LIGO Weekly Report

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through September 4, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

09/18/03	Packages	Faxes
In	22	43
Out	6	22

Continued development of a proposal for implementing Primavera Project Planner Enterprise.

We meet tomorrow to status the Outreach Proposal. We seem to have budget convergence more or less.

The following change requests are still open.


CR-030015	FY 2003 Livingston Observatory Detector Maintenance Expenses (Increment)	R. Wooley	July 14, 2003
CR-030016	Hanford Facilities 2.2--Divide the Large Equipment Access to Facilitate Movement of Large Items (currently assigned to FY 2004 liens list)	J. Worden	July 31, 2003

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)

Saturday marked the start of a series of engineering runs leading up to S3. The M3 mini run was
intended as a 6h shakedown of the DMT, with several DMT authors in attendance and more online
remotely. A series of DMT monitor assesments (e.g.) and suggested improvements are available in the
LHO elog, Sat 13th. The 4k IFO locked in CM & full power mode for short stretches (~1/2 hr)
during the evening. The inspiral range was roughy 1Mpc. Remarkably, a sprint on 2k restoration
(after the meat locker installation and subsequent new table layout) resulted in CM locking during
M3. A summary of the run is posted here.

2K IFO
The 2k received upgrades to the anti-imaging filters, dewhiteners, and the (higher acquire current)
coil drivers, bringing it inline with the 4k. The snubber circuits are being tracked down and
removed (4k as well). A fast shutter controller went in on ISCT10.

4K IFO
Studies suggest that the acoustic mitigation on ISCT4 has outpaced the noise coupling in on
ISCT1, the 4k Refl port, providing direction for near-term improvements prior to the S3 freeze.

A major source of lock loss continued to be the transitioning of the dewhitening filters during the
running of the fullup script. The break often occurs on ETMY, although other optics are also
culprits. Several solutions were tried, with some improvement, including the one elogged here.

A comprehensive 4k PSL power assessment is detailed here, with a followup calculation on the
PMC loss shown here. The WFS sensing matrix was measured for high power.

An estimate of the H1 MC transmitted frequency noise was elogged, including the matlab
model as a tarball, and comparisons to S2 performance. Click for details.

DAQ
The 2k received new code. The LDAS T3 upgrade began. One effect of this is that the
fb3 lookback time will now be 6 days, instead of 12.7. The upgrade allows any and all
data to be archived at the site and available on tape from fortress.

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

LLO (Zucker et al)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Interferometer commissioning:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Continued progress working out bugs in the progression to low-noise
mode, culminating in a complete run with full power on Wednesday
evening. The calibrated spectrum showed a new noise effect not seen
before. Unfortunately the high microseism associated with Hurricane
Isabel impeded further study; analysis of the data on disk provided some
possible clues to the origin of this noise. In any case it is gratifying
that the bugs are out of the procedure and most hardware problems have
been stabilized.

We are preparing for Saturday night's mini-E run, after which we will do
a number of upgrades to the interferometer's hardware and software.
Welcome to the many visitors arriving this coming week and the next from
MIT, LHO, and CIT to help us complete these upgrades and get us ready
for S3.

REMINDER TO VISITORS ARRIVING AFTER HOURS: The entry gate will be
closed, so you must contact the control room via intercom to gain site
entry. Email or contact Rich Riesen or Katrina Carter once you arrive to
get a new pass card, or to update your existing pass card so it will
operate the gate automatically.

Safety/security
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Rich Riesen is on vacation this week. No new incidents or variances
have been reported.

LLO Seismic retrofit (Kern)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Still working to complete the integration of the housing and actuators
into the BSC and HAM models. The size of the SolidWorks assemblies makes
the work proceed slowly and we assumed the frequent crashes of our
machines were caused by processing demands. A serendipitous call to our
SolidWorks vendor revealed that the initial release of version 2003 is
pretty 'buggy', and we've upgraded to service pack 4. It's proving much
more stable and I think we'll be able to distribute integrated models of
the HAM and BSC configuration Thursday.

The shop that is manufacturing the machined parts for the actuator has
really come on line, and numerous phone calls and e-mails through the
day indicate that they are in the thick of CNC programming. Ed Jasnow,
Dennis and Larry Wallace have been instrumental in contacting some
manufacturing and production folks from JPL and today has been spent
explaining to them the design of the hydraulic actuator. JPL has a team
available to assist us by visiting the shop in order to assess their
capabilities and readiness, and help them come up to speed if at all
possible. Ed Jasnow is making arrangements ASAP and our contractor is
anxious to receive their advice.

