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The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday February 17, 2003 will be:
CANCELLED DUE TO HOLIDAY
no report
LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)
No site telecon report this week, Phil is on vacation:
The
list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned
through January 16, 2003 may be found at ACTION
LIST.
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)
From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>
DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)
>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
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
In the process of organizing past years fax transmission reports for filing.
Electronic document activity has been overwhelming. 2 sets of HEPI drawings were processed during this period and it appears more is on the way. I would estimate that over a hundred documents have been submitted electronically over the past week.
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WE 02/06/03
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Packages
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Faxes
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In
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25
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24
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Out
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Press
here to access the DOCUMENT
CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.
COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Kaufman)
From: Esther Cunningham <esther@ligo.caltech.edu>
Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .
From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>
Reconciling and placing pcard orders as requested.
Continuing to update certifications for FY2003 on the subcontracts.
Closed out standard po's for LIGO and the main BSB office.
SUBCONTRACTS
MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)
From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)
CONSTRUCTION:
>Irene Baldon
From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>
Progress Period from 01.31 to 02.13
Accomplishments:
Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meetings were held 1/31, 2/4, 2/5, 2/6, and 2/7. Next meeting is scheduled for Friday the 14th at 10:00am.
For list of documents that are being used to develop Adv. LIGO Cost and Schedule, see http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/Cost_MTG_082002/
Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)
Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.
Reports (Lindquist)
No report
- Phil on vacation.
Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)
Change
Request CR-030002 to adjust the FY 2003 operating budgets to reflect actual
staffing during the first quarter has been prepared. Additional information
is required.
Human Resources (Akutagawa)
From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>
Interferometer: The LLO interferometer is locking well. One lingering concern is the glitches in the AS_Q data stream. These infrequent glitches caused a dropout in the AS_Q data stream. Rana deleted some channels of little significance from the master configuration file, and following this the problem went away. When we restored the master configuration file, the problem failed to reappear. We are monitoring the data collection performance carefully in an attempt to catch the problem if it reappears and diagnose its cause. WFS1 is working well. WFS2A also appears to be functioning, but WFS2B is not and will not be used during S2. Both sensors seem to contain the same set of data - we have not been able to orthogonalize their outputs into independent control signals. We have devoted most of the evening running this week to PEM excitations - done by Robert Schofield with Brian O'Reilly as the LLO liaison, and signal injections, which Szabi Marka orchestrated. We have completed the assignment of shifts for expert sci-mon coverage by LLO.
HEPI/MEPI: I have been providing quotes, sketches, and cartoons to Larry Jones for the LASTI HAM proposal. Some of the PDF's can be viewed on my public sight at: http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~mhammond/LASTI%20HAM/ I have completed the redlines and as built changes for the HEPI Actuator and have brought all drawing to rev "A". There is still work to be done as far as bill of material, assembly, installation, and initial startup procedure documentation. All of the drawings prior to "A" can be found on my public web site. http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~mhammond/HEPI%20Drawings/ I am now gathering up information to intelligently migrate from SolidWorks 2001plus to SolidWorks 2003. Ken Mason was the last person in the group (Seismic) that had a specific purpose for 2001plus and informed me today that he had the software and was ready to change over. Much work still needs to be done on proper archival of 3D digital content. Presently we are investigating the use of CVS to store at least PDF files of cad drawings and I am still looking at PDMWorks (which comes standard with SolidWorks 2003 (office pro edition) and is roughly $200 per seat. My plan is to advertise to the rest of the groups the location and revision of all seismic efforts as I make them publicly available in a configured and controlled medium. (Marcel)
HEPI / LASTI: The HEPI actuator as-built documentation was finished this week, and the complete drawing package with manufacturing details has been filed in the DCC. The DCN releasing for record is pending. All of the early revision drawings are also filed in the DCC. (Jonathan Kern)
LLO site Working with Allen to coordinate the machine shop's move to the new building. Doing elevation surveys to see how we can drain some areas of standing water. (Jonathan Kern)
LDAS admin:
1) Running tapecontrol script to archive injection data;
2) Ordered spare hard drives for beowulf nodes;
3) Preparing scripts for AS_Q only RDS generation and replication
between sites.
LDAS data analysis:
1) Fixed some bugs in waveburst DSO and submitted it to CVS.
2) Together with Sergey Klimenko testing waveburst DSO. So far it looks
like it is working well: the output looks reasonable and it never fails
if LDAS behaves.
3) Working on scripts to use with waveburst DSO during S2.
Igor
GC: Added a GC account for Alan Weinstein and also added him
to group dsorun for the LDAS-JOBS machine. There are a couple of other
accounts to add today for this. I am a little unsure of how this mixed
administration is going to go. Setting up a camera for Joe Giaime so that
he can do a presentation remotely for a group of high school students at
LSU. Looking into getting some more hard disks for baronne since the home
directory disk is now at 94% again. Looking into a couple of minor networking
issues. The problems are pretty transparent to everyone, but they need
to be fixed. Did some maintenance on our tape backup server. One of the
drives is still not letting the tape eject properly about 10% of the time.
