Weekly Report for Week Ending August 15, 2002

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  August 19, 2002 will be:

 CANCELLED DUE TO THE LSC MEETING
 

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Operations--Administration

There was a site teleconference held on Thursday, August 15, 2002. The following issues were among those discussed:

Hanford Laboratory Building--LSC meeting in Hanford starts Monday.  Air conditioning is working well in auditorium, although heat load on rest of building is high due to south western exposure.  Mechanical stuff works.  Some passive measures will be required.

Fred reports that the new auditorium is spectacular, and they are already getting requests for use by outside organizations.  Ed Jasnow to check on legal and insurance related concerns.

Amphibious Vehicle for Livingston--Caltech procurements checking prices.  Demo scheduled at Livingston.  Hanford wants a golf cart.  Amphibious capabilities deemed unnecessary for Hanford, but a driving range would be nice.

Property--Ed Chargois reports that NIH in Bethesda, MD might prove to be a good source of almost new furniture for both sites.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through August 15, 2002 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• Nothing Significant to report.

>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>

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

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• No report this week.

ACTIVITY

• Processed and distributed one DCN.  Additional progress was made in reorganization of the DCC file system.  Made many new file folders and added numerous documentation onto the shelves. Electronic document activity remains steady.
  DCC Activity


WE 08/15/02	Packages	Faxes
In	37	35
Out	13	50

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Completed change order 7 to Viking Office Products, change order 5 to Corning.  Issued several one time PO's.  Working with Esther on moving funds from one expenditure type to another per Florence Kaufman's request.  Moving funds on Irena's contracts as requested by Florence Kaufman.
• Ready to send out the Time and Material Contract for LLO.

• Prepared an analysis of Operations costs for the 10 month period ending July 31, 2002 separately identifying indirect costs for labor.
• Started gathering the various pieces of the puzzle to try to explain the large charge to the Data Group for Raytheon charges through JPL in July 2002.  Many pieces gathered, but not enough to complete the puzzle.
• Assisted in the preparation of FY2002 projected costs.
• Started working on reports for August 2002.
• Began working on write-up of procedures used in my preparation of monthly financial reports.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

• Insaco: PO for rework/polishing of one LIGO supplied a-axis sapphire blank was released to Purchasing.
• Univ. of Oregon: CO #8, to add funds for FY'03 on site support at Hanford, is in preparation. The CO is bringing the Order cumulative total above $100K threshold. This makes it a 'significant' procurement per the terms of LIGO Cooperative Agreement, requiring NSF's advance approval.

CONSTRUCTION:

• We still have not received the retention invoice from Brunt Construction on the LLO Staging Building.  When we receive it, we will begin negotiations on withholding an amount for the wooden stage floor and the HVAC.
• The HVAC system for the LHO Laboratory Building has still not been turned on to see if it works [actually it has and it works, at least in the auditorium. --pel].  The LSC meeting is scheduled to be held in that building this Monday, August 19.

• Studies are still ongoing regarding traffic control at both sites via the use of remotely controlled gates on the access roads.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Torres, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for eleven (11) new/revised trips, and there are nine (9) trips that are in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and paper work completed.  Continue to work on a couple of upcoming relocation trips and worked with Ed Chargois for their household moving.  Also continued to work on a number of long-term visits which will require long-term housing, etc.
• Completed fourteen (14) Expense Reports and there are eighteen (18) reports yet to be done.  Contacted a couple of travelers who have long-term outstanding Expense Reports and asked for their cooperation in sending me their receipts so that the trip(s) in question can be closed.
• Reconciled seventy-seven (77) P-Card items last week which required numerous phone calls to hotels in order to track down which traveler incurred which charge and pulling each traveler's file to assure that charges are correct for each airline fee.  Assisted a few travelers with their questions in regard to their P-Card and/or reconciliation.
• Worked with Criselda Rodriguez-Brodeur (P-Card Office) and staff on number of issues and problems which arose this past week.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for August 12, 2002.  Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement.

Worked on the final last minutes detail for the SURF Field to LHO as well as performing miscellaneous duties as requested by various members of  the LIGO Project here at Caltech and each of the two (2) sites.
• I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.

• Processed the usual incoming invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems, and reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther for the week of August 5. For the total number of incoming invoices received for this period see "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham.
• Processed the usual requisitions and change orders on-line.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database.

Oracle will be upgraded to the 11i level and the system will be shutdown campus wide August 16-22 for the upgrade. For those of you contemplating a large purchase or have an invoice that will require payment during this time period, it is too late.  Note that for emergency procurements, our group will have a block of numbers pre assigned and will be able to prepare and order off line. -pel]

>Rita Torres

• Most of my time this week was spent on LSC stuff:  Edits to the nearly 50 names for experimental groups with LIGO, I'm almost done.  Also completed the input of codes for the various LSC working groups.
• Scanned several documents from GEO and submitted these to DCC out.  Updated the data base with email addresses from their 11-page Attachment Z.
• Confirmed that the many LSC documents recently submitted appear on the web page.
• Spent some time coordinating exit eye exams for Surf students.
• Placed several Pcard orders, and reconciled lots after obtaining the documentation.  I've reconciled 53 so far, and expect to do a few more before the final bank dump on 8/16.
• Prepared for return a faulty pump, we expect a credit from the vendor.
• Changes to LIGO roster this period:  Brian O'Reilly at LLO, and Michael Plissi, visitor to CIT.

• Obtaining quotes from photographers for Livingston photo shoot.
• Finalized brochure text and reviewing images with designer.  Check out new addition to press clippings

http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-thorne32aug11.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dmagazine
• On my way to Hanford site to help with LSC meeting.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

No report this week.  Preparing for MRE review scheduled Friday, August 17, 2002.

• The text for the Operations Work Plan has been edited and a copy will be distributed for review this week.  Will return to the budgets and work on the Justification sections.

The following change requests have been submitted:
 

The Executive Committee meeting has been reformatted to include discussions of technical, budget, and schedule issues including Change Requests.  During the meeting on Monday, August 12, 2002, the following change requests were approved:

• CR-020008    Purchase and Install Audio Visual Equipment in the New Auditorium at Hanford
• CR-020010    Additional FY 2002 Funding for Low Frequency Seismic Isolation R&D

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

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

The review and editing of the LLO Safety Audit Report was completed. The report will be distributed when all of the attachments are obtained (now have all but one).

The Synchrotron room 215 Inergen fire suppression system installation was completed. Final acceptance tests were conducted on Thursday, 15 August, witnessed by both Caltech representatives and the Pasadena Fire Department.  The system completed all of the tests OK and was accepted by the Pasadena FD and Caltech.  The system is charged and fully functional and is on-line.  The tests were delayed for a short time by the Fire Department rep when no one could produce a copy of the Pasadena Building Permit. A phone call and fax saved the day when copies of the permit fee receipts were faxed to LIGO (Tyler).  The tests were then allowed to proceed with no problems. The final test was an actual "dump" of the "agent" with a gas analyzer recording the in-room O2 and CO2 levels for over 15 minutes after the system was activated.  Personnel entered the room shortly after the dump with an open flame to demonstrate both the fire suppression capability and personnel safety of the agent (the flame was immediately extinguished and the personnel noticed no ill effects).
 

