LIGO Weekly Report

There was no site teleconference held on Thursday, July 4 or Thursday, July 11, 2002.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through June 20, 2001 may be found at ACTION LIST.

Web pages for the DCC give simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database. Take a look. . .

We are evaluating the impact of Caltech's policy regarding premium pay for working shifts and its applicability to LIGO and other PMA observatories.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

A LIGO Change Control Board (CCB) was held Tuesday, July 2, 2002. Change Request CR-020007 was discussed. Items totaling $157K were approved. Minutes have been prepared and will be distributed pending Gary's review and approval (LIGO-M020281).

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by F. Raab)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(see ilog for details - if it's not in the ilog, it didn't happen...)

2K IFO Repair
-------------
The diagonal section is still pumping after the repair of MMT2. This down time is being used to upgrade the ISCT10 layout, which should complete this week. There have been some conflicting estimates of when we can safely open the gate valves to the rest of the system. This reflects uncertainties in how the water will equilibrate with pumps once the valves are opened. By Monday we will reach a point where it would be useful to have light to realign the ISCT10. We are considering opening the gate valves to allow this alignment, which should also address the vacuum uncertainties within a day. We would then know if we could leave the valves open or if we need a few more weeks of pumping on an isolated diagonal section.

4k IFO investigations
---------------------
A major focus has been to find the cause of poor lock acquisition on this interferometer. We have been seeing evidence of saturation effects for some time. Modifications were made to the analog drive circuits to extend the range and make saturation characteristics flatter in frequency. This did not help, although it should be helpful in later work. Work then focused on understanding the unusual optical lever "kicks" that were evident on the ETMx during lock acquisition. Bill Kells had studied these several weeks ago, but the cause was not isolated. It was found this week that in addition to the sudden kicks, the locking transients were also being rectified and were causing large steady-state misalignments (several microradians!). This explains the observation that sometimes a slight misalignment of the interferometer facilitated locking. You just needed to misalign in the direction opposite to the saturation misalignment and hope for the best. Eventually this was traced to a fault in a voltage limiting circuit on a coil driver, which has been repaired. Some other problems were found in the ETM controllers and repaired. We expect this will greatly facilitate reliable locking, but this is yet to be demonstrated. Now the focus will shift to reducing frequency noise on the incoming light.

We expect to move forward on changes to the mode cleaner to support a digital common-mode path, starting next week.

FACILITIES
------------------
All the sidewalks and the outside concrete is complete for the Laboratory
Building. The auditorium seats are being installed and will be completed by
the end of the week. The building is on permanent power, although all the
wires are not yet pulled. The contractor is working on the HVAC system and
painting. The Bathrooms are still lagging behind and it is a concern. The
audio/visual system is on schedule.

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Coles)

HEPI MIT issued a PO to P&N Machine Works in Houston, TX for the majority of the machined components. The shop began machining parts last week. We're still closing the loop with Hyspan, the manufacturer of the bellows. Cost and delivery factors have persuaded us to use Hyspan's standard UHV bellows design. This necessitated some minor changes in the actuator design. The group at Stanford has been closely linked and agrees with the changes. We sent Hyspan our drawings incorporating their standard bellows and as soon as they provide a final quote and approval drawing we'll issue a PO. The LLO spring tester was used last weekend to measure the spring constants of the 8 wound springs being installed in the LASTI HAM. We shipped these to MIT on Monday. This was the first time we used the tester and some operational deficiencies were discovered. We're working with the fabricator to remedy these. (Hammond,Kern)

ETF Manufacturing errors were found in the Pods (housings for the geophones). These were returned to the machine shop for inspection and we're waiting to receive their report, and recommendation about how they propose to correct the error. (Hammond, Kern)

Laser Safety: Last week was our first Safety Audit with the system installed and the committee liked what they saw. We've been using the system for several months, without the safety shutters installed in the beams so as to let people become used to the system. We're hooking up the last of these (PSL shutter) this week. The LVEA is Laser Safe right now as we install PEPI. When we return it to Laser Hazard next week the Laser Safety Interlock will be fully functioning. (Fyffe,Kern)

Seismic Amelioration: This Sunday I along with Jonathan Kern met with the vendor from Power Dynamics to replace the faulty signal conditioner etc. so that we could make use of the machine to accommodate the LASTI MEPI installation. George Noid and Jonathan Kern Stayed late Sunday and were able to capture the spring constants for the MEPI coil springs. The springs were sent to MIT Monday and received by the responsible personnel. All analysis on the Machined spring has come to a halt do to a "bug" in their software. I have worked with their technical support as well as Algor sales and they have promised a version of the software that will accommodate the intended analysis. I have been promised that the worst-case scenario would be that they would overnight me a CD of the update for Friday the 19th of July. On parallel path, Jonathan Kern is try to expedite getting Pro Mechanica on site and available for my use in case the Algor solution does not present itself in a timely fashion. Efforts continue on the HEPI actuator detailing. Changes had to be made to the Actuator pin valves, Bellows, Displacement sensor, and the Bellows shields. The changes to the bellows shields were made here in Livingston and have been successfully procured as of today (see Jonathan Kerns weekly). Corwin Hardham has made the necessary changes to the displacement sensor and has sent it to me to re-incorporate it into the drawing package. Both Corwin and myself are looking at ways to re-fit the bellows shield into the bellows geometry. Our intent is to have a solution by the days end (Thursday the 18th). The changes to the pin valve have been incorporated and ready to be fabricated. Machined spring fabrication efforts include changing the overall length to better accommodate the assembly at the request of Dennis Coyne and Ken Mason. The changes have been incorporated in to the drawings and sent to the vendor. (Marcel Hammond)

MODE CLEANER: The mode cleaner no longer stays in lock for prolonged periods during the day now that the dynamic range of the MC_L path is attenuated and that the PSL path is DC coupled . The mode cleaner also takes along time to lock because of these changes. We spent a bit of time adjusting the dynamic range of the MC_L path and removing a resonant electronic filter to see if this would improve the situation. We do not have any real results since the mode cleaner had to be shut down for PEPI. We did find that the mode cleaner would lock more quickly when the MC_L path had a larger dynamic range with no resonant filter. (Joe Kovalik)

LLO Commissioning: Studies were made of the modecleaner servo to see if we could figure out why the modecleaner kept dropping out of lock and then seemingly taking a long time to re-acquire. By examination of the MC_L and MC_F signals, it appeared that when MC_F oscillated rail-to-rail at about 1.5 Hz, there was a slow oscillation in MC_L. Loss of lock would occur when MC_F saturated. After experimenting with the 1.5 Hz Tow-Thomas filter on the modecleaner servo, the modecleaner lock was broken and the time taken to re-acquire was noted. The time taken for the modecleaner to re-acquire now seemed to be as it was before. The change made to the modecleaner servo, for this study, was then restored to bring the servo back to its previous configuration.