The piece-parts of the Parker valve test manifold were returned from the
machine ship today and the first article is being shipped to Stanford.

CDS software (Khan)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Design and tested the Burt/Restore diagnostic setup. Once installed,
the diagnostic would indicate the status of the Burt restore on all our
CDS epics controllers

2) Prepared a software flow diagram for the Mode Cleaner Autolocker
sequence. This was requested by Brian.

3) Presented a seminar on "The Digital Signal Processing" at the
Southeastern University LA.

Detector commissioning and data analysis (Franzen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) I continued to work on the f2p filters.

2) I continued to learn how to run and use some of S. Klimenko's ROOT
scripts for upcoming analysis of S2 WaveMon data.

Detector commissioning and HPLF (Amin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I am trying to center this MC beam now that I have the correct
calibrations and appropriate DTT setup. If I am still out in the weeds
with my understanding, at least the MC_L signal will be minimized for
all mirrors. However, I believe my numbers are more realistic now.

I have been in PSL for a bit, gathering mode information regarding the
PMC mode matching. I estimate we may be able to get another Watt out
(perhaps). Two lenses were off center last Friday; someone must have
recentered them--and not e-logged it. Nonetheless, those lenses will be
moved more later today. The AO (the largest noise factor in the PSL)
still requires trimming. Final results are pending.

The new high power laser is expected to arrive this week. Lab safety
equipment is being installed or is being shipped. The current safety
interlock consists of a key switch that cuts off the power running to
the laser's power supply.

I am also altering the high power laser lab's SOP to more closely
resemble Lawerence-Livermore National Lab's protocols. Since they run
more powerful lasers, their guidelines are a platinum standard to be
matched.

Detector commissioning (O'Reilly)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Worked on commissioning the detector, we finally got to common mode
through the efforts of many. Worked a little with Ken and Wei Li on
f2p filters, and a little with Rupal on the MC centering.

Took some data for the reference cavity temperature response, which I
have yet to analyze.

HEPI and detector electronics (Abbott)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. The majority of my time has been spent preparing for the HEPI
electronics review this Friday.

3. Assisted Ben and Flavio with the installation and de-bugging of
their ISS system.

4. Helped with MC servo transfer function measurement and the correct
setting of the FSS gain.

Data analysis (Yun Yong Wang)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I did the data quality study last week with the WFS1, WFS2, WFS3 and WFS4
channels. The data of WFS1 is good.It shows that the alignment of the two
arm cavities are fine. The signals are 3 orders smaller than the normal
for WFS2 ( maybe only noise) in 65 S2 data segments. Need more work on the
WFS2,WFS3 and WFS4. The results are posted in the web page:
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~wangyy
in the title of " Wave Front Sensor and Alignment".

LDAS (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS admin:
Tried to set up replication between LLO and central metaserver at CIT.
It worked but the performance was bad so far. Hopefully the new fix to
VPN problems would solve this problem.

LDAS data analysis:
Debugging the new waveburst feature that would deal with
non-stationarity of the noise. There is some nusty memory bug that
ocassionaly crashes the DSO.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

see also the Revision Technical Review Board (RTRB) status here

Seismic Upgrade Project

CDS

see also 9/17 weekly CDS meeting minutes in the commissioning archives:

CDS Software

Rolf Bork reporting

- Modified the LSC code to run on the CIT 40m system. Main change was to move

DAQ from the VME DAQ network card (used at the sites) to the new PCI network

card used in the 40m system. Making use of the PCI card DMA engine, able to move

data onto the DAQ network at ~120MByte/sec.

- Busy modifying/checking latest software for installation at LLO this weekend.

Two rackmount PC's were built, loaded and shipped for the new EPICS system

yesterday. The latest ASC software was modified to handle the IO WFS used at

LLO.

- Worked with LHO to load/test latest software on LHO2k.

- Completed draft of HEPI controls design doc. for LLO installation.

CDS Hardware

Rich Abbott reporting

1. The majority of my time has been spent preparing for the HEPI electronics review this Friday.

2. Received the last of the equipment needed for doing the RFI baseline survey.

3. Assisted Ben and Flavio with the installation and de-bugging of their ISS system.

4. Helped with MC servo transfer function measurement and the correct setting of the FSS gain.

Jay Heefner reporting

GPS Clock Driver Module:

A design omission was discovered on the GPS Clock Driver. This omission may be partially responsible for the ICS110B channel hops that we have seen. A DCN will be issued and the fixes propagated to the modules at the sites. Through the testing it has become apparent that we need to redesign or rethink various pieces of our timing system, including point to point clock transmission.

