Weekly Report for Week Ending September 12, 2002

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  September 16, 2002 will be:

  (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

1. Announcements
2. LSC Issues (Weiss)
3. Comments on Weekly Report
4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)

Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests

Administration (Lindquist)
Sites (Raab, Coles, Shoemaker, Sanders)
Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

• CR-010012, Closeout of Acounts for Initial Complement of Computer Equipment at Sites (Genaral Computing has provided revised estimates)
• CR-020009, Digital Common Mode Servo to Mode Cleaner Path
• CR-020011, High Power Test in Suspended Interferometer (Gingin)
• CR-020012, Additional Funds to Complete 40-Meter Facility Upgrade
• CR-020013, Pentec VME Digital Signal Processing Boards (Withdrawn for now)
• CR-020014, High Power Laser for Advanced Input Optics System

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

No report.

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

There was a site teleconference held on Thursday, September 12, 2002. The following issues were among those discussed:

Budgets and Costs--The reports for the end of August have been posted on the Web.  The projection for carry-forward into FY 2003 remains at approximately $3 million.  This is the carry-forward for cash flow purposes.  All of these funds have been budgeted for necessary items that remain to be purchased in the FY 2002 plan.

All reserve has been allocated to "planning packages" in the FY 2003 budget.  These will be reported separately in the monthly reports that Florence prepares.

Equipment--Caltech Finance wants to modify the ORACLE systems to enable them to capture equipment data directly from their files instead of using E. Chargois' database.  To do this, they will be modifying the description fields just a bit starting in FY 2003.  E. Chargois has been given an action (#115) to prepare an EMAIL explaining the changes to the people affected (mostly Project Services people and the users of P-Cards).

Livingston Staging Building--A more definitive report was expected last week concerning causes and proposed corrective action for the HVAC problems.  A draft has been received but was disappointing in content.  It did not provide a substantive analysis of the causes of the problem and proposed action.

Hanford Laboratory Building--Construction is nearly complete.  The flooring has not been installed in the lab areas because the underlying concrete has not fully cured.  There are some additional punch list items.  The fire Department must test the fire detection and suppression systems, but this cannot be done until after the O&M manuals have been received from the sub-, sub-, sub-vendors.  Still expect to begin moving people in soon.

All Terrain Vehicle for Livingston--Procurement is in progress to be provided by a company in Baton Rouge.  Delivery is expected two weeks after receipt of order.

Property--Ed Chargois has dicussed the available furniture with both Hanford and Livingston.  Furniture should be at Hanford by October 1 including a conference table.  Will be working on furniture for Livingston after Hanford shipment.

Use of Auditoriums by General Public--Ed Jasnow still has an action (#114) to prepare an email for NSF concerning the use of the auditorium by outside organizations and the notification of the DOE concerning the same.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through September 12, 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

• Mike installed a new hard drive and no major glitches have appeared.
• Continued having difficulty with the DCC database.  Ran into a locked condition that prevents updates or additions to the database.  Neither Veronica nor Larry have been able to determine the problem.  Also, the electronic links between our database and the docspublic and docsinternal directories still will not link.  Some documents with ownership as Turner rather than dcc were changed to see if that was the issue but it didn't solve the problem.  More investigations to come.  In the meantime, if an entry comes up on a search with no electronic document called out, it very well could be available but no link to show it.
• Entered nearly 200 documents this week.
• Spent a large amount of time working on electronic "problem" documents--everything from incomplete documents, duplicate submissions, wrong revisions, file naming, etc. etc.  When the OUT folder is near empty, it doesn't take too much to correct the anomalies of any submission.  But when there are large numbers of documents to process, customized handling really wastes time and sending an email for document corrections becomes time consuming.
• Reminder to LIGO staff:  Please make sure that as a minimum, each document submitted has a LIGO number, author's name, and date.  It's surprising how many documents are missing one of more of these essential pieces of information!.

ACTIVITY

• Processed and filed all LSC documents that I'm aware of.  There appears to be a few presentations not yet submitted.
• Electronic document activity has been fairly quiet for this period.  Scanned an old document for electronic access.
• In the process of making new labels for DCC file system.
  DCC Activity


WE 09/12/02	Packages	Faxes
In	40	27
Out	13	40

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Working on change orders in the new ORACLE system IIi.  We have come across several problems and are discovering changes, which we are working through.
• Working with several individuals at JPL trying to resolve the discrepancy on the Raytheon CWO contract amount.  We are trying to get JPL to increase the funding both JPL and Raytheon show by about $100k to match the higher level of funding that Caltech has already sent to JPL. There will be a meeting on Monday at JPL which will hopefully shed some light on who at JPL will be the project manager for the Caltech CWO to Raytheon.
• Completed change order #5 to Excel, change order #7 to John Desmond, change order 7 to the Digikey blanket, and change order #1 to Intelligent Video Systems.  Currently working on change order #22 to Butler, change order #3 to the Air Products blanket, and the change order for W Tyler.
• Working with Ed and Gerry on the proposals for the LLO site [finishing the staging building -pel].

• Out of the office for a few days - not much to report.
• Responded to request from Project Accounting for funding realignments required for Fiscal Year 2002 accounts.
• Note all accounts in the R&D Award PHY-98-01158 in award numbers NSFLIGO.504800 and NSFLIGO.SEISMI are closed to new charges.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

• No report this week.