We continued working on the idea to analyze HAM table motion by looking at OSEM sensor signals from various optics on the HAM table. We have found that mutually parallel OSEMS sensors of different opitcs (such as MMT1side and MMT3 side) have high cohrenec (>0.9) in 0.2 - ~3 Hz. We are currently interpreting the observations. We started to make an e2e box to simulate MMT3. We have constructed a box file that takes noise from the suspensin point as input and outputs the motion of the mirror. We are planning to give realistic noise to this file. Also we are currently installing the newest version of e2e at LLO. (Dodda, Yamamoto, Yoshida)

CDS: Installed a new version of matlab API on CDS. Working on the mode cleaner auto locking state code to fix the mode cleaner from locking in a wrong mode. Modified master.config file to add a couple of channels. Modified the database records for the WFS white gain sliders. Testing CDS network speed between workstations on the fiber network. (Chethan)

GC: Set up three new computers in the new building. Installed office, NAV, matlab, etc. Trying to track down a problem with our mail server. Tom and I have not been able to solve it. Reinstalled Nessus and I am doing a scan of the network now. Fixed a VPN issue with our firewall. It was preventing caltech VPN users from getting to caltech. Installed a web application that I will be using to track certain issues. Looking for some auditing software since the software I was evaluating has some stability issues. Reinstalling the OS on several computers here to return them to "guest use". Fixed problem on our software server. Renamed a couple of the shares. Audited a student personal computer from the network, and it turns out that he had a vulnerable version of ssh on his linux installation. Requested that he update it. LDAS: Still looking at VPN configurations for LDAS. (Shannon Roddy)

LDAS
* Set up a simple replication configuration between two computers
connected through VPN. It works at first glance but much more tests are
needed.
* Applied for academic license for DB2 7.2. Downloaded it to
ldas:/export/Igor/DB2. Have not played with it yet.
* Learning signal processing.
* Writing a DSO to compute correlation between time series from two
interferometers near the coincidence events.
* Recorded two tapes for Szabi with low noise data. Copied the
corresponding data into /frame11/LOWNOISE directory.
Igor Yakushin

Resistivity measurements of the soil in-board of the LVEA vertex on the southwest side of the building began this week. We are investigating the uniformity of the soil resistivity in this area as it may be an ideal location to construct a a buried mesh which wse can use as an analog ground for the interferometer electronics. We are using 10 foot copper grounding rods buried to a depth of 5 feet separated by about 100 feet through which we source about 0.2 amps as 0.1 Hz, +/- 10 v square wave. We then measure the potential between the one of the ground rods and a third rod located at various spacings between the other rods. (UTB students + faculty + Coles)

Systems test of the 18 seismometers, data acquisition systems, and power supplies was completed and deployment is now underway. We will acquire approximately one month of continuous seismic data which will be used to directly calculate the gravity gradient background. An analytical model of the Rayleigh motion is being constructed as a MATLAB simulation to estimate the array response and check against the acquired data. (Coles + Robert Johnson - UTB + Quarles, Cheung - SURF students).

LIGO-Trinet Livingston (LI.LTL):
Szabi Marka
I recommissioned the low noise station using the new wiring and fibers.
I installed new backup batteries, reconnected all devices, improved the
lightning/transient protection and performed the due maintenance
process. The station is up and running and the data flow is verified for
the seismic and magnetometer channels.

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

DETECTOR SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

For the 2 weeks ending 7/18/2002

Seismic Upgrade Project

Dennis Coyne

The project continues to lose schedule. We are now approximately 2 months behind the preliminary design review schedule for the hydraulic external pre-isolator (HEPI). Costs are also coming in significantly higher for the hydraulic actuator components than initially estimated; A revised bottom up cost estimate will be completed soon.

Jonathan Kern

HEPI

37 drawings comprising the hydraulic actuator filed in the DCC. Checking

and tolerancing continues aggressively.PO prepared for MIT

encompassing 20 of the drawing sheets.Hyspan provided their initial

bellows quote after much haranguing; quite high and they promise to make

suggestions to facilitate manufacture which will reduce the cost. ~5

weeks delivery.12 Parker valves and ~100 nozzles received and in

Livingston. Design work initiated for a hydraulic flowbench at LLO to

calibrate and qualify the valves.An informal design review is planned

for Friday to discuss requirements of a spring tester for LLO.

MIT issued a PO to P&N Machine Works in Houston, TX for the majority of

the machined components.The shop began machining parts last week.

We're still closing the loop with Hyspan, the manufacturer of the

bellows. Cost and delivery factors have persuaded us to use Hyspan's

standard UHV bellows design. This necessitated some minor changes in the

actuator design.The group at Stanford has been closely linked and

agrees with the changes.We sent Hyspan our drawings incorporating

their standard bellows and as soon as they provide a final quote and

approval drawing we'll issue a PO.

PEPI

The HYTEC shipment of the Fine Actuation System (FAS) which includes the flexures and the piezo-electric actuators, were received on Monday 7/15.

Specialized fixtures and lifting hardware fabricated and on hand in Livingston.

Installation began as scheduled on Monday, July 15 and is proceeding

very smoothly. Monday was spent preparing the LVEA and staging tools,

flexures and forklifts.The first flexure was in place Tuesday

afternoon and a second was completed Wednesday.Today (Thursday) we

plan to install two, completingITM-x. You can see images of a typical

installation on the July 16 Livingston i-log.

