2) reduced computational and network loads on downstream APIs in pipelines

While exploring the possibility of supporting decimation in the frameAPI a
non-thread safe aspect of the dlmalloc memory management code was discovered.
A fix for this has been added to the dlmalloc released with LDAS and is now
being tested. This could possibly explan some of the thread issues seen in
the dataConditionAPI.

A problem with disconnected sockets in the dataCondtionAPI interfereing with
the start up of wrapperAPI parallel jobs on the beowulf cluster was discovered.
The cause of the disconnected sockets is unclear but a clean up routine has
been added and the problem is no longer seen on the development system.

The latest release of LAM, version 6.5.6 has been installed on all the Lab
LDAS system. All the necessary patch files and documentation have been added
to the CVS repository and posted on the development webpages.

In an effort to read in frequency domain data stored in process frames for
post processing steps it was discovered that the dataConditionAPI was unable
to ingests these data types. Code to support frequency domain data is now in
place and being tested with process frames from the periodic and stochastic
search codes' output.

The -returnprotocol option for naming and directing output data products from
LDAS jobs has been fully implemented to support local files, anonymous FTP, and
http access. This effects all LDAS job commands.
 

The lightWeightAPI has been updated to support multiple threaded requests
for LDAS jobs. This elimenates the serial bottleneck that existed previously.
A similar sirialization bottleneck was found in the metaDataAPI and new C++
code to support more threading has been added. The TCL layer to take advantage
of these new threaded functions is being developed and will be available in
the next LDAS release.

The documentation for a single cpu LDAS system has been updated and is now
being verified. It will appear in the next release of LDAS.

All the mpi and inspiral MDC scripts have been updated to use the new "cleaned
up" -frameQuery syntax. We communicated with the UWM group on these changes
and await their okay to submit the changes to the MDC CVS repository.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)

Continued to migrate data from (mostly) 3590 tapes to 9940 tapes.

The main problem with Encina (running out of memory) has been fixed.  I
helped identify another problem (bug in dumppv_pvl) that caused Encina
to crash.  A patch has been applied to dumppv_pvl and Encina has
remained up since.

Continued to label and import LIGO-purchased 9940 tape cartridges.

Dealt with some problems that were a function of conflicts between the
migration work and ingesting new data (i.e. running out of disk
cache).  Convinced James Patton that temporarily disabling LIGO access
to HPSS was not the solution to the problem.

(Al Wilson)

This week
working on makeing our own RPM from scratch. Also help Igor with seting up
linux systems.

(Stuart Anderson)

Received and installed Solaris 8 on the 6 new Caltech SF880 servers.

Determined that a single 2200VA UPS is the right size for the new SF880 servers
configured as they are with 4 out of 8 CPUs and 6 out of 12 internal disks.

Started configuration of new central LDAS server--upgrading from E220R to E450.

Working on certifying the cfdef perl script to handle LDAS Solaris system
configuration management in addition to the previously working support
for Linux.

Help setup second Sun equipment rack and UPS in Powell-Booth to support
the LDAS archive system.

Begun ingestion of E6 data into the Caltech archive--approximately 50% complete.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)

setup BigBrother as per Shannon's instructions
(adjusted repeat warnings in etc/bbwarnsetup.cfg)
investigating kernel upgrade for linux boxes
received Sun shipment of SunFire 880 / T3 Raid Array
Moved ldas equipment around so that ldas lab floor could be waxed
Ordered Solaris 8 media (latest revision) through Caltech

Livingston
----------
(Shannon Roddy)

Finished troubleshooting the backup script on LDAS.  The problem
was with the permissions on one of the ssh files.  The backup script now
works as it is supposed to.  Once I edit the configuration, backups can
be added to the cron on admin.

(Igor Yakushin)

* Visiting Caltech
* Learning to run LDAS jobs
* Learning to build LDAS systems

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

1) The November 2001 Known Pulsar Demodulation Mock Data Challenge was
run from Nov 27-30 at LHO.  All problem reports opened during the MDC
have been closed, or have been analyzed and will be closed after the
next release of LDAS.

2) E6 data was untarred and made available to ldas jobs and
investigations
at the sites last week.

3) A "Cache memory parity error" was reported by t3-7 causing the fb3
framebuilder to crash.  Sun replaced the controller (which includes
the cache) on t3-7 on the morning of Dec 4. Everything has been
running normally since then.

4) AIT2 tapes have been ordered for the E7 run.