40 Meter:

- Most of the week was spent cleaning up the target directories and startup files for the 40 meter processors.

- The LSC VME system should be up and running by late next week.

- Generation of database records and screens for the ISC aux crate has been started.

PSL

PeterKing

NPRO S/N #238 is back from Lightwave. I have not fired it up to see if

it's okay yet but hope to do so by week's end.

A high power photodetector is in the midst of fabrication. Another

high power photodetector circuit has been fitted out with heatsinks for the

voltage regulators, buffers and the photodiode itself.

Attached is a close-up view of the GAP2000 photodiode employed. This

photodiode was damaged when the light level was increased beyond 400 mA.

The small line is the crack in the photodiode substrate. Clearly evident

is the spot left on the photodiode by the beam (and the fact that the beam

was not centered on the photodetector). The bonding wires to the

photodiode substrate were intact, suggesting that with better heatsinking

it might be possible to run at higher photocurrents. The large line

through the picture is a crack in the window, which was damaged after the

initial high power test.

IMAGE NOT SUPPLIED TO GHS

Errant Beam Blocks

Ken Mailand

The mc1 and mc3 baffles are in the clean and vacuum bake process a CIT.

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)

Contamination Cavity # 1

The sample "PEEK" wire spoolfor the OSEM is under test.

We are taking ring down and beat frequency measurements everyday.

So far, no change in measurements.Does not show signs of contamination.

The new plots will be released by Dr. Zhang.

Absorption Test Measurement prototypein standby

( We are waiting on the new laser coming by the end of September 2003)

Scatterometer system

Another and new and complete scan for the HR surface Reflectance for the 2ITM04-C (Inner test mass mirror)

is in progress. Complete plot and results will be released by Dr. Zhang.

Dr. Zhang have set up the new ring down & beat frequency measurement on the new PC.

Complete new scanning set up is also adopted on the new PC.

Meet Mike Gerfenat the main shop to discuss the final design of the new base to hold the new Sapphire mirror

(13.875"DIA X 7.875"THICK) and be able to accommodate finally

the new optical plate to hold the RTS head as well as all the optical train.

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38

Cavity #3

Is pumping now with the old, cleaned andoriginal mirrors of ~70ppm and the ring down was recovered back to

23.5 microsec. as compared to the 18.0 microsecfrom the new REO mirrors (too much scattering).

We are in preparation to introduce a new simple of solder joints of led & photodiode boards for the

OSEM assembly. A complete RGA test is also in progress.

Cavity #2 Test cavity in STANDBY.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

While we continue to try and push the TNI's noise floor below 1e-18 m/rHz, most of the work this week has focused finishing the photothermal apparatus in preparation for measuring thermal properties of coating candidates for advanced LIGO. The experiment is now up and running, and we are ready to accept samples for characterization.

I've been trying to reduce the noise levels in the arm cavities. Increasing
the modulation depth did not have the effect I expected and I'm trying to
understand why. I'm focusing on the photodetectors, the phase shifter, the
mixer, and how they interact with each other.

On the Photothermal Experiment we have completed the installation of the
AOM which allows us to extend measurements of the photothermal effect to
the frequency range of 100kHz. All sources of noise and systematic
errors have been identified and now we are ready to test mirror samples
with various coatings. The theory relating the results of measurements
with thermal expansion coefficient and thermal conductivity coefficient
yet has to be utilized. In order to improve the efficiency of
measurements we think about automating the experiment to a certain
degree.

I have been doing some library research on the question of thermal conductivity in coatings. It turns out that several people have measured the thin-film thermal conductivities of the kinds of materials we are interested in, namely SiO2, Al2O3, Ta2O5, HfO2, TiO2, and MgF2. The results are pretty consistent for SiO2 and MgF2, and their thermal conductivities in thin film form appear to be

Results for Al2O3, Ta2O5, HfO2, and TiO2 are not so consistent, and that appears to be due to the wide variety of techniques used to measure the thermal conductivity. There is microscopic structure in most films (but not SiO2) that can give rise to a strong anisotropy in the thermal conductivity. Different methods of measuring the thermal conductivity measure it in different directions, and hence they get different answers.

