Weekly Report for Week Ending February 7, 2002

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  February 11, 2002 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 1:00

1. E7 LESSONS LEARNED DISCUSSION STARTING WITH LDAS PRESENTATIONS

Special Announcements:   Regarding change to Montrose Travel as Caltech and LIGO/Caltech travel provider

Why are we doing this?  Our current provider has done a fine job for many years. But Caltech has decided at the highest levels that the Institute can get a better deal by combining the entire Institute's purchasing power in one place to get the best discounts. Of the roughly $2 million per year in Caltech travel, LIGO is about 25% of the total and is by far the single biggest group doing Caltech travel. If we do not support this move, we undermine the possibility to make the best travel savings. I see no reason to withhold our support of this laudable goal. Caltech had a solicitation and Montrose Travel made the best case by far, according to the selection committee (Ed Jasnow served on this). In addition, I see several new and valuable services available to us. Web booking, excellent management reports on costs, potential savings, and on travel policy exceptions.

Therefore, I ask each of you to fill out the Traveler Profiles and start to use the Montrose capability.

I strongly urge that you make use of their web booking capability.

As part of this, the travel policy rules will be changed to align better with Caltech's emerging travel policies. I have asked Irene to defer to Travel Audit for rulings on permitted travel practices. This will evolve as we and Montrose and Caltech settle the policies and I will work with Ed and Irene to make LIGO-specific policy decisions. In the meantime, continue as you have been in making arrangements but do this through Montrose.

Remember, we are doing the public's business. We are to conserve public resources and travel in a thrifty and prudent manner. We have done well in this respect to date. We should continue to save those tax dollars at every opportunity.

Please direct any questions that you have to me and to Irene. Irene can provide the needed Montrose contact information.

GHS
 

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

laser telecon minutes in Adv. R&D section below

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Operations--Administration

A Site Teleconference was held on Thursday, Frebruary 07, 2002.  Discussion included the status FY 2002 costs-to-date, of NSF funding and the Cooperative Agreement, the establishment and budgeting of FY 2002 accounts, the FY 2002 Financial Reporting format, as well as the status of the construction at the two sites.

Budget status: we are spending at a rate of 65 percent of the Operations budget through January, but the first few months of the fiscal year are historically slow.  Labor is running at about 80 percent of budget.  It was noted that some procurements have been delayed because we have not yet received funding for FY 2002 from the NSF.  NSF expressed the hope that the cooperative agreement would be approved by this weekend.

We have emphasized with the Contractor for the building at Livingston the importance of having the auditorium available for the LSC meeting in March.  We also seek assurance that we will be able to efficiently work through any open punch list items.  An action has been assigned to explore possible ways of providing power for laptops in the Livingston auditorium.  An action has also been assigned to develop plans for 1) how the buildings are going to be populated, and 2) how the new building is going to be outfitted.  It was noted that the total cost of furnishing the building is now in Operations, and yet to be determined is how much reserve will be available.

Question: will the audio/visual system in the auditorium at Livingston provide separate connections from the podium for each of the two projectors?

Excess property cubicles have been received in Livingston and appear to be in good condition.

A location has been proposed for the Weber Bar displays at Livingston.  A location has not been finalized at Hanford.  Everyone is reminded that display materials must be submitted to the University of Maryland for their review.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through February 07, 2001 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• Assisted the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing and shipping of optical parts valued at $5000, to Stanford University (Dr. Roger Route) via Federal Express, three (3) Day Saver.  Account Number P157746.
• Assisted the Detector Group (J. Romie) with packing and shipping of ninety-seven (97) individually wrapped  40m Test Suspension Aluminum Parts and fifty-eight (58) individually wrapped 40m Test Mass Suspension Stainless (Steel) Parts to the LIGO Hanford Observatory (B. Rivera) for cleaning. Account Number LIGO.40MCA 1.6.2 NSFIGO.FY02CA.
• Assisted the Project Office (G. Sanders) with packing and shipping of a Defective piece of equipment to Palm Return, Lindon, Utah, RMA #0509839 via Federal Express. Account Number P204254.
• Assisted LLO (M.Coles) by acquiring 10 complete Cubicles with chairs  from USDA, Des Moines , IA.  Pick-up and Delivery (door to door) of  10,220 lbs gross weight by International Moving Service.  Account Number . NSFLIGO. 3.1FY02OF.

>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

• No report.

ACTIVITY

• Another busy week for processing electronic docs
• Processed and distributed 1 DCN
• Progress continues on conversion of old financial reports to electronic form.
 

02/07/02	Packages	Faxes
In	44	44
Out	07	38

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Processed change order #14 to Waveprecision, and change order #2 to MLD.  Transferred funds from FY2001 to FY2002 on Waveprecision, MLD, Box City, SLU, Perkins Coie, CSIRO, Taylor Porter Brooks, and Lightwave Electronics.
• Working on finalizing the contract for the AV presentation system for LLO today.
• Have several change orders and internal transfers to complete.