5) A simple script was written and sent to
ldas_admin_all@ligo.caltech.edu
that synchronizes the times on the T3s with that on the admin machine.

General Computing (Wallace)
(Keith)
-Moved gc equipment around so that basement floors could be waxed
-Ordered Mathematica software upgrade
-Investigated MIT purchasing requirements for capital expenditures
-Setup new laptop for for postdoc
installed software
setup wireless card
-Investigating VNC remote display through SSH
-Adding users to PortMaster modem server

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Installed office 2000 on the machine in Bonnie's office.
-Investigated some leftovers of the Nimda worm.
-Worked on price quotes for various needed equipment in the new building
here.
-Gave Ed Daw access to one of my "testing" computers here so that he can
try and build LDAS on a RH 7.1 system without affecting the machine that
he uses on a daily basis.
-Contacted hummingbird software to ask some questions
about our license/maintenance renewal.  Thinking about the
advantages/disadvantages of using cygwin to replace hummingbird.  It
would be free to use (GPL'd) rather than paying ~$1100 annually for
license renewals.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Installed a new Photoreader on the new guest PC.  The old one was too
old, ie. no compatible drivers were available.
- Re-built the old guest PC to pass it on to a new user.
- Worked on comments to Albert's Security Plan.
- Installed patches for Solaris 8 AdminSuite, so the nis+ passwords
would work.
- Reviewed Larry's latest GC Policies and Procedures.
- Installed the new tape robot on the new file server and installed the
latest version of the backup software.
- Started installing more memory in all the GC Ultra 10s.

CIT:
(Veronica)
- Posted updates to LIGO website (MOU's, Fellowships/postdoc positions,
Conference participations).
- 2002 GWADW Conference: working with the Organizing Committee on the
contents/structure of the conference website. Started on making graphics
for the website.
- CaJAGWR: finalizing the seminars schedule for the Spring '02 term;
negotiating the room reservations.

(Mike)
-Updated all algor users with current update file date 11-20 file size
431MB. Engineers were having problems with software when running a stress
test through the network. Once file was copied to local computer the all
stress tests ran fine.
-Loaded Win98 on top of Ken Mailand's PC's current configuration,
because he insisted that he needed a complete rebuild but talked him into
doing a reload first. After reloading his computer software seems to be working fine.
Ken's computer is not up to speed with solid works, after coming back from
his training classes and has figured out on how to master this software,
he has showed me the problems he is having with his current PC and it looks
like he is going to need a updated computer, we ran tests on Dennis
Coyne's engineering workstation and the software works just fine. Ken mentioned to
me that Solid Works Reps, are recommending a 1.4 Ghz computer with a
tested video card that is listed on their website in order to get full
functionality of Solid Works software.
-Loaded a new Laptop for Peter Shawhan with all General Computing
software, issued him a wireless card and configured it.
-Ligo project was spammed by campus sending out a virus to all; users
informed me about this matter and asked if I would check this out to make
sure it was removed from the LIGO systems.
-Norton has the current update and a fix tool for the goner virus.
Users called for me to make sure that their computer was cleaned and
protected from any viruses as I attended to their requests, I ran the
goner tool and so far the LIGO_CIT users are okay. Thumbs Up!
-I ran multiple ghost backups of administration computers; I still have a
few more computers to add to ghost server.
-Updated access points with new MAC addresses.
-User support onsite and phone support by multiple users; as everyone
knows
I am the LONE RANGER this week and yes I am very busy.

(Lisa)
-Attending the LISA conference but did get the Monthly backups run before
leaving for the conference.

(Larry)
-Worked a number of procurement issues and ordered some more equipment for
various users.
-Worked on a couple of the policy statements. Received some feedback and
will work on the changes next week. Once the group agrees on the content
we will then get approval from Gary and have it checked over by Caltech to
make sure we are not putting in anything we shouldn't be.
-Worked on some hardware installations.
-Attending the LISA conference. Some of the interesting points so far:
A number of companies are putting in SUN servers and using PC's as
clients. One University group that I talked to really likes Solaris for
Intel.
LDAP is still not mature and has a number of stability problems. SUN
IPlanet version was touted as being the most stable but lacked some
features. It appears to be at the level NIS+ was about 6 years ago.
Only 1200 attendees. Less than 1/2 of last year. Sept. 11th hurt the
conference as far as attendee and vendor participation.
-Worked with Barbara, Mike and Veronica in getting some of the DCC and NT
web server issues cleared up. So far testing has proven the problems have
been resolved, people are now getting the latest copies of the documents.
 