CONSTRUCTION:

• Two proposals for the T & M contract for the construction of interior walls in the LLO Staging Building have been reviewed by Gerry Stapfer, Ruth Brambila, and Ed Jasnow.  There are some areas of the proposals that need clarification.  Letters requesting this clarification have been sent and discussions with both companies have been scheduled for next week.
• The final report on the HVAC system of the LLO Staging Building has not yet been received.  Corrective action on the system is awaiting that report.
• The LHO Laboratory Building is substantially complete, and a letter is being prepared for Chervenell.  Occupancy is only awaiting the test of the fire suppression system by the fire department.  This test will begin when all O & M manuals have been received.

• Approval is being requested of the NSF regarding the use of the LHO Laboratory Building auditorium by the general public.  Its use will be governed by the seismic requirements of running the interferometer.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Torres, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for five (5) new/revised trips and there are seven (7) trips which are in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and paper work completed.
• Completed twenty-four (24) Expense Reports and there are four (4) 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 eleven (11) P-Card items which required numerous phone calls to hotels, etc. in order to track down which traveler incurred which charge, and pulling each traveler's file to assure that charges are correct for each fee incurred.  Assisted a few travelers with their questions in regard to their P-Card and/or reconciliation.
• Prepared and distributed the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for September 9, 2002.  Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement.
• I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.

• Processed 75 invoices for payment and followed up on a couple of  invoice problems. For the total number of incoming invoices received for this period see "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham.
• Processed 5 requisitions and 4 change orders on-line.
• Monitored contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers where supplements were needed.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database.

• No report this week.

• Meeting w/B.Barish -final approval of media/press folder and approval of initial brochure design.  Discussion re: press website and new photo project TBA.
• Meeting w/Veronica -final details on media/press info site to be released by Friday 09/13/02.  Discussion re: photo project TBA.
• New hire -photographer Jai Ralls start date 09/16/02 - C.Torrie supervisor.
• Contact with Sky&Tele and Physics Today re: reprints, web posting, copyrights.
• More work w/NSF re: pictures for boardroom.
• Work with American Museum of Natural History re: images for Einstein Exhibit.
• Work with graphic designer re: reproduction/printing of media/press folders.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting was not held this week.

Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)

• Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.
• The following is a summary of status by sub system:
• COC - Work on action items per second review continues.  Garilynn continues to execute action items.
• PSL -  Management to secure commitment from LZH for laser development.  Scope decisions to be made.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• AOS - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• IO -  Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• SUS - Working with Janeen doing updates and action items.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 08.30.02 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 09.13.02.
• Next update with progress through 9.13 to be processed next week.
• SEI - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• ISC - Mike continues to work on the WBS dictionary.  No comments as of 9.12.02 on the draft detailed schedule and no WBS dictionary.
• LDAS - No data / feedback from Albert to date.
• INSTALL - Continue processing of data developed by Dennis Coyne and provided by Gary Sanders.
• All other subsystems have yet to be scheduled for their first review.  These dates are pending per direction from Gary Sanders and Dennis Coyne.

• Next update with progress through 9.13 to be processed next week.

• Next update with progress through 9.13 to be processed next week.

• Next update with progress through 9.13 to be processed next week.
• At the request of Janeen, I picked up some parts needed immediately at a supplier in Santa Ana (Opto Sigma).

• ROSTER DATABASE:
• Continued working on technical issue with one of the data input forms.  Followed up with BK on this issue.
• Provided updated reports to Irena.
• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• Continue to verbally communicate the username and password to users.
• Gang of 5+:
• Veronica has posted the Purchase Requisition instruction PDF and XLS template to the internal bulleting board.

Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.

• Changed design to align with LIGO home page.  See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

I feel that I am very close to a final version of the Annual Report and Request for FY 2003 Funding for LIGO Operations.  This version addresses suggestions provided by Gary and includes sections on Hanford Outreach, Actual Costs, Proposed Staffing, LIGO Organization, and Planned Meetings.  In addition, all "contingency" has been allocated to specific items or tasks in Planning Packages.  I will distribute a .pdf version for final review and propose to begin entry into FastLane tomorrow.

The following change requests have been submitted:
 

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

• No report (vacation).

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report this week.

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

No report this week.

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

Detector Installation: Following the conclusion of S1 running and post-run injections, the interferometer was shut down for installation work on Tuesday morning. At present, the SOS and LOS racks in the LVEA have been completely replaced, and LOS DSC replacement at the Y-end is in progress. The work is progresssing very rapidly owing to the fine job Rus, Mike Fyfee, Ken Watts, and Gary Traylor did modifying boards, building new racks and crossovers, and making new cables in advance so that everything would be ready. (Rus, Mike, Ken, Gary, Peter King, Jay, Ash) We are preparing a detailed plan for commissioning activities following behind the DSC installation work.

HEPI / MEPI / LASTI:

(Hammond): The machined springs were received by MIT and installed. I have completed the gross characterization of the springs and the spring constant was within 4.5% of the FEA model and the each spring was within +/- 1.3% of the mean spring constant. At my request, Rusyl Wooley took a look at the data acquisition system of the spring tester in hopes to get a better resolution on the force readout. In conversation with Ken Watts, they suggested that we install a field isolator to convert the signal level to a more appropriate range. This will be investigated further in the not to distant future. Harry Overmeir has been installing mechanical hardware for the GS-13 pods which include the mounting feet and the locking mechanism. Those efforts are going reasonably well and should have the units ready to be shipped to Stanford to be fit into the ETF Prototype within 2-3 weeks. I have started installing the plumbing into the digital HEPI models to be installed at LASTI so that we may determine which plumbing routes would be the most efficient.