What is consistent is that the thermal conductivity is almost universally much lower in thin films than in bulk, sometimes by one or two orders of magnitude. Moreover, there is usually a significant thermal resistance between the film and its substrate. According to the latest calculations, the thermoelastic damping noise would increase as the thermal conductivity of the coating goes down. If the films we use in our test-mass coatings also show lower thermal conductivity than bulk materials, our estimates for this noise source, which assumed the bulk values, might be too low.

The measurements in the literature are mostly for e-beam deposited coatings, whereas our coatings are ion-beam deposited. (Thanks to Helena Armandula for pointing this out.) It's too early to tell whether this is important, though, since there aren't many results in the literature for ion-beam coatings. We plan to measure the thermal conductivity in ion-beam coatings using our photothermal experiment.

I've also been working on a simple method for extracting the thermal properties of a sample from its photothermal response. The method in the literature is somewhat computationally intense, and it appears that a simple interpolation between frequency regimes gives the same answer with a lot less work.

LASTI (Ottoway)

We have been continuing the work on characterizing the sensor correction
coefficients.
Some data can be found on the September 16th and 17th LASTI ilog.

We have also started to break down the MEPI system on the HAM in the
anticipation of moving the HEPI from the BSC to the HAM.

HEPI Installation and Design (Mason)
The piping and valve panels from the pump room to the X-END and Y-MID
stations at LASTI is complete. We will be doing final leak checking on
friday.
Myron has begun de-installing the MEPI Pre-Isolators on the Y_MID
station. Lee Cardenas from Caltech will be here monday to assist with
the switchover to the hydraulic HEPI Pre-Isolators.

ISC Periscope (Mason)
All machined and fabricated parts for (6) ISC periscopes are on order.
The expected delivery date is 9/24.

Vacuum Compatible geophone (Mason)
Design of a vacuum compatible geophone was started this week. Parts are
out for quote. Larry Jones is assisting with cabling and pigtails for in
vacuum installation. This will allow us to button up the vacuum system
and pump down after the HEPI is moved over from the BSC chamber to the
HAM chamber.

HEPI Conversion to VME (Sarin)
I've been writing up vme code to implement local (geophone->actuator)
loops in the vme control software. i'm mostly done with that, but am
unfortunately unable to test it fully now that the HAM/MEPI setup has been
dismantled.

other than that, i did some noise measurements on the re-worked
L4C-interface box that i got back from rich abbott: it looks ok now with
the troublesome bw-limiting output op-amp removed from the circuit.

also started looking at the dspace-simulink BSC/HEPI setup that richard
has, to get the filters from that into the vme.

A meeting was held to discuss space issues at Hanford for fitting the
initial LIGO thermal compensation. Ano ptical design for heating the
optics
from the back surface was presented. Due to significant space limitations
it was decided to consider a design where the front of the optics are
heated. This will be done next week and hopefully its feasiblility will be
known by next week.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E Weekly Physics Meeting
----------------------------
Matt, Hiro, Virginio and Biplab discussed about excess noise shown by
SimLIGO in between 30-200 Hz and other SimLIGO-related issues.

(Biplab) A factor of 2 discrepancy in thermal noise level has been
    debugged and a new version of Thermal.box is prepared and
    incorporated inside SimLIGO.
    This version uses FUNC module instead of primitives for
    digital_filter, white_noise etc. It can take into account individual
    characteristics of each mirror and would be easier to handle,
    check and modify.

(Hiro) The new release of SimLIGO (030915) has significant bug fixes
    and all users of SimLIGO should switch to this one. The bugs fixed have
    been announced recently, but mainly problems related to the timing of
    digital controller simulation and the thermal noise normalization are
    fixed, since the last release 030902.

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Hiro) New release of SimLIGO and the corresponding simulation engine codes
       have been uploaded for download in the usual place of our homepage.
       Also updated is the Primitive Reference manual, which is also
       available from the e2e home page.
       The simulation engine update has several bug fixes, in addition to the
       support of this new release of SimLIGO, so it is requested that all
       e2e users upgrade to this release.
       (Note: "about box" display during the run shows what are fixed).

(Matt) Worked on E2E simulation code, debugging and multi-thread
implementation.

(Melody)Continuing e2e source code modification to dynamically create
C++ source from FUNC_xxx equation modules, which would be compiled,
combined to a shared library, and used during runtime execution.

Alfi
--------------
(Bruce)
-Finished bundle input tracing for bundles and bundlers in Alfi (PR 272.)
-Nearing completion of bundle implementation.