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

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

Procured 2 types of heavy glass frit samples, 1 kg ea. from Viox  to test melting behavior and casting processes.
Sem Com in Toledo , Ohio will do the casting. The parts will be formed into 1/2"dia. substrates.
The glasses are: formula V1586 - density 4.07 gms/cc and Formula #24935 - density 6.77 gms/cc

"Q" Substrates shipped to Lyon from Caltech on Nov 14th were received on Nov 29th.
Coating of those parts will take place Dec.12th.

Gregg and I scheduled a visit to MLD on January 4th.

Adv. LIGO PSL
Peter King
Advanced LIGO PSL
A meeting was held at Lightwave Electronics to discuss the
approaches to increasing the output power of laser #104 to 20W.  It appears
that the preferred approach would be to add an additional amplifier to the
output of the laser.  The amplifier would be identical to the one currently
in the 10-W laser.
 

PSL @ LASTI
Lee Cardenas
·       The 10 watt Laser is ON and the power is 10.50 watts.
·       The Ref. Cavity is fully assembled and hung. The chamber is pumping and the ion pump will be switched on tomorrow.
 

Advanced LIGO SUS: Modelling and Testing for Prototype Suspensions
Calum Torrie, Janeen Romie
We had a very productive conference call with Mike and Eoin in Glasgow and Norna at Stanford. We discussed the work we have been doing for the design of a new blade and sorting out what we need for our testing, that will start in January. (Norna Robertson will be visiting us for the month of January.)
Continuing work on updating version of triple pendulum model as well as continuing with designs for the LIGO MC suspension.
We have sorted out the problems we were having between ALGOR and AutoCAD.
(We can now transfer existing 3D .dwg files from AutoCAD 2002 to Mechanical desktop 6 and then to ALGOR 12, with November updates.)
Next week we are attending classes in SOLIDWORKS.
Calum will visit the IGR group in Glasgow, on the 20th and 21st December, to borrow some material, blades and wire used in GEO so I can compare with new material and parts we have ordered. This will also be a good opportunity to speak to the various people about the status of the prototype suspension design.
Janeen is also working on finding a vacuum compatible LED and photodiode.

Adv. LIGO SUS Dynamics Modeling
Mark Barton
I continued validating my suspension model against Calum's Matlab
version. So far the only significant differences to surface have been in
the interpretation of the input parameters. The Matlab interprets values
of wire length in the model definition as stretched lengths, whereas my
model naturally prefers to be given unstretched lengths. Similarly the
Matlab uses stretched lengths in calculating the elasticity of wires,
whereas by default mine uses the unstretched lengths. Thus for
comparability I added options to use the alternative interpretation. With
no fudging beyond that, the mode frequencies agree at the 1-2% level,
except for two relatively high frequency modes where the top two masses
move in longitudinal and pitch. I suspect there must be a minor error in
the way I've specified one of the top masses, so I've been working to
isolate it.

_____________________________________________
LSC LASERS WORKING GROUP
Minutes of telecon Dec. 6st, 2001:
participants: morning call: Peter Veitch, Maik Frede, Martina Brendel, Ralf Wilhelm,
Benno Willke
evening call: Martina Brendel, Maike Frede, Ralf Wilhelm, Gary Sanders,
Peter Fritschel, Shally Saraf, Peter King, Benno Willke
1) updates
Adelaide:
- still working on the problem that a too strong negative thermal lens develops when pump
power increases
- found huge variation (up to a factor of two) in power behind fibre between the different
pump diodes and tracked the problem down to a dependency of “the power out of the
fibre” on “the angle under which the fibre leaves the SMA connector” which is used to
connect the fibre to the laser diode
- now they optimise this angle for each diode
- Ralf Wilhelm will check if he can simulate the lens causes by an inhomogeneous pumped
slab
- LZH will check if their pump diodes show the same effect as soon as they arrive
LZH
- consider different pumping schemes for rods
- model compared to first fluorescence measurement shows good agreement of spatial
pump distribution in rod
- first 10 laser diodes will arrive latest next Monday
- rods for 100W system arrived and will be coated in house (either EBS of IBS coatings,
they try to get IBS)
- two 23W lasers delivered to VIRGO
- birefringence is included in the modelling, however convergence and agreement with
earlier measurements is not very good
Stanford
- finalized design of new slabs, order placed (?)
- no experiments towards the 100W system done
Caltech-Stanford
- discussed with Lightwave how to increase power of 10W system, different options
(increase NPRO and ampl. power, add additional amplifier stage, redesign system) are
under consideration, Peter King and Shally Sharaf will try to get upgraded system as soon
as possible  (GHS note: We will likely procure an added amplifier stage for this)
 