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...)
 

Following the hard week reported in last week's report, we found success in both the 2K and the 4K commissioning efforts this week. We can now go into S1 with respectable performance in both of our interferometers. Rana has put a plot in the Hanford e-log showing the strain of all three LIGO interferometers (search on rana around wednesday of the week). The good news is that all three have nearly equal strain sensitivity at 1 kHz. The bad news is that neither of the Hanford IFO's are quite as good in strain as Livingston at the most sensitive frenquency. Both interferometers here have displayed good stability with locks of 6-10 hours not uncommon. Thanks to all the visitors who helped us get here!
 

2K IFO Repair
-------------
At this point, I consider the 2K IFO repair complete. The IFO operates in common-mode configuration with ASPD powers comparable to before. Lock robustness and lock acquisition are much better than before. During a tour for the visiting SURF students, the IFO lost lock and reacquired within about 30 seconds! Virginio has been troubleshooting the alignment issues encountered on the antisymmetric port detection table. The strain spectrum shows a significant "mechanical-looking" structure at frequencies in the 100's of Hz. (Livingston shows similar structures but at a lower strain level.) Virginio has shown that these resonances are coherent both with measured accelerations on the optical table and with the DClight level on the ASPD. Furthermore, he can excite the resonances in strain by increasing vibration on the table. A more systematic study of this effect is planned. Probably should be looked at in Livingston also. A dark noise measurement has shown that the IFO is dark-noise limited in a narrow band of frequencies from 1-2 kHz. Above 2 kHz, the strain spectrum deviates strongly from what we would expect from a flat noise spectrum at the ASPD and it fluctuates by a factor of two hour by hour. Stefan has analyzed a mini-S0 clip of data from the IFO and sees bursts extending from many- to few- kHz that have a typical burst frequency of ~ 1.2 Hz. We will be looking at both this effect and the power spectra further next week. Currently we see significantly improved strains at sub-100 Hz frequencies when we operate without the ETM optical levers and the QPD damping loops. This was previously impossible. Our guess is that the increased stability stems from having fixed the SM1 suspension controller which had been out of operation prior to late July. However we have not established that the data quality for science is not compromised by having these loops off. We have been doing loop gain measurements and other optimizing efforts.
 

4k IFO investigations
---------------------
Mike Z. and Daniel managed to get the common-mode servo working and now the strain sensitivity of this IFO is vastly improved, although the peak sensitivity does not yet rival the other two interferometers. But we still have a week to tune. Daniel has been scripting and tuning the filters for this machine and we will be pursuing other optimizations.
 

FACILITIES
------------------
The critical systems required for the LSC meeting on Monday will likely be complete by Friday afternoon. As of this writing (8 pm Thursday) there are no show stoppers. Some minor items of work will need to be finished later. We are sufficiently far along to begin planning the move of LDAS into its custom-built lab.
 

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

IFO: Work on WFS2 continued this week (see also under CDS). Andri and Gabi created a "poor person's phase camera" that allowed scanning across the beam at the side band at the reflected port. They discovered the existence of a bulls eye mode which indicates some mismatch of the light into the PRM. The signals were as expected when the RM was misaligned. These investigations are continuing. PEPI is is now installed and is in a state that appears to be adequate and beneficial for S1. The micro-seismic feed-forward (MSFF) is also operating. We are planning to operate both of these systems together and will watch them closely since we are aware that ground motion around 0.8 Hz is outside of the band where the MSFF is beneficial.
 

CDS: We are continuing the work with Gaby to straighten out the wave front sensors. In particular, this week we are troubleshooting the DC read backs for pitch and yaw on WFS 1, 2, 3 & 4. The board inventory for the installation of the digital suspensions is complete. We are completing the rack assemblies in preparation for early September installation. I am also working on the schedule for the post S1 activities. We have installed a new rack in the mass storage room. The electronics work for PEPI is complete. This work included building passive filters, installing remote enabling control for the system, and installing 4 data acquisition channels. (Rus)
 

LDAS:
* Finished writing correlation DSO. Testing it.
* Fixed a bug in a slope DSO that sometimes produced huge unreasonable amplitudes for the last trigger in a segment. More testing is needed.
(Igor)
 

Work continues on the AC for the new building. An initial draft of the bid package for the time and materials contract for office and lab construction in the new building is nearly complete. We have provided some revised figures to Ruth Brambila for inclusion in that document. Spreading of crushed rock behind the new building to control erosion on the slopes is underway, but hampered by the once or twice per day rains we are now experiencing. The furniture for the patio was delivered and assembled this week.
 

Brian O'Reilly began work this week as a research scientist at LLO.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