Overmeyer,Traylor,Langdale,Fyffe,Kovalik,Giaime,Busby,Kern plus a host

of others

Spring Testing

Marcel Hammond

I, along with

the help of George Noid, Rob Berry, and Jonathan

Kern, tested the machined spring for compliance. I

have every indication that the results agree with

the FEA analysis, but I am holding all results

until the models can be properly compared.

I worked with Joe Lacour to finalize plans on the

for the HEPI actuation system with the intent that

we start cutting metal this week

The Spring Tester had a faulty signal conditioner

and a replacement has been ordered and should be

reinstalled very soon.

The LLO spring tester was used last weekend to measure the spring

constants of the 8 wound springs being installed in the LASTI HAM. We

shipped these to MIT on Monday.This was the first time we used the

tester and some operational deficiencies were discovered.We're working

with the fabricator to remedy these.

Pump Station/Distribution

Ken Mailand

SYSTEM OPERATION:

Running system daily. Motor rotor and coupling were precision balanced to reduce vibration and re-installed 7/11. The balancing has measureably improved flow characteristics; The pressure noise spectrum peaks were reduced by a factor of ~10 and are now near the noise floor of the pressure sensor. The pump shaft temp is down from prior measurements by approx 33 deg.F.

A screw style pump to be at CIT the week of 7-22, this test pump may improve the temp rise and flow ripple characteristics. This pump can be installed with a minimum of rework and can be reversed to the existing configuration; installation work is approx 4 days. materials and parts for this installation are in the works.

Latest tests: 7-17:

Pump shaft temp measured at 162 Deg. F

Oil temperature rises to approx. 6 deg F. steady, above ambient after approx 3 hrs running,

the viscosity of the oil is reduced, and system pressure is lowered by approx 30% across the board.

ref. 150 to 102 psi at pump gage/ 102 to 70 psi at gage after rc stage.

ON GOING:

A new pump mount adaptor will be designed to attach the existing motor to the new screw style pump.

A new aluminum coupling will be modified and balanced for the existing pump, and new screw style pump. The lighter coupling will be finned to reduce heat in pump shaft. A new coupling spider material will be tried to smooth flow. The motor pump bracket will be modified [opened] to allow air flow thru coupling area.

The motor will be detached from the base and allowed to contact the floor independent of the station plumbing brackets with the hope of further isolation of vibrations from pump and motor.

The plumbing will be mounted on an existing base board which is more secure than the current and of a better material.

Need to design and build a bypass resistor for MIT configuration.

ELECTRONIC SENSORS: Sensors have been electrically isolated from the piping, and are working acceptably.

MANIFOLD [fluid distribution]: The manifolds [5]are in the machine shop, with their mounting bases, and will be finished

7-18. After receiving them fittings will be welded to the manifolds for attachment of accumulators, and field fit tubing.

Drawings were sent 7-2 to MIT to show the configuration, and the attachment method.

TESTS: We need to run tests at several accumulator pressure settings to optimize the operation of the pump isolation.

Determine which improvements or modifications might be made to improve performance.

DESIGN: A site installation version of the test pump station to be designed, when final configuration is

known. This would be more compact, have a mass dampened mount base, and be in an isolation

enclosure, to control temp and exhaust vapor.

STANFORD [information needed from]: A range of acceptable viscosities will guide us in the design, re. the allowable temp rise of the oil in the system.

SHIPPING: 7-1-02 a shipping contractor visited CIT and looked at the requirements for shipping the test pump station the MIT. Received a quote.

LAYOUT DRAWING: I have finished a scale plan view and partial elevation

[acad 2D] layout drawing, of station component assembly.

MEPI Pre-isolator Design/Fabrication

Ken Mason

The assembly drawing and assembly procedure for the MEPI actuator has

been completed. Work is underway to complete the overall MEPI assembly

drawing and assembly procedure by monday 7/15.Assembly is expected to

begin on that date.

Visits were made to Lavallee Machine, Arland Tool, and Southbridge

Sheet Metal. Lavallee Machine had a couple of small parts remaining to

finish up. 4 skids of parts were taken to SSM for paint. Arland Tool is

making the large steel foot. They have 2 operations left and will

deliver the parts to SSM for paint the end of this week. I am concerned

about these parts as Arland Tool goes on a shutdown for two weeks

starting 7/12. I have asked the president to call me with a daily

update. SSM is aware they are coming and will paint and deliver them

immediately to us.SSM has subcontracted the machining of the housings

to APCO machine. They have been slow in starting the machining. John

Colegnesi (VP Engineering) of SSM visited them and demanded they have

them completed by 7/10. SSM has picked up the unfinished housing

previously delivered to MIT for magnetic field testing, and is

finishing it up. So if everything works out SSM will deliver all parts

for MEPI on 7/12 or 7/15.

EPI Installation fixturing and rigging

(Myron, Ken)

7/11:A test lift was performed on one corner of HAM20, using a modified

screwjack unit and a cantilever plate designed by Larry Jones to move

the crane hook CG over the gull wing mounting pad. The lift went

very smoothly.There were a few issues, however; there was visible

deflection of the cantilever fixture, which might become serious when

the full weight is involved (HAM20 only has the support structure

and no stack inside).Also there was rotation of the gull wing

flange when the bolts were loosened, indicating some degree of torque

stress is being transmitted to the pier as built. This could complicate

realignment after substitution of the EPI since

the flange torque stress can't be duplicated exactly.We are studying this

and trying to evaluate how it bears on the site installations,

where spherical bearings could have absorbed some or all of the

flange rotation.

We're instrumenting with some new indicators to do a second lift

test.

7/18: The first MEPI (electo-Magnetic External Pre-Isolator) assembly is being done at MIT/LASTI. There were a few minor fit problems that have been resolved. Most of the components are now together. The next 3 weldments for the other piers are expected Monday.

- MEPI Actuator Characterization (Gregg, Megan, Rich)

We measured the magnetic field coming from the MEPI actuator when it is

in place on the large steel preisolator structure.We found significant

reduction in the field at all frequencies when the steel is between the

actuator and the test point. This is the orientation relevant for

calculating the field at the test mass.We used this value to calculate

the position noise of the test mass.It appears additional shielding may

be necessary, as the test mass motion due to the field is similar to the

science requirement document value between 40 Hz and 1 kHz and is only a

little below the allowable noise near 1 Hz.