• Attended a meeting on Tuesday to review R&D budgets, as a result of the meeting prepared a spreadsheet for possible reallocations of R&D budgets for FY2001 and FY2002.
• Continued working on financial reports for January 2002.

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

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

• Nothing significant to report this week.

CONSTRUCTION:

The contract for the audio/visual equipment for the LLO Staging Building auditorium has been awarded to American Electronic Systems of Baton Rouge, LA.  The contract amount was $57,108.79, which was for the basic system plus Alternate 7, which provided for a second projector.  Installation is scheduled for completion on March 13, 2002.

The site teleconference scheduled for February 21 will discuss the lessons learned from the E7 run as they related to staffing for 24/7 operations.

SUPPORT

• No report.

• No report.

• Scanned LSC documents from EGO, submitted these to the DCC.
• Spent several hours using Word to recreate personnel forms.  Turns out however that L. Turner did similar work.  Since forms and procedures are still in process by the personnel committee, it is possible that at a later date my forms may still be useful.
• Arranged an eye exam and training for L. Zhang, who works in the subbasement.
• Did edits to the 40 m Safety Audit report, sent it out for further review.
• Arranged telecons for the LSC Lasers, and the Thermal Noise groups.  Changed the Advance Systems telecon reservation to the new schedule which starts with 2/15, the reservation is now for the 1st and 3rd Fridays each month.  The old schedule was for every other Friday.
• Updated site trips.  Lots of Pcard activity, most orders were for parts going onto the hydraulic pump station.  Prepared a letter to a vendor to accompany items for either refund or exchange.  Prepared a fax to clarify our requirements for another vendor.  Reconciled a few.

 

 

INFORMATION
The new format Roster is online.  Click the Staff Directory/Roster link at the top of the LIGO home page.

FROM Caltech Weekly Update February 4 - 10, 2002 - - -
VOICE MAIL INTERRUPTION - NOTICE TO CAMPUS
There will be no Caltech voice mail service from 11 p.m. Saturday, February 16 until 3 a.m. Sunday, February 17. During this time, we will be adding more capacity to our voice mail system. There should be no impact to existing messages, greetings and passwords. For additional information, please contact Dawn Boyd, ATC Telecommunications Office, ext. 3881.  Details: http://atcaltech.caltech.edu/news/item.tcl?news_id=4975

• Thanks to everyone for your friendly support and positive demeanor.  It has made my transition that much more enjoyable.
• Assisting Gary.  Introduced myself via phone to Jill and Bonnie at the sites.  Read up on some more LIGO literature.  Visited the 40 meter here at CIT.  "I think I get it"! =)
• Took over Gary's p-card charges from Criselda.  Working with Irene to handle Gary's p-card travel reconciliation.
• Discussed with Gary and Cindy the beginnings of a press kit.
• Continue with meetings and work with the Gang o' Five plus One.
• Learned how to submit a division approval  [We are trying to get revised budget for Albert's DST-NSF Proposal. --pel].  Looking forward to learning more about Fastlane.
• Organizing files and supplies to utilize space in the LIGO Lab office better.  (Come check it out in a week or so.)  Suggestions are welcome and will be considered.
• Odds and ends, this and that.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 02.01 to 02.07

Accomplishments:

• Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting was not held this week.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)
• Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.  Attended budget meeting on Tuesday to discuss status of R&D funding and expenditures.
• 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.  Per conversations with GB and GS, down select has been moved to 12.01.02.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• PSL - Finished inputting changes to the cost book and schedule.  Queried management regarding scope issues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• AOS - Work on action items continues.  Inputting / reviewing 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.  Followed up with Janeen regarding her budget issues and setting up a fab account.
• SEI - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• ISC - Continue to review data.
• 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 02.01.02 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 02.15.02.
• Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 02.01.02 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 02.15.02.
• Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 02.01.02 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 02.15.02.
• Continue to test the Cost Book Tool.
• ROSTER DATABASE:
• Continued work on procedures for data gathering.  Attended meeting with working group on employee orientation.  Worked with Rita, Mike and BK to get changes made to the newly posted roster file (Wrong email address at top for requesting updates.)
• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• Continue review of changes and updates to procedures / online help.
• Mapping and formatting of OPS cost data for input on hold pending finalization of co-operative agreement.
• DCAA - No work this week and awaiting further instructions.
• 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 02.08 and 02.11.  Will be attending the AACE (http://www.cost.org)Western Winter Workshop.  For details see http://www.aacesf.com/www0102.pdf.
• Next weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting to be scheduled.
• 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 complete estimate and schedule changes.
• 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 on 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 issue updated meeting minutes for every subsystem as action items from most recent review are completed.
• Will Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 02.15.02 and  post to site by the 19th.
• Will Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 02.15.02 and  post to site by the 19th.
• Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 02.15.02 and  post to site by the 19th.
• Roster Database
• Will continue work on actions items.
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 to provide support to PL for DCAA audit.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Web Site.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.