LDAS:
Began hooking up the new KVM switch. I have only been able to hook
up about half of the machines to it so far, but I plan on hooking the rest
up tonight. This may require some reboots of a couple of machines. I will
have to get with Igor to coordinate this, or we can run like it is now
for S2. (Shannon Roddy)
Modelling: Continued working on making IOO e2e boxes. Took typical
daytime and night LVEA seismic spectrum using the permanent seismometer
installed in LVEA.
The data were sent to CIT e2e group, so that they can make an e2e box
to simulate LLO LVEA floor motion. Started to make macro files to put IOO
parameters, such as mirror dimensions and other suspension parameters (center
of mass location, wire-to-wire distance at suspension point, etc). (Sany)
Other: The BBC sent a news crew to film for a segment on the
BBC 10 o'clock news. This is tentatively scheduled to air next Monday evening.
They also gathered some information for a BBC radio program that will also
be aired, although no schedule was provided. They promised to e-mail information
with the radio program is scheduled and it is possible that it can be heard
on the internet. They filmed staff from the LSC as well as LIGO.
The Livingston Parish school board asked if they might use the LLO auditorium
to host a meeting for science teachers completing their credentialling
process (first and second year teachers). They would like to schedule this
for either April 29 or May 6, for about 60 participants. They asked if
I could recommend a speaker in the area of teacher development for science
education - since they had invited a nationally recognized speaker who
had just cancelled out on them. I gave them Karen Worth's name and they
have invited her - Karen has been an advisor to LIGO in the preparation
of the outreach proposal.
no report
no report
LASTI (Coyne, Forbes, Hammond, Hardham, Kern, Mason, MacInnis,
Lantz, Lilienkamp, Nayfeh, Mittleman, Ottaway, Rankin, Rollins, Shoemaker,
Zuo, Zucker)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
HAM Structural Modifications (Ken & Myron)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Several structural modifications have been made to the HAM crossbeam
structure to improve the
response of the MEPI system. Beams have been added to connect the
crossbeams and constrained
layer damping has been added along the crossbeam. The modified HAM
can
be seen at the following
location: http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/~kmason/HAM%20mods/
MEPI (Myron, Rich, Ken and Dave O)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Preliminary investigations after the installation of the stiffening
and
the constrained layer damping appears to have simplified the transfer
functions somewhat, particularly for the local damping case. The modal
transfer functions still look somewhat complicated. Have tried a simple
modal decomposition; somewhat surprisingly, the results don't appear
to
look very different from modes taken along cartesian coordinate lines.
So for simplicity we'll use cartesian coordinate for our first attempts
at modal control.
It was also found that our somewhat dissapointing prior
results in MEPI modal
control may be traceable to an error in the code.
HEPI (Rich, Bill, Dave)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
A complete open loop system ID has been completed. We have set
up to
test for correlations between fluctuations in fluid pressure and the
signal from a witness seismometer which is placed on the BSC support
structure.
STS
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have found a problem in the Streckheisen controller and replaced
it,
and are currently investigating a possible problem in one of our three
STS-2 units.
PSL (Jamie and Dave O)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Our low frequency photo-diode has been tested and is performing well.
It
has been tested at 200mA photocurrent level. At this level the
electronics noise is 6dB below the predicted shot noise level for this
photocurrent level. It remains to be seen whether geometric fluctuations
will prevent us from utilising the full benefits of this design.
Further, a servo has been closed using this detector, at present its
performance is limited by low frequency fluctuations on the laser
running the current shunt out of headroom.
Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E Physics meeting
---------------------
Luca, Virginio, Hiro, Biplab discussed about new developments in SimLIGO
by Matt, Wavefront sensors and speed (computational) considerations
for
various modules used in SimLIGO.
Support for GEO
-----------------
(Hiro) Michaela Malec of GEO is using e2e to simulate (still simplified)
GEO. She found strange behavior of FP cavities when mirrors are
moving
or the laser frequency is changing. Her setup was tested, and
we will
assist her to get useful results.
Input optics
----------------
(Hiro) Sany is working to setup the input optics model. He is creating
tables with proper mirror orientations. He provided seismic data
with
correlation measured at LLO to Matt. Matt is going to convert
the data
to parametrized correlation spectrum density so that e2e can
generate
LLO seismic motions with correlations. Hiro is assisting Sany
to make
the box files working properly.
First direct real physical validation of e2e mechanical simulation
( Good outcome of outreach efforts )
Tiffany Findley of SLU, one of Sany's undergraduate student, sets
up a
simple pendulum. One can measure longitudinal, pitch and yaw
motions.
She created a e2e box to simulate the setup, and completed the
first
comparison, transfer function from the suspension point to the
mirror
motion. Data and simulated results match perfectly within errors.
SimLIGO development
---------------------
(Matt) Major focus was to get to a good locked state for different
degrees
of mode matching. The input matrix was studied at different levels
of
heating of ITM (lensing deformation effect is up to 20% from
the
idealistic - fully heated - state), and a matrix for lock acquisition
and for detection modes were calculated. The change of the mode
overlapping of various signals were found to be very important.
(Hiro's comment : Many interesting chacaterstics of LIGO IFO
when mode
matching gets better were learned, and Matt will summarize in
the future
commissioning meeting.)
SimpleLIGO, a simplified version of SimLIGO, was built based on
SimLIGO. This runs almost one order of magnitude faster by simplifying
ASC and other not-so-important part of SimLIGO, so that some
physics
effects can be simulated fast.