Software Systems (Maros for Blackburn)
The use of STLPort continues to be fruitful. It continues to catch illegal use of iterators. As issues are discovered, they are ported back to the GCC builds and tested.

This week has seen major emphasis on fixing problem reports. Nearly a dozen were either closed or put into feedback. The fixes included the use of -usertype and -outputdir options with the dataPipeline command, returning all locations of result files from a job, corrections to gridftp support and others. These changes reflect changes to the diskcacheAPI, manager, frameAPI and documentation.

CmonClient has been modified to better support beowulf nodes. These changes have been done in a way to support backwards compatability with the 0.7.0 release of LDAS. Also new to this week is the ability to block a dso from the cmonClient.

Work continues in the area of correcting problem reports for createRDS to support the mini MDC. Several regression tests have been written to demo the problem in the Problem Tracking System.

* Started work on more sophisticated scripting system to retrieve data
from HPSS and copy it into SAM-QFS.

* Copied S2 L1 RDS data into SAM-QFS (ongoing) and dealt with IDE-RAID
failure (copied all but 3 files from the bad RAID set, got those from
Scott Koranda).

* Greased bureaucratic wheels to get our 4 new 9940B tape drives
installed
(ongoing).

* Helped with reconfiguration at LHO (set up 3510, provided instruction
to Greg & Ben vis a vis the new QFS set up).

* Dealt with major problem on the CIT archive when one 3510 just
"checked
out" and the switch decided to reset it's port to type GL (from F or
FL).
Spent a whole day determining what data could be saved and what
needed
to be thrown away and recopied into the archive. No data was lost.

* Finished writing the script for publishing RDS data generated by
Philip into the RLS. Waiting to test it once the new version of LDR
is
released.

* I have also added a verification module for the data that is
published
into CIT using LDR. This verification modules checks to see if the
disk is
mounted or not if a physical file requested by the LDR returns with a
file not found error.

Another check I added was also to verify even if the file did exist,
its
checksum and filesize is still the same as that exists in the
database and
the local is not corrupted.

* Modified the Condor installation a little. Adder user accounts
lsc-cit and lsc-uwm on the nodes. The certificates of individual
users
will be mapped to the appropriate account depending on their
location.

This configuration is better than creating individual accounts, I
feel
this scales a lot better, since we dont use NIS. And we can always
add
individual users if a need arose.

* Recovered 1TB of S2 level 1RDS frames from tape archive back to
rebuilt IDE-RAID device.

* Obtained quotes for Larry to order 16 more Fibre Channel ports for
the main FC switch at Caltech.

* Met with Sun to discuss a few open issues regarding high-performance
computing that they have agreed to research for us.

* Replacement hot-swap power supply from ASA has also failed -
contacting
ASA about it.

* Tried to set up replication between LLO and central metaserver at
CIT.
It worked but the performance was bad so far. Hopefully the new fix
to
VPN problems would solve this problem.

* I have figured out the cause of the strange MTU problem we were
having
on the VPN. Turns out that it is related to having aliased IP
addresses
assigned to a single interface. I am still working on a long term
resolution. I am in the process of testing a temporary configuration
that will allow VPN access for the 10.14 and 10.15 subnets, but not
the
10.16.

* The main LDAS sys admin activity on my part at LHO this week is
assisting Dan Kozak and Ben Johnson with the reconfiguration of the
T3
disk farm. This is underway and should finish by tomorrow.

* Tested disk2disk copy script during M3. It successfully copied data
between 17:30 and 00:30 during the run. Data is presently on tapes
HL0058 and HL0059. Compression ratio for the full frames turned out
to
be approximately 1.5.

* StorageTek replaced drive 41 (top drive) in our L700 tape library.
WWN was set to that of the old drive, but Solaris seems to not be
happy
with the drive (thus, samfs can't use it yet). I'm still working on
the
problem.

* Presently working with Greg Mendell and Dan Kozak to reconfigure our
SAM-QFS filesystems to the S3 configuration. We are making the
/frames
filesystem and seeing if we can stage our trend data into the new
filesystem.

* Received the new Linux/Xeon metaserver box. I will start memtest86 on
it this afternoon (Sept. 18).

Creighton:
I have finished writing a template placement program for directed
sky-plus-spindown pulsar searches. It seems to be working fine,
although the final template counts seem a bit large -- I'll need to
check them before committing a final version into LAL.

Mendell:
1) Continued working with PULG on methods for doing parameter estimation
in the frequency domain.

2) Worked with Mike Landry on the stack-slide search. We hope to
implement the first version of the sliding routine in LAL by Oct 1.