 

Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 20:56:42 -0500
From: David Shoemaker <dhs@ligo.mit.edu>
Subject: SWG: Summaries and Agenda; Telecon Friday 6 Dec, 9am Pacific

SWG Telecon, Friday 6 Dec, 9am Pacific

Agenda:

Organization and Schedule

Accelerated pace for seismic remediation at Livingston for initial LIGO

Coating losses on Sapphire: need for a test program

Discussion of Summaries (I am personally truly impressed at the amount and variety of progress)

================================

Suspensions Report from Norna Robertson covering GEO Glasgow and NAR at Stanford.

A. Materials

1) Algor modelling of sapphire masses including anisotropy completed for analysis of coated sample. (David Crooks).
Coating loss results being analysed by Sheila Rowan (Stanford) and David - some anomolies to be resolved

2) Measurements of mechanical loss of 6 silica samples (LIGO) for coating by Mackowski in Lyon now complete. 4 have been despatched to Lyon, and 2 more will be despatched next week. Loss factors are around 1 x 10^-7 for most modes but there is noticeable variation between masses (Peter Sneddon). .
Return of one annealed mass and 3 coated masses is awaited. Algor analysis of masses underway to allow interpretation of coating results.

3) Further work on ear design to demonstrate lower peeling stress for tapered ears - both by Algor and polarimetry with plexiglass models. (Eoin Elliffe).

4) Measurement of bond strength (silica to heavy glass) carried out on only sample currently available. Result falls within range measured for silica/silica bonds. (Eoin Elliffe).

5) Sample of REO high reflector coating sent to colleagues in Newcastle for measurement of coating modulus by contacting afm method (Eoin Elliffe).

B. Other Suspension Matters

1) Further investigation of blade behaviour underway  aimed at allowing more accurate prediction of deflection under load. Comparison of IDEAS finite element model, calculations based on equations from VIRGO, and experimental data on various blades (Eoin Elliffe, Mike Plissi, + Calum Torrie, Caltech)

2) Further consideration of blade internal modes  thermal noise level at peaks. Most important is lowest in chain, which has less isolation (but also highest frequency since supporting less mass). If allow higher stress than used in GEO, damping probably not necessary to reduce noise level below sapphire internal level. (Norna Robertson + Peter Fritschel, MIT)

3)  Consideration quantitatively of difference between hanging pendulum suspension from “ground” and active isolation table. Simple analysis suggests effect on frequency and Q of actively damped suspension is of order 1% or less for  reasonable values of mass ratios, frequencies, gains. (Norna Robertson)

=========================
 

Suspension design: (Janeen and Calum)

Cantilever Blades
Janeen has ordered some maraging steel, type 250 from a US manufacturer. We also have quotes from the French company that supplies GEO with maraging steel through a NY distributor.
We spoke with Giles Hammond about experience from the Stiff group on their blades.
Janeen and I have been working with the Glasgow group and Norna at Stanford on the design of the cantilever blades. (After many problems we can now transfer existing 3D .dwg files from AutoCAD 2002 to Mechanical desktop 6 and then to ALGOR 12, with November updates)
Tests
We have a set of AutoCAD drawings in workshop and various parts have been ordered to allow us to carry out various pre-prototype tests. We should be ready to start work in the lab in January, this will coincide with Norna Robertson's visit.
I am visiting the IGR group in Glasgow, on the 20th and 21st December, to borrow some material, blades and wire used in GEO so I can compare with new material and parts we have ordered. This will also be a good opportunity to speak to the various people about the status of the prototype suspension design.
LIGO Mode Cleaner Suspension
The AutoCAD drawings of masses/ small parts near completion - looking at a coil holder structure/upper mass catcher, based on GEO design. (We are both going to classes in SOLIDWORKS next week for a week)
Janeen has been looking at the design of a support structure for this suspension, in particular its natural mode frequencies.
Modelling
Mark Barton has a set of parameters from me for a quadruple pendulum, to allow him to compare his model with the existing one. I have been working with Norna to update the GEO triple pendulum model closer to the version we use for the quadruple pendulum.