(Kern): At Stanford this week working on calibration and characterization methods for the Parker differential proportional servo valves used for controlling the hydraulic actuators. Working together has led us to a cleared understanding of what is required of the calibration process, and we've reducing the number of steps and simplified the existing procedure. Rich Duder, an application engineer with Parker visited the Stanford lab this morning to help us prepare a spec which we might ask Parker to perform. Gathering up 'busted' valves and returning them to Parker for overhaul. Checking fits on the Pods in the ETF. Prepared 2 additional purchase requisitions for MIT/LASTI and sent the machine shop's first invoice for completed parts onto MIT for payment. Met with Brian and Corwin to go over assembly issues of the welded actuator. Word from the machine shop is that all parts (excepting tripod) ought to be completed this week. Issued PR for additional load cells for the LASTI BSC, as well as 4 more BSC machined springs from Digital Machine.

Optics/Laser Safety (Kern): Gerry, Katrina and I have evolved a procedure to make sure visitors and staff can receive a new or replacement laser safety card as long as one of the three of us is in Livingston.

CDS (Chethan): Ash and I are working on getting the Pentiums and the aux processor for the Digital Suspension control in the LVEA going. Sorted out problems with some license issues on sun workshop software. Tried to increase the memory on the LLOFB2 frame builder to 3GB form 1Gb but ran into problems. Contacted Sun for tech support but our warranty has expired on this machine and we might have to get a time and materials service contract. Trying to fix the problem in-house if possible. Investigating the discrepancy identified by LDAS identified in one of the data files written by LLOfb2 on LDAS T3 disks.

GC (Shannon):

• Fixed multiple problems with sendmail this week. Most of these were problems resulting from the upgrade to Solaris 9/Sendmail 8.12.2+SUN.
• Worked on some quotes with Larry Wallace from Foundry Networks for a possible switch upgrade at LLO.
• Worked on some security information as a result of the conference call a couple weeks ago.
• Added anti-SPAM functionality to our sendmail software here. I would like to add anti-virus at some point in the next month.
• Talked with Dana Kuntz from SolSoft to get more information on the software & quote that we evaluated last week.

• Helped Igor work an issue on the new 2TB RAID server that LDAS is setting up here.

• Sent all the remaining S1 tapes with raw data and rds to Caltech, MIT, UWM.
• Configured the new 2 T RAID system.  Shannon helped to troubleshoot the GigE network card.  Running a 72 hour burn test on RAID.

Other: Two bids were received for construction of the office and lab partitions in the new building. Tree harvesting continues very close to the LVEA and to the Y end station.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

September 13, 2002

• We have been maintaining lock on our mode cleaner with the repaired servo board, for the past week. Wednesday night, the MC remained in lock without a single brief loss for 12 hours straight.
• We have been operating with a 10x larger gain than design, in order to control the large 3 Hz and 7 Hz oscillations associated with our input optic chamber stack and small MCCM stack.
• However, Osamu noticed some signal clipping after the 10x amplifier stage. Dennis and Ben have reduced the gain in the PSL path of the MC Servo from 30dB to 20dB above the nominal gain. They also shuffled the gain between two stages from a X10 followed by a 3 stage to a X3.3 stage followed by a X1 stage. This eliminated the clipping that we saw previously, and allows a robust locking of the Mode Cleaner now.
• Osamu measured the servo cross-over frequency to be 6.6 Hz. It's a bit low, since the PSL path is 20dB above the nominal gain.
• We continue to suspect additional problems in the servo electronics, especially in the VCO path. Our attention will now turn to a full checkout of the PSL frequency stability servo, whose UGF was measured to be significantly below spec last November.
• We also continue to have a problem with MC1; several of the OSEMs don't read meaningful signals, so the damping, which appears adequate for MC locking, is surely not optimal.
• Osamu measured the length of the mode cleaner by turing on the resonant sidebands at 33.2 MHz, shaking a mirror at 3 Khz, and looking for the 3 kHz peak in the demodulated signal from the reflected port to disappear (because the 33.2 MHz was being fully transmitted). He observed the peak to disappear at 33.1954 MHz, corresponding to a length of 13.5467 +- 0.0001 meters, less than 5 mm longer than design.

Optical sensing (Smith):

• OPTICS PARTS LIST, Orders pending: 166.033 MHz Pockel's cell is pending from New Focus; 67 each, 1in mirror mounts are pending from Newport; miscellaneous optical posts and mounts are pending from ASCO; 3 each Uniblitz shutters are pending from Vincent Assoc; IO alignment/calibration fixture is pending from ASCO; input mode-matching telescope off-axis parabolic mirrors are pending from SORL; IFLEX1000 IR laser for optical lever is pending from Point Source Ltd.
• OPTICS PARTS LIST, new orders placed: Spare polarizing prism for IO PSL table; vacuum polarizing prisms for input Faraday isolator from KLC; half-wave plates for input Faraday isolator from KLC; Faraday rotator for input Faraday isolator from EOT. Quotation was received from Piezosystems Jena for PZT tilt platforms and drive electronics; three tilt platforms will be ordered, and ordering of drive electronics is awaiting a make/buy decision from CDS.
• VAC MIRROR MOUNT: The design drawings for the 1.5 in and 2in fixed vacuum mirror mounts were completed. Parts will be ordered shortly.
• OPTICAL LEVER FOCUS LENS: A top level design was completed in ACAD. Detail working drawings are in process. Hope for a prototype in November.
• FARADAY ISOLATOR: A top level design was completed in ACAD. Detail working drawings are in process. Hope for construction in November.
• IFO MODE-MATCHING TELESCOPE: A top level design was completed in ACAD. Detail working drawings are in process. Hope for construction in November.