Reilly:
I have nearly finished the first run through of the S2 data, it has
taken a bit longer than expect because I am still working out the
bugs in my new scripts. (I have had to re-write a number of scipts
for running the newer DSO.) Overall it takes less than one day
to analyze the S2 data set. I have also been playing with some
ideas I had about tracking down the 16 Hz glitch. I have been
making "folded light curves" of the H1 data using about ten
to twenty hours. I see definite structure in the data on the 1/16
second time scale, however I am not yet certain what it is that
I am seeing. There are a couple of more tests I am going to try
to see if I can understand these folded curves a little better.

Shawhan:
* Performed triage on the list of open LDAS problem reports, to try to
identify those which are critical from a science user point of view.

* Verified that the DAQ systems at the observatories are now writing out
frame files with complete and correct detector geometry information.

* Checked whether the S2 periods of "growly" elevated noise in H1 are
reflected in the data quality flags. They are, thanks to studies by
John Z. which specifically flagged intervals of elevated noise in mid
to upper frequency bands.

* Investigated an apparent problem with conlog and tracked it down to an
Epics processor with a system clock which was 17 hours fast. The clock
has been fixed, but I also revised the conlog query code to be smarter
about detecting and correcting for clock discrepancies like this.

Yakushin:
Debugging the new waveburst feature that would deal with
non-stationarity of the noise. There is some nusty memory bug that
ocassionaly crashes the DSO.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Working on SSH upgrade to gc computers

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Had a conference call with several representatives from Sun about the
LDAP migration. Some questions were answered but some still remain. I
have a commitment from Sun to provide decent support on the items that
are unresolved.
-Tightened down some firewall rules this week in response to the OpenSSH
vulnerabilities. There is supposedly a root exploit in the wild for
this, though there are mixed reports on how common it is at this point.
Patched the machines where a patch is available. Still waiting on Sun
to release a patch.
-Working on some storage issues.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Mon., Tues. and part of Wed. were spent on final setup and user
support for pcard training and cleaning up after training. I thought
everything went very well. There were a few minor problems, some users
needed help with using the computers and VPN login, the wireless network
was a bit slow and I had to add more IP addresses to the DHCP server.
Thank you to Erich Schneider at Caltech ITS for creating 20 ITS user
accounts in one day and to RuthAnne Bevier for creating 20 VPN accounts
and providing immediate assistance when needed.
- Now that most everyone has ITS and VPN accounts we can download and
install the Caltech site-licensed software. I have started updating
everyone to Norton Antivirus version 8 and the latest SSH.
- Misc. other user support.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Upgraded Ed Jasnow & Phil Lindquist with newer computers and transferred
over users data, loaded print drivers and additional software on Phil's
computer.
-Loaded a new laptop for Patrick Sutton with all GC software and configure
e-mail and security settings.
-Updated ghost images on the following user workstations:
Irena Petrac, Thomas Frey, Phil Lindquist + laptop, Irene Baldon, Cindy
Akutagawa, Ryan Tischler, Florence Kaufman, Ed Jasnow, Dot Lloyd, Cleveland
Mak, Donna Tomlinson, Bill Tyler, Ed Chargois.
-Worked on all NTSRV's updating running (windows update) to load security
patches. I also took a look at security logs checking for intrusions.
Everything looks okay.
-Janeen Romie was having problems with the CDRW that came with her computer.
I ran the diagnostic software from Dell, which reported no errors. Dell
diagnostic software could not find the problem. I called Dell and reported
the results and they decided to send out a new CDRW. This issue has now
been taking care of.
-Upgraded Calum Torrie's computer with CDRW/DVD+RW and loaded some
additional software.
-Called in one of our loaner laptops that is having problems booting up.
This is caused by a sticky spacebar and right mouse button that is
integrated onto the palm rest. I had called this in and had the top end of
this laptop replaced days before it ran out of warrantee. This laptop is out
of warrantee. Dell claims the mother board needs to be replaced, which
would cost way to much money to fix. Larry Wallace has decided to save this
laptop for parts.
-Cleaned up one laptop that was infected with a virus. This laptop came
from the loaner pool; plus I updated this laptop with all windows updates.
-Worked on Gina Salone's computer. She was having problems with spyware &
adware filling up her desktop with multiple advertising annoying websites.
I had to cleaned up the registry and load an adware software removal tool.
Plus I un-installed multiple unknown programs that were loaded on her
computer. She is back up and running free of adware/spyware.
-Tried to ghost the conference room VRVS computer
using a ghost boot disk but got nowhere with this. I will have to ghost
this computer locally.
-Worked on Cleveland Mak's computer regarding a dead zip drive. I ended up
swapping this part out.
-Worked a number of printer and printer supply issues.