=======================

Quad Suspension Tests (Rich Mittleman)

The "measuring the modes" phase of the characterization of the
prototype all metal quadruple suspension is nearing an end. In this work
we have been driving the chain at the top mass (#1) using the actuators
supply by the Glasgow group. The transfer function to various points on
the chain are then measured using either the actuators themselves (for the
top mass) or one of six Kaman position sensors. The latest set of data
can be found at http://tintagel.mit.edu/~richard/Rotation/. In these
measurements the rotational degree of freedom is excited at Mass #1, and
then measured on all masses by taking differences between two sensors,
positioned horizontally symmetrical from the approximate center of mass.
In all of the plots the vertical dotted line represents the predicted
frequency from Calum Torrie's model.
The NoDamping plot shows data from all four masses and the model. The
data has been scaled to make the Mass #4 data and prediction amplitudes
agree. No Damping means no Rotational Damping, the other direction have
damping in some runs.
The other four plots (Mass #1-4) show the effects of damping. In this
data the damping gain was either set at zero or 50% of full scale.
A little bit more data on this degree of freedom still needs to be
gathered, the Mass #1 data is very skimpy. A tentative identification of
the four rotational modes based on these plots is
Model Frequency Measured Frequency
(Hz) (Hz)
0.6544 0.6835 +/- 0.001
1.4691 1.5255 +/- 0.0005
2.8538 2.7944 +/- 0.0002
3.9300 4.1711 +/- 0.0003

The last measurements in this phase involve finding the highest
frequency bounce and roll modes, which weren't visible the first time
around.
It should be noted that great care has not been taken to make the
excitation of measurement system orthogonal. That is the excitation is
probably not limited to the degree of freedom of interest and the
measurements aren't preformed exactly at the correct position and angle.
The result of this is that was a significant contamination the data
sets with modes associated with other degrees of freedom.

==================
 

Report for SWG call from Stanford  (Sheila Rowan)

SWG related activities this month:

Using updated anisotropic models for sapphire, and subsequent updated energy ratios the Q measurements for a coated sapphire test mass were re-analysed.  (collab. with Glasgow, D. Crooks)) To get a consistent value for coating loss requires rejecting the data point for the highest Q mode  this is not a solution we are happy with. Ryan Lawrence has shipped this coated sample back to Stanford from MIT for some more study.

An m-axis sapphire sample previously measured in Glasgow had a highest Q of ~4 x 10^6  lower than expected (P. Sneddon).  Preliminary measurements in Stanford to check this have given a Q of ~ 5 x10^6 slightly higher. A companion c-axis piece will be measured to check whether suspension technique is at fault or whether there is a difference between these samples.

First of the 5 fused silica coating samples installed in tank at Stanford for pre-coating measurements.

=============================

Gregg Harry

The coating Q program is proceeding. We have preliminary measurments from
both thin samples that were cleaned and annealed at SMA/Virgo in Lyon. The
concern was that this process might hurt the Q and thereby compromise the
results from coated samples. We found that this is not true, as the Q's
were near 20 million before going to Lyon and over 40 million afterwards.
There are still a few details to be worked out getting Q's for all modes,
and doing the best fit to the data, but the trend is clear. This seems in
general agreement with the results from Numatat et al, that show that the
Q of fused silica can depend on annealing. It may also suggest a strategy
to improve the loss in the coating material itself, although the Ta_2O_5
does not stand up well to annealing.
We are measuring before Q's on other samples now, and will send two more
thin samples to Lyon December 17. We expect the first samples to be
coated in early January, two thin samples and one thick. A second thick
sample will be cleaned and annealed. It will be interesting to see what
happens to it. The first coated samples should be back in our hands
somtime in January.
We have also at MIT had some discussions about coating loss on sapphire.
Given that sapphire looks increasingly likely to be the test mass
material, and the first round of coating Q measurements don't rule out
rubbing between substrate and coating as a loss mechanism, it may be wise
to do some more planning for measuring coated sapphire samples.