We are doing a standard Annual Report for the Construction Project as of the end of November.  Started working on the report again.  Work was interrupted by Audit questions and by need to review budgets.  In particular, a review of the current status of the FY 2001 Advanced R&D costs and the budgets assigned for FY 2002 was overdue.  An approach has been selected.  We will be closing out most of the current Advanced R&D accounts for any more costs and transferring everyone over to the new accounts immediately.  The exception will be the soft seismic studies.

The following change request has been submitted:
 

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

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

• Completed the LIGO key database and sent all the updated information to Campus Locks and Keys office.
• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report this week.
 

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

----------------
LHO General
----------------
Most of the work was accomplished in the commissioning area. Please see
Stan's report.
 

---------------
Facility
---------------
 

A five ton crane was installed in the Staging Building. Electrical and
additional work on the building columns remain before the crane is usable.

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

Commissioning activities: We tried alternative locking schemes for the recombined interferometer. It is possible to lock the recombined interferometer by locking the arms separately. This may aid in locking with high seismic noise. The ISC tables were prepared for recycling. This included a clean up of the optics, a documentation of table layouts and the debugging of the electro-optical shutters.

CDS: Rolf visiting LLO. Upgraded the Frame Builder LLOFb0 and the Frame Broadcaster Tested and installed the new 2 omega I & Q board into 1X9. Received boards back from Fiber Options for the cameras at the west end station. Performed a custom board inventory - the list can be seen via a hyperlink on the CSD
web page. Changed LLOFb1 to produce 16 sec frames. Upgraded all the control room machines to Solaris 8. New Dataviewer version 6.0 installed. New version of DTT also installed. Last week created an epics interface to the DMT's BitTest program to look at PEM channels on MEDM screen. Setting up the Ultra 60 as an upgrade to existing london. LLO2 cds server has been setup but its not replaced LLO1. ATM switch rebooted on Thursday. (Chethan)

LDAS:
Installed DB2 products on sunbox1 to experiment with restoring backups (does not work across platforms). Successfully restored on sunbox1 the database backed up offline on metaserver. Successfully restored on sunbox1 the database backed up online on metaserver rolling forward to the end of logs. Shipped 4 tapes with E7 data to MIT. Together with Shannon prepared the inventory list of LDAS equipment at LLO. Repaired d2 metadevice on gateway.Read DB2 SQL reference. Investigating the possibility of using federated database configuration in LDAS.Updated the release of java 1.1.8 on metaserver and sunbox1 to be used with db2cc. (Igor Yakushin)

Testing an eight port serial card for controlling the various LDAS UPSs in the mass storage room. Results are looking promising so far. I hope to work on this more after the LSC is over and have something going quickly. Received the electronic license for QFS for the new "dataserver."(Shannon Roddy)

GC: Ordered some wireless access points and some wireless cards for use in the new building during the LSC. Looking into a problem with one of the linux machines here locking up for no apparent reason. This happens to be the machine that Snort is running on. Trying to decide if it would be worth while to remove the databases for the web site from of  the web server to a different machine and have a dedicated database server. It would be beneficial in several ways, but would take some work on the web pages. Ordered a laptop to replace an older one (~5 yrs. old) that has died. Ordered a case with higher cooling capacity
for Igor's GC machine. It was having heat problems. Still working with a company in Baton Rouge that may be able to provide us with a high speed network to LSU.

Optics and Installation: Gary and Harry completed the installation of the PSL acoustic enclosure, which required the installation of toggle clamps to safely secure the table access plugs. Caution to registered Users! These plugs are VERY heavy(~125#), and awkward. Do not attempt to remove them without another person to assist you. We will post a reminder warning on the plugs. A general cleanup of ISCT1 and 4 is ongoing, in anticipation of resuming commissioning in a recycled state. EO shutters on ISCT-4 and 1 have also been reinstalled. Optical lever laser on MMT-3 died (old style) and Gary replaced it with the iFLEX1000's supplied by Mike Zucker. Thanks to Harry Overmaier for coming in Monday (his day off) to work on the ACAD drawings of the ISC tables. (Jonathan Kern)
 

---

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• After a complete tune-up of the Lightwave MOPA by Dennis and Steve, the output beam is now high-power (10.4 W) and stable. Well, 126MOPA_AMPMON varys by ~0.1 w over the day, correlating strongly with humidity. We see no indication from the calibrated power meter of that variation, so we assume it's the PD in the MOPA.
• Dennis and Steve have steered the output beam so that it exits the box straight and level.
• They will measure the beam profile, waist, etc, on Friday. Then Mike Smith will determine whether the circularizing lenses and mode-matching lenses need to be changed. Then, mods to the beam path and the mode matching will be implemented, and the FSS and PMC loops and beam diagnostics will be re-commissioned.
• Lee Cardenas and Bob Taylor have sewn up the reference cavity heater insulation jacket. Lee and Paul Russel have installed the thermistors, and Paul is wiring up the thermistors -> temperature box -> Minco controller -> HP power supply -> heater jacket.