Wave-Front sensor Document
---------------------------
(Biplab) Documented our validation of the wave-front sensor signals
from
E2E's 6-optics LIGO system. DCC number: T030016-00-E.
Mode mismatch
---------------
(Biplab) Melody generated strange results for modal order 8<= m+n
<= 18
when I studied sideband fields in LIGO's cold state. For m+n=4
it agreed
with E2E. Had discussion with Ray Beausoleil and according to
him this
originates from poor choice of basis functions for an unstable
cavity
and that the Melody results are not right in that range of m+n.
Phase map
-----------
(Hiro) LIGO COC phase map study is gearing up again. This will be Hiro's
main work until this will be used in FFT to understand the effect
of the
as-built mirror for LIGO I.
Code development
------------------
(Hiro) ModalModel class is developed and debugged which enables e2e
to
simulate fields with arbitrary number of modes.
(Melody) Worked on optimizing the modeler's FUNC_xxx modules.
Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
- Discussion and work on
the next step in implementing junctions
as well as the
new bundler/debundeler objects in ALFI.
- Updating of the distribution
and installation web pages for ALFI.
LIGO Data Analysis System
Software Systems (Blackburn)
We have now released (as of today) LDAS version 0.6.0 for the Science
Run. This
code has been extensively tested as closely as we understood against
what was
run in the E9 run to promote better reliability. Each night we ran
a set of
six search codes through the E9 data set while also simulating E9 trigger
data
inserts and concurrent createRDS generation. The condensed results
are that
LDAS now has between a 0.1% and 3% failure rate depending on the computational
performance of the three platforms we used to test. The sites are most
similar
to the system here that showed 0.1% failure rate so we are optimistic
that we
are going to have about 999 jobs out of each 1000 succeed from the
point of
view that a failure is due to LDAS. This is not as good as was seen
in the first
science run, but it is about 250 times better than was seen in the
E9 run a few
weeks ago. We have two major bugs contributing to the primary failure
modes:
a) the frameAPI or the frameCPP library will die and produce a core
file.
- All our efforts to resolve this over the past two weeks
with two
different individuals looking for the cause
have resulted in no
noticeable improvement.
b) the mpiAPI is the major source of failures at this point accounting
for
the bulk of the 0.1% failures.
- The level of effort that was put into solving this was
embarrassingly
low, but we had a meeting earlier this week
to discuss the issue involving
the technical developer and senior staff.
We now think we understand a
source of assumption in the code which is
the root of the problem and
will be working to resolve this ASAP.
Our plan is to work on these two issues for the next week to two weeks
and have
available a new release to push to the sites, if the opportunity arrises
and
assuming that we have something better.
We have also identified that the version of GCC (3.2.1) that we are
currently
carrying is very buggy in ways that are certain to effect LDAS. A new
version
of GCC (3.2.2) has been released with many fixes to compiler behavior
directly
in line with usage of that compiler by LDAS. We will attempt to upgrade
to the
new compiler during the next two weeks as well.
We have built and installed on all LIGO Laboratory Systems the new release
of
LAL and LALwrapper (version 2.0). This release was used in all testing
of LDAS
after its release and prior to the version 0.6.0 release of LDAS.
There has been a continuing issue with restarting LDAS APIs which has
shown a
very large possibility to fail. A code modification one day before
the release
has greatly improved the possibility for success. However, it is not
obvious
that this issue has been completely resolved.
The new stageData command and the supplimented -metadataapi option to
write
to the database and a LIGO_LW (XML) file concurrently has been a big
success
and made several LSC users quite happy.
Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
* Continued to work with Qlogic to get beta 2Gb FC switch working with
1Gb HBA.
* Computed md5 checksums for all E9 data archived to SAM-QFS, most (all?)
of which would have been read back off tape and found no errors
in 2.2TB
of data.
* Continued labeling and importing 9940 tapes.
* Got final quote from STK for L700s + tape drives, etc.
* Did some HPSS work (trying to pick it up after it fell over).
(Al Wilson)
(Stuart Anderson)
* After several months of negotiating we have finally placed the order
for the SAM-QFS storage software, and received the quote for
the
software maintenance.
* Placed an order for the Observatory tape robotics (700 slots) and
tape drives, as well as 4 more Fiber Channel tape drives (9940B)
for the central archive at Caltech.
MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
* Troubleshooting pc raid unit (time-out SCSI errors attributable to
the ribbon cables I think)
* NFS mount issues with ldas due to pulling raid off-line
* Swapped P4 chips between cluster test boxes
* Build OpenBSD 3.1 vpn box (needle.mit.edu)
* Got quotes for PC Raid unit with upgraded motherboard
* Looking into serial ATA to resolve cabling issues
* Backing up asq data from pc-raid (onto tape)
* Troubleshot tape unit and added Sony AIT configuration back into
kernel config file
Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
* Running tapecontrol script to archive injection data.
* Ordered spare hard drives for beowulf nodes.
* Preparing scripts for AS_Q only RDS generation and replication between
sites.
(Shannon Roddy)
* Began hooking up the new KVM switch. I have only been able to
hook up
about half of the machines to it so far, but I plan on hooking
the rest
up tonight. This may require some reboots of a couple
of machines. I
will have to get with Igor to coordinate this, or we can run
like it is
now for S2.
Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
* The tapecontrol scripts were start by Igor and myself at LLO and LLO
on Mon Feb 10 to record the raw frame data for the times below.
The
scripts will run through the run, and until the post-S2 injections
are
completed.
728955000 729001860 # Feb 10 17:29:47 2003 CST - Feb 11 06:30:47
2003 CST
729041400 729088260 # Feb 11 17:29:47 2003 CST - Feb 12 06:30:47
2003 CST
729127800 729174660 # Feb 12 17:29:47 2003 CST - Feb 13 06:30:47
2003 CST
729214200 734369460 # Feb 13 17:29:47 2003 CST - Apr 14 10:30:47
2003 CDT
734394600 734441460 # Apr 14 17:29:47 2003 CDT - Apr 15 06:30:47
2003 CDT
734481000 734527860 # Apr 15 17:29:47 2003 CDT - Apr 16 06:30:47
2003 CDT
734567400 734614260 # Apr 16 17:29:47 2003 CDT - Apr 17 06:30:47
2003 CDT
734653800 734700660 # Apr 17 17:29:47 2003 CDT - Apr 18 06:30:47
2003 CDT
734740200 734787060 # Apr 18 17:29:47 2003 CDT - Apr 19 06:30:47
2003 CDT
734826600 734873460 # Apr 19 17:29:47 2003 CDT - Apr 20 06:30:47
2003 CDT
734913000 999999999 # Apr 20 17:29:47 2003 CDT - ...
Note that the script only archives to tape the raw full frame
data
written by the framebuilders. The tapes will be sent to Caltech,
as
usual. (As usual, the tapecontrol script does not have access
to
excitations written by the rds writer on fortress.)
Note that the times above apply to LHO and LLO.
Note that data in raw frames outside the above GPS times will
NOT be
archived unless I am contacted with time to get the data.
Raw frame
data on disk at the sites is overwritten by the framebuilder
after ~12
days at LHO and ~9 days at LLO.
* Made some further updates to how the rds loop script outputs log
files, preparing it for S2. Have run test using the E9
channel list.
* Working to fix two nodes with failed drives: node23 and node25. There
are currently 62 beowulf nodes available at LHO.
* Set up a process to archive the E5cross pemall data from fortress
onto tape. This is to assist with freeing disk space for
the rds writer
on fortress. (Note that as stated above, this is independent
of the
tapecontrol script that archives the raw frame data. That
process does
not have access to fortress.)
Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Mendell:
I am still working to update the knownpulsardemod.loop.tcl driver
script. The script ran during E9 to generate SFTs during S2, monitored
from the LDAS LHO Search Summary web page. I still need to update the
script to get the calibration data under the S2 plan, and to detect
clean locked science mode stretches in real time. The search
code
itself, the knownpulsardemod DSO, should be ready to go for S2.
Weinstein:
- getting burst online running ready, with the "dsorun" package.
- Working with Laura on generating summary plots from
online S2 running.
- testing the use of time-dependent calibration info
with burst simulations, and crudely estimating the
effect of the time-dependent calibration on the
preliminary S1 analysis (our reach gets better!).
- Prepared list of hardware burst injections for pre-S2,
and preparing to look at the results.
- Preparing a list of systematics associated with the
burst S1 analysis.
Yakushin:
1) Fixed some bugs in waveburst DSO and submitted it to CVS.
2) Together with Sergey Klimenko testing waveburst DSO. So far it looks
like it is working well: the output looks reasonable and it never fails
if LDAS behaves.
3) Working on scripts to use with waveburst DSO during S2.
General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Configuring AP2000 wireless unit for nw22
-Ordered extra toolboxes for matlab license
Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Added a GC account for Alan Weinstein and also added him to group
dsorun
for the LDAS-JOBS machine. There are a couple of other accounts
to add
today for this. I am a little unsure of how this mixed administration
is going to go.
-Setting up a camera for Joe Giaime so that he can do a presentation
remotely for a group of high school students at LSU.
-Looking into getting some more hard disks for baronne since the home
directory disk is now at 94% again.
-Looking into a couple of minor networking issues. The problems
are
pretty transparent to everyone, but they need to be fixed.
-Did some maintenance on our tape backup server. One of the drives
is
still not letting the tape eject properly about 10% of the time.
Hanford:
(Christine)
- Finished setting up the Ultra10 and tape robot to be used as back-up
for fortress and as emergency back-up to framebuilders. Decided
not to
make it an nis+ client, instead just set up one local account.
Greg
took over once it was set up and started the tape back-up of fortress.
- Met with Greg and Dave for training on LDAS tape handling in the
event
that Greg is un-available.
- Worked with Dave to create a site emergency calling tree and
procedures to determine what is an emergency.
- Lots of user account set up and maintenance, i.e. people wanting
new
accounts and people wanting changes to existing accounts.
- Worked with Dell Technicians on the phone and at our site to replace
the mother board and CPU on a PC. The PC is still under warranty.
- Everyone residing at our site has now signed off on the Computer
Use
Policy. A copy of it will be included in the guest information
packet.
- Lots of other miscellaneous user support.
CIT:
(Mike)
-Setup four meetings that included testing connectivity, video, audio
and
setting up the speaker's presentation.
-One of the edge switches went out up in W/B 3rd floor. We had to reroute
network patch cables and add additional backup mini switches to get
our
users back up and running.