===============================

Heavy intermediate glass (Helena Armandula)

Procured 2 types of heavy glass frit samples, 1 kg ea. from Viox to test melting behavior and casting processes.
Sem Com in Toledo , Ohio will do the casting. The parts will be formed into 1/2"dia. substrates.
The glasses are: formula V1586 - density 4.07 gms/cc and Formula #24935 - density 6.77 gms/cc

===============================

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Eric Black)

The Thermal Noise Interferometer appears to be approaching a thermal-noise limited sensitivity in its South Arm cavity. Our most recent sensitivity curve displays, in the range of 300Hz to 3kHz, a slope (f^-0.5) consistent with mirror internal thermal noise. The amplitude of this noise curve is also approximately consistent with mirror thermal noise, based on ringdown measurements of the Q of the lowest-frequency mode in the output test mass. This ringdown measurement is currently very rough, but with it we are able to set an approximate upper bound on the output mirror's Q of 100,000, which would produce, in our interferometer, a thermal noise of about 1e-18 m/rHz at 1kHz. Our observed noise floor is 3e-18 m/rHz at 1kHz, which indicates that the mirror's Q must be at least 15,000, or about 20,000 if both mirrors have the same Q. We are currently working on a more accurate measurement of the Q's of both the input and output mirrors in an attempt to refine our estimates of the expected thermal noise.
That the Q of at least one mirror is no larger than 100,000 is somewhat disappointing. It may not, however, be surprising. The mirrors in the TNI right now have visibly rougher polishes on their outside diameters than our first set of mirrors (for the higher-finesse cavities). We do not expect this to affect our ability to measure Braginsky noise in sapphire, since the level of that noise is expected to be comparable to the noise level currently exhibited by the TNI.

===============================

Phil Willems

Fused silica fiber research:
----------------------------
I have measured the unloaded Q's of the fiber in my violin mode suspension to be
~1.1e7 above the thermoelastic damping peak (4 modes measured). This value is
about 2x better than expected based on the line in the Gretarsson-Harry plot. I
believe the difference to be the use of hydrogen in my torch, compared to
methane at Syracuse. This makes the line in the Gretarsson-Harry line a
conservative estimate and safer to use in predicting adLIGO performance.
After plugging this intrinsic Q into the experimentally verified dilution factor
formulas, I generated the following plot comparing my measured Q's to the linear
and nonlinear thermoelastic theories
(http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~willems/exp_paper/Figure7.ps); the pink dots are
data, the black dots NTE, the blue dots LTE. You couldn't ask for better
verification of LTE. While not conclusive, this plot seems to me to scream that
NTE must be verified before we can design fibers/ribbons for adLIGO.
An article summarizing this work has been drafted and is being reviewed by the
authors.
Silicate bonding research:
--------------------------
Helena, Mathieu and I have polarimetrically measured the stress distribution in
a sapphire/silica bond that has been heated to 125 degrees C and returned to
room temperature. While quantitative results will require more work, we clearly
see that stress induced by differential thermal expansion as the sample is
heated relaxes quite quickly at high temperature- in fact all visible stress is
gone in ten minutes or so. This may signify thermally activated plastic or
viscous flow. Or it may represent a one-time curing process. When the sample
returns to room temperature a large amount of stress is then frozen in that
apparently never decays. This is in bonds that are months old before heating.
Work continues.
Coating loss research:
----------------------
Not much to report. I have ordered a spectrometer and some coated samples with
which to measured the Young's moduli of thin film mirror materials. Delivery is
expected in January.

==================================

SWG Monthly Progress Report for the Syracuse Group
submitted 5 December 2001 by Peter Saulson

Q of fused silica flame-drawn rods:
Steve Penn and Sasha Ageev have now measured the Q's of a number
of modes of two rods made out of Suprasil 312. A 3 mm rod had Q's in
the the low 60 millions, and an 8 mm rod has one mode (its lowest,
around 750 Hz) with a Q of 81 million.
There are several lessons to draw from this.
1) 81 million is a new record Q for fused silica.
2) This is the first time we've measured 312 in our lab, so we
confirm that it also has good Q.
3) The bad Q's we were finding with our last sample of
Suprasil 2 must have been due to bad quality of that sample, and not
to any features of our new apparatus.
If 312 should behave like Suprasil 2, and if the trend with diameter
that we saw (and attributed to surface loss) had continued, we would
have expected even better Q for this thickest sample, by about a
factor of 2. Sasha and Steve will try one thicker sample still, to
see if we are leveling off at something we might call the bulk Q.
One further remark: The 8mm sample was rapidly cooled after being
drawn. (The glassblower cooled it with pressurized air.) If the
temperature history of the sample is important, as seems more and more
likely, this rapid cooling might have affected the Q.