• All of the mechanical parts for the SOS suspensions have been cleaned and baked at LHO, and are now back at our lab. All the special fixtures are ready.
• Janeen is arranging for the hanging of the MC suspensions, lining up experts to do the hard work.
• It looks like the work will be done in the South Annex. She will be collecting all the needed equipment.
• Todd Etzel is working on making sensor/actuator heads and hopes to assemble a majority of the 40m heads by the end of next week. They will need to be cleaned and baked after that.
• We will need a stand-alone suspension controller (optical bench test stand); Jay is arranging to borrow a system from LHO.
• We hope to start in the last week of March or first week in April; estimate 2 weeks to complete hanging and installation.
• A box of 40m TM suspension parts have been sent to LHO for cleaning and baking. Another box will be sent in a week. The last machined parts (which are waiting for custom material) will be done in 4 weeks.

• Bob Taylor will wire the mode cleaner suspension controller cross connects. A point to point wiring diagram has been generated in order to help Bob do the wiring. DIN rails for the cross connects are in.
• More modules have come from the tech shop, and another Sorensen power supply has arrived; tomorrow Ben will be transporting them over to the 40m.
• Ben has begun to test pole/zero modules that will be necessary for the digital suspensions in Hanford, after he's done with this he will start to test the 40m set.
• Ben is learning about the CDS software and EPICS controls for the suspension controllers.

• Jay has put in a PO for our video switch (Knox Chameleon HB 64x32).
• Jay has draft drawings of the 40 M Mode Cleaner ASC and LSC Wiring D020006-02, and the 40 M IOO Controls Rack Assembly (1Y2) D020007-03. It's 95% complete.
• Jay has a draft drawing of the 40 M RF Distribution System D020029-00 .
• Jay is purchasing racks for the shutter controllers and boxes for the suspension satellite modules.
• Jay is thinking out the timing system and the reflective memory system.

• INPUT FARADAY ISOLATOR: A preliminary design for the 40m IO Faraday isolator optical train was completed with the following modifictions to the LIGO design: 1) Brewster angle polarizers were used to provide a higher transmissivity and to eliminate glint light into the IFO, with an antisymmetric orientation so that the input and output beams are colinear, 2) an integrated structure containing the two half-wave plates, two polarizers, and Faraday isolator. Drawings will be sent to Karl Lambrecht Corp for a quotation on the polarizers and half-wave plates, and to EOT for a quotation on the Faraday isolator.
• DLC Mirror Mounts: The DLC mirror mount, pedestal and holding fork were modified, and a drawing was sent to DLC pending a quotation for parts.
• INTEGRATED LAYOUT DRAWING: The optical layout was revised with the addition of the new Faraday isolator design and DLC mirror mounts.
• IO, IMC_R, and IMCT Parts: The parts list for the IO, IMC_R, and IMCT beams are being finalized and purchase reqs are being placed.
• ILLUMINATORS: Locations for the chamber illuminators were received from S. Vass. Illuminators will be placed outside each of the chambers to illuminate the optical components on the optical tables inside the vacuum chambers. Mounting flanges will be designed for attaching to the 40m chamber viewports.

• Bob has sent a load of baked Fluorel parts to Walker & Sons for pressure boiling in de-ionized water to reduce free flourine. Should be back in 2 weeks.
• Status of bake ovens:

Oven D: Old, large viton-sealed bake oven: commissioned and used to bake fluorel parts. Will be used to bake viton and teflon o-rings for new viewport flanges.
Oven B: Old, small copper-sealed bake oven: commissioning in progress.
Oven C: Old, small copper-sealed bake oven: conversion from 220 to 110 V in progress.
Oven E: New, large copper-sealed bake oven: heater coil wiring and insulation in progress. Pumps on order. We need to be sure that the pump will arrive by March!
Oven F: New, large copper-sealed bake oven: waiting to be commissioned.

• There was a scheduled power outage at the 40m last weekend. Everything was powered down on Friday, and came back up with no problems on Monday (computers, network, DAQ, vacuum controls, PEM, PSL, STACIS). We are documenting the procedure; it will get progressively more complex as we add more systems.
• In vacuum suspension cables: Todd Etzel has completed the 8 cables that we need for the mode cleaner, to Larry's satisfaction. They will be cleaned by Bob Taylor in the South annex.
• Two loads of in-vacuum equipment (feedthrough flanges, cable clamps, optical port flanges & windows, hardware) have been received by Bartie at LHO, and he's starting the clean/bake.
• Larry continues to work on the design of ISC table enclosures and beam tubes. One or two ISC tables may have to be moved a bit to accomadate the enclosures.
• Caltech undergrad Eric Lin is working on wiring up the STACIS controllers for readout through EPICS.
• Caltech HVAC experts will prepare a plan and an estimate for reducing particulate content in the IFO hall, by 2/15.
• Installation of alarms on the 2 end doors has been arranged.
• Steve has specified the locations of viewports and illuminator ports. Mike Smith is working on the illuminator can design. Viewport safety covers must be designed.
• We continue to shoot for installing the 2 remaining seismic stacks, all in-vacuum cables, clamps, feedthroughs, optical ports in March.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