August 16, 2002

• General issues:
• The 40m Technical Advisory Committee will meet at 9am PDT Wednesday, August 21, at the LSC meeting. All are welcome to attend.
• Our five SURF students are nearing the end of their work. They will present results on SURF seminar day, 9am PDT Tuesday, August 20, at 351 W. Bridge. All are welcome to attend.
• Suspended mass mode cleaner (Ugolini, Miyakawa, Vass, Abbott, Benna, Bonfield, Berdnikov):
• Our mode cleaner is now locking reliably (since Friday 8/9/02), with lock stretches lasting for hours, through the night. Lock will break if you walk by the small MCCM chamber, but will often be re-acquired seconds later.
• To accomplish this, Osamu replaced the MC control servo board with a bunch of SR560 amplifiers, handling the PSL/VCO frequency path and the DSC/MC2 length path. He spent some time tuning them up.
• To diagnose why the MC servo board doesn't seem to work, Dennis, Ilya and David carefully measured the transfer functions for each piece of the board, including the boost path. They can only find one discrepancy: the final pole-zero in the length path was removed by shorting a single capacitor. The remaining resistors in the differential amplifier, however, now act as a 14 dB attenuator. There are two 7.5K resistors at the output that should be replaced with shorts.
• Dennis and Ilya have compared their measured transfer functions with the design, using a simulink model of the MC servo from Rana.
• Dennis and Ilya then carefully compared the actuation signals from the MC servo board with those coming from Osamu's SR560 setup. They found that the DSC/MC2 length path was identical, and they were quickly able to achieve lock with Osamu's VCO path and the board's length path (turning the boost gain to 10 dB after acquisition makes it hold indefinitely).
• But, the PSL/VCO frequency path is very different, in magnitude, phase, and behavior during lock acquisition. The behavior during lock acquisition suggested to Jay that there's a DC offset in the MC servo board; this is now under investigation.
• The MC was observed to lock in 2 different states. Osamu traced this to a mis-oriented polarizing beam splitter, which was permitting some light with the "wrong" (P) polarization into the MC. This light would resonate with low finesse, giving a strong error signal. Osamu removed the offending polarizing beam splitter, and the MC now locks reliably in the high-finesse mode only.
• This beam splitter is used to provide variable attenuation of beam power just before the periscope. It will be replaced and carefully aligned, soon.
• Osamu measured the visibility of the MC cavity to be 86%.
• Osamu has tried measuring the finesse from the MC cavity ringdown, but does not have a good way of interrupting the beam quickly enough (microseconds); he will work on commissioning an electro-optic shutter for this task. Meanwhile, by switching the VCO, he has gotten a few decent measurements, measuring finesse to be between 800 and 1800 (design is 1550). He tried to take an OLTF to see the cavity pole; he very crudely measured it to be at 2.3 kHz; design is 3.5 kHz.
• Next, we will measure the cavity length (using 33.207 MHz sideband transmission). We will continue to fix and tune the length servo. We'll commission state code to automatically transit from acquire mode to low-noise mode. And we'll fully characterize the MC performance.
• Suspension Controllers (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor, Ugolini, Miyakawa, Berdnikov):
• Ilya has been working on pushing the MC mirrors through a FSR in order to calibrate the sensor and coil readback values.
• Ilya has diagonalized MC2 and MC3 following Mark Barton's procedure. He was unsuccessful in diagonalizing MC1, and indeed, it appears that there is something wrong with MC1. (The osems on this optic were moved around, prior to pump-down, in order to zero the pitch/yaw biases). The lower osem sensor readings seem railed at some large value, and don't change when you put in a pitch or yaw bias. And yet, the optic appears to be well damped, and it's Q was measured successfully. This mystery is under investigation.
• Ilya has measured the Q of MC1 to be 2, and MC2 to be 3. MC3 is next.
• Boxes and holders to protect the satellite amplifiers and strain relieve the cables to and from it, are in construction at CES.
• PSL/IOO (Ugolini, Abbott, Miyakawa, Vass, Sekido): Osamu and Aya adjusted the lenses that mode-match from the PMC into the mode cleaner, one last time. They measured a waist at the projected MC waist position, of within 5% of spec. Thus, the mode matching is quite good. Osamu has also installed the 2nd EOM (for the transmitted sidebands at 33.207 MHz) and an electro-optic shutter to aid in MC ringdown measurements.
• Optical sensing (Smith):
• AP1 ISC Optical Train: The spot size matching lenses in the AP1 ISC table optical train were determined, and components were moved to establish the appropriate beam spot sizes throughout the optical train. The integrated layout drawing was updated to reflect the changes.
• IFO Beam Parameters: The IFO beam waists and wavefront curvatures at all of the IFO mirrors and pick-off beams were re-calculated based on the 40 m updated parameters (AJW 5/16/2002). The wavefront radii do not match the PRM and SRM specified curvatures. The worst case tolerance of the PRM has a radius mismatch of 33m; the worst case tolerance of the SRM has a radius mismatch of 36m. The optical paths and path lengths from the IFO beam waist to the ISC tables were determined for the BS PO and the ITM PO ISC beams. This information will be needed to calculate the guoy phases of those two ISC beams.
• Note from AJW: indeed, the ROC specs for the core optics were incorrect, due to a change in cavity lengths made on 10/31/01 (the optics went out for polishing on 10/24/01, and the specs were not revised). However, the spec'ed ROCs and the as-delivered ROCs are all well within tolerance, as far as mode mismatch is concerned; so this isn't a problem.
• Optics Parts List: Purchase orders are being processed for most of the opto-mechanical parts for the AP1, AP2, ITM PO, BS PO, ETM PO, and SPS ISC beams and sensing table optical trains. Missing lenses and lens holders for the IO diagnostics optical train were ordered; the lens holders were received, and the lenses are due to be received by 8/16.
• Optics (Billingsley, Armandula) and suspensions (Romie):
• All of our core optics, polished and coated, are in hand, at last!
• Helena measured radius of curvature, after coating, on (40m) ETM's and ITM's. There's a reasonably-well matched pair of ETMs and ITMs.
• Reflection on the beamsplitter coating was measured at Caltech by L. Zhang and L. Cardenas. In good agreement with spec and REO's measurement.
• Betsy is going to try to get here Sept 10-20. Helena, Betsy and I will be assembling a BS, ITM and ETM during that time.
• Electronics (B. Abbott, Taylor):
• Bob continues to work on the cabling of 1Y4, the digital suspension controller rack for the BS,PRM,SRM,ITMs.
• Bob continues to work on wiring and cabling of the auxiliary rack (1X1: video switch, camera power, illuminator controls, mechanical and EO shutter controls).
• Bob will be building LED/PD boards for the OSEMs, under Todd's supervision.
• Steve is ordering more SR560's to help commission control loops.
• We continue to await decision on the fate of Penteks, which we need to complete our main IFO DSC, LSC, ASC systems.
• Ben is on vacation this week.
• Wavefront Sensing (Marcus Benna): SURF Marcus Benna has studied the WFS alignment signals for 40m and AdvLIGO. He studied ModalModel, but could not succeed in making it work reliably for dual recycling. He wrote his own, compact Mathematica calculation, comparing against Twiddle for DC fields, and Modal Model for Initial LIGO alignment sensing. He finds that the sensing configuration (lengths, RF sidebands, pattern of resonances) which were designed for good length sensing, are NOT good for alignment sensing. D(ETM) and D(ITM) signals are degenerate; the signals only appear in the dark port, and no signal is available in the bright port to break the degeneracy (as in Initial LIGO). Reducing the sideband contrast (9/180 -> 36/180) may help; more f2 at bright port gives some D(ITM) signal there. Still under investigation!
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Vass, Jones):
• The 40m vacuum is in good shape, at around 1.5e-6 torr with the maglev turbopump and the cryopump. H2O completely dominates. The RGA scans look good. We are now logging scans from the SRS RGA twice a day.
• TO DO list for vacuum controls: implement remote control and readback of new turbopump controllers via RS232; re-implement remote control and readback of ion pump controllers; add state recognition state code to vacuum EPICS control.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor, Cardenas):
• Bob has set up a space in the South Annex for OSEM production work.
• Bake ovens B,C,D, and E are in full working order. several bake jobs for SURF Dan Mason were completed last week.
• New bake oven F is being baked out this week. Bob is building a new temperature controller for it.
• We will do another careful RGA scan of the not-yet-installed in-vacuum cables. These apparently have unpassivated Teflon insulation, with possible risk of HF mirror etching (fluorine content not controlled). Eight sets of these cables have already been installed in the 40m, and no evidence of contamination has been seen in the 40m RGA scans.