• Betsy Bland arrived on Monday and is in the process of hanging 3 core optics (BS, ITMx, ITMy), with help from Helena, and with Steve Vass and Dennis Ugolini looking on. By the end of Wednesday, one ITM and the beamsplitter have wire stand-offs and guide rods bonded.
• The OSEMs built by Bob for our 3 new suspended optics failed their RGA scan. The OSEM bodies arrived with no paperwork, and Bob was led to believe that they were baked at 200degC; it now appears that they probably never got their bake. We will use these OSEMs to help hang our 3 new suspended optics, but they will then be removed, disassembled, and re-processed properly by Bob.
• Meanwhile, Bob is beginning the assembly of a new batch of OSEMs to complete our needs. He started the bake of the OSEM coil bodies for us yesterday; we will have them by Monday afternoon. There are 19 long and 16 short bodies in that bake load. He has 12 sets of OSEM boards ready to be installed in the long bodies when they are through baking. He will get the short circuit boards ready tomorrow for the Short OSEMs. Next week he should be able to do the final assembly on both the long and short OSEMs we need.

• Ben delivered the satellite amplifier and cable to control the optics that we're hanging this week.
• Ben has assembled an updated spreadsheet detailing the electronics and cables needed to fully complete the digital suspension controller (DSC) system for the core optics. We are on track for having all the parts and wiring for the vertex area suspensions by November, and the end racks shortly thereafter.
• Bob has been working on the cabling and wiring for the core optics DSC rack (1Y4), and the cables to the vertex area satellite amplifiers.
• Bob has also been working on the cabling and wiring for the auxilliary controls rack, for the video cameras, shutters, etc.
• Several anomalies have been seen in data acquisition and/or display and have not yet been diagnosed: second-trend min and max are gibberish in dataviewer, and the dust monitor data is not finding its way into frames. Alex Ivanov has been consulted, but is travelling and has no time to help diagnose and fix the problems in the next week or 2.
• Jay reports that the Freq Devices DACs will be a while in coming, so we should order Penteks for the 40m. Jay will order the 12 that we need to complete the DSC system, at $8100 each. Ouch!

• We plan to vent next week, to install the newly hung optics (it's the cleanest place in the lab to store them, until we get suspension controllers). At that time, we'll also rebalance the OSEMs on the 3 mode cleaner suspensions, and might have to shim MC1. We'll also install in-vacuum cables for the core optics at that time.
• Dennis has completed the state recognition code for the vacuum system, and tested and installed it. There are 10 defined states. The state recognition does not affect what valves may be open or closed -- it is for informative purposes only.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

1. We rotated our pre-beamsplitter Faraday Isolator and moved the half-wave plate to produce p-polarized light going into the beamsplitter. Before, the light had been polarized at 45°, which resulted in a loss of power going into the cavities.

2. We equalized light power between NAC and SAC by replacing our unpolarized beamsplitter with one designed for p-polarization.

3. We verified that 1 and 2, along with changes to the NAC photodetector, resolved the discrepancy between the NAC and SAC error signals.

4. We built new, low-noise electronics for rapid lock acquisition, along with lower-noise summing junctions than SR560's can provide.  Successfully tested these in both SAC and NAC. We can lock during the day now, with ~10 seconds acquisition time under favorable conditions.

5. We measured Q's of modes of arm cavity mirrors. They were all over the map.

6. We measured individual noise sources, including shot noise, electronic noise, laser amplitude noise, and detector current noise (dark current). We failed to measure OSEM controller noise because, at our measurement port, the corresponding voltage we looked at was less than 4nV/ˆHz.

7. We tested the transfer function of a broadband Pockels cell for secondary calibration. Found (too late) that responses are not even expected to conform to factory spec! If we want the Pockels cell calibration path to work, we will have to calibrate the Pockels cell itself before we install it in the TNI.

8. We recalibrated the mirror transfer function M, based on the PZT response in the NPRO. Our original (rough) estimate was 1.0µm/V at dc. Our new, more accurate value came out to be 0.63µm/V at dc. This lowers all of our previous noise estimates by 40%.

9. We inserted collimating lenses on the output beams of both NAC and SAC inside the chamber to tighten up the beams.

10. Upon reassembling the instrument and taking a noise curve, we found that the noise had come up by two orders of magnitude compared with our best previous spectrum. One order of magnitude was due to electronic crosstalk between two of our custom servo boxes, and that was easily eliminated. That leaves us one order of magnitude above our old noise floor.  We are currently investigating what this excess noise might be.

11. We got started looking for non-Gaussian events. We set up a system to take data continuously and analyze it on the fly. So far, we have taken only one, fifteen-minute data stream and found no non-Gaussian events.

12. We found a good deal of beam cross-talk in the photo-thermal experiment was coming from mirror birefringence.  We greatly reduced this problem
with better polarization management, and now this experiment is working well.  Photo-thermal data taken with an aluminum mirror agrees well with
theory.

VACUUM SYSTEM (Zucker, Macinnis):

At 1 atm all week.

PSL (Jamie R, Kirk M, Mike Z and Dave O):

We have settled on the design of a photo detector capable of observing shot noise at high power and very low frequencies. Initial noise characterization by a quick breadboard mock-up suggests that the noise is where we expect.