Noise reduction in the photothermal experiment continues. We discovered
that the mixer was underpowered, leading to bad PDH signals. We decreased
the power in the modulated beam from 50mW to approximately 2 mW, to avoid
heating the Al mirror, clipping the signal in the electronics, and
scattered light contamination in other optical paths.  We were concerned
that there might be too much power in the sidebands for the
low-modulation-depth approximation of the PDH error signal to be valid, so
we built a
higher-finesse (about 200) fixed length cavity from stock mirrors to
analyze this beam, and found that 2.7% of the light power of the modulated
beam is in the sidebands, with RF power to the EOM of 16.5 dBm.  We also
verified that the laser's fast input has a transfer function of 6.3 MHz/V
at low frequencies.
 

A good part of the week was also spent preparing for Thursday's TNI review.

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Bayer, Fritschel, Harry, MacInnis, Mason,
Miller, Mittleman, Ottaway, Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
=======================================================================
 

VACUUM ENVELOPE:
We had a visit from Steve Foster, Pfeiffer Vacuum's product manager
for mass spectrometers.  He showed us workarounds for some of the more
annoying bugs in our QMS421 RGA software, and we're now getting
higher dynamic range by defeating the programmers' intent. High AMU
partial pressures in LASTI remain excellent, but we're still
puzzling over the air
signature.
 

We began staging to relocate the pump system further
from the BSC at the next vent cycle.
 

HYDRAULIC ACTUATORS:
Hosted a successful visit by Dennis Coyne, Gerry Stapfer, Brian Lantz,
and Joe Giaime to work technical and programmatic issues for the LLO
pre-isolator retrofit.
 

The need was identified for a broad characterization of BSC stack and
support pier modes and reactances to plan the pre-isolator control
dynamics.  This will be carried out over the next 4 weeks in LASTI. A
suite of at least 12 acceleration/velocity sensors is required to
support this test. We're trying to recall accelerometers, seismometers
and geophones which have been dispersed to other sites, but haven't
succeeded in locating everything yet.
 

        PLEA: if you know of vibration excitation or monitoring equipment
        in your lab which might be "on loan" from another site (for
        example, MIT) please email Mike Z. and/or the party responsible
        for that equipment so we'll know where it is.
 

On the mechanical pre-isolator design Ken reports:
Completed several design modifications resulting from the meetings held
at MIT over the past week. The following design changes were made:
1. Springs were moved inboard of the pier to allow for easier access to
actuators.
2. The housing asembly was modified so that it could be used in either a
RH or LH orientation.
3. The housing assembly was modified to use either hydraulic actuators
or the BEI electromagnetic actuator.
 

CDS/DAQ/GDS:
No problems to report.
 

PSL:
Replacement AOM and driver were received from Peter King at Caltech
and installed successfully.
 

The PMC modematching has been optimized; the power transmitted though
cavity is 8W for 9.7 W incident on it. The reflection dip was measured
and found to be 11.5%. The reflected light was analysed by studying the
power found in the higher order modes. It was concluded that the
majority of the residual light on reflection is caused by a poor
spatial mode in the horizontal plane (earlier measured to be M^2=1.3)
This probably cannot be improved by improved modematching outside the
MOPA, and only a realignment of the laser head is likely to fix it.
 

        #MZ note: further realignment is not a priority, as the
        transmitted power is already more than adequate.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Modal Model (Hiro,Biplab,Matt)
------------------------------
The effect of the change of the input beam basis was studied. At least to the first order,
the phase change due to the curvature mismatch cancels out the change of the guoy phase.
Due to this cancelation, the cavity length change predicted by e2e before turned out to
be incorrect, and will be much smaller. Further calculation and the implementation in e2e
is in progress.

LIGO I simulation system
--------------------------
(Matt) I built the LSC analog electronic sub-system, largely taken from Luca's updated
model. I am currently building the LSC digital system.

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Biplab) A discrepancy in transfer functions from L+ mode to Asymmetric Q signal
observed by Luca could be solved by taking into account very little time-differences
among various partial beams bouncing back and forth inside the recycling cavity.
A few lines are added in the recycling summation cavity module.

(Ed Maros)
- Updated build instructions for e2e software
- Created release of e2e software 1.7.4
- Installed and created run script for alfi5

Alfi
----
(Bruce)
- Beta release of Alfi5 completed.
- Debugging newer parser elements (like #quote).