August 9, 2002

• Suspended mass mode cleaner (Ugolini, Miyakawa, Vass, Abbott, Benna, Bonfield, Berdnikov):
• We pumped down last Thursday, and all suspensions maintained their alignment. The alignment is good, and bright TEM00 fringes are seen.
• Attempts at MC locking have not yet been successful. The feedback to the PSL VCO allows us to hold lock for up to 0.5 secs, but adding the length control feedback path does seem to improve (or hurt) this.
• We are now systematically checking everything in the VCO and length control paths.
• Osamu measured the VCO loop gain at 20 kHz (the design UGF for acquisition mode) to be 0.01, with a phase lag of 180 degrees.
• Dennis turned up the light incident on the MC from ~ 100 mW to ~500 mW, and the gain at the design UGF went up to 0.3. Dennis will measure the power incident on the length sensing RFPD.
• Dave took transfer functions of the length control servo board (both paths), and the VCO actuation path.
• Osamu and Aya adjusted the mode matching into the IOO pockels cells and the mode cleaner. This resulted in a significant improvement in the brightness of the TEM00 fringe, with much less strong higher orders. The locking time increased to 0.5 secs.
• Suspension Controllers (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor, Ugolini, Miyakawa, Berdnikov):
• Ilya installed the GDS system and has been using it regularly.
• Ilya and Mark Barton used the GDS system to diagonalize the input matrix for the MC2 suspension controller, with very good results. Ilya tried to repeat this with MC1, but with unsatisfactory results. He'll try MC3 next, and then go back to MC1, with help from Mark if necessary.
• Ilya measured the Q of MC2 to be ~ 15. with damping gains in all degrees of freedom set to 1. We will turn the gains up to get a Q of ~ 3 (design).
• Dennis and Ben cured various ills in the MC suspensions and the satellite amplifier boxes. The resistors in the satellite amps that set the sensor and coil gains were put back to 20 kOhm ("acquisition mode" gain) instead of the 40 kOhm for "low noise" mode. When we can establish reliable lock and good headroom, we'll switch these resistors back.
• Dennis, Ben, and Ilya determined that the misbehavior of MC1 was due to an exceedingly large roll mode at 23.71 Hz, which was being rung up by the DSC and totally dominated the motion. They inserted a Q of 100 digital notch filter that effectively attenuated this peak by 70 dB, below the level of the bounce. Next, they'll notch out the bounce mode as well.
• Before we closed up and pumped down, much effort went into zeroing the pitch and yaw biases required in all suspensions; but we had limited success. We speculate that this may be due to magnetized OSEM components, causing the optic to "follow" the osems when the latter are moved.
• Larry Jones has designed, and submitted to CES, boxes and holders to protect the satellite amplifiers and strain relieve the cables to and from it.
• PSL/IOO (Ugolini, Abbott, Miyakawa, Vass, Sekido): Osamu and Aya measured the beam transverse profile at locations corresponding to the IOO pockels cells and the mode cleaner. They adjusted the mode matching lenses, resulting in significant improvement in themode matching into the mode cleaner; see above. Still, it is not clear that the correct procedure was followed, so they will repeat this work, following Mike Smith's outlined procedure.
• Optical sensing (Smith):
• IFO Mode Matching Telescope: A final design for a remotely focusable, vacuum compatible, off-axis telescope has been completed. A specification for the parabolic mirrors has been written and is out for quotations.
• Quad Photodiode Mounting Pedestal: The parts for insulated mounting pedestals for the quad photodiode boxes have been received. New mounting holes will be drilled in the boxes to accommodate the pedestals.
• Optics Parts List: Purchase orders have been prepared for most of the opto-mechanical parts for the AP1, AP2, ITM PO, BS PO, ETM PO, and SPS ISC beams and sensing table optical trains. The optical layout ACad drawing and table drawings are being updated to reflect the reworked parts list.
• Optics (Billingsley, Armandula): We have received the coated ITM's, ETM's, and BS's from REO. All received optics are being characterized after coating. Preliminary results look good. All the remaining coated optics (PRMs and SRMs) should be here in the next week or 2. We will be ready to start suspending these optics in September, with a visit by Betsy to help/teach us to assemble and hang them.
• Electronics (B. Abbott, Taylor):
• Alex Ivanov installed the Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) system and the GDS software, and it is now in heavy use. We'd like the ability to excite some channels that it is not yet possible to excite (in particular, the pitch and yaw dof's of the suspensions). Jay says that Rolf is working on the ability to do this, with the new DSC filter banks, right now.
• The Penteks that we need to complete our main IFO DSC, LSC, ASC systems have not yet been ordered, pending decision on the new Frequency Devices DACs. Jay hopes that the dust will settle on this issue, in the next couple of months.
• The VME crate and associated hardware for the digital alignment sensing and control for our mode cleaner is "moving forward". Ben has most of the hardware; the software is almost done, but is on hold due to higher-priority tasks.
• Bob is wiring up the auxiliary rack (1X1: video switch, camera power, illuminator controls, mechanical and EO shutter controls) and associated cabling. He's waiting on a shipment of relays, and is going ahead with building a panel of rheostats for the illuminators.
• Ben and Bob continue to assemble parts and wiring for completion of the main IFO DSC racks (1Y4, 1Y10, 1X4). We need some of it to damp the suspensions we hope to hand in September. The goal is to have this system completed by the end of this calendar year, pending the Pentek decision.
• Wavefront Sensing (Marcus Benna): Marcus has written his own Mathematica-based wavefront sensing model for a dual-recycled ifo. All DC fields agree perfectly with Twiddle (and E2E and ModalModel). The Guoy and RF phase calculations for a power-recycled ifo (Initial LIGO) show some discrepancies with ModalModel, which he is investigating. He has calculated a full wavefront sensing matrix for the dual-recycled 40m (and AdvLIGO), without the need for nonresonant sidebands. The matrix is reasonable, but not as diagonal as we'd hoped. There is weak separation between the PRM and SRM, and the SRM signal is weak everywhere. It still may be good enough. If not, we still might need a NRSB to nail the PRM, so that the SRM can be controlled.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Vass, Jones):
• The vertex area crane was repaired, permitting Steve and company to seal up the vertex area chambers. Steve will also replace the large and heavy crane controls with smaller, less dangerous ones.
• We pumped down the 40m on Thursday. There was a leak, due to a loose gasket, which was found and tightened. After that, the pumpdown went smoothly. We are using new turbopumps and dry scroll forepumps. The scroll pumps appear to have significantly less throughput than advertised (~ 3 m^3/hr as opposed to 5). Steve will investigate whether this is a problem for us, and whether the manufacturer can give us better/larger pumps.
• We are now down to ~ 2e-6 torr, using the turbopumps and the cryopump. Water totally dominates.
• The RGA scan looks good: there is no sign, at the 1e-10 torr level, of anything other than water and air. the Dycor and SRS RGA's agree, and they both agree with our new CC gauges on the total pressure.
• TO DO list for vacuum controls: implement remote control and readback of new turbopump controllers via RS232; re-implement remote control and readback of ion pump controllers; add state recognition state code to vacuum EPICS control.
• From Larry jones: Strain relief for Input Optics chamber cables: completed. Stand for Satellite Amplifier Box: design complete, in shop. Fixture for holding 30'" adjustable bellows: still awaiting welding (low priority). 5 Optical Table cover assemblies: went out for anodizing; expect completion next week.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor, Cardenas): Bake ovens B,C,D, and E are in full working order. Bob is nearing completion of new oven F; working on the temperature controllers. Bob is doing several bake jobs for SURF Dan Mason.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

Since our last report, we re-optimized the OSEM heads, realigned the
interferometer, closed the vacuum chamber, and pumped out. We found that
we had successfully balanced both the power in each arm cavity and the
response of the photodiodes, and we were ready to lock the instrument and
take data.
 