A visiting student from ANU (Kirk McKenzie) has agreed to complete the characterization and optimization of the new high bandwidth servo. This will serve as a tutorial introduction to the LIGO frequency stabilization/mode cleaner/common mode control technology, which he will explore further when the test cavity is back under vacuum.

HEPI / MEPI / LASTI (Kern, Hammond):

At Stanford this week working on calibration and characterization methods for the Parker differential proportional servo valves used for controlling the hydraulic actuators.  Working together has led us to a cleared understanding of what is required of the calibration process, and we've reducing the number of steps and simplified the existing procedure.  Rich Duder, an application engineer with Parker visited the Stanford lab this morning to help us prepare a spec which we might ask Parker to perform. Gathering up 'busted' valves and returning them to Parker for overhaul.  Checking fits on the Pods in the ETF.  Prepared 2 additional purchase requisitions for
MIT/LASTI and sent the machine shop's first invoice for completed parts onto MIT for payment. Met with Brian and Corwin to go over assembly issues of the welded actuator.  Word from the machine shop is that all parts (excepting tripod) ought to be completed this week.  Issued PR for additional load cells for the LASTI BSC, as well as 4 more BSC machined springs from Digital Machine.

MEPI INSTALLATION (Mason, MacInnis, Coyne):

The mechanical installation of the electromagnetic pre-isolator has been completed.

        #MZ LOOKING GOOD, GUYS! READY FOR A TEST DRIVE.

The bent coil springs were replaced with the newer machined springs made of maraging steel. Installation was much easier as the new machined springs were straight and fit in with no side loading on the stack. The electromagnetic actuator coils and position sensors were centered. There still remains an axial and lateral displacement in the stack which was caused by attempting to accommodate the old springs. Our feeling is that it will not affect our tests so we are proceeding with powering up the system. We will return later and set the stack in its original position using the coarse actuation system.

MEPI MODELING & DYNAMICAL TESTING (Mittleman, Coyne, Ottaway):

Dave has finished converting the hytec stack model to a stack-plus-support table model, which has now been incorporated into the Simulink model.

The electronics to drive the MEPI are all in place and currently undergoing a debugging process.  We hope to be able to start comparing the plant and model by the end of the week.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

Physics meeting

Matt reported his progress in developing the new E2E field model. We discussed about thick-mirror code, change in beam-basis, proper implementation of guoy phase etc.

Outreach collaboration

Hiro helped Sany Yoshida to prepare the NSF proposal for his research at SLU, including his students. Some preparatory work was done at LLO during the summer season by Sany and his student Raghu.

Code development and maintenance

(Hiro) The simulation code is reorganized because no C++ code is needed to be shared with Alfi. Also changes and modifications are made to make it work under gcc 3.1.

(Biplab) A few modifications were done in triangular summation cavity code to conform it with last week's change in parts related to misalignment matrix calculations. Tested results by comparing with primitive version, found another bug. A few more tests are needed before I commit.

(Matt) Continued development of new E2E field model.

Alfi

(Melody)

• Continuing work on the automated tester for alfi5.
• Started looking into the C++ ALParser code to clean up any unused methods.

Software Systems (Blackburn)
The final summary for the use of LDAS during the Science Run for LHO, LLO and MIT is in:
Interval: 08/23/02 12:00:00 PDT - 09/10/02 12:00:00 PDT

Looking at the details for the failures reveals that the dominant cause of job failure was missing frames, accounting for roughly 50% of the failed jobs. Segmentation faults in the LALwrapper DSOs accounted for about 45 % of  the job failures and too many triggers being sent to the database, the power outage accounting for most of the remaining 5%. The number of jobs that failed do to internal errors in LDAS software was very small (order a few).

Work continued this week on the new frameCPP I/O library to read and write version 6 frames. An empty test frame with a "Table of Contents" was shared with VIRGO to validate against the version 6 frameLIB I/O library developed in C. Several new standalone utilities are also being developed for dumping the dictionary, data, and table of contents. A version {3,4,5} to version 6 converter application is also in development.

A new series of test scripts was developed for trying out the new dataStandalone and putStandAlone user commands against each of the DSO search codes. This is still being polished up but in working. The controlMonitorAPI has a new least squares fit routine and now plots a histogram of the number of jobs vs number of nodes allocated. Log plots are planned for the next release as is support for LDAS account based access to monitoring functions.

A bug was found in the asynchronous communications between the wrapperAPI's master process and the mpiAPI. This has now been fixed. Will also be implementing a new data domain type of "NONE" to compliment the existing time, frequency and time-frequency domains. This has been discussed in the LSUG meeting and has majority approval of the software change board. An issue in the diskCacheAPI came up at the sites after the Science Run from August frames co-existing with science run frames the minor bug in the diskCacheAPI has been fixed and the August frames moved.  Some progress has been made on getting LDAS to run on Solaris 9 platforms on a test system. So far simple inspiral jobs work as do database jobs. Similar progress is being made towards running LDAS on Linux 7.3 platforms. No effort has yet gone into porting LDAS to GCC 3.1.x though.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

(Dan Kozak)

• HPSS: continued migration of files off of Redwoods (with a pause on 9/11 since all four Redwood drives got contaminated by a bad tape, requiring STK to come out and give them a mega-cleaning).
• SAM-QFS: Continued ingesting S1 data, and improved configuration for better performance.  QFS -> SAM-QFS (disk to disk) copies are now averaging ~20Mb/sec, SAM-QFS (disk to tape) writes around 17Mb/sec.  Have had problems when tape media errors occur--am crafting questions for LSC/Sun.