(Melody)
- Released an alpha version of alfi5 (Java version).

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)
The LDAS startup procedures have been modified to run each API under a
unique directory. This is to avoid clobbering core files in ill behaved
software and will facilitate debugging efforts. Additionally, the nightly
builds of LDAS are now using -no_in_lining to provide better source level
debugging information. This speeds up build times but has caused code to
run 3 or 4 times slower.

The abortJob malfunction that was discovered in the E7 run has finally
been tracked down and fixed. A similar coding bug which existed in the
lightWeightAPI was also fixed, though it was not the source of any issues
discovered in the E7 run.

The controlMonitorAPI now support monitoring database insertions and
queries. Filters are available to look at individual users and a plotting
package is integrated to allow graphing usage of database over time.

The LAL modification to the wrapperAPI to support generation of a list
of channel names and providing a comment to the search codes continues. The
skeleton changes are in place but the lexical parser being integrated from
other sources fails at runtime. This should be fixed in a couple of days.
Also the requested modification to provided more timing statistics is now
in place and working. Information is stored in the log files. The other
open request for a -userTag passed by the search codes is now available.

The cycle of develop, test, fix, develop... continues with the new
diskCacheAPI/frameAPI upgrades to LDAS. Most things are once again working
but there is still some irregular behavior that is being tracked down and
fixed.

Guild was modified so that it displays estimates of data volume and
execution time when requesting frame data.

Continuing to work on resampling/linear filtering in the new "filters"
library. The library has now been created in CVS and was in last night's
build (although omitting one file by mistake broke the build). Directories
src, test, doc, doc/html have all been added including the Perceps-generated
documentation (at some point Ed will need to add graphics to the software
layout diagrams for the library)

Added EXTENSIVE testing to LinFilt and have started doing so for
Resample. New testing aggressively verifies linear filtering in the
following way: a continuous data stream is first filtered "as a whole"
and then broken up into three components which are filtered separately.
The results from both are compared for an exact match. Every possible
way of partitioning the continuous data stream is tried eg. for a length
10 input we filter 3 segments with lengths 1, 1, 8 then 1, 2, 7 then 1, 3,
6 and so on.

Planning to do similar testing for Resample. An issue which came to
light today is that Resample produces significantly different results than
Matlab, which may be intentional but I don't know at this point. This
discrepancy is present in the existing dataconAPI Resample class.

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

* Finished splitting up the large directories in the LIGO HPSS archive.

* HPSS migration from 3590s to 9940s continues and has been somewhat
automated (there have been a lot of unrelated HPSS problems since I
started running the new script, so it's hard to tell how well it's
going to work long term, but I'm optimistic).

* Fixed various breakages in HPSS (deleted core files, restarted servers,
added tapes to storage classes) including a big "restart the whole
thing" one just this morning.

* The Ultra 10 has been working fine with the LIGO supplied memory. Still
waiting on StorageTek to make good on coming up with some replacement
memory.

* 10 (electronic) QFS licenses obtained for Caltech machines.
 

(Al Wilson)

* We have a working BigBrother setup on the ldas-test system. It will be the
template for other LDAS installations. It will migrate to the other Caltech
system by the end of the week. In two weeks it will be running on all of the
LDAS installations.

* Still have not given up on a simplified Kickstart configuration. I am
meeting with the Redhat guru at CACR. I will get this one yet.

* There are now cabinets at Millikan and at Synchrotron for LDAS books
and for spare parts, start using them.
 

(Stuart Anderson)

* Finished archiving all of the E7 data into the LIGO archive at Caltech.

* Reworked the LDAS HPSS web page catalog generating script to handle the
  large number of files (~370,000) more efficiently, i.e., now able to update
  in less than 24hours which is useful since the contents are updated
  daily.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)

* Received permanent QFS license.

* Received UPS stand-alone unit.

* Received E7 "playground data" tapes from Hanford and Livingston.

* Loaded Livingston tapes.

* Loading Hanford tapes.

* Moving ldas-sundev1 back to LDAS lab.

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)

* Installed DB2 products on sunbox1 to experiment with restoring backups
(does not work across platforms).

* Successfully restored on sunbox1 the database backed up offline on metaserver.

* Successfully restored on sunbox1 the database backed up online
  on metaserver rolling forward to the end of logs.

* Shipped 4 tapes with E7 data to MIT.

* Together with Shannon prepared the inventory list of LDAS equipment at LLO.

* Repaired d2 metadevice on gateway.

* Read DB2 SQL reference.

* Investigating the possibility of using federated database configuration in LDAS.

* Updated the release of java 1.1.8 on metaserver and sunbox1 to be used with db2cc.
 

(Shannon Roddy)

* Testing an eight port serial card for controlling the various
LDAS UPSs in the mass storage room.  Results are looking promising so
far.  I hope to work on this more after the LSC is over and have
something going quickly.

* Received the electronic license for QFS for the new "dataserver."
 