With the new servo electronics and low-noise summing junctions, built by
SURF student Kyle Barbary, we were able to quickly acquire lock in either
the South or the North Arm Cavities, though getting them to lock together
was somewhat tricky. We characterized the open-loop transfer function and
noise level in SAC, and found that the noise floor had come up. Part of
this was due to electronic crosstalk between the NAC and SAC servo
filters, which we were able to eliminate fairly easily and thus
eliminate most of the increase in the noise. We are in the
process of measuring the noise floor in NAC.
 

We also recalibrated the tni, using the (well known) laser pzt transfer
function as a reference to determine the mirror response. A crude
measurement, performed some time ago using an auxiliary Michelson
interferometer, gave approximately 1.0 microns per volt at dc. Today's
more accurate measurement gave 0.63 microns per volt at dc. Since the
total noise floor in the tni scales as the mirror response, this means
that all of our previous noise estimates were high by about a factor of
1.6.
 

In December of last year, we estimated our noise floor to be 1.5e-18m/rHz
from about 2kHz to 4kHz. Based on our new measurement of the mirror
response, we believe that we actually achieved 9e-19m/rHz at that time.

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Fyffe, Goldman, Harry, Kern, MacInnis, Mason, Mittleman, Ottaway,
Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
=============================================================

VACUUM ENVELOPE:
There was a power failure Tuesday. The vacuum
equipment interlocks performed correctly and everything dropped into a
safe state (valves closed, etc.). Pressure rose to the 1e-5 range but
recovered quickly to the mid- 1e-7 range after power was restored and
the pumps were restarted.

PSL:
Dave Ottaway investigated a potential new source for photodiodes
and placed an order.

MEPI design and assembly:
The first MEPI was installed on HAM 13. This week we balanced and
aligned the unit. The wiring for the electromagnetic actuators and all
sensors has been completed (thanks Mike Fyffe!).  The pneumatics used
for course actuation has been installed and tested.

The second MEPI unit has been installed on HAM 13. We will begin the
alignment today.

We have not recieved the lift needed for removing the old piers located
near the back wall. The manufacturer, Genie Lift, went on a plant
shutdown. Myron has been looking into making a lift to remove the old
piers and install the thinner HAM pier.

Dynamical modelling of the HAM MEPI system is making progress.
 

Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 12:22:11 -0400

LASTI (Fyffe, Goldman, Harry, Kern, MacInnis, Mason, Mittleman, Ottaway,
Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
=============================================================

VACUUM ENVELOPE: Normal operation, no events.

PSL: Normal, no changes.

CDS: Normal, no changes.

EXTERNAL PRE-ISOLATORS FOR LLO SEISMIC RETROFIT:

Ken Mason writes:

MEPI  Modeling (Mittleman, Ottoway)
On the modelling front Rich and I spent some time advancing the HAM
models and the driving point
impedances should be available by the end of the week.

MEPI / LASTI (Mason, Ottaway, Mittleman, Megan, Kern)

The first MEPI assembly was removed from HAM 20 and installed on HAM 13
(LASTI HAM with full stack and 2 small optics).
A scheme to equalize the tension of the eight springs supporting the HAM
stack was developed.
We've decided upon load cells and modified and installed 8 for the LASTI
HAM. Also installed
fixtures and tooling to monitor  each corners
displacement.  We observed a yaw error of ~40 u-rad.
LASTI is our proving ground and we'll be refining procedures on the
remaining three actuators. See some images of the installation at

http://tintagel.mit.edu/~jkern/

Jonathan Kern writes:

MEPI / LASTI

The first MEPI assembly was installed in LASTI's HAM-13 this week.
We're paying particular attention to the installation procedures of the
External Pre-isolator because identical EPIs will be used for HEPI as
well.  We spent considerable time designing a scheme wherein we might
equalize as nearly as possible the tension of the two springs supporting
the payload.  We've decided upon load cells and modified and installed 8
for the LASTI HAM. Also installed fixtures and tooling to monitor the
each corners displacement.  We observed a yaw error of ~40 u-rad. Given
the level of tooling and fixtures we prepared (none), we're pleased with
this error. LASTI is our proving ground and we'll be refining procedures
on the remaining three actuators. See some images of the installation at

http://tintagel.mit.edu/~jkern/

First batch of parts for the actuator is expected next week.  Also
promised on Monday is the set of 8 machined springs for LASTI-HEPI.
We've issued a PO to the machine shop doing the springs to assemble,
braze and plate the springs for which they promise an additional 2 weeks
time. HYSPAN states that they will ship the bellows on Aug 15.

Hammond, Kern
 

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E weekly Physics meeting
-------------------------------
Hiro, Biplab and Bill Kells discussed about a bug encountered while Bill was
studying the effects of misalignments in arm cavity using Han2kFP model. Matt
discussed progress in new field model for optics simulation. Luca described
his experience with the new simLIGO model and its various features.

maillist
--------------
(Hiro) Now that more people are using e2e in widespread areas throughout the
world, announcements about the new release, bug fix and, most importantly,
open discussion related to simulation need to be done more efficiently and in an
organized way. Toward that goal, we have created the following 4 maillists,
This will be announced to public soon.

LIGO-e2e-announce :
Announcements related to LIGO e2e software will be posted here.
This includes (1) new release of the simulation package (modeler, alfi, etc)
and (2) new release of LIGO simulation (SimLIGO, Han2k, etc). Other
warnings like a serious bug found in the current release and workaround of
it will also be posted here. Softwares will be downloaded from e2e homepage
as now.

LIGO-e2e-physics :
Discussion about the physics related to LIGO, questions and answers about
how to use the simulation for specific problems, interesting observation
found using the simulation, suggestions of physics to be included in e2e
(like radiation pressure, role mode of mirror, wedge angle, etc).

LIGO-e2e-GUI :
Discussion about the graphical front end of e2e, ALFI, Q and A of how to
do this, suggestions, etc. Specific suggestions and bug reports need to
be posted to the bug report section in the e2e homepage. This maillist will
be used for discussions.

LIGO-e2e-programming :
Programming details will be posted here, including useful commitments
to CVS fixing improving this and that. If you want to keep up-to-date in
the day-by-day basis, or are interested in programming details, subscribe this.
After reasonable amount of changes are made, a newer version will be released
and announced in the LIGO-e2e-announce maillist.