• Installed and setup the IDE raid boxes (at least the ones we got (3)) and got them up and running. Burntest should be complete by Friday.  Data is currently being loaded on to the units we have in house.
• The kickstart disk did not work with the ide raid machines. This might be due to the fact that there are 3 NIC's to choose from. I will continue to look into this.

• Managing the data archive of S1 data which is currently being read from tapes and simultaneously replicated to three locations: HPSS and SAM-QFS at Caltech and the Beowulf cluster at UWM. A fourth copy to the new IDE-RAID disk cache at Caltech should start on 9/12 or 9/13.
• Helped install the first 6.6TB of S1 IDE-RAID storage at Caltech.

• Ordered harddrives.
• Returned / replaced failed 160GB drive for PC.
• In contact with 3ware on raid rebuilding troubles.
• Loading S1 data from tape.

• Sent all the remaining S1 tapes with raw data and rds to Caltech, MIT, UWM.
• Configured the new 2 T RAID system. Shannon helped to troubleshoot the GigE network card. Running a 72 hour burntest on RAID.

• Helped Igor work an issue on the new 2TB RAID server that LDAS is setting up here.

• Added a new query type to the conlog web interface to track changes in control settings from one science-data segment to the next.
• Helped a few LSC collaborators get started analyzing data from the S1 run.
• Working on calibration issues.

• finished up S1 online running, compiled some statistics.
• Helped Laura get set up for offline running on S1 playground at ldas-mit.
• Began thinking about simulations required for S1.

Received over 30 tapes with S1 RDS data. Injection of data onto PC RAID on LDAS is currently paused due to hardware errors of the unit. Laura has been working on fall back scenarios to bring S1 playground data at MIT on Frame v4 format.  Some of that data are at MIT. Tania is setting up running the stochastic DSO on the S1. She reports a misbehaving of the DSO when a specific DB partition is used. Stefan is catching up on S1 data analysis issue now that he's back from Europe. Burst Analysis Meeting (=BAM) #1 starts next Friday at MIT and will go over the weekend.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:
(Keith)

• Ordered CAD software and PC
• Ordered IBM laptop
• Starting to work out logistics for the NSF review.

• Fixed multiple problems with sendmail this week.  Most of these were problems resulting from the upgrade to Solaris 9/Sendmail 8.12.2+SUN.
• Worked on some quotes with Larry Wallace from Foundry Networks for a possible switch upgrade at LLO.
• Worked on some security information as a result of the conference call a couple weeks ago.
• Added anti-SPAM functionality to our sendmail software here.  I would like to add anti-virus at some point in the next month.
• Talked with Dana Kuntz from SolSoft to get more information on the software & quote that we evaluated last week.

• Researched Intrusion Detection System (IDS) software and hardware compatible with Cisco routers and PIX firewalls.  This is part of the Ligo IT Security Plan.  Cheapest/best plan is to upgrade the IOS for our existing router and PIX to the latest version which has IDS software included.
• Purchased two new monitors to replace ones that have died.  Purchased a new flat screen monitor for CDS Control Room use.  Purchased more gel filled keyboard and mouse pad wrist rests.  Purchased a DVD module for Dave's GC laptop because he does all of his CDS backups on DVD now and needs to be able to read them from his GC laptop.
• Priced new color laser printers for the new building.  Priced a new laptop for Luca, one that would better meet his needs for running simulations.
• Downloaded and started installation of the latest version of SSH in order to be compatible with the latest version of OpenSSH.  Downloaded and started installation of the latest version of sendmail. Investigated e-mail spam blocking on our e-mail server.
• Writing comments to the Ligo IT Security Plan.
• Created a new user account and helped a new visitor with computing needs.

• Working on a webserver that is loaded on a new computer. This well replace one of the old webservers that is currently running on NT4.0 server. The new computer will be running 2000 server. I am having problems working .asp web pages and still have to do some more research on this before I upgrade the websites to 2000 server.
• Quite a few user support issues to take care of upon returning from San Diego that included software and some hardware issues that I took care of.
• Working on putting together a cheat sheet on how to tighten up security on the PC server/pro-workstation.
• Reloaded a laptop that had a hard disk failure. I received a replacement hard disk then reloaded it with 2000 Pro and General Computing software.

• Working on learning Linux.
• Loaded a PC with win2k
• Had Mike show me the new security measures for win2k
• Other small random tasks

• Wrapped up work at Wilson House.
• Working on the tape archive rebuild.

• Project Science: Working extensively on the scripting, database setup and troubleshooting, and images for the next Project Science workshop.
• LIGO website: posted a few updates. Making updates to the LIGO Press and Media Information website, in preparation for its publishing early next week. Working on images. Along with Mike and Larry, did some troubleshooting for the server that hosts Elba Conference webpages. Edited the page of presentations.
• LDAS: Generated a query of LDAS equipment for Ed Chargois.
• LSC website: keep posting the remaining LSC meeting transparencies as they arrive.
• CaJAGWR website: making arrangements for the next term's seminars.

• Got POP/IMAP running over TLS on becrux.  I still need to work out issues with different mail clients using this. Once in-place and the kinks are worked out we will work on upgrades for Eudora so that this feature can be taken advantage of.
• Installed a new version of netscape on sirius that should fix many of the acrobat plugin problems people have been seeing.
• Helped look into some problems with dhcp and sendmail with Shannon and Larry.
• Worked on restoring a data tape from MIT for Julien.  I am getting chronic read errors and I believe Keith will need to create a new tape.
• Asked Ryan for help to get the caltech telephone office moving on my request to switch the 800 number over to ISDN.