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

* The data for the time intervals listed in the files PlayH1noH2L1.txt,
PlayH2noL1.txt, and PlayL1noH1H2.txt at
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/faculty/gonzalez/E7Segments/ has been sent to
LDAS MIT on tape.

* Most of the last week has been spent writing and debugging a script
to control LDAS jobs to produce SFTs.  The script is basically ready to
go, once locked an clean segments are identified, and certain issues
involving the quality channel are worked out.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Salvaged/refurbished/butchered/swapped PC's around labs
-Hooked up networking to NW22
  NW17-tp<->SC<->SMA--to NW22---SMA<->SC<->switch
-Continued to install MU6 on Sun machines
-Installed o/s on new dell for conference room
-Installed video conf software on new dell
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Ordered some wireless access points and some wireless cards for use
in the new building during the LSC.
-Looking into a problem with one of the linux machines here locking up for no
apparent reason. This happens to be the machine that Snort is running on.
Trying to decide if it would be worth while to remove the databases for the web
site from of the web server to a different machine and have a dedicated database
server. It would be beneficial in several ways, but would take some
work on the web pages.
-Ordered a laptop to replace an older one (~5yrs. old) that has died.
-Ordered a case with higher cooling capacity for Igor's GC machine. It was
having heat problems.
-Still working with a company in Baton Rouge that may be able to provide us with
a high speed network to LSU.
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Set-up a new Win 2k PC.
- Provided user support for various problems.
 

CIT:

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: posted updates to various parts. Working with Larry and
Mike on troubleshooting of the Amaldi NT server where the Elba GWADW
webpages and Amaldi99 Proceedings reside. Mike has set up a temporary
backup server until the old one is fully restored. Posted the new LIGO
roster. Edited and posted the LSC March meeting announcement; rewrote the
registration form. Looking into the setup of the meeting's transparencies
webpage.
- LDAS: Working my way through the CVS manual and LDAS website directory
tree.
- Project Science Jan 18-19 workshop: Added minor changes to the database
of contact names.
- CaJAGWR: posted the new seminars schedule. Posted a pointer to Luis
Lehner's talk (pdf and animation's). Compressed and installed the video of
Luis's talk. Contacted about the availability of 155 Arms lecture hall for
CaJAGWR and LIGO seminars.

(Lisa)
- Replaced castor with betelgeuse for Phil Willems
- Larry put the new mail server in place.  Mike and I worked on the little user
glitches that followed -- mostly deleting secure shell host keys.
- I spent a lot of time refining the mailman set up.  We have a pretty good set
of defaults and a policy in place, but I haven't yet finished the documentation.

(Mike)
-Restored a couple of PC's that had been infected with a virus. The units needed
complete rebuilds.
-Worked on the cleanup of ssh for the users needing to tunnel their Eudora with
e-mail. The fix was to delete the SSH hostkey for the machine they were
tunneling in to.
-Updated and cleaned up a couple of units for the users.
-The Amaldi server went down over the weekend, due to a hardware failure.
Contacted HPC, it turns out the power supply was corrupted this was
replaced but when I brought the server up it was running real sluggish, HPC
brought out another motherboard, but this still has not fixed the problem.
I have loaded a temporary server to get the Elba2002 and Amaldi99 websites
back up, until I get the original server back into service.
-Auditor from ITS.CALTECH came by to check our security permissions on the
NTSRV's; he went over a lot the security issues, that he looks for as far
as tightening down your shared permissions, this is still a on going
process and will report the out come when this is completed.

(Larry)
-Resolved the licensing issues with SDRC. We still have Master Series 7 up and
running and did not have to upgrade to the latest version of the application.
This would have been a time consuming task for the end users to have to update
all of their data bases.
-Placed a number of orders for PC's. A couple for the 40M and a couple for other
users. Checked on the orders with DELL that were placed last month and they are
having a problem getting one of the components, so those units will not ship
until the end of February.
-Worked with Mike on the Amaldi server. He's got it under control. Though I had
to reset the pherkab server which is the same type of h/w being used for the
Amaldi server. We will be keeping an eye on it.
-Worked out a few more issues on the e-mail server with Lisa. Also, some work
with her on the MailMan logistics and policy. That should be a pretty good tool
once it is on-line.
-Worked a number of network issues. We've a FORE edge switch that has gone out
and working on getting it replaced.
The Foundry FE met with us this last week, to start working out the logistics on
the installation of the GigE backbone and equipment. Ordered four more edge
switches, two of the units ordered, were because of Marconi not planning on
supporting the FORE edge equipment.
-Worked on policy and procedure documentation for GC and the over all LIGO
procedures the gang of 5 +1  is working on.
 