-Loaded two laptops with OS/Security updates and General Computing
software for the loaner pool.
-Working on hardware upgrades on a few older computers that were
replaced with new computers. These computers are in pretty good shape
and
have been instructed by Larry to swap out users, that have even older
computers with these, which are a few hundred MHz faster than what
they are
currently using.
(Lisa)
- Built apache2.0.44 for the new www.ligo. This is a much better
build than for
version 2.0.43. I also compiled php 4.3.0 for it.
- Installed the statistics toolbox for matlab12. Installed matlab13.
Combined
the licenses for both into one flexlm.
- UFSdump'd the root partitions for all servers.
- Tested then RMA'd a dell laptop.
- Resolved a problem with the wireless interfaces on 2 dell laptops.
- Moved a couple more people over to encrypted mail on becrux.
- Misc. user support
(Larry)
-Another busy week with procurement and contract issues. Reviewing
all of the
purchases made with Foundry. There's is some confusion on the maintenance
contracts and getting the LIGO equipment separated out from Foundry
equipment
purchased by other Caltech groups. Also, working a couple of maintenance
contract issues with SUN.
-Worked with the SUN Blade150 workstation. When using Solaris9 the
latest patch
cluster needs to be installed to resolve a number of the h/w communication
issues. Installed the SUNPCI card and so far it works as advertised.
-Worked a number of network issues. The edgeswitch on the 3rd floor
went down
and is being RMA'd. The new switch should arrive shortly.
We've had someone going around on the third floor moving network cables
while
people are away from their desk. I was asked by three different people
to fix
their computer and each one had their network cable plugged into a
dead or
incorrect port.
-Worked on the VRVS for the meetings. Once again we has someone play
with the
equipment just before the meeting and we had to reset the projector,
camera and
computer.
-Worked on some network performance testing. Not much has changed since
last
week.
-There have been at least 50 new locations added to the e-mail access
list used
for blocking spam and porno e-mail.
-Worked with Szabi in getting the temporary disk space he needs for
the S2 run.
We are now getting pretty low on spare disk space so I will be looking
into
increasing it over the next month or so.
-The usual assistance in restoring files, repairing and changing accounts.
(Veronica)
- LIGO website: updated various pages (Aspen Conference, Publications,
SURF program, Past Seminars, Employment, Conference Participation).
Support for LIGO seminars videoconferencing.
- LSC website: an announcement/information webpage for the upcoming
March
meeting was a priority. The webpage is ready and will be posted today.
Linked a calendar of LSC events to the LSC website; reworked navigation
graphics for this.
- CaJAGWR: videotaped the last talk and set up the webcast. Posted
updates
to the website. Working on some combos and compression of the videos
of
the last seminars.
From: David Ottaway <ottaway@ligo.mit.edu>
Report on the 2003 Aspen Winter Conference
Roman Schnabel (Hannover)
-Significant limitation in achieving greater than 10dB squeezing is
the
limitation in the current quantum efficiencies in the available
photo-diodes. A consideration for the 10dB Consortium is commissioning
a
new supplier of high QE PDs
- View graphs provided an excellent explanation of how squeezing is
obtained using OPO/OPA
- V. Chickarmane et al. Phys Rev A have done a similar calculation
to
Thomas Corbitts
Bill Kells
-Reported on initial measurements on the lensing in Hanford 4K Optics.
-Surprisingly it appears likely that at 6 Watts nominal operating power
the ITMs will heat passed the nominal optimal radius of curvature.
With
2.68 Watts input power a sideband buildup of 13 was achieved.
Bernard Schutz (Albert Einstein Institute)
-Discussed in detail the advantages of a high frequency detector with
sensitivity between 1kHz and 10 KHz. The advantage of such a detector
would be the observation of the normal modes of a neutron star. He
compared this with the recent advances in understanding the sun through
Helio-seismology.
-Normal modes can give a great deal of information about the structure
on
Neutron stars => Gravitational waves may be able to give us this
information => Neutron star seismolgy
-Normal modes can be exited by glitches between the core and the shell
-He strongly advocated the splitting of the problem of a high frequency
and low frequency sensitivity into two detectors.
-He is also advocating the changing of the GEO
600 detector into a high
frequency devices once advanced LIGO/Virgo style
detectors make its
sensitivity obsolete. High frequency detectors
can achieve good
sensitivity on much shorter baselines because
there is good separation
between good thermal noise and shot noise at
higher frequency. This means
such an interferometer can be achieved on a significant
cost saving.
J-M Courty (Jussieu)
-Talked about a new technique to cancel radiation
pressure noise by
utilizing a high finesse cavity that measures
the movement of the mirror
in the local reference frame and cancels it out.
Members of the audience
thought that thermal noise could prove to be a limiting noise source.
Essentially extends the bandwidth of a SQL Interferometer.
-A very thorough summary of this talk from Bill Kells is as follows:
The "new" (to me) idea which particularly caught my attention at Aspen,
was the description of "Quantum locking" to suppress (in principle
entirely) intrinsic cavity length noise. The specific noise addressed
(in
initial conceptual papers, gr-qc/0212081 and gr-qc/0301068) is that
component of quantum noise ascribed to radiation pressure. At the high
laser powers to be used in Advanced LIGO, this component is the ultimate
noise floor (in absence of any special signal tunings or squeezed light
injections) in the low fequency end of the sensitivity band. Note that
this group (Courty, the presentor, along with Heidmann, Pinard and
others
at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris) has been working along
these lines for quite a while. They previously made a splash
with the
demonstration of strong suppression of themal noise via conceptually
similar feedback techniques (PRL 83, 3174 (1999)).