- Interim SHaker Reaction EPI for HAM's (Gregg, Dave, Megan, Rich)

The transfer function from a LIGO 1 PEM shaker mounted on the LASTI

HAM's gullwing to a co-linearly located Wilcoxon accelerometer has been

measured in the frequency band between 1-100 Hz. A pole zero fit involving

22 pole and 22 zeros has allowed us to accurately fit to these data. These

data have been inverted to flatten the transfer function around a unity

gain point. At present we are currently attempting to close a transfer

function around this flattened transfer function. A preliminary

calculation suggests that the maxium velocity that this approach can

correct for is 2.5 um/s at 1Hz. This is limited by the allowable power

dissipation in the LIGO 1 PEM shaker.

CDS Software

Rolf Bork reporting

- Busy modifying the LHO4k Digital Suspension Control (DSC) software to change

MC2 controls for the new CARM control.MC2 now appears same as a large optic,

without optical levers, but with LSC and MCL inputs.To do this, small optics

controller code had to be modified to extract MC2 (except for the sensor

inputs), a new large optic controller added, and LSC code modified to send CARM

error to MC2.We are in process of testing the system at Caltech.

- We have come up with enough parts now that we can hopefully better test

multi-system software.We have 5 VME crates set up now, all as LHO4k

subsystems, including SOS controller, one LOS controller, LSC, ASC and one end

station.They are all interconnected via reflected memory, similar to the site.

Once we ship parts for LHO2k/LLO4k digital suspensions, most of this will go

away however.

- Lisa changed out our server (luna) with a new SunBlade 1000 today.It appears

everything is working ok so far.

- Alex has ported EPICS to a Pentium and we are testing it in the SOS controller

crate (installed system at LHO uses two MIPS processors).So far, it seems to

run well and has much better response than the two MIPS it replaced.We are

also going to try it with the new ASC systems, which also have a heavy EPICS

load.

- Khan is moving the LOS dewhitening filters to the coil output filter stages,

as requested by Peter.

- Alex has fixed the LSC error signal test points, as brought up at today's CDS

meeting.Code is now running on LHO4k.(Bug does not exist in LHO2k or LLO4k

LSC software).

- A CDS timing chart was brought up at today's meeting.One way to do this is

to inject a signal (such as the GPS 1PPS) at specific locations and measuring

the propogation through the various processors/reflected memory networks in the

various subsystems.We have done that here, but it should be done at the sites,

as we do not have the 4km of fiber optics, all the reflected memory loading and

drops, etc. in our test system.

CDS Hardware

Jay Heefner

Optical Lever Whitening: We have stuffed one board and are in the process of testing it. Once it looks

like the board works we will begin stuffing more for the sites. We should have

~10 ready by 7/24.

Diff Driver/Receiver:

- We are waiting for the SCSI connectors to be delivered (7/17) to complete the

balance of the boards for the sites.

- I designed and layed out a daughter card that can be attached to WFS and QPD

whitening boards currently in use. It converts the output to differential for

input to the pentek. I am also completing a differential input board that can be

attached to the anti-image boards currently in the system. Both boards should be

in hand by late next week.

EMI:

- I have started to design P1 buddy cards for the LSC modules in the system. The

cards will have differential inputs and outputs and optical isolation for all

epics signals to/from the boards.

- I have started looking for a way to attached a 3U card guide to the back side

of our eurocards. The buddy cards would be mounted in this card guide.

Rich Abbott reporting

1.Finished the 8 channel valve driver board for seismic pre-isolation use.Boards to go to board house 7/11. will be back from manufacturing on Thursday.4 boards will immediately be stuffed, tested and shipped to LLO and LASTI for use in ongoing tests.A companion board with BNC interface will be shipped as well to interface to the dSpace DACs

2.Started design of the 6 channel medium current drivers (+/- 4 amps)

3.Flavio has communicated to Peter King at LLO the changes necessary for the next stage of learning on the ISS outer loop.He has built a duplicate system to install in the 40m lab to continue the development. Flavio is working on simulations for the ISS and is preparing for tests in the 40 meter lab to better understand the outer loop controls.

4.Mohana finished her seismic field interface box that interfaces the L4C, Inductive Position and STS2 sensors to the d-space system. The first of the L4C adapter/connector boards went out to the board house.PCB mount pins for the other version were received in order to best select a model for the job. CAD work will be done on the second flavor of board on 7/18 to get it out to the board house.

5.Mohana is working on the multiple pulse timing solution with Jay.

6.Mohana finished the 4 pulse timing system boards and has tested a prototype.Either new boards must be cut, or an alternate solution must be engineered using the Altera FPGAs that Jay and Rich have been working with.

7.The first full version of the +/- 10 amp driver chassis (for the MEPI electro-magnetic actuator) is essentially complete.Testing will follow and the chassis will be sent out to LASTI.

Sander Liu

Micro-Seismic Signal Processor - All twelve sets of Remote Interface Box and Post Processor have been tested and in good working order. One set was sent to MIT last week. Another set will be sent there this week. The rest will be held in stock until needed in the field.

PSL

PeterKing

A few components of the experimental VCO have been tweaked up in an

effort to reduce the amount of distortion coming out of the pre-scaler that

follows the 800 MHz VCO and the RF amplifier that follows.With the

present layout of the board - with a mistake in the tuning input - it was

not obvious how to phase lock the VCO to an IFR oscillator.The phase

jitter as observed on a scope didn't look too bad but only a phase noise

measurement will tell if any improvements have been made.

With Flavio and Rich, I discussed some experiments that might be

done with the existing intensity stabilization servo card in order to gain

some information about the outer loop.Two minor modifications were made

to re-route the outer loop control signal.

Flavio and I tried to close the intensity stabilization servo loop

after the modecleaner using the spare servo card.During these attempts the

outer loop photodetector appeared to be railed, something which might be

attributable to the auto-zeroing function having to deal with a new voltage

offset.