• Resolved a number of procurement items/issues. The CISCO renewal has gone through. Ordered a number of items for different people. Spent too much time this week on the phone with different vendors.
• Spent time working with Shannon on various fronts. E-mail issues and configurations. Getting quotes for the Gige backbone for the Observatory. Working out the logistics for the Solsoft quote.
• We've both been trying to get more information from LSU concerning some alternatives on getting the Observatory more bandwidth to the WAN.
• Spent time working with Veronica and Mike resolving different Web server issues.
• Working a couple of CCB items. We now have most of the information needed and should be wrapping it up next week.
• Working on the Security Plan document. Still need to get together with different parties to get some of the documentation out but it is being worked on.
• The usual support of fixing accounts, resetting h/w and supplying cables and tools were popular this past week.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

Core Optics
(From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>)

Crystal systems has had one more successful boule growth making the ratio 2/5, they are now proceeding to work on 20" boules for another customer, though of course the technology is applicable to our efforts as well.  They have been doing some developmental work with core drilling of large pieces and are now ready to proceed with processing our order.  This pushes the estimated delivery out to mid-November.  However, Insaco is known to be conservative in their processing estimates, so there is still some room for optimism.

Insaco has completed (ahead of their estimate) the edge polish of the ITM for Gin Gin, I am waiting on a quote from Wave precision for full polish.  I still need to know if there are special requirements for the back side of the Gin Gin ETM.  I have gone ahead and assumed there are not, and am asking for l/10 polish.

We have had some exploratory conversations about using "flat topped beams" for Advanced LIGO.  I am generating possible errors for these surfaces; Kip's group will use these to explore the tolerance of the system to errors on the mirrors.  You can see the ideal profile at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~gari/LIGOIII/FlatTopProfile.JPG  The vertical scale is waves, horizontal scale is millimeters.

CSIRO believes they could easily produce the surfaces to within 50 nm, they have a ~50% confidence that they could produce the surfaces to within 10nm using ion beam etching.

Another avenue to explore is the use of corrective coating, or creative masking during the coating process.  in LIGO1 we found that the coatings were uniform to within ~0.5% Peak to Valley or about 50nm for a high reflector.  This bump was at a radius of 100mm and was caused by masking errors.  The coating mask is commonly modeled then tweaked for best performance.  One could imagine using a mask that allowed much more material (~5% in the Flat top case) to be deposited at the edge, or perhaps using some combination of a polished sphere and a coating which is thicker in the center.

Once we have a tolerance established we will be speaking to our coating and polishing vendors about the possibility of demonstrating this technology.

Coating Thermal Noise Experiment (Gregg Harry):
(From: Michael Zucker <zucker_m@ligo.mit.edu>)

We received the sample from Wave Precision coated with tantala/alumina.  However, they forgot to put the mask on while coating so we didn't have a region to weld to free of coating.  We tried hanging it anyway and the coating near the weld was visibly changed along the edge. We don't have any Q's from it yet.

We do have some data on the silica/tantala sample coated at MLD and annealed to 450 C.  However, its coating near the weld was also visibly affected, similar to the WP tantala/alumina.

This is very similar to what we were seeing on the SMA samples.   I am waiting for confirmation of these numbers from the other samples.  It is conceivable that the small damage on the coating isn't enough to effect the loss and we might be able to get usable data on the WP samples.

We will hang the niobia/silica sample from MLD next.

Adv LIGO Core Optics:
(Erika D’Ambrosio)

I am back on mathematical computations for the flat topped beam that has been proposed as a choice for reducing thermoelastic noise.  I am going through some optimization for the driving beam considering the constraints we have settled.

Adv LIGO Mode Cleaner Suspension Prototype

Advanced LIGO Suspensions
(From: Janeen Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>)

Yesterday, Calum and Mike Plissi assembled the mode cleaner controls prototype triple pendulum. It was an exciting milestone. Click on the link -  Triple Pendulum Pictures for photos and links to the Solidworks model. Use password "geo600" to see the Solidworks web page with Internet Explorer. Calum and Mike started with an assembled top mass and walked us through the use of the wire jigs and the balancing process. Mark Barton, Helena, Betsy Bland, Mike Smith and I were watching and assisting.

Blade characterization is continuing. The small and large MC blades have had their thicknesses measured down their lengths. This data will be logged into an Excel spreadsheet for blade analysis. This analysis will aid in modeling future blade designs. Half of the small blades have had their deflections measured and noted. We measure the deflection of the blades unloaded and under two different loads. The other half will be measured tomorrow. All of the large blades have had their deflections measured.

The hybrid osem coils are in the oven for their hot bake. Bob Taylor is soldering the boards and will begin assembly tomorrow or Friday. He's still assembling the LIGO I osems for global control. Helena has assembled the large magnet flag assemblies for the local control hybrid osems. The LIGO I magnet assemblies are also complete.

David Robertson from GEO reported Tuesday that the GEO portion of the osem electronics shall not be delivered until after the first week of October. At this point, that is certainly our long pole. We can perform form and fit with the osems but that's all. Mark Barton has taken the Norna/Simulink suspension model and has been modeling the sensor/actuator system in dSPACE as a prelude to developing the controller. He modularized it so that the simulated plant is separated from the controller. The aim of this is to replace the simulated portion with real sensor data from the dSPACE system when ready. He will post his model at  Mark's Model Page this afternoon.