Q of coating substrates:
Steve Penn and Luis Lopez have measured the Q of a thin coating
substrate that the Lyon lab had cleaned and annealed, but not coated.
Preliminary measurements show a Q of around 43 million, a
substantial improvement over the pre-treatment Q. Annealing seems
to be good! (Gregg Harry's report will mention his even better number.)

Comment on annealing, surface loss, etc.:
Our Japanese colleagues were the first to show that annealing could
improve the Q, and now these coating substrates are giving even more
exciting results. Exciting because the Q's are so high (Gregg's
sample in particular), and also because they were achieved
in samples with rather extreme surface-to-volume ratios. This means
that the surface loss in them is much smaller than we would have
expected from measurements of other samples. It appears that whatever it
is that annealing does includes repair of surface damage.
The effects of annealing are profound enough that we have to think
again about the way we interpreted our Q vs. diameter results as a
simple manifestation of a surface loss effect. Perhaps the different
thermal history of rods of different diameters plays a role. (Thinner
rods/fibers cool more quickly, so they are more nearly quenched after
fabrication.) We will anneal some thin samples and see what we can
learn.

Anelastic experiment:
Annealing is in the air. Scott Kittelberger concluded that one of
the limiting systematic errors in the anelastic experiment is the
signal that comes from fixed birefringence gradients in his sample,
visible because of motions excited by the release of the vise.
Over Thanksgiving, Scott began annealing one of his silica blocks, then
gradually cooled it to try to reduce the birefringence gradients.
(He learned a lot from folks at Corning about how to anneal silica.)
We'll see soon whether this made any difference.

Violin mode monitor:
Andri Gretarsson has cleaned up the input optics of his violin mode
monitor, to increase the light power. The extra light reflected from
his fiber caused his laser to become noisy, so he also added a classic
quarter wave plate plus PBS circulator to remove the reflected light.
Now he is implementing a simple Michelson interferometer to perform
an absolute calibration of the motions of his focusing lens. Soon
he'll take a more extensive set of data on his metal fiber.

Personnel note:
Congratulations to Andri, who has just accepted a postdoctoral
position at LLO. He has told Barry that he hopes to start
March 1, so he'll be working hard to finish up the violin mode monitor.
 

==================================

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

One month worth of weekly!  I have been lazy.

@ Pasadena
Charlotte
Measuring thermal conduction of existing glassy metal and maraging
samples.

Charlotte, Riccardo, Gianni
Designing reed (diving board) Q-factor measuring setup between 2 and
400oK, calculating double oscillator support geometry to achieve
sufficient reed mechanical isolation factors within the 2.5cm diameter,
7.5 cm length available sample volume.
Testing some shadow meter components.
Preparing a coarse glassy metal stress strain measurement.
Creep measurement ongoing. Problems with data transfers due to
firewalls.
Received all mechanical parts to upgrade the creep measurement setup.
New electronics still lags.  Anycase installation of new components will
have to wait for end of present measurement.

Charlotte, Bill Johnson, Jan, Riccardo
Preparing melt and spin cast of ribbons optimized for mirror suspensions
(non magnetic, high yield, high internal Q-factors).

Riccardo, Hareem
LVDT paper ready to be submitted to NIM, will appear under P010035-00-D

Also previously submitted
Szabi
Submitted “Anatomy of the Seismic Attenuation System for TAMA300(TAMA
SAS)” for Amaldi conference proceeding, P010034-00-D
Akiteru
Submitted “Mirror Suspension System for the TAMA SAS” for Amaldi
conference proceeding, P010033-00-D
Riccardo
Submitted “Path-finding towards a cryogenic interferometer for LIGO” for
Amaldi conference proceeding, P010032-00-D
Virginio, Giancarlo
Completing MGASF theory paper.

Virginio
Writing MGASF result paper

Szabi
Completing IP result paper, promised for soon!

@ Pisa
Francesco, Riccardo
Organizing University of Pisa/LIGO grad student exchanges, there might
be students available for different locations in LIGO and or Virgo/LIGO.
Please enquire if you need a student.

Alessandro, Riccardo, Francesco
Ultra Sound Milling Machine will be built by Faimond and paid in
partnership with INFN and INFM of Italy, the machine will reside and be
further developed in the INFM locals of Universita’ di Pisa.  It will
produce sapphire flex joints for LIGO.  Other INFM scientists to join
the development.