HAM Stack motion
-------------------
Sany and Raghu of SLU and Hiro worked to characterize the HAM1 motion.
The goal is to understand the stack motion, translation and rotation,
and study the effect of the stack motion to the signal. The current focus
is the table top and mirror rotation using signals using Optical Lever and
OESM. Raghu gave a SURF presentation about the first step (measurement and
e2e modeling) of the work.

Code development and maintenance
----------------------------------
(Matt) Continued restructuring of internal E2E field model.

(Hiro) Development of a new primitive, FUNC with bundle inputs and outputs,
and the phase map modeling based on real measurement which can be used by e2e
and FFT, are still going on.

(Biplab) Tested the misalignment calculations in cavities in order to solve
the problem encountered by Bill Kells.

Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
- Finished initial implementation of repositionable ports in the external view.
- Updated Alfi 5 usage document.
- Fixed various small bugs I noticed while implementing the repositionable ports.

(Melody)
- Continuing work on the automated tester for alfi5.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)
A couple of minor patches were made to the LDAS 0.4.0 release. These were to
fix documentation and slightly improve performance of the system under abnormal
conditions (such as failure of a node in the beowulf). There is a new issue in
this release for job requests that use the encrypted password mode that is
currently integrated into the ldasjobs package in LIGO Tools. A fix for this
has not been identified and as a fail-back we may have to disable the use
of password encryption if the fix isn't discovered soon. In addition we are
adding more extensive testing of this password mode to duplicate the problem
which only occurs when a high rate of requests come into the manager (order
one in ten problem typically though seen to sometimes be significantly less).

A somewhat global and rather significant issue came up this week with regard
to the numbering of the frame version in frame files by frameCPP. It was first
discovered by noting that frames created with LDAS had the version number of
5 while frames created with the framebuilder had the version number of 4. Yet
each uses the same code base (frameCPP) for I/O into frame files. In addition,
the version 5 frameCPP is under development and not yet complete, hence not
yet in CVS. The problem was traced down to having two dimensions - one a bit
of good fortune the other a bit of bad fortune. In April of 2002, the source
code in CVS was prematurely (or mistakenly) modified from writing the Frame format ID value in each frame it produces from 4 to 5. LDAS
has stayed up to date on its version of frameCPP source code, so since April
any frames written by LDAS would have the INCORRECT version number of 5.

However
tools such as the framebuilder and DMT were not upgraded to the newer versions
of frameCPP since the December 2001 version, hence the real time systems
are still writing frames with version 4. This older version has several serious
design flaws that need to be corrected for LDAS use (such as incorrect handing of byte swapping
between big endian and little endian applications and incorrect metadata about
the geometry of the detectors). These were fixed in later versions of LDAS and
were necessary for the successful running of search codes developed by the
LSC. The plan for the science run demanded some strategy to be able to
correctly identify the version number. Simply changing the version back to
4 in the CVS respository would break search codes. Leaving it at 5 would cause
problems once the "true" version 5 I/O libraries were officially released. To
solve this problem we (meaning GDS and LDAS) decided to continue to use the December version of the
frameCPP library in the framebuilder and DMT and continue to use the current
CVS frameCPP in LDAS even though it will generate RDS frames with version 5.
We will "skip" official version 5 and go directly to 6 in the next version number of the official frame specification.
THis solution allows for a unique association to persist between the version number and the content
of the frames. In addition, LDAS will need to completely re-run the generation of the
RDS frames once the new frameCPP for the now version 6 specificaiton is available
in about a month. Only the version 6 RDS frames would be stored in the archive.
This decision was made in concurrence with Virgo.

The work on the new *now* version 6 frameCPP continued this week. Unit tests
will begin late this week, with integration testing starting next week.

This week's dataConditioning effort included addressing an LSC problem report
concerning the correctness and depth of explaination of linier filtering web
documentation. This was fixed for all LDAS webservers. In addition, coding
for the real(), imag(), and abs() dynamic type preservation was finished and
tests are now being worked on. A new matric class was proposed and distributed
within the group for comment and feedback. New goals and requirements were
outlined and documented. Finally, the long standing issue of having several
hundred server sockets within the dataConditionAPI for communications with
the wrapperAPI was reduced down the the functional requirements of having
only a single server socket thought the use of handshakes. This removed the
continuing issue of syncronization of port number used by jobs between the
dataConditionAPI, mpiAPI and the wrapperAPI. This changes also required
similar changes to the wrapperAPI, mpiAPI and the managerAPI.

The implementation effort to have more threaded C++ functionality in the
frameAPI was renewed this week. A deeper understanding of the cause of the
1000x slowdown has been traced and implemented and several improvements in
the choice of the different frame reader methods has been cleaned up in a
single class. This is also expected to solve the issue in jobs such as the
stochastic and periodic searches which need multiple sources of input data
which caused huge (~100x) slowdowns in the performance of the frameAPI when
these jobs run with jobs that only have a single source of input data.

The controlMonitorAPI now has new monitoring graphics for generating histo-
grams of the time jobs spend in various APIs and other holding tanks within
LDAS. This is a very powerful tool for discovering bi-modal and non-linear
behavior in the code.

Two new user commands were added to LDAS (dataStandAlone and putStandAlone)
that allows LDAS to handle running of a job up to the point of using its own
internal Beowulf cluster. But stopping at that point and handing off the job
to a GRID resource where a standalone version of the wrapperAPI can be run
on say larger computer resources at NCSA and then be able to pick back up the
job and complete it with an LDAS system to properly handle all final data
products and database requests once the stand-alone wrapperAPI completes on
the larger GRID resource. These new commands will be demoed this November at
the Supercomputing Conference in Baltimore. This work was completed in less
than a week and demonstrate the tremendous flexibility of LDAS to integrate
with some of the GRID technologies being developed in a positive why which
allows for a consistent development enviroment for code developers while
also opening the door to greater computational resources than either LIGO Lab or the LSC can provide for LIGO data analysis.
 

Hardware Systems (Mendell reporting for Anderson)
(Greg Mendell)

1) Another beowulf node had a hard disk failure at LHO.  Previously
another node had a similar failure, and another node had a failed
onboard network interface.  New parts for these node shipped at the
beginning of this week and should arrive today.  The nodes should be
repaired by the end of this week, and reinstalled and tested by Monday
of next week, in time for use in the S1 run if all goes well.  Note
these failures represent 3 out of 64 computers, which is not an unusual
"infant mortality" failure rate for new computers.

2) I've inspected the LDAS room in the new building. We have nice 12
foot high ceilings. Previously I've made measurements to make drawings
of the new LDAS room, as part of plans to move LDAS into the new
building at LHO at the end of September or early October.  I am
coordinating with Otto and Richard so that fiber, cable trays, fire
suppression, power, and AC should be in place for a move at this time.

3) I'm still waiting on the new IDE RAID system.

(Dan Kozak)

HPSS: continued migration of small files off of 3590 tapes.  Also did a
lot of account creations.

Continued working with SAM-QFS on the ldas-archive system.

(Igor Yakushin)

No sysadmin activity at LLO this week.