In trying to lock the inner loop with the spare servo card, the error point

spectrum was unstable at low frequencies.Examination of the board on a

bench showed a small offset in the output of the input stage, which was

reduced with increasing input frequency (greater than 200 Hz).I have not

figured out why the board would behave in this manner.

DMT

John Zweizig

This week I spent at LLO verifying that the DMT monitors and interface to

control room viewers were correctly installed and configured. I also set

up an audio monitor at Rana's request and added low- and high-frequency

filtering. This monitor can be used to listen to any channel in real time

(~1 second lag).

Szabi Marka

The released the new version of the timing monitor. We installed more

connections, to be able to check the timing at all relevant points at

both interferometer, which finally includes the check of LSC timing. Our

alarm limits are fairly liberal at the moment, to minimize the frequency

of alarms in the commissioning phase. We will likely set tighter limits

for the science runs.

I released the new version of the WebViewer interface, which allows

users to access DMT monitor output via a web browser.

(http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/gds/WebViewer/WebIndex.html) This

interface provides graphical and file representation of the monitor

output in many popular format. It plays a similar role for remote users

as the DMT Viewer plays for the local control room users.

Optics Analysis

Erika D’Ambrosio

Bill and I are stuck on studying the consistency of modal model; the method

of Vinet which is considered the standard one, is reliable at the first

order but gives wrong solutions starting from the second order on

in the perturbation.

I am trying to understand what the limitation is, given the fact that the set

of Hermite-Gauss functions used in optical modeling is complete.

I could not find in literature any validation of the Vinet method at the

second order, although I found some variations of that which have been

devised for specific problems.

Bill Kells

Analysis, with J. Camp, on his old measurements of LIGO I HR loss, and

bulk substrate loss. This plus plotting strategy for "final" measurements

at LHO of arm mirror losses, is in prep for a round of definiitve

results for upcomming COC paper

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang, Bill Kells

After introducing the glycerin contaminated sample, the cavity 1 has been run for 12 days. So far, there is no contamination effect observed (or maybe it's very small) – more time is required to know for sure, so the test continues.

A combined optical table was separated andthe two parts were settled down in the RSE lab, we are building the test bench for cavity 2 and 3. Please let us know if you have any comment and idea.

OTF Lab.

Cavity # 1

On 6/28/02 We introduced a test sample of Glycerin (Glycerol, Class IIIB, 99.9% pure)

The test sample embedded with a very thin film of glycerin on a S.S bar is seating close to the (3) vented holes of the cavity, next to the concave mirror. So far the cavity is being pumping for (19)days. There appears to be no increase in the cavity loss (scatter or absorption). This is an encouraging result which justifies the research that Stanford is doing on whether we can use Glycerin as an alternate hydraulic fluid. (Note: The hydraulic fluid is not intentionally introduced into the vacuum system. However there is concern that a leak might migrate into the vacuum system by contact with gloved hands when the system is vented and in-chamber work is conducted.)

The vacuum pump for this cavity broke down. The turbo pump bearings are gone.

This is a very old pump (1995) . I will hopefully replace the turbo pump with another one that I found.

Provided by Bob Taylor.

Cavity#2

Fully assembled with new mirrors and It has been baked. This cavity is pumping down and has been moved to the former RSE lab.

Cavity#3

Fully assembled with new mirrors is being pumped and baking in process after we opened it to clean the foggy view port window.This chamber has some situation as the Nitrogen level still low ~ 7E-7 torr.It should be at least 10E-11 torr or higher.It seems that this chamber leaks and we'll leak test to find out.In the meanwhile this chamber is still baking because it has hi level of water.

Moved to the new place the former RSE lab.

The optical transmission test setup is finally setting on its own table base designed and fabricated

at our Lab. This base is very nice, made of 3"x3" x1/8" wall thickness square steel tubing, powder coated white with TGIC Polyester coating, semi-gloss ($170) (this coating is designed for ND:YAG laser beam same as for the enclosures) this table base is 40"LX20"WX32"H. The material cost was only $79 and cutting included. The reason I am mentioning all these info. is because it is way cheap to have these bases made ourselves. If one orders from NRC or any other place it will cost three to four times as much.

RSE LAB.

We have finally put all the optics and mounts away from the optic table and storage in a cabinet. We will use some of the optics as well as mounts from these bunch.We just finished separating and rotating these optical tables 5'Wx6'Lso now we have two individual optical tables separated and ready to install the chambers.

Liyuan Zhang is gathering all the optics and mounts and bringing into theRSE Lab.

All the optics, mounts and electronics boxes for MIT have been packed carefully and put into a wooden crate and is ready to be shipped to MIT (Nergis Mavalvala).

PSL Lab

The parts for 2" High Vacuum mirror mount has been brought to the PSL Lab.

These parts has been cleaned and baked and I am assembling them as right now.I have encounter a small

situation with the parts which it makes more difficult its assembling but I have coordinated with M. Smith and Dynamic Light Control and I will proceed as fast as I can since 40m needs these mirrors mounts.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

LASTI (Zucker)

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

New release of e2e - preparation for it
----------------------------------
(Hiro) The new release of the e2e environment (modeler+alfi) and the LIGO
simulation package (SimLIGO) have been internally tested to validate their integrity.
Some problems were identified, and the revised code is now being tested at
LHO and LLO.

Seismic measurements at LLO
-------------------------------
(Hiro) Sany Yoshida and his student Raghu are working on the measurements of
seismic motion and station-to-station coherence. Sany was able to locate a few seismometers for these
measurements. They are trying to understand characteristics of their
measurements, including comparison with LHO data. Hiro is making a simulation
box of a HAM table on which there are three suspended mirrors with different
orientations to simulate their measurements.

State of thermal lensing in Han2k
-----------------------------------
(Biplab) collected relevant parameter values, did analytical calculations and
clarified various points with Bill Kells and Jordan Camp. Preparing a note
summarizing the situation and giving an outline of studies already made and to
be made.

Code development and maintenance
------------------------------------
(Biplab) Modified the way in which pitch and yaw calculations are managed so that those take
less computational time especially in simple runs. This was introduced after a bug
(i.e. conflict with E2E's other new features) was detected.