Alessandro, Riccardo, Franco Frasconi, Gianni
Refurbishing an old Virgo stress strain machine for precision
measurements of elastic and Poisson modulus, hysteresis and yield points
in Glassy metals.

Alessandro, Riccardo
Tested thinning of glassy metal ribbons by electro-polishing and
successfully thinned existing 30 micron ribbons to 10 microns.
Developing differential etching to shape the flex joint; failed with
conventional photoresist available in house and gold plating, will
procure ad hoc photoresist and solve the problem.  Testing different
brazing techniques.

Alessandro, Riccardo, Gianni
Engineering flex joint structure for mirror hook-up.

Alessandro, Francesco
Advancing on vertical accelerometers.

@ Hongo
Akiteru  et al.
Starting with the one tower TAMA-SAS Michelson measurement.  Will get
some results soon.
Riccardo going to Hongo next week to assist on second tower
commissioning.

==================================

Advanced LIGO Seismic Group Update (Joe Giaime)

The Advanced SEI group once again is concentrating on two things,
preparations for the ETF active platform test, and a test of an
external hydraulic pre-isolation stage to be carried out at LASTI.
Also, the final "feature" of the LIGO-I seismic isolation system has
been implemented at LLO.

Stanford:
Amit/Brian: new valve (designed for pneumatic use) received, test in
progress. Seems to function, but detailed tests not yet done.
Corwin/Brian: geophone received, under evaluation.
Jeremy/Hua: inductive displacement sensor received and calibrated, noise
performance under evaluation.
Corwin/Norna/Brian: Control of hydraulic test stand using vertical
"supersensor" achieved improvement over most of 0.1 - 10 Hz range.
Next: Characterize improved bellows stiffness, then build up new
design actuator with new bellows and new valves.
Hua/Brian: continued work on two-stage "rapid" prototype, and
characterizing the candidate displacement sensor for the hydraulic
stage.

JILA:
Giles has gone back to the UK having contributed a great amount in the
past two years, most recently the day-to-day oversight of the HPD's
design and fab of our ETF prototype parts and the spring/flexure
detailed design. Delivery from HPD may be delayed (at our request)
until some time in January to allow a complete fit check with all
blade springs.

MIT:
There has been much preparation for the upcoming LASTI hydraulics
test, including the installation of a LIGO-I BSC stack (with the help
of a crew from LLO), as well as some dynamic tests and modelling of
the BSC piers and a hydraulic pump. (Joshua, Mike, ?). Ken is working
on the design of a large extension spring and interface hardware to
support the weight of the in-vacuum payload and allow hydraulic
actuation.

LLO:
Marcel has continued overseeing production of the small (inner stage)
seismometer pods for the ETF prototype, and (with Szabi) the locking
mechanisms. Also, a shop that can fabricate the large springs for the
LASTI hydraulics test has been identified in New Orleans.

LSU/LLO:
Ed, Rana and I have implemented the microseismic feed-forward system
at LLO. We see an 85% reduction in the microseismic displacement
among the test masses, pretty much meeting the system goal. At
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~dhs/SWG/microseism-init-ligo-correction.pdf
is a two-page summary I prepared for last week's PAC meeting.

=====================================

LASTI (Bayer, Fritschel, Goda, Harry, Laliberty, MacInnis, Mason,
Miller, Mittleman, Ottaway, Phinney, Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
 

HAM13 SOS INSTALLATION: Dave O., Myron, Fred and Jamie got both SOS
optics for the short test cavity installed in HAM13. Their OSEMS,
wiring and feedthrough connections are installed and checked. The
stack optics table was counterweighted and rebalanced. One door has
been replaced on the HAM and coarse alignment is proceeding well, using
a visible diode laser pilot beam.

HYDRAULIC ACTUATORS: Ken continues detailing the actuator structural
interface design and would like to hold a design review in the next few
weeks. Joshua moved the prototype pump/accumulator skid setup out of
the machine shop into the student lab to improve cleanliness, and is
continuing experiments to understand its dynamics.

PSL: This week and last we've been fortunate to have had the expert
support of Lee Cardenas from Caltech, working with Dave O., Myron and
Jamie. The 10W Lightwave Laser has been installed and tested; its
output power has only marginally degraded during shipping (still above
spec, though). The reference cavity has been installed and its vacuum
chamber pumped down. MZ and Jamie have ordered components and test
equipment to support commissioning and upgrade of the frequency
stabilization controls, and are collecting a rich dossier on regional
and historical variants.
 
 

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