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: VRVS setup and troubleshooting for this week's seminar.
Posted updated to various pages throughout the website. Updated the roster
database. Updated the Internal Bulletin Board. Tracked down a reference of
a LIGO publication per a request from U. of Arizona. Recompressed a video
job for better performance.
- LSC website: Posting belated presentations from the August meeting.
Preparing a layout for the webpage of the upcoming meeting in November.
Addressing an issue of migrating a webpage for the stochastic group to a
LIGO location. The LSC server seems to be a logical place for it.
Addressed an MOU issue with Linda who is concerned that with Rita's
departure there is no mechanism for tracking down and submitting the MOUs
to the DCC for processing and posting. Helped Linda with mail lists.
- CaJAGWR website: Usual upkeep. Updated the roster. Updated the schedule
of talks for the Fall term.
- Project Science: User support. Updated the database of the participants
for the upcoming workshop.

(Lisa)
- Rebuilt alterf with solaris 9.
- Worked on GC internal documentation.
- Compiled and installed a new version of openssh on sargas and mirfak.
- Worked on a pc modem problem after an upgrade to winXP pro.
- Worked with Larry on fixing a problem with the nis+ mail alias map.
- Dealt with a problem on the mailservers where the RAV software got into a
loop.

(Larry)
-Worked a number of procurement items. It is definitely the end of the fiscal
year. A number of orders were placed in trying to beat the deadline.
Reconciliation was not too bad this month even though there were a large number
of items, most of the companies had sent some sort of documentation and it was
nice not having to hound them.
-Assisted DCC with a number of misc. items. Most dealing with the movement of
documents.
-We will have to start dealing with people tinkering around with the network
equipment without permission. We've had a couple of incidents in-which someone
has pulled to power cable instead of pushing the reset button, to get the access
points to reset.
-Spent time on the LDAP issues that Shannon has been working on. It doesn't look
like we will be able to start moving over in October, we will have to wait for a
few logistical issues to be resolved.
-Worked on various account issues. Still a deal of work to do on accounts of the
summer visitors that have left.
-Worked a number of documentation issues. Still a lot more to go.
-Swapped out the core Foundry switch. No major problems have come up and Ed
Chargois has taken care of sending the old switch back.
-The usual of fixing PC's and moving equipment around. I hope to get back on the
server and network systems next week.
----------------

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO and supporting R&D

Seismic Isolation

No report

Suspension

From: JaneenRomie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdLIGO Suspensions
Working on tasks in preparation for the alignment workshop in October. Submitted an RFQ for RM blades to one company; two more companies will be sent RFQs as soon as possible. Reworking MC structure to accomodate the blade rotational adjustment mechanism.

Gin Gin
Designed and submitted for fabrication a holding fixture for the ETM sapphire. Supported Helena with the ETM balancing. Reviewing and preparing for release all Gin Gin documentation.

From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO Suspensions

COILS
Russell Jones and I have continued to prepare the coil drawings.

SUS WORKSHOP
A schedule is available at the Workshop page on my web page.
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ctorrie/SUS%20WORKSHOP%201/sus%20workshop%201.html

RAL
I have written a draft Mike summary of proposed work that the new engineer at Rutherford Ian Wilmut will consider for the ETM.
it is currently being reviewed by Janeen and Norna.

SOFTWARE
As it is only $100 a set I propose we buy at least 1 seat of "push button pdf" for use with SolidWorks?

MC
Mike Lloyd and I have been updating the MC assembly to include several new adjustment mechanisms.

RM
It is hoped that we can get back into the design of the RM suspension parts again early next week.

DCC
I have started to load some of the MC files and associated documents to the DCC

Pre-stabilized Laser

From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>

ShallySaraf, of Stanford, asked for some help in fabricating a small
pre-modecleaner-type cavity for use in his saturated amplifier experiment.
He wanted a finesse of about 100, so we tossed around a few numbers to get
a rough idea of what is required. He will visit around mid-October, if we
have the pieces together.
.

Input Optics

No report.