(Keith Bayer)

gc:

troubleshot gc machines after power failure
troubleshot email forwarding problems for remote gc accounts
spec'd out and ordered Dell (Precision 340) PC for (Peter/Richard)
continuing to acquire network bandwidth stats

ldas:

boot / network tested all 16 PC's from Livingston
working on striping the Raid unit 1.1TB files systems together
other various PC raid testing.

(Al Wilson)

With Shannon, got the first BSD VPN machine running at Caltech

Did some fine-tuning on Big Brother at Caltech sites

After some false alarms, looked at the overall security of systems at
Caltech

(Larry Wallace)

Tracked down a number of procurements. The Foundry switch and the disk
raid systems. The Foundry Switch finally arrived. The order for the raid
system going to Caltech has been placed and the units for the
Observatories have shipped.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
T. Creighton:  prepared a presentation on the FCT algorithm for the upcoming LSC meeting.

Mendell: Worked on LSC talk giving an update on the knownpulsardemod DSO for
the PULG session.  The talk is available at this URL:
http://apex.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~gmendell/talks/talkkpdLSCAug2002.pdf

Shawhan:
* Finalized E7 veto optimization study for inspiral analysis.  Wrote it up
nicely for the inspiral analysis document, and prepared slides for LSC
meeting.

Weinstein:
- Completed running of all 3 burst DSOs (power, tfcluster, slope)
  on full E7 H2/L1 coincidence data,
  and collected all triggers into the metaDB and into
  xml files for EventTool analysis.
- Working on scripts for online (S1) burst dso running
  using Duncan's online DSO Monitoring Tool.
 

MIT et al.:
The main feature of this week's data analysis work at MIT
was the analysis of the E7 data for the bursts pipeline
as defined on the playground set. LDAS jobs were submitted
by Alan on LDAS-MIT. Analysis was performed by Stefan, Laura
and Erik and preliminary results submitted to Finn&Saulson
for the E7 final report. Specific tasks that were carried over:
o E7 segment-by-segment analysis of triggers and vetoes (Stefan/Laura/Erik)
o TFClusters, Slope and Power event statistics (Laura, Erik)
o MICH_CTRL/AS_Q signal ratios as seen by TFCluster and Slope
  over entire E7 (Stefan)
o First analysis of pre-S1 low noise run at LHO (Stefan).

Yakushin:
* Finished writing correlation DSO. Testing it.
* Fixed a bug in a slope DSO that sometimes produced huge unreasonable
amplitudes for the last trigger in a segment. More testing is needed.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Troubleshot gc machines after power failure
-Troubleshot email forwarding problems for remote gc accounts
-Spec'd out and ordered Dell (Precision 340) PC for (Peter/Richard)
-Continuing to acquire network bandwidth stats

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Resolved a virus/hack problem.
-Met with Larry and went over VPN setup and a few other s/w programs
that may be of help in managing the PC's.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Swapped the old cisco router for a newer model to see if it would help
with the WAN upgrade problems.  It didn't.  Will be trying some other
hardware changes to see if we can eliminate the errors and increase the
bandwidth.
- Setting up projectors and computers for LSC breakout rooms.
Installing wireless and ethernet network hardware in the new building.
The fiber between the buildings should be terminated by Friday.
- Larry will be arriving to help out with LSC setup.  We'll be working
on the VRVS video conferencing setup.
- Compiled a list of submitted MAC addresses for LSC attendees.
- Added some new user accounts and removed one not being used anymore.

(Larry)
-Contacted Cullen concerning the WAN upgrade issues. He and his group are
stumped. The new router did get things back to T1 speeds but that is about it.
-Checked with a few other companies selling long distance media converters.
It looks like a number of them use units from Omnitron systems. They will
ship it overnight if we need it.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Worked on the NT4.0 servers doing some administration like updating
software and going through security logs looking for potential hacking
attempts. Check for viruses and looked for system errors. Everything seems
to okay!
-On the second floor students were having some software problems this
turned out to be permission problems that I had to correct. They are now up
and running once again.
-Reloaded the new Antares server. After installing service pack
three, this server went south. I reloaded this server with service pack two
and critical updates. Service pack three seems to have some major issues
and is not recommendable to update. Service pack two and critical updates
is all we need as of now, for those users that are running 2000 Pro.
The old Antares server is swapped out and up and running on the new server.
-Working on reloading the Amaldi server, which is currently running on NTSRV
4.0 to Server 2000.
-Swapped out a French students old computer with a high-end computer in order
for user to run data analysts. Plus I had to configure users network settings
and setup email.
-Reinstalled the distiller for Rita, the Adobe Acrobat was corrupted. Then I
had problems with office 2000; I ended up having to reinstall.
-We have two computers to reload due to being infected by viruses. These
computers could have been prevented from getting infected, if these users
had paid attention to the "General Computing update" email messages that "I
send out on a regular basis" these computers would have not been affected.
This also looks like real time protection was disabled. Or could have been
corrupted by the viruses which some viruses corrupt the virus scan software
first then proceed to corrupting the OS. This is why I send out the current
date for (current live updates) to prevent attacks like this. After a
computer is infected with a virus and I'm notified ASAP, I can usually save
the Operating System before the virus/viruses have taken their full course.
These computers were a month behind in (Live updates) Even if you have auto
updates configured it is important to check to see if your computer is
running the current update. Be aware if your Norton Anti-virus software is
not updating, you more than likely you have a virus.
I send out email: subject line (General Computing Update) The users that
were infected were surf students; our regular staff users are doing a great
job keeping their anti-virus software updated and if there is a problem
they contact me right away.
(Special Thanks To You All)

(Wendy)
-upgraded/ghosted a few machines with Mike
-started working with tapes with the rest of the crew
-updated a bit the computer inventory on vega

(Mick)
-Worked on moving the 8MM backups to AIT tapes.
-Assisted on a few upgrades of PC's.
-Took care of some RMA equipment.

(Lisa)
- Began working on fixing the handling of mime attachments in the mailman
archives.  I am also looking at incorporating a search engine into the archives.
Note:  the mailman mailing lists will be down at intermittent times so that I
can get the tools working.  I will send out notices and try to keep it to off
hours.
- Created some new mailman mailing lists.
- Pulled a couple of compromised win2k boxes off the network.
- Taught Christian and Wendy how to do the tape restoration project.

(Larry)
-Setup a few new accounts to handle GC at the Observatories. The new numbers
have been sent to those that should be using them.
-Setup a number of new accounts for visitors.
-Spent time trying to debug a network glich issue. So far we can't track down
anything specific on for a significant time period one person was not able to
get full connection to the servers while others could.
-Worked a number of virus issues.
-Went over some property issues with Ed C. concerning trade-ins and upgrades.
-Spent time with Veronica and Barbera debugging a DCC issue. The upgrade of the
OS from NT to Win2000 required some variables to be changed in the WEB s/w
being used for the DCC.
-Worked on a number of procurments. Mainly, replacement parts.
-Reworked a number of cable areas.
-Reviewed a couple of documentation and policy issues with Albert.