The concept, which they work out in a detailed theoretical model, is
based on monitoring the position (and hence longitudinal quantum noise
due to radiation pressure in the idealized situation where all other
noise
is neglected, eg at T->0) of a TM mirror by forming a locked resonant
cavity between it and an auxillary "reference" mirror. This cavity,
its
beam, and locking circuit are all purely auxillary and have nothing
to
do with the main interferometer configuration or servoing. However
by
operating this auxillary cavity at much lower power (and hence lower
radiation pressure noise), its locking error signal can effectively
monitor
the RP noise of the TM. Further, this monitor can be fed back to the
TM
to suppress its RP induced jittering. Of course this lower RP noise
in the
auxillary cavity must mean that it has MORE high frequency shot noise.
With optimum high pass filtering the normal (no feed back) shot noise
limited ifo sensitivity is maintained above the knee (RP - shot limited
transition), while below the knee the floor only rises as f^-1
(= the
optimum power
SQL). So, for a quantum noise knee ~ 100 Hz (~ LIGO I) this can mean
a lower fundamental noise floor at ~10 Hz of an order of magnitude!
Stacy Wise (UFL)
-Talked about white light interferometers
- Will use gratings to match pathlengths for many wavelengths
-Have ordered gratings from Juena, 97% diffraction efficiency
-Will begin table top experiments soon and will start devising a time
domain model of the such an interferometer
Andri Grettarson contributed this detailed comments about this talk:
I guess I found Stacy Wise's talk about a white light interferometer
using
reflective gratings the most interesting, especially given the remarkable
progress on grating efficiency (99.5%) described earlier in the week
by
Marty Fejer in his talk (though apparently Stacy will use 97% gratings
to
begin with). The idea is to include a dispersive element in the
cavity
followed by a recollimating element (both gratings) to make the
length of
the cavity different for different wavelengths. Thus, the cavity
can
resonate at a broad range of frequencies and the roll-off in sensitivity
at 1/storage time, associated with a frequency-selective cavity,
disappears. There seems to be some disagreement among senior
folks
whether this would actually work, but, as her thesis project, Stacy
will
build a prototype. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the
results.
Garilyn Billingsley
- Showed a view graph of a first attempt at flat-topped beams profile.
It
appeared to me that it matched the profile quite well. The theoretical
folks have calculated that this will not be good enough
- It was mentioned that no attempt has been made to investigate the
effect
of thermal loading on flat-topped beams. (This surprised me)
- Ion beam etching looks like a promising means to make these shapes,
ion
beam size is around 1 cm.
- The corrective coatings of J.M from SMA Virgo were also discussed
Kenjii Numata
- Talked about a direct measurement of thermal noise in BK7 over a range
of 100 Hz to 100 kHz. BK 7 glass has a Q in the few thousand. Uses
very
small spot sizes and test the Fluctuation-Dissipation theory.
- Produces similar measurements for thermo-elastic noise in single
crystal
CaF
- A displacement sensitivity in the 10^-18 m rtHz level was achieved.
- The strain sensitivity appeared to be similar to the TNI except and
intrinsically noisier material was used.
- Kenji will measure fused silica in a few weeks and committed to measure
sapphire if LIGO send him the samples
Steve Penn
- Showed his and Gregg's latest results about thermal noise
- Q at around 200 milllion, on the predicted surface loss curve
- May still not have reached the
intrinsic limit on the bulk Q of
Fused Silica
Andri Grettarson
-Talked about a simple optical monitor to measure excess noise events
in
suspension wires and fibers
-The monitor could act as a useful veto to the gravity wave channel
or in
prototype facilities such as LASTI
-Utilized techniques used in the bar community to look for transient
events
-Experimental tests showed that no excess events in fused silica, however
loaded tungsten wire suspensions showed and excess of events
A. Takamori
-Measured the Seismic attenuation of the SAS seismic attenuation system
using a 3 m cavity
- Warren Johnston was worried that the results would be limited by
the
common mode rejection of seismic noise over such a short baseline.
It was
claimed that this had been considered and measured but was not important.
Marty Fejer (Stanford)
-Talked about all reflective inteferometers using diffraction gratings.
Very impressive diffraction gratings have been made at LLNL. Diffraction
efficiencies as high as 99.5% have been demonstrated. Fringe contrast
as
high as 0.999 have been shown in a test interferometer.
-Showed various schemes using all reflective components to create all
of
the components that are currently used in Advance LIGO.
- Very high diffraction efficiencies have been recorded (~99%)
- Compliments S. Rowan's talk on Silicon interferometers.
- Can handle a power loading of 200 times that of a Sapphire uncompensated
Advanced LIGO interferometer
- Have done and presented thermal distortion calculations for gratings.
Peter Snedden, David Crooks
-Investigated the frequency dependent loss in silica substrates
-Greater the temperature the higher the frequency dependence
-Weak frequency dependence was observed in coating
M. Cerdonio
-Discussed a new type of sphere detector consisting of a sphere enclosed
within a shell.