(Hiro) New compiler issues:
gcc 3.1 was installed on the server alterf.ligo... It now supports the 64 bit option for compiling. With the 64 bit
option enabled however, the binary would not run, most likely due to the fact that some incorrect library is being
linked in. I asked Larry to get help from Sun support. The code compiled with
v3.1 (no 64 bit option) stacks in the simulation code. There are no debug tools
available on alterf, and I requested the installation of these tools.

(Ed Maros) Worked on some issues in the build-e2e script for the 1.7.7
release of e2e.

(Melody)
- Working on the automated tester for alfi5. Evaluating a shareware
Java package called Abbot which may provide the foundation of tester.

The new user command "createRDS" used to generate the reduced data set frames
is now working. It no longer introduces any time offset (output is GPS second
aligned with user's request) and support resampling and no resampling. It is
fully threaded in the frameAPI so that it will not contend with dataPipeline
jobs for CPUs. The time series data has been minimally tested at this point
and preliminary results are positive. However, much more testing is still
needed before the release.

A new extenstion to TCL for concatenating frame data in the frameAPI is
almost complete. This also is a fully threaded extension and is expected to
significantly boost the performance of LDAS. The integration of this new
function into user commands is under development at this time. We expect to
have preliminary results by the end of the week.

The controlMonitorAPI has several new features this week for viewing the
statistics of jobs submitted to the system. This includes the running job
queue size and the time each job spends in various elements of LDAS as it
moves through the distributed system.

Work continues on implementing a version 5 frameCPP library. Unfortunately,
there still remains several open issues with the specification to be settled.
Beniot Mours is currently visiting LIGO and his presence will greatly facilitate
the open issues in the spec and the understanding necessary to implement the
new version 5 frameCPP.

We are working closely with the LSC to address quatlity control issues in the
search codes to increase our S1 scientific data analysis success factor. We
hope to have the next release of LDAS the week of August 2nd.

* Lots of problems with HPSS this week, particularly DCE (which affects
lots of other components). No root cause identified.

* Working with Scott Koranda and Mike Gleicher to get hsi working for
Scott. Ongoing.

* Now that saiph has fibre channel connectivity (via 50 micron fibre) to
the FC switch in Booth, I configured a ~400Gb QFS filesystem on saiph
(/datacache) using part of one of the T3s in Booth.

* Setup frame archive to support night long IFO data runs, i.e.,
not E or S runs.

* Set up a simple replication configuration between two computers
connected through VPN. It works at first glance but much more tests are
needed.

* Applied for academic license for DB2 7.2. Downloaded it to
ldas:/export/Igor/DB2. Have not played with it yet.

* Recorded two tapes for Szabi with low noise data. Copied the
corresponding data into /frame11/LOWNOISE directory.

* I'm still waiting for ASA to repair, replace, or explain what they
plan to do with the two beowulf nodes that I sent them with spontaneous
reboot problems.

* I have restored from tape onto disk at LHO a small portion of the E7
raw full-frame data files with the response of injections that were done
during the run. The GPS time are: 694842080 to 694858960 which
correspond to Jan 11, 2002 19:41:07 PST (Jan 12, 2002 03:41:07 UTC) to
Jan 12, 2002 00:22:27 PST (Jan 12, 2002 08:22:27 UTC). This
corresponds to 4.69 hours of data. This includes the GPS interval for
the injections that Stefan Ballmer gave me: 694846440 to 694852150. The
data will appear from fortress in these directories:
/frame10/E7Inject/LHO/GPS694842080/Data[0-4], and it is available from
LDAS jobs. The data will remain on disk until we need to free up the
space for the restart of S1. Similar data will be restored at LLO.

Mendell reports;
1) The knownpulsardemod DSO has been basically completed. The code still
generates SFTs, as before. Since May, work has been completed to allow
the DSO to unpack SFT and ephemeris data (input from LDAS) and to use
the new versions of LALDemod, LALBarycenter, and supporting code in the
LAL pulsar package. The output of this are DeFTs for the two
polarization states and the Jarnowski, Krolak, and Schutz F statistic
(the maximum likelihood estimator). The output of the statistically
analysis is written to the signal_dperiodic database table, as before.
The final set of code changes were made in the last week to allowing
writing to the search summary and search summary variables tables, and
to allow output of DeFTs (really the power spectrum of the F statistic)
into frame format. The code runs without problems in stand-alone mode.
Some bugs have turned up when run on the LDAS beowulf cluster at LHO,
which I am currently working to correct.

2) Work continues with my SURF student to generate synthetic data sets
that will be used to test the knownpulsardemod DSO.

* Writing a DSO to compute correlation between time series from two
interferometers near the coincidence events.
* Learning signal processing.

Weinstein reports:
- Resolved lingering concerns about the calibration
of simulated bursts injected into E7 data.

- Submitted several thousand jobs to ldas-mit with
bursts of various morphologies injected into E7 data.
Pointed Laura to the results, which she has compiled into
some lovely plots in
http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/~cadonati/Bursts/E7PlaySimul/

- Submitted several thousand more jobs to ldas-mit
to survey the BLRMS noise in LSC-AS_Q for full E7
H2-L1 coincidence data, and compiled the results.

- Talked too briefly with Patrick about a facility for
controlling and monitoring burst dso online runs during S1,
and about tuning the power dso.

Wen reports: This is an abstract for a paper she is working on with the CaRT group --
The so-called Kozai mechanism in a hierarchical triple system can drive
an initially circular inner binary orbit into a highly eccentric one.
In a Globular cluster, hierarchical triple blackhole systems can be
produced through binary-binary interaction. It has been proposed
recently that the Kozai mechanism could drive the inner binary of the
triple system to merge before it is interrupted by interactions with
other field stars. We investigate qualitatively and numerically the
evolution of the eccentricities in these binaries under the
gravitational radiation reaction. The implications on gravitational
wave detections, especially its relevance to data analyses for
broad-band gravitational wave detectors, are discussed.