(Veronica)
-Worked on a number of DCC resolutions.
-Made a number of changes to the LSC web page.
-Updated a number of web pages for LIGO in general.
-Started working on the logistics for the Aspen conference.
 

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

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

AdLIGO Suspensions
All but two parts of the MC prototype suspensions have been included in POs with machine shops. The last two parts are stiffeners for the structure and will not be needed for about 3 weeks. I hope to place that PO tomorrow. The structure should be completed tomorrow along with a prototype compliment of blades. Most other parts are in the Synchrotron or in my and Calum's offices.
Mike Plissi has arrived from Glasgow to support us in building and testing the MC prototype. His invaluable experience assembling and testing GEO suspensions will be greatly appreciated.

Osem procurement has run into another delay. The alumina heads should be shipped on August 22nd. Looking at the fabrication schedule (assuming Bob Taylor will be trained by Todd and available), the heads will be ready around Christmas. These osems are site spares, AdLIGO prototypes and GinGin.  Todd is currently working on the remaining LIGO I heads earmarked for the 40m suspensions and some of the AdLIGO prototypes along with some site spares.

Held another meeting on Tuesday with the suspension groups (CIT and GEO) and the LASTI folks to talk about interface and scheduling issues. It was quite productive.

Working with SURF students.

40m Suspensions
Betsy is going to try to get here Sept 10-20. She will confirm with Alan and I soon. Helena, Betsy and I will be assembling a BS, ITM and ETM during that time.
 

From: Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>

40 METER IFO

AP1 ISC Optical Train
The spot size matching lenses in the AP1 ISC table optical train were determined, and components were moved to establish the appropriate beam spot sizes throughout the optical train. The integrated layout drawing was updated to reflect the changes.

IFO Beam Parameters
The IFO beam waists and wavefront curvatures at all of the IFO mirrors and pick-off beams were re-calculated based on the 40 m updated parameters (AJW 5/16/2002). The wavefront radii do not match the PRM and SRM specified curvatures. The worst case tolerance of the PRM has a radius mismatch of 33m;  the worst case tolerance of the SRM has a radius mismatch of 36m. The optical paths and path lengths from the IFO beam waist to the ISC tables were determined for the BS PO and the ITM PO ISC beams. This information will be needed to calculate the guoy phases of those two ISC beams.

Optics Parts List
Purchase orders are being processed for most of the opto-mechanical parts for the AP1, AP2, ITM PO, BS PO, ETM PO, and SPS ISC beams and sensing table optical trains. Missing lenses and lens holders for the IO diagnostics optical train were ordered; the lens holders were received, and the lenses are  due to be received by 8/16.
 

From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>

Fused silica fibers:
--------------------
We have measured the quality factors for four modes so far in the fused silica
triple suspension.  That of the vertical bounce is 1.3e7.  That of one rocking
mode is 5e7.  That of the torsional mode is 5e6.  Now we are measuring the Q of
a pendulum mode to be 5e7.  However, this last mode shows a very interesting
diurnal variation that we want to understand before completing measurement.
 

We are still building a fixture to measure the strength of dumbbell fibers and
are awaiting some gas cylinders to build the suspension to test NTE.
 

Electrostatic charging of test masses:
--------------------------------------
We have tested one scintillator paddle left over from the MACRO experiment for
use as a trigger for the Moscow test mass charging experiment, and it seems to
work well.  We are now in possession of eleven more which we will also test.
 

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

Silicate Bonding
Received 22 polished SF4 substrates for bonding experiments.
 
 

From Riccardo:

Francesco
Back to Italy

Kelin
Left for SLAC.

Alessandro
Possible success in electrolytic deposition of Ni on MoRuB.  If confirmed will allow easy brazing.

Eric
Finished his SURF period, he will be back after Christmas for a master thesis and a 6 month stage.
Passed responsibility for X-ray scanning technique to Stoyan.

Stoyan
X-ray scattering, changed to “better” scanner of the negatives and found a much larger gradient of the background.  Cross checking.
FE simulations, exporting on autocad the shapes of the suspension hooks to prepare for Ansys analysis of modes.
MoRuB density puzzle, getting new micrometer with micro spherical points to measure uniformity of sample thickness.
Waiting for new splat pistons.

Brian
Have an half decent scan of a MoRuB splat, analysing it.  It looks that the best part is a crescent shaped area and that the center of the splat shows a little of crystalline inclusions.  Need to scan with narrower slit, and would need a sample scanning mechanism.  Started making a mechanism but we are not allowed to implement it on the X-ray machine, so stopped.

Stefano, Chenyang
Working on mini stress strain machine.  Implemented an amplifier  stage to the stress gauge (presently it is more than 10 times stiffer (500 Kg full range) than necessary, we are waiting for a more sensitive replacement (smaller full range)).
The LVDT implemented last week is now calibrated.
Measured a preliminary stress strain curve with Glasmet and one with MoRuB with the wedge grabbers and scissor cut (wedge unpolished)samples.
Found a lower limit yield point for Glasmet of about a GPa and for MoRuB 1.1-1.2 GPa (expected 4.5 to 5 GPa).
The measurement is limited by the lack of proper cutting of the sample, by the lack of polishing of the cuts and by the lack of swivels in the wedge grabbers that concentrate the effort on one side of the ribbon.
Made a rough measurement of the sample Young’s modulus and found 175 GPa  while expecting 220 GPa.  Good agreement given the systematics of this first run.

Hareem, Maddalena
Did the diamond pyramid test and got 5.2GPa for MRuB17.
Also calculated the critcal defect size from the measurement and it turns out to be 80
micron approximately. Checked with Bill he says our numbers are good especially because we are getting a  defect size bigger than the thickness of our material!

Hareem
Waiting for chemicals to reproduce Alessandro’s Ni deposition process and test other ones, installing in hood in sub-basement of West Bridge.

Mike, Valerie
Calibrated new thermometers for thermal capacitance measurements.
Running a complete thermal conductivity running with correct power settings (DT of sample ~0.5 oK.  Already made 400 to 2 K, now scanning back from 2 to 400 K.  The measureent is about 1 week long.  Found that some of the earlier spread in conductivity data was due to Quantum Design correction factors (power radiation and thermal conductivity of the thermometer wires).  Working to properly treat these corrections.  The radiation correction can be treated by measuring the effect at two different power settings and extrapolate to 0 power (in future scans).  The wire parasitic conductivity can be measured.

Xavier
Working on stress strain machine with Stefano and Chenyang.
Starting modelling on Ansys of stress distribution in ribbons.
Learning the thermal conductivity from Mike.

Lia
Proceeding with the creep data analysis.

Barbara, Maddalena (Hareem supervising)
Mass production of MoRuB samples from 12 to 24.
Made boules of MoRuB 17 to 21.  Making stock of beads for splatting.
Making splats of MoRuB 17.

Barbara, Hareem
Learming the differential thermal analyser to measure phase transition heat for glass/crystalline transition and melting point.
 

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