-This detector promises to have sensitivity advantages in the high
frequency regime over the baseline Advanced LIGO design
M. te Plate
-Discussed the LISA technology package that is scheduled to fly in
2006 to
test key LISA technologies, including the new optical table layout
and
bonding procedures developed at the University of Glasgow
-The main goal of this mission will be to demonstrate drag free flying
W. Hua
-Discussed strategies involving the correction of position sensors
using a
witness seismometer to get around the horizontal tilt coupling problem
in
active seismic isolation. These were demonstrated on the seismic isolation
platform at the engineering test facility at Stanford
C. Hardham
-Discussed the Hydraulic External Pre-Isolator, including a result
of a
factor of at least 10 isolation at 1 Hz in both the horizontal and
vertical direction
Adrian Melissinos
- Talked about interferometers
having significant sensitivity at the
FSR frequencies of the long arms (37.5 kHz)including results obtained
for
the LIGO 4K Interferometer
R. DeSalvo
Put forward the case for the use of Glassy Metal Mirror Supensions,
including demonstrations that large micro-cracks do not propagate,
this
allows very thin flexures to be made leading to low energy being stored
in
the joint. He predicts that this arrangement will allow suspension
noise
of such structures to be similar to that of fused-silica suspensions
despite having Qs of only 10000
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Mark Barton" <mbarton@ligo.caltech.edu>
This week I continued to work with Paul Russell integrating, debugging
and calibrating the GEO and CDS electronics for the LASTI prototype
MC
suspension. We found a defective cable, some inappropriate jumper
settings, and an excessively large choice of gain for the shadow sensor
readouts (open-light voltages of 26V!). All that remains is to enter
the
measured gains into the software and hopefully it should servo.
I also struggled some more with the earthquake stop measurement. I now
suspect that some of the trouble I was having getting it to servo stably
was a mechanical defect in the side OSEM. (The OSEMs I've been using
include some of the earliest production samples of the new design,
and in
two of them the circuit boards for the LED and PD are significantly
non-
parallel.) Rotating the side OSEM by 180 degrees cured the oscillations.
From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>
Janeen and I have been preparing a full set of drawings, assemblies,
bill of materials and indented bill of materials in order to send out for
a quote for all of the parts associated with the Mode Cleaner suspension.
These are now ready to go to the Graphic Arts Department for copying.
Helena and I have been continuing with the last few upgrades to the suspensions. These are both now ready for one to be taken apart and cleaned and the other for the local control tests.
From: Janeen Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>
AdLIGO Suspensions
Helena and I brought the MIT/Ken Mason HAM table spacers from the machine
shop to Bob Taylor for cleaning and baking yesterday.
Calum and I are working on creating a full drawing package for the
mode cleaner triple, including BOM, for an RFQ to support the proposal
costs. We are currently making small changes to some drawings. We reviewed
all quantities for parts and assemblies this morning. Gina has been involved
with our work and will create the RFQ as soon as we have copies of the
documents.
At the LASTI prototype meeting on Tuesday, Mark and Paul reviewed the status of the electronics debugging (GEO electronics + dSPACE + LIGO electronics.) They made a resistor change and reported this to Dave Robertson, who will make the same change on the second set of electronics for the second MC triple. Mark will continue debugging and report to Dave Robertson any changes that need to be made to the GEO electronics and report to Jay and Paul any changes to the LIGO electronics.
We're still hoping to get the LASTI MC prototype to MIT by the first week of April to coincide with Caroline Cantley's teaching break. We hope to accomplish an installation practice and maybe some transfer function tests on a pre-isolated HAM. I'm hoping Doug Cook can join us for the installation practice and bring along the LIGO1 HAM installation fixtures (not in his suitcase - shipped prior to his arrival.)
Bob Taylor is assembling hybrid osems for the second MC triple.
Gin Gin
Helena and I brought the parts for one ITM over to the Synchrotron
for assembly. We're still waiting for the front legs and the magnet gluing
fixture. Hopefully, Jay will have electronics ready and Bob Taylor will
have osems ready by Wednesday of next week. I am supporting Helena in writing
the assembly document for this suspension.
This afternoon I need to design a shipping container that will hold the optics securely, once their magnets and standoffs have been glued on. Hopefully, it can be fabricated in the next week.
40m
I originally ordered 7 SOS suspensions, with the assumptions that one
was a spare. That spare is the one Mark is using for his earthquake stop
testing. Today, I ordered mechanical parts for a new spare, as Mark assumes
testing will be ongoing for a while.
From: Jay Heefner <jay@ligo.caltech.edu>
Adv LIGO SUS
-========================
- The electronics for the adv LIGO suspension prototype in the synchrotron
building are installed and operational. The transimpedance of the GEO receiver
module needed to be adjusted from 120K to 60K ohms.
EMI Retrofit
==========================
- Quotes for VME crates have been received. Evaluation units will be
purchased from two manufacturers. These units will be tested at LLO. Test
plans and criteria are being developed, but will include shielding effectiveness,
cooling, and ease of use in the LIGO environment.
- Quotes for racks are still being collected, but should be received
by next week.
Adv LIGO DAC Development
===========================
- The prototype is operational and is being tested at Frequency Devices.