MIT Data Analysis activities (Ballmer, Cadonati, Kats)
======================================================
We focused on producing the document describing the E7
bursts pipeline analysis on the playground data. The
document was presented and discussed during the bursts
conference call. A number of action items and additional
requests from group members are being addressed and
will are circulated within the group. We received a tape
with data from LLO's July 12 data taking. We plan to
look at that data using the bursts pipeline defined on
the E7 data as soon as possible.

Isabel Leonor prepared a nice summary page of the pre-S1 injections
which is available at:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ileonor/ligo/inject/inject-0602.html

We recorded hours of data, while the interferometer was in the "low
noise" state. The brief run summary can be found at
http://london.ligo-la.caltech.edu/engrun/DataTaking/071202/index.html.
The data is already available at LLO on
decatur.ligo-la:/frame10/LOWNOISE/LLO/ and at CIT from HPSS at
/proj/ligo/frame_archive/LLO/full/DT/L-R-71047/. I shipped the data to
MIT and I am about to mail a tape to LHO.

MIT:
(Keith)
-Working logistics for the air-conditioning upgrade in the LDAS room.
-Continually checking on the network performance issues.
-Getting the users home server machine ready to have the system disk drive
replaced.
-Setup a new NIS+ server and updated all of the machines.
-Installed a new printer and setup the services for the printer.

(Larry)
-Assisted Keith on setting up a new NIS+ server. Tested server and worked
with the installation. One corrupted file delayed the swap by a couple of hours but other than that the swap was painless.
-Went over a number of logistical issues with Keith concerning the LDAS room and server swapouts/fixes for GC.
-Assisted Keith on new printer driver installation on the print server.

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Set up three new computers in the new building.
-Installed office, NAV, matlab, etc.
-Trying to track down a problem with our mail server. Tom and I have not been able to solve it.
-Reinstalled Nessus and I am doing a scan of the network now.
-Fixed a VPN issue with our firewall. It was preventing caltech VPN users from getting to caltech.
-Installed a web application that I will be using to track
certain issues.
-Looking for some auditing software since the software I was evaluating
has some stability issues.
-Reinstalling the OS on several computers here to return them to "guest
use".
-Fixed problem on our software server. Renamed a couple of the shares.
-Audited a student personal computer from the network, and it turns out
that he had a vulnerable version of ssh on his linux installation.
Requested that he update it.

-Christine will be setting up more of the ATM edge switches and testing them out.
-(Christine & Larry)Working on getting equipment in for the new WAN connections. Cullen is ready to get things going on the PNNL side.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Finished up a DSPACE installation for Mark Barton on a new computer that
included win2000 install and GC software plus MatLab 12.1.
I transferred and setup this computer and monitor in Synchrotron and this
setup is now up and running. I also documented the DSPACE installation
instructions for the next installation at MIT.
-Worked with Wendy going over on what I needed done for new rebuilds on PC's.
This included GC software, win patches, ghosting computers, and backing up
users data.
-The Mother Board went out on Kelin W.'s computer. I called HPC and had them come out to replace this. I set him up with a temporary computer and transferred
his Data to temp computer to get him back up and running.
-The Mother Board went out on Linda T.'scomputer. I called HPC and they replaced the Mother board, CPU, and memory. She is back up and running.
-Ran an ethernet cat5 cable from server room to lab area. This drop is
dedicated for a wireless access point. Lisa and summer students gave me hand.
-Transferred Kelin W.'s data to temporary computer to get him back up and running until we get his old computer rebuilt hardware wise.
-Terminated a cable drop in Donna's office and pulled out that (cable eye
sore) in the hallway of Bridge Annex.
-Had multiple users with virus issues that I had to clean their computers
that included cleaning up registry problems and running virus removal tools.

(Bruce Sears)
-General Ilog Maintenance: (0.5 days)
- Working on positionable ports in Alfi 5.

(Mick)
-Upgraded own PC to Win2000; reloaded
-More emails for quotes for Orinoco equipment and AIT-2 tapes
-Assisted Lisa upgrading luna; began documentation of luna's build
-Helped run cable in Synchotron
-Cleaned virus from 1 PC

(Wendy)
-loaded win2000 and backed up old info for a few people
-helped string cable by synchrotron
-went around third floor too see where ports are and which ones are active
-fixed CD-RW drive by using a single piece of tape--it's amazing what a
piece of tape can do =)
-gave a lesson on how to load win98 and other software for LIGO boxes
-did other stuff Lisa told me to do

(Lisa)
- Swapped out the old luna for the new in wilson house. Discovered a bug with
m64B video cards on the blade's that only occurs with version 13 of the kernel
(108528-13). The crates could not boot with tcp wrappers around rsh. Otherwise the swap went remarkably well. Mick and I will be doing follow up for the next few days.
-Had a problem with becrux webmail. When mod_ssl crashes it leaves some log
files behind. These have to be removed before apache will restart with ssl.
-Installed a second hard disk and restored /usr2 and /usr3 from tape backup for
Janeen.
- More surf/visitor accounts and support.

(Veronica)
- LDAS website: most time was spent searching for a suitable format for
the new LDAS hardware diagrams. The extensive list of hardware
specifications needed a functional but compact way of displaying. Two
different scripts were written and tested. Did some minor changes to the
diagram images provided by Albert. The new diagrams for LHO and LLO and
supporting files were installed to the LDAS webserver and will be
published shortly.
- LSC website: working with Rita on standardising the posting of the LSC
progress reports. Posted various documents. Made a few additions to the
August meeting webpage.
- LIGO website: incorporated a few changes to the LIGO Press and Media
kit. Posted remaining transparencies from the last PAC meeting. Riccardo
requested videoconferencing support for an upcoming SURF seminar; later it
was decided to cancel the broadcasting.
-Exploring better document flow control options; together with Linda, will
meet with a representative of a consulting firm Doculabs, to help us in
our decision-making and, possibly, facilitating an upgrade.
-Attended a seminar on Adobe Illustrator.
- CaJAGWR website: did usual upkeep.