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

LSC LASERS WORKING GROUP
Minutes of telecon Feb 7 th 2002:
participants: morning call: Peter Veitch, Jesper Munch, Maik Frede, Martina Brendel, Ralf
Wilhelm, Carsten Fallnich, Michèle Heurs, Benno Willke
evening call: Ralf Wilhelm, Michèle Heurs , Rick Savage, Peter King, Benno
Willke
1) updates
Adelaide:
- variation of pump power out of the different diodes was reduced to below 5% by
adjusting the angle under which the fibre leaves the SMA connector, it is not clear if the
strong dependence of the power on the angle was there from the beginning or developed
over time
- after putting the pumping fibres at one side of the slab back into position (close to the
slab, no waveguide that allows spreading out the pump distribution in the horizontal
direction while keeping it confined in the vertical) the negative lens still was there
(checked with a Mach-Zehnder)
- when putting the wave guide back in, the negative lens disappeared !!!
- assembly of the laser head will continue the next days (fibres on the other side back into
position) and new result on the output power vs pump power are expected next week
LZH
- modelling continued, oscillator with two rods was modelled, results: for 100W pump
power per rod the output power was 85W with an estimated M^2 of 1.1, increasing the
pump power up to 250W per rod reduced the output power to 70W with M^2 = 1.5, when
aberrations in the model were turned of (no temperature dependence of dn/dT and of heat
conductivity) the output power was above 200W
- validation of the model will start once the rods are coated (coating is done by IBS coater
in house)
- 20 diodes are delivered (each 30W), 10 are mounted characterized and temperature
stabilized, no variation of the output power when moving the fibre around was observed
Caltech-Stanford
- delivery of Lightwave amplifier is expected next week
- no info on the 100W project
2) schedule
- it was decided to shift the decision on “which high power stage design to choose” by a
couple of month, depending on the progress of the different groups this milestone will be
scheduled (latest fall LSC meeting)
 

From Peter King:

AdLIGO PSL

        The amplifier ordered from Lightwave Electronics to boost the
output power of the 10-W laser to 20 W, is expected to be shipped next
week. Stanford have arranged with Lightwave Electronics to have a graduate
student, most likely Shally Saraf, work with them in increasing the power
of 10-W laser S/N #104 to 20 W by increasing both the NPRO pump diode
current and the power amplifier pump diode current.

From Janeen Romie:

AdLIGO Suspensions
Working on the RM suspension layout.
Still working on the budget with Thomas, et.al.

From Rich Abbott:

4. Worked out a repair plan for the manufacturing defect on the Cap. Pos. Sensors.
5. Finished (with the testing done by Dave Grimmett) the test of voice coil driver.

From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>
Subject: Weekly Report - Billingsley
 

Sapphire homogeneity:
Goodrich reports 14nm rms single pass homogeneity of the 250mm sapphire substrate.  This was accomplished by computer controlled polishing, which uses a small rotating tool to remove material on side 2 of the substrate.  Aaron Turner, their CCP expert believes that they could do better if they went to another polishing cycle.  He will send an estimate of the possible improvement and cost for another run, along with data from the current run.
 

We have received 4 m-axis sapphire substrates intended for coating loss investigations.  These are 3" x 1" pieces.  All show inhomogeneity on the order 10nmrms.   For one polarization the measurement is entirely dominated by a ~10 nm rms ring pattern on surface 2 of each optic.  I have not been able to explicitly subtract this pattern, so cannot tell the level of inhomogeneity with the optic in that orientation.  In the other orientation the inhomogeneity is clearly visible with features typically at the 10 nm level.  Typical results are posted at:
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~gari/Supporting/3x1m-axis-homog.html
 

These are much lower levels of inhomogeneity than we have seen in m-axis material, begging the question:  Is there really any difference between A and M?  The only way to tell for sure may be to turn one of our pieces into a cube so that we can measure the same bulk along each axis.
 

Mark Felt has left Crystal Systems, our new contact is Chandra Khattak.
 
 

From: Mark Barton <mbarton@ligo.caltech.edu>

    This week I got the export to Simulink working for my Mathematica
model. It runs rather more slowly than the pure Matlab model in the time
domain simulation but is still quite useable, and the frequency domain
analyses are not significantly different. And the slowness is due to the
new physics (the high frequency modes of the springs) which is the point
of the new model in any case.
 

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

Advanced LIGO Coating Development - Low Absorption Coatings
 

Received substrates from MLD coated with Nb2O5 / SiO2. The substrates were baked in sets of 3's at 300, 350 and 400 degrees C.
Sent the parts to Stanford.
Vlad is finishing calibration on the system; he should be able to start the measurements shortly.
 

From: Janeen Hazel Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdLIGO Suspensions
Working on the RM suspension layout.
Still working on the budget with Thomas, et.al.

40m
A box of 40m TM suspension parts have been sent to LHO for cleaning and baking. Another box will be sent in a week. The last machined parts (which are waiting for custom material) will be done in 4 weeks.
Todd Etzel is working on making sensor/actuator heads and hopes to assemble a majority of the 40m heads by the end of next week. They will need to be cleaned and baked after that.
 

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