Core Optics

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

Fused Silica Q
--------------

Dan Busby and I have been trying to measure the Q's of a 12.5cm diameter by 5cm
thick Suprasil 312SV mass for more than a month. For some reason, we just
cannot excite the modes. We did get one measurement of 1.8e7 for a mode at
38kHz, but we will need many measurements to get a real sense of the Q. Work
continues.

Thermal Compensation
--------------------

I am learning how to use FEMLAB, a MATLAB-based finite element modelling
program, so that I can model the real Pathfinder sapphire absorption
characteristics in Melody to get a sense of how bad the thermal lensing will be.
I am starting by modelling the modes of theSuprasil mass mentioned above so
that Dan and I will know which frequencies to check.

Mesa Beam Research
------------------

I have partitioned a region of the OTF with laser safety curtains and warning
lights, and have acquired a Nd:YAG laser and verified its output power. I am
currently developing a more detailed budget and schedule.

From: "Erika D'Ambrosio" <ambrosio@ligo.caltech.edu>

Jerome Degallaix & Erika D'Ambrosio

As thermal lensing is one of the most important issues
Advanced LIGO has to handle we started a collaboration
on investigating whether we can benefit from using non
gaussian beams. The plan is to use the informations on
thermal lensing as output of Jerome's FEM code and put
them as mirror maps in the FFT model simulations while
looking for possible problems.

I sent him the power profile of the flat top beam.
The data are normalized so that the integral of the power
over the surface is one, so that any increase in power is
just a multiplicative factor.

The grids I provided Jerome are in the same format I am able
to deal with that is 128X128 pixels read one column after the other.

The area covered by the grid is 35cmX35cm and 32cm is the diameter of
the mirrors. What we am looking for is a similar grid for the optical
path deviation in transmission (due to the dependance of the refractive
index on temperature and the thermal expansion) and in reflection (due to
the thermal expansion).

The major problems are:

1) to check whether the deformation of the reflecting surface
is large enough to modify the transverse distribution of the
beam and therefore cancel any benefit;

2) to look for instabilities in connection to realistic perturbations
   that might affect the interferometer (such as misalignment). This is
   important since the flat top beam has shown to be already very
   sensitive to tilt and thermal lensing can make things even worse.

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

Advanced LIGO Coating (R & D)

Due to some organizational changes Ed Jasnow is the new contract manager on this project and
at this time he is finalizing the package to present to the NSF for approval.
We have an agreement with SMA that they will provide us with the names of dopants,
alloys, and similar physical information about any coatings they make for us without
spelling out coating process details. An appropriate group of authors from SMA will be
listed on any papers coming out of this work. It is hoped that a similar deal can be
made with CSIRO.
Jean-Marie has also expressed interest in collaborating with CSIRO, rather than working
independently in a quasi-competitive situation. This could be a good approach as we
could double technical efforts to solve the mechanical loss problem. One vendor takes
one approach while another vendor investigates a different approach.
Jean - Marie is providing (outside of the contract) a 7 micron thick pure hafnia coating
done in the small coater. We will get one thick 3"dia. Q substrate and 2 one inch
substrates coated. One of the1 inch parts will be used to measure absorption, the other it
will go to the TNI lab for measure of thermal conductivity and expansion. SMA is in the
process of purchasing an instrument to measure thermal conductivity in thin films. All
their coatings will also be characterized for absorption. If hafnia looks promising, we will
probably try some hafnia/alumina coatings and then we'll also continue with some
dopants.
Mackowski plans to visit Caltech during the first days of October to formalize plans.
From CSIRO I requested a 30 layer, 1/4 wave of silica/tantala coating as a baseline to
work from, as they are new to our research effort. We will certainly measure these
samples for Q and absorption. We will try to get other measurements done as well.
With Gregg I am planning on visiting their facilities around October 20th.

Auxiliary Optics

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

PHOTON DRIVE R&D
The test of the photon actuation control of the mode cleaner is awaiting the pump down and commissioning of the 40m mode cleaner.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: RiccardoDeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>

Weekly September 17th

Xavier and Chiara finished their period and left.

Chiara
Finished data collection for the MoRuB thermal conductivity measurement and left, the data was collected by Hareem and sent to her in Italy where she will finish the data analysis

Simone
Writing final report

Francesco

Working on final report

Riccardo
Working on the mini-arc melter to solve a technical problem in getting better sample uniformity for Erics modified MoRuB.
An additional small back-flow of Ar should prevent untimely feeding of the melt in the mold and allow better heating of the samples and better result uniformity.

Weekly Report for Week Ending September 18, 2003

Special Announcements:

LSC Issues (Saulson)

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)