(Larry)
-Worked a number of purchases. Mostly supplies. Spent time working on reconciling my p-card. There were a couple of problems but the vendors were able to work them out.
-Still working with Florance on developing a new account for the Hanford Wan system. Also, resolving a number of issues that Florance had with past purchases.
-Installed a number of patches and working on the s/w upgrades for the sandbox units.
-Worked a number of PC issues. Both hardware and software issues.
-Ran a few more tests on the VRVS. We were able to broadcast from behind the natrouter at MIT but could not receive. We will be checking on which ports need to be opened up for that.
-Worked a number of virus issues. We really had a number of them hit ligo computers, however, it appears we did better than a lot of other places according to news reports. Thanks to the admin group and the users keeping the scan files up to date.
-Assistance for the SURF student crowd is continuing.
-Worked with Lisa on resolving a few e-mail related issues. Still more testing to do on the webmail but it is looking pretty good as a tool.
The filter list on spam sites is growing on a daily basis.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

ETF technology demonstrator (advanced SEI)
Hammond, Kern
Manufacturing errors were found in the Pods (housings for the
geophones). These were returned to the machine shop for inspection and
we're waiting to receive their report, and recommendation about how they
propose to correct the error.

This week I continued familiarizing myself with the dSpace DSP box. I've
learnt how to do most of the basic functions including setting up models in
Simulink, compiling them for the dSpace processor, setting up instrument
panels in ControlDesk to control and monitor the processor task,
input/output to the ADC/DAC cards, capturing data to files. Jay and I tried
measuring the input noise, but the data analysis isn't finished yet.

Janeen and I continued to extend our search for local companies to supply us some cantilever blades, see Janeen's report.

Both the Central Machine and Physics Machine Shops are very busy at the moment so Janeen and I have been looking at sending out the last few sets of drawings fro the mode cleaner to local companies.

I tested Feature Works, a SOLIDWORKS tool that came with the SOLIDWORKS upgrade. This tool allows you to create an intelligent part from a .dwg or .sat file that is imported to SOLIDWORKS. It seems to work very well.
Janeen and I updated to SOLIDWORKS service pack 3.0, I believe some work is required to understand these upgrades.

I have been providing drawings to Rutherford and working through Russell Jones in Glasgow on bringing Tony Jones, an engineer at Rutherford, up to speed about particular aspects of our suspensions.

14 hybrid OSEMS are being ordered today in Glasgow for the mode cleaner suspension

From: Janeen Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>
AdLIGO Suspensions
As we've overloaded both campus machine shops, we're sending out RFQs to local shops for suspension and fixture parts, in hopes of receiving all parts by mid-August.
Superior Jig has agreed to grind the blade material to +/-.0005, which makes blade matching much easier. Lobart has agreed to do the same, at a higher price and a longer lead time.

From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>
Fused silica fiber research:
----------------------------

We measured the pendulum Q of the upper mass in our violin mode setup to be no
more than about 3e4, perhaps not too surprising since it was suspended from two
loops of greased steel wire. Still, given that the energy of the upper mass in
the violin mode measurement was only about 1e-5 to 1e-6 of the total energy of
the violin mode and extrapolate this measured loss to that frequency, the recoil
might possibly have limited the Q of the lowest violin modes at the 1e9 level.

This loss is much too large for our planned NTE experiment, so we have replaced
the upper clamp to measure the Q of a fused silica pendulum to see if the
numbers improve. We install the pendulum itself soon, now we are building
reeadout electronics

The vertical bounce experiment sees a Q for the rocking mode of the cental mass
of approximately 1e8, which appears very consistent with the predicted value.
However, persistent excitation and long decay of low-frequency modes slows our
work considerably. We are installing a damper on a motion feedthrough which we
hope will allow us to quiet these modes more quickly.

We have collected bending strength data for about 20 dumbbell fibers. All show
strengths 3-5 times above that necessary for advanced LIGO. We have designed a
tension tester for these fibers which is now being built.

Alessandro
Accelerometer paper waiting for comments.
Preparing LVDT coiling for mini stress strain.
Received MoRuB samples for laser shhoting tests.

Found “gravitational waves” frozen in glassy metal.

The image appears in X-ray microdensitometry of a section of 18 micron thick commercial glassy metal ribbon. A second event found feet away. After some head scratching the fenomenon was explained with a tiny bubble that burst just in the instant while the ribbon was freezing.
OK it is not great physics, but it still is fun!

Probably determined the source of the few percent density gradient in the X-ray densitometry, should be due to the edge effect of the X-ray window limiter. Probably can eliminate with wider window settings.
A technique to offset the gradient effects was in any case developed and works.
Correlating critical thickness of splat with glass/polycrystalline transition.
Measured MoRuB density, so far 9.05 g/cc, lower than advertised, investigating.
Training Stoyan.

Stoyan Nikolov
Stage student from INSA, welcome.
X-ray trained and getting oriented, on X-ray imaging and image processing.
Made drawings for replacement pistons for splatt machine.

Brian
X-ray diffraction spectra of background, glassy metal, polycrystalline samples made.
Learning to quantitatively distinguish between them to detect crystallites in glassy metal matrix , if present.
Working on a sample positioner to bet capability to scan the samples.

Stefano
Electropolishing of MoRuB followed by brazing tested, and failed miserably.
EDM cut samples for X-ray uniformity and density measurement.
Parts of mini stress strain machine and optimised stress gauge ordered.

Youichi
Tentative design of suspension point interferometer with top section acting as an High Frequency GW interferometer and the bottom half as its Low Frequency counterpart
Improving parametric model for evaluation, included suspension and mirror thermal noise, seismic noise, . . . . will introduce shot and radiation pressure.
Going back to Japan this week end.
Arrivederci

Mike
Work ongoing, will need some help with the mass of histograms to fit, getting an high school student from Mayfield.

CR-010012 Revision B	WBS 1.4.4.1	Closeout Construction Budgets for Initial Computer Equipment Complement at the Sites	P. Lindquist
CR-020007	WBS 1.1.4	Finishing and Furnishing of Livingston Staging Building	G. Stapfer
CR-020008	WBS 1.1.4	Purchase and Install Audio Visual Equipment in the New Hanford Auditorium	O. Matherny
CR-020009	OPs	Digital Common Mode Servo to Mode Cleaner Path	D. Coyne

Weekly Report for Week Ending July 18, 2002

Special Announcements:

LSC Issues (Weiss)

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Coles)

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)