Tomorrow, I'll get together with Larry Jones and Mike Zucker and get in an order for the in-vacuum cabling. We'll also check on baked feedthrough connector spares that may be available for borrowing from Livingston, with the assumption that replacements will be ordered and processed.

Calum and I are working on quick drawing changes so parts may be reworked and optimized. We're still waiting for the structure stiffeners and the magnet fixture for the LIGO I osems. The second structure is due to be finished on Monday the 16th. The second set of metal test masses are due any day. I still need to design a few small installation fixtures.

Dennis had reported that a positive schedule forecast would allow use to use the LASTI vacuum chamber around the first of the year. The chamber is now being used for seismic retrofit testing and cannot be used simultaneously because the optical table needs to be changed.

Advanced LIGO Suspensions:
(From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu> )

Mike Plissi, Janeen Romie and I assembled a triple pendulum assisted by Helena and Phil Willems on Friday of last week. On Tuesday we repeated the process of assembly with Mark, Betsy, Helena, Mike, Janeen and I present.  Some pictures can be seen at the following link, hopefully more of better quality will appear when the student photographer starts next week. http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ctorrie/ligotriple.html

SolidWorks
Also available at the above link is an animated assembly of the triple pendulum and structure. The password is "geo600."

Blades
With the help of Mike Plissi and Janeen we have been spending a lot of time characterising the blades. This information will be used to fine tune the choice of parameters for future designs.

Electronics:
(Jay Heefner)

GEO will send us schematics of their modules by 9/13.  Once we have them we can complete the system and whitening/dewhitening designs.  We are shooting to have electronics available by the first of October. This should be possible if other priorities, like the DSC upgrade do not interfere.

40m Suspensions:
(From: Janeen Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>)
Betsy and Helena have started the work on the BS optic. They have also started work on one of the test mass suspensions. Steve Vass has been observing.

Prestabilized Laser (PSL):
(From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>)

After a boot up test of the VME modules last week, a 3123 and a 4116 failed.  These were replaced and successfully passed the boot stage.  For some reason I don't understand why the Motorola IOC timed out whilst attempting to load the vxWorks kernel.  Booting up the VME crate with the Motorola and testing of the 21.5 MHz photodetector are the only two remaining tasks to be performed before shipping the items to Hannover.

Software:
(From: "Mark Barton" <mbarton@ligo.caltech.edu> )

I finished a big chunk of the Simulink/dSpace programming for the mode cleaner prototype test. The Simulink model of the pendulum and controls used to design the system was fairly high-level and didn't attempt to model the sensors and actuators in any detail, so I fleshed it out considerably, adding blocks representing the sensors and actuators, the geometry of their deployment and their driver electronics. I also modularized it so that it will be easy to swap out the simulated plant and replace it with inputs and outputs to the physical pendulum when the electronics arrives. A lot of the more detailed simulation will be made redundant at that time but it will be useful in the interim because we want to try designing a simpler, pure-SISO controller. The existing controller design assumes that the six sensor inputs have been magically diagonalized to measures of x/y/z/yaw/pitch/roll, and contrariwise for the outputs

Advanced LIGO Coatings
(From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>)

Low Frequency Seismic Isolation:
(From: Hareem Tariq <htariq@ligo.caltech.edu>)

Stefano:

• Leaving for Italy where he will write his undergraduate theses for Pisa University on the work done here at Caltech.
• New stress gauge (100 lb) arrived. Stoyan and Stefano tested the gauge but could only get a resolution of 20 gms whereas with the old gauge a resolution of 10 grams could be achieved. This new gauge is supposed to be 10 times better than the old one. Therefore, need more investigation and improvements to make th enew gauge work better.
• Labview programme fully automated now and the resolution of ~140nm step size for the motor was achieved with it thus far; the programme running reliably.
• Measuring MoRuB samples which are cut with EDM and by electropolishing.  Installed and configured Pcanywhere software on lab computer.

• Learnt Stefano’s experiment and can run the measurements on his own now.
• Ran ANSYS simulations. Simulating the elastic deformation of the sample when measuring thickness with the pointed micrometer.
• Scheduled to do X-ray scans for stress broken samples.

• ANSYS simulations running smoothly on SUN/ UNIX and can run 4 simulations simultaneously. Modeling sample and braze/ braze and cavalier geometries to find an optimum stress for the flex joint.
• Helped Mike with curve fits and with thermometer calibrations.

• Studied conductivity vs. radiation losses in TTO in the power scatter measurement, maybe we can use extrapolation to get rid of radiation losses. Ready to take measurements on MoRuB.
• Prepared and sent out a detailed analysis report about the National Instrument DAQ problem to Quantum Design. Observed some periodicity in the digital jumps on sample temperature channel (~60 sec);  this needs further investigation on a bigger data set.
• Found that the faults in feedback loop effect the resistance of the heat capacity thermistor readings, making them increase or decrease.

• Conducted more Vicker hardness tests on B-14 and B-16 and got good data initially. Later in the week started having problems with the diamond tip indenter, as it falling down abruptly near the sample. Contacting the company for maintenance.
• With Barbara prepared some splats of B-15 and B-16 and prepared more samples.

• Tried detecting the noise source in DTA measurement and found the furnace  unstable. The Perkin Elemer's engineer is coming in to check and change the furnace next week.
• Found that we needed a separate gas system for running the DTA so we are getting ready to put it together.

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