They are having some problems measuring the actual output noise. These
problems appear to be related to their test setup and not the module. If
they can not resolve the problems this week, they will ship the unit to
us for completion of the noise tests.
From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>
Advanced LIGO Coatings
J.M.Mackowski finished the coating of a 3"dia. x 1" thick fused silica
substrate with doped tantalum. He tried to reproduce the coating that was
sputtered on one thin sample some time ago. He stated that the optical
properties of both coatings are very close.
He shipped the coated substrate to Peter Sneddon (Glasgow); he will
be measuring the coating loss shortly.
Silicate Bonds
The load on the SF4 / silica bond was augmented to 10.5 kg (in sheer)
without problems.
The other SF4 / silica bond continues under tension (26 kg) after being
exposed to 30 C for a day. No stress was observed on the bond as consequence
of the increase in temperature.
From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>
Sapphire Q Studies
------------------
Dan Busby and I have found all but 2 of the first 10 modes predicted
by Dennis
Coyne for the 40kg sapphire, and measured most of their Q's.
Values are quite
low- the best is only about 5 million. I expect this is due to
the poor barrel
polish and we are working to overcome this.
Gregg Harry kindly spent a day in our lab helping us set up a birefringent
readout scheme for ringdown measurement. We love it, it is much
more convenient
than our previous Michelson readout scheme and quite sensitive.
Initially, our electrostatic driver was not very efficient at exciting
the modes
of our sapphires. This was puzzling, as it had worked exceedingly
well four
years ago when I first used it. On the theory that since those
early
experiments a dielectric layer of some sort had covered the driver
and trapped
the fringing electric fields, keeping them from the sapphire, I polished
the
driver very lightly with fine sandpaper to brighten the copper tracks,
cleaned
it, and reinstalled it. The excitation of the sapphire increased
by orders of
magnitude. I am sending this info to Popular
Mechanics and Martha Stewart's
Living, but you get it first.
From: Benno Willke <bfw@mpq.mpg.de>
Dear All,
neither Adelaide nor Stanford could attend last weeks telecon. Hence
I
send progress reports instead of telecon minutes.
Benno
******** Adelaide ***************************
Our progress:
New high temperature NPRO master laser
· testing 80% complete
· with no heating of the
gain medium it produces about 250 m output and a crystal temperature of
about 30C.
· heating the gain medium
about 4W -> crystal temperature of 110C and an output power of about 170
mW. Reduction in power is not due to
misaligment.
· checking of mode shape
and spectrum remains to be done
10W laser
· currently assembled as
standing wave to confirm thermal lensing and to re-tune the diodes
· will change to ring laser
next week, determine optimum output
coupler and confirm mode control
· fabrication of ,production'
laser has begun
10OW laser
· new fibres installed
· pump homogonizing waveguides
are now OK
· currently checking output
of fibres and waveguide
· next week: reassemble
laser head and commence lasing
Will we be ready for March visit? - difficult to say.
Will someone from here go to LSC meeting? - yes. Who? - Jesper
probably.
Will someone from here go to Stanford? - probably not (teaching will
have started then and it is extremely difficult for us to escape)
******** Stanford ***************************
1. Replacement slab with one zigzag shaved
off ready and in laser
head. Slab 1 realigned and fired up. Beam measurements being made on
it with new Gentec Dataray (Previous CCD we purchased from Gentec was
defective and was giving widely variable measurements). Redesigned
spatial filter to clean up beam before second slab.
2. Laserline diodes wavelengths were
off from specifications.
Manufacturer has acknowledged the problem and will ship replacement
stacks. Meanwhile, the diodes are being cooked (coolant runiing at
36C) to scoot wavelength at full power (300W) to 808nm. Supplies had
excessive hysterisis in the coolant temperature coolant (~6 degrees).
this cause wavelength to shift considerably and also change the
gain
of the slab as a result of the variable absorption. I have changed
the
coolant flow rates to drop the hysterisis to 2C. This still causes
about 0.6nm of wavelength shift as the temperature bounces between
the
2 extremes (Control system implemented in supplies is not a PID
controller but a bang-bang controller). I have made small signal gain
measurements and am ready to send in the 23W beam from the external
20W amplifier into it. The next step would be to send the 35W beam
from the first edge pumped slab into it and see what output level we
can obtain.
I am hoping to have the edge pumped system and end pumped system
ready when the team arrives at Stanford.
I am planning on being at LZH for the measurements there. SInce I need
to be back at Stanford for the team visit I will probabaly skip
Adelaide and prepare my setup and lab fro the laser tests. Regarding
the presentation at LSC, I was planning on presenting from Stanford.
******** LZH ***************************
1. We changed the Resonator design of
the high power laser to put a
second lens into the Resonator. Therefore we have better control of
mode diameter and stability range. Lin Pol. output power of 86 W in
fundamental mode operation achieved.
2. We did some locking experiments on
the Nd:YVO Laser, to test the
electronics and the piezo mirror for the high power system. In the
low finesse operation it was possible to get 95% trough a modecleaner
cavity.
3. On Friday we start to lock the high power system on a 2W Miser. Up
to now 68 W in single frequency operation achieved.
I (Maik) am planing to do the complete travailing tour together with
Benno. Carsten will come to the LSC meeting.
For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu