LIGO Weekly Report

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)
We held a site teleconference on Thursday, January 8, 2004. The following issues were discussed:

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

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
No report this week.

> From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>

ACTIVITY
Distributed 2004 Personnel Directories to all of LIGO Staff including the two sites and MIT.


1/8/04	Packages	Faxes
In	13	11
Out	16	21

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)
[We have prepared a change order for the MIT contract pending receipt of FY 2004 funding from the NSF (which is expected shortly). This change order has been approved by G. Sanders. --pel]
From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

>Irene BaldonPLEASE NOTE: This report covers only three (3) days (Monday thru Wednesday) due to Holiday Vacation.

ADVANCED LIGO (Cost Schedule Control Systems) T. Frey
From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>

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

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

The final report for the Advanced R&D Grant (PHY-980158) was sent to the NSF (via FastLane) and was approved by the NSF. We think that this is the final hurdle before the NSF can provide us with our FY 2004 funding, which should follow shortly.

Scrubbing of the FY 2004 Operating budgets continues. The target is to have a change request ready for review by Monday.

The following change requests are 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 S3 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)

S3 finishes up later this morning, Jan 9th at 8am. Some cumulative duty cycle information,
up to but not including the last ~6 hours of the run, is given here:

Elapsed run time = 1673.2 hours
Sample        Hours Percent
H1           1155.7     69.1
H2           1058.5     63.3
L1            365.9     21.9
H1+H2+L1      264.9     15.8

The 265h of triple coincidence is 85% that of the 312h obtained during S2. The GRB alarm
(indicating a gamma ray burst has very recently been recorded) has been observed during triple coincidence locks.

Sub-zero temperatures and heavy snow in E. Washington has made travel to the site difficult
at times. Other hazards of note include 300kg icicles falling from the corner station, and
freezing rain making a skating rink of Steven's Drive. Plows on route 10, as well as the
clearing of snow on site with a tractor, produced several lock losses.

LVEA gatevalves automatically shut on Jan 2nd, due to a blown fuse. Instrument air systems
in EX and MY were troublesome.

Laser power was found to be correlated with the ambient temperature in the LVEA (both
here, and again here).

The 4k ran in peak form this week, typically posting long locks with inspiral ranges of 4-5Mpc.
Click here for a look at a displacement spectrum corresponding to a range of 6Mpc (within
a factor of 2 of SRD at 100Hz). A MICH_CTRL correction was tested on H1.

Broadband noise in the 2k crept up last week, dropping inspiral ranges to ~650kpc.

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

---------------------------------------------------------------------
S3
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The L1 duty factor has improved for the last few weeks of the run, but
we were still hobbled by daytime anthropogenic noise and several periods
of high microseism (unlucky but typical of the season).

In addition we had a short circuit on an ISS circuit board, which indirectly
caused a thermal runaway on the PSL reference cavity; repairs, plus the
time for temperatures to re-equilibrate, cost us a full night. A
recurrence of an intermittent problem with the mode cleaner alignment
controls cost further precious coincidence time.

The noise recovered to its best level after increasing slightly in the
week after the Xmas holiday (for those who follow such things, the
reported "inspiral range" temporarily dropped from 1.2 to 0.9 MPc; more
precisely speaking the spectral density around 200 Hz increased by about
3 dB). The change (and its reversal) are not fully understood, as
definitive diagnostics would have been invasive. This mystery has been
added to the post-run commissioning list.

Such minor problems notwithstanding, we ended the run with L1 running
stably and reliably, a significant coup given the severe adverse
conditions and late start. Commissioners, scimons and especially the
Livingston operators should be commended for an outstanding effort. Well
done!

With S3 behind us, alas there's little time for reflection; we must now
embark on an aggressive commissioning schedule to push for design
sensitivity and duty and lay the groundwork for S4. By far the biggest
component in this effort is the installation of our seismic
pre-isolation system (HEPI), which will enable us to ride out daytime
and seismic noise.

However in addition to HEPI we must resume in parallel the interrupted
WFS, RFI retrofit, power-up, ISS, PSL and other suspended commissioning
tasks to stay abreast of the schedule. It will be complicated to
interleave these tasks with the backdrop of HEPI construction and
commissioning, but we have confidence the work can be organized to get
the most out of 2004. Many observe it would be cleaner and easier to sit
back and wait for HEPI; we simply don't have that option.

Safety/security (Rich Riesen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I have staged 2 forklifts at the X-end station. (1 clean area and 1
utility).

Crane inspections schedules have been made for the end stations and
staging bldg. Wed. & Thurs. next week. The Genie man lift is staged at the
Y-end for the first of the cranes to be inspected and will end up at the
X-end after the inspections in case it will be needed for HEPI installation.

Final Vent Readiness cleaning is now underway and will be completed end
of next week ( staging bldg clean areas and the X-end have priority at this
time).

LLO, a Community Resource (Bonnie Wooley)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Livingston Parish School Board utilized the auditorium this week to
conduct their librarian in-service conference. The participants felt the
atmosphere of a professional environment enhanced their training/experience
as they are accustom to meeting in lunch room cafeterias with echoing walls
and herds of children.

#MZ note: Gratifying to hear we came out on top in that comparison.
See, we really are making progress! ;-)

LDAS (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS admin

1) On Dec 30 GC experienced a disk failure and user file system became
unavailable. ldas-jobs box, from which users submit their LDAS jobs and
from which createRDS jobs are running, became unusable, since ldas-jobs
uses NIS and depends on GC, until GC problem was fixed couple days
later.

2) On Jan 5 the old dataserver stopped working. It is back online after
bad memory was replaced by SUN.

3) On Jan 6 t3-8 got frozen. That caused /samrds file system to become
unavailable and rebooted dataserver as a result. Power cycling t3-8
helped. It is not clear why this happened. Perhaps, we should upgrade
disk firmware on t3s.

1) Fully tested and released for general use sine-gaussian burst MDC
frames. Presented the results at the burst telecon, see
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/MDC/ for details.

4) Testing how waveburst sensitivity and event properties reconstruction
depend on time-frequency resolution of wavelets used in waveburst.

General Computing (Roddy)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
On returning from vacation, most of my time the last two days has been
spent checking on things in preparation of the NSB meeting in Livingston
on Feb. 4th. preparing some documentation of the network, printers,
etc. for visitors.

Looking into the crash that happened while I was gone. Have been going
through the logs on the backup machine to try and see what was causing
it to lock up during restores. It does not appear to be a firmware
problem despite the fact that a later firmware was released while I was
on vacation.

Attempted to flash the EEPROM on the IDE RAID on decatur. It appeared
as if the flash was working, but it was taking forever and was still
going when I left to go home last night.

Burst analysis & S3 detector support (K. Franzen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

LLO Seismic Retrofit (Rich Abbott)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Sent out the first boards to the stuffing house (Screaming Circuits)
and anticipate receiving them next week. For comparison purposes, the
cost of having the 12 boards stuffed was $260 each on a 48 hour
turnaround time. The boards measure about 14 by 12 inches and have
approximately 500 parts per board. If the boards were stuffed on a 10
day turnaround, the cost would have been $160 per board. Given the
schedule and the desire to prove the process, I am using the 48 hour
option for the near term.

#MZ note: Does the vendor's name indicate compliance with our new
EMC protocols? ;-)

2. Excel has completed the fabrication of the motor controller boxes.
All that remains is to mount the units on the pump cart once it is
ready.

3. Dave Grimmett - a technician from Caltech - will be
travelling to LLO to assist the HEPI task during the week of the 19th of
January

5. Lightwave Electronics reports that they have not found any problems
with the laser power supply sent back to them for repairs. They are
still beating on it after a conversation wherein I gave them more things
to check.

6. Electronics work is well underway for the HEPI design. With the
help of Flavio and Ben, the various chassis are coming along fairly
well. We are still on schedule for delivery in February.

LLO Seismic retrofit (J. Kern, O. Spjeld)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Follow-up on Valve Calibration Test Stand manufacturing progress.
Estimated delivery mid-January. Complete setup at LLO by end of January.

Follow-up on Boot Installation Fixtures. Delayed from machine shop,
earliest delivery Jan 15 with direct shipping of one set to MIT for the EPI
fit test.

All Holo-Krom fastener and off-the-shelf hardware for EPI has been
received at LLO - a shipping package with required hardware to MIT is in
progress.

EPI Assembly and Installation drawings in progress. Will be ready
before fit test.

Worked with Ed and Gina to rework a RFP describing the mechanical
installation of piping for LLO HEPI. Ed will come to LLO next week for a
job walk Wednesday. 8 completed actuators, 8 springs and 4 Ham piers were
palletized and shipped to MIT for LASTI Monday.

Ken Mailand is at LLO and we're working together, along with our vendor,
to complete the assembly of
the HEPI pump stations. Scrambled yesterday to arrange for prompt nickel and
silver plating, as well as anodizing for components this week. The Swagelok
welding engineer will be at LLO Friday to deliver, and demonstrate the
butt-welding machine we'll be using to assemble the piping. Received ~80%
of the fittings and valves ordered before the holidays. Most hardware for
HEPI assembly has been received, and is being degreased and sorted in bins.

HPLF, S3 Detector Studies, IO Faraday Upgrade (R. Amin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
HPLF: SOP is in place. ELS has been contacted. They will be sending a
tech to assemble and verify the operationality of the 75 W device. Yea!

Lock Loss: There has not been very much done concerning lock loss. For
the past few weeks, operator reports have attributed lock breaks to
either trains or the PEPI running out of range. I have obtained a pair
of lock breaks around New Year's that were not the consequence of trains
or PEPI. These breaks show a failure beginning in the FSS control loop.
However, I have suspicions that the mode cleaner may be contributing to
these failures.

Faraday Replacement (UF-LIGO for all sites): Calculations regarding the
forces induced by stray B-fields on SOSs and LOSs are complete. The
current IOO upgrade plans on placing the Faraday Isolator downstream of
MMT1 (on HAM1, 4k). The forces expected by SM1 appear to be similar to
the calculated force on SM1 due to the FI in its current position. The
2k may be different since initial UF plans set the FI much closer to
MMT1 then it present position between SM1 and SM2. This calculation and
draft of this paper is expected Friday. Additionally, two of our three
suppliers have equipment either in stock or on order.

MC investigation: Since the commissioning crew of LLO has noticed
anomalies in the MC alignment, Rai and I have restarted an investigation
that staganted in late November. The symptoms of this problem occur as
a non-periodic drift in the alignment of the number one mode cleaner
mirror. This appears, to me, similiar to what happened in mid-November
when the mode cleaner failed to lock due to a mode cleaner mirror
misalignment. The culprit of this misalignent was never found, though I
thought it had been the result of poor electrical contacts.

CDS support (Ash Khan)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Developed a becnchmark test for the Penteks, ICS 110B, XYCOM 212 and
XYCOM 220 boards. These tests will help diagnose the problem in our VME
boards.

E2E IOO Modeling (T. Findley, N. Jamal, K. Rogillo, and S. Yoshida)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We continued building e2e boxes to simulate IOO. The e2e has been
updated by H. Yamamoto to the most recent version. This enables us to
calculate optical power coupling of the IOO output to the arm cavity
with much higher accuracy. T. Findley calculated the power coupling to
higher order modes casued by the motion of MMT optics due to disturbance
from the ground. When a realistic disturbance is given to the suspension
points of all MMT suspension towers, the calcualtion shows that the
power of the IOO output beam is coupled into higher order modes as much
as 0.5%. The power coupling to higher order modes at this level lasts
typically for 1 sec, at a rate of two or three times in 10 sec.

K. Rogillio continued the analysis of HAM table top motions based on
optic's position and yaw motions recorded via the corresponding OSEM
sensors and theoretical transfer functions in the position and yaw
modes.

Nafis Jamal (an undergraduate student attending the Southeastern
Louisiana University) has joined our group. He made an e2e box to
analytically calculate the optical power coupling into higher order
modes of a given cavity for given translational and/or rotational
misalignments of the input beam. This box has been used to calculate the
power coupling of IOO to higher order modes of the arm cavity for the
same beam pointing fluctuation as the above-mentioned e2e calculation
made by T. Findley. The two results show good qualitative agreement with
each other.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

LASTI (Ottaway)

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

---------------------------------------------------------
LIGO Data Analysis and Computing (Anderson for Lazzarini)
---------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------
LDAS Software Team (Blackburn)
------------------------------

The LDAS controlMonitorAPI has been extended to precent a system usage
breakdown in a graphical "tree" structure to provide details of the
types of jobs submitted by command type and or user name. This gui also
displaced the number of jobs that passed, failed and were rejected. Also,
a problem with the /bin path being missing from the environment which was
causing utility functions under the controlMonitorAPI was sorted out and
fixed.

Worked on performance testing of SAM-QFS using versions
0.9.0 and 0.9.59 of FrVerify and version 6.10 of FrCheck. The
results showed direct io of the SAM-QFS to be two to three times
slower than not using direct io. Efforts continue to understand
why the slow down.

Worked on getting TCL 8.4.x working with LDAS. Tried many
versions of the 8.4 series along with prebuilt binaries from
Sunfreeware.com and trying with the Sun's CC compiler. All these
efforts resulted in the APIs failing to start under Solaris. Just
today a bug in the binary translation routines under TCL 8.4.x
was discovered to be the cause of the failures. The TCL core
development team has been contacted with a simple example that
demonstrates the problem. We plan to develop a "C++ solution" for
the 1.0.0 release of LDAS which will more cleanly interface with
the system process information exercised by these routines.

Completed the upgrade to autoconf 1.59, automake 1.8 and
libtools 1.5. These are now the development tools used on ldas-dev.
This has been reported to the LSUG group as a target for LAL in
the next release of their code. They will only need to migrate to
the libtools 1.5, having already migrated to the newer autoconf
and automake.

Work on the new C++ powered diskCacheAPI continued this week. It
has now been determined after successfully attaching the SAM/QFS
archive to the LDAS-DEV system that this new diskCacheAPI is
absolutely necessary for performance on LDAS systems having large
file systems - the performance hit without the new threaded code
is factors of 2 or more. The team continues to work closely on
the data discovery algorithms in order to have this code ready
in time for the release.

Began integration of the most recent version of the Fourier Transform
engine (FFTW version 3) into LDAS. We expect to have this complete
in time for the next release.

Worked on update to LinLIGO's optical model. Multimode implementation
seems
possible, but it introduces many new problems (offsets, thermal
asymmetries,
etc.). I am currently exploring options for a combination of
measurement
and plane wave modeling.

The analytic calculation was completed for a FP system to design
LSC/ASC control system
with high power radiation pressure, with realistic linear and angular
noise. An e2e box has
been developed to include these controls. This is to study how the
requirement placed by
Danniel can be loosened when a modest control system is working.

Xiao is working to study the noise degradation when the LIGO optical
system is not perfect.
First one is when the cavity axis is off from the designed beam axis.

Hiro made a FFT binary for Erika to simulate a cavity with small waist
size, 1cm.
He is going to port the Brett's dual recycling FFT code onto e2e-linux
applying
the same improvements done in the power recycling code.

The use of the FFT calculation is needed only at the beginning of the
code and
all the rest can be done in the frequency domain. This will improve the
speed even further.

Worked on enhancing the e2e_dfKernel class to be used easier in the new
FUNC modules. The new FUNC functionality is mostly complete.
Currently
working on getting the compile/link options from the system which will
be used in building the shared library.

Worked on adding and updating information in the alfi manual.
A meeting was held among Bruce, Melody and Hiro about the future plan
of the alfi.
After the working going on (help to transit from old bundle code to new
bundle code),
alfi update is focused on the ease of use. E.g., macro is a powerful
tool but it is not easy
to grasp the relationship (where it is defined and where it is
overridden).

-----------------------------------
Data Analysis Activities (Anderson)
-----------------------------------

- The S1 burst paper has been sent to gr-qc/0312056 v.3
with an updated author list, and has been submitted to PRD.

- Re-making ilwd files with a variety of burst waveforms
(sine-Gaussians, Gaussians, damped-sinusoids,
Zwerger-Muller supernovas, DFM supernovas, Burrows-Ott supernovas,
and BH mergers); the ones made some months ago were flawed.

- Prepared a list of S2 burst analysis goals in an effort
to focus the work of the burst group.

The current activity is debugging the stackslide code on SFT data
generated by makefakedata_v2. Also, created a simple modified form of
makefakedata_v2 to output SFTs with pure sinusoidal output, to simulate
instrument lines. Working on a method to veto such lines.

1) Fully tested and released for general use sine-gaussian burst MDC
frames. Presented the results at the burst telecon, see
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/MDC/ for details.
2) Performed benchmark tests of waveburst on sine-gaussian MDC frames.
3) Testing wavefilter algorithm for line removal in waveburst.
4) Testing how waveburst sensitivity and event properties reconstruction
depend on time-frequency resolution of wavelets used in waveburst.

I have begun working on an improved Condor pipeline for coherent
pulsar searches, making use of Condor DAGMan jobs to eliminate
unneccessary load on the manager processes.

-------------------------------------
LDAS System Administration (Anderson)
-------------------------------------

* Unwedged SAM stagerd_copy processes so that createRDS could continue (several times).

* Working on new machine condor.ligo.caltech.edu and installed VDT
1.1.12 and set it up as the Condor Central Manager.

* Installed new computers in 215. These systems are to be used in the condor
system.

* Updated firmware on the 3ware cards (ide raid) This update will allow the
systems to run a disk checker, for bad media.

* Installed 3ware media check program and cli on the datacaches.

* Replaced memory in node41, running memtest.

* Received 3 new computers running burn in test.

* Verified the integrity of the 1/2TB /export filesystems on ldas-sw,
ldas-dev, ldas-test, and ldas-cit before applying the latest UFS
patch to fix a known data corruption problem.

* Rebooted the main LDAS-CIT Ethernet switch after it looked up on
1/5/04, with many network services needing to be restarted.
Followed up with the vendor to look at the switch and have applied
the latest firmware version.

* After a multi-Month multi-person effort we have finally got updated
software licenses for the SAM-QFS archive and for the latest Sun compilers.

* Tested the latest RH9 kernel update and upgraded most of the LDAS
computers at Caltech.

* On Dec 30 GC experienced a disk failure and user file system became
unavailable. ldas-jobs box, from which users submit their LDAS jobs and
from which createRDS jobs are running, became unusable, since ldas-jobs
uses NIS and depends on GC, until GC problem was fixed couple days later.

* On Jan 5 the old dataserver stopped working. It is back online after
bad memory was replaced by SUN.

* On Jan 6 t3-8 got frozen. That caused /samrds file system to become
unavailable and rebooted dataserver as a result. Power cycling t3-8
helped. It is not clear why this happened. Perhaps, we should upgrade
disk firmware on t3s.

* Monitored the LDAS system at LHO over the holidays. Archiving of data
and creation of RDS data has proceeded at LHO without significant
problems during S3. We continue to have minor problems with tapes and
tape drives at times, but have worked out procedures to deal these
without disruption of services or loss of data. Dan Kozak and others
are investigating the cause of the problems.

* Sent tapes to Caltech with full frame data, and tapes to LLO with L1 RDS
data. Tapes with the L1 RDS from LLO were received at LHO and imported
into the archive here by Ben Johnson. One more shipment of tapes next
week should complete transfer of full frame data to CIT and L1 RDS to
LLO. The L3 RDS continues to be transferred to CIT over the internet.

* "Fixed" down tape drive #42. Drive went into down state January 3,
2004. Repaired by loading in a diagnostic tape to clear the "Dmp" error.

* Restarted LLO minute+second trend disk2disk copy scripts at LLO. I
did this to replace the data corrupted during the failure of t3-8@LLO.
The trend files were filled successfully.

* Due to frozen water pipes in the LHO Science Building, the water to
the LDAS Room air conditioners was cut off. Humidity dropped to approx.
30% (normally 40%). Water flow is now restored. Presently working on
getting the humidifiers (on both ACs) working again.

---------------------------
General Computing (Wallace)
---------------------------

MIT:
(Keith)
-Working on SMTP authentication sendmail server for gc
-Working on computer logistics for possible June meeting
-Getting yearly matlab subscriptions orders together

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-On returning from vacation, most of my time the last two days has been
spent checking on things in preparation of the NSB meeting in
Livingston on Feb. 4th. Preparing some documentation of the network,
printers, etc. for visitors.
-Looking into the crash that happened while I was gone. Have been going
through the logs on the backup machine to try and see what was causing
it to lock up during restores. It does not appear to be a firmware
problem despite the fact that a later firmware was released while I was
on vacation.
-Attempted to flash the EEPROM on the IDE RAID on decatur. It appeared
as if the flash was working, but it was taking forever and was still
going when I left to go home last night.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Out Tues. and Wed. due to 3 feet of snow on the ground and more
falling from the sky. Police requested everyone stay off the roads
unless absolutely necessary.
- Spent most of Monday working a user's laptop that was having network
problems.
- Researching an issue with the auto-master files and NIS+ table.
Apparently our computers are mounting sirius files and this led to
Caltech blocking one of our computers as a possible security violation.
After more investigation Caltech said there was no security problem. I
still need to remove sirius from our tables/files so that we are not
mounting sirius files.
- Requested some free software licenses for some web page design
software as requested by a user.
- Purchasing some new PCs for EE lab to use.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Worked on a hardware problem over in synchrotron. This looks like a
problem with the mother board. This computer well have to be replaced.
-Updated all NTSRV's firewall software and checked out system and security
logs.
- Worked on a loaner laptop it up to get ready for the next person to take
on travel. This includes taking off old data and updating software, windows
patches and firewall software.
- Ran all end of month ghost backups on NTSRV's.
-Worked with Calum Torrie to come up with a solution on the PDMWorks scenario.
-Worked on a network connection for Erika.
-Mike Smith, I worked on his loaner laptop and a networking issue that he
was having in his cubicle. This laptop was having a problem connecting to
the network. This was a TCP/IP issue.
-Worked on Cindy's laptop and workstation; troubleshooting memory issues
that she was having with her laptop and implementing a secure connection
between both computers.
-At 40Meter I updated all Mathematica licenses plus I went through and
updated windows security and OS patches on all visitors workstations.

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: Made year-end updates to LIGO document databases and
search engines. Regenerated the text versions of the DCC database to
include the 2003 entries.
Installed the latest newsletter.
Prepared high-resolution images for a popular science publication. Working
on another image for this publisher.
Set up and monitored the VRVS for four LIGO seminars. This required some
troubleshooting in some cases. Posted the talks and made necessary updates
to the seminars webpage.
Posting updates to the Aspen '04 website as they arrive. Posted updates to
various other webpages.
- CaJAGWR: Videotaped the last seminar. Captured and compressed the video
in preparation for posting. Assisted the speaker with the setup for his
presentation. Updated the webpage and provided more than usual user
support.
- LSC website: Posted updates to the website. Updated the S1 papers
webpage.

(Lisa)
- Worked on the spam filtering.
- Fixed a problem with op240m in the 40meter.
- Began training Osamu on how to do the tape backups in the 40meter.
- Had a couple of meetings with Sun and with ITS over sun compiler licenses.
Was finally able to borrow edusoft cd's from IPAC.
- Over the holidays, I fixed a problem with the modem pool and began working on
upgrading acrux.

(Larry)
-The procurement issues never end. Presently, we have received most of the items
ordered but now I am clearing up billing issues. We were double billed on two
different orders. Most of the equipment has been distributed and the rest will
be installed next month.
-Repaired and reset a couple of network switches.
-Worked on a couple of issues for the E2E group. Still have a number of items to
work on. One of their server units has some h/w problems and presently in the
process of rebuilding one of their other units.
-A little time spent in different DCC issues. All have been cleared up.
-Working with the Livingston group on the logistics of the NSB meeting being
held at the Observatory.
-Working with Shannon on a number of issues related to the GigE installation and
a planned trip to go through and update software on the PC side of the house.
-Setup a couple of webcam units for different rooms. The remote control room
webcam is going to be relocated but so far has worked out well.
-Working on the logistics for the planned power outage for Bridge that will take
place January 18th.

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

Seismic Isolation

From: Larry Jones <ljones@ligo.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure

SEI Structure Design/Fab contract:

ASI is on plan for time applied and progress made to date. There are no significant risks or technical issues identified. Even though their cost for labor expended to date was 27% below plan as of the end of December, they assure me that their progress is on plan. The Intermediate Design Review was held on 23 Dec, and they showed designs for the 3 pods (one for each of the seismometer models). They are reducing size and mass wherever possible, to the extent of our using circuit boards for cable connectors at the ends of the GS-13 and L-4C seismometers to reduce the pod dome heights. These reductions are likely important in optimizing the structure configuration and in minimizing mass for a given stiffness. The circuit board inside the L-4C pod will also serve for our signal pre-amp, if we so choose to add that function. ASI showed proposed details of mounting the seismometers inside the pods; we suggested a stiffer design for the L-4C. We asked for ASI to provide quotations on providing Interface Control Drawings and for providing harness drawings for the wiring inside the pods; these have since been received.

An Intermediate Design Review will be held for the spring and flexure designs on 13 Jan.

Actuator Testing and Redesign:

BEI/Kimco is late in providing quotes for akadized (a type of anodize) coupons and NdFeB magnet samples, as well as the design development and prototyping of actuators for UHV service. I'm very concerned about schedule for this task.

Position Sensor Probe Development:

The spare 40M RGA head was installed in Oven C and the unit was baked and scanned. Although this head was new, it did not operate properly to allow readings in the Electron Multiplier Mode. Taylor has talked with the vendor and was given directions for oxide removal at a likely problem spot; this will be done soon. The cabling bake is our hottest priority once we get an operating RGA.

RGA data from the last 2 years has been surveyed and plotted to review the capabilities (sensitivities and variations) of our RGA scans.

Seismometer Procurement:

This task is on hold pending management approval for SEI structure prototype fabrication.

Galling/Dusting Test:

The CES shop is expecting to complete fabrication of the tapped plates, and we expect to receive the test fasteners next week. Testing will start after cleaning is completed, probably during the week of 19 Jan.

Suspension

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

Coordinated with MikeGerfen in CES on the machining he's doing to the one MC structure and associated parts to help stiffen the structure. He should be done with that machining today. Calum and I will reassemble the structure with it's stiffeners as soon as Mike is done and test the resonances on the milling center.

Calum, Russell and I have been working on the paper detailing the experimental and finite element work done so far on the MC. The paper will also address fea work done so far for the RM and quad designs.

On Tuesday, participated in a telecon with Ian Wilmut of RAL on his concept for the blade test facility. He will continue the review of his designs at the weekly suspension meeting on Tuesday, Jan 13th.

ANSYS has provided us a 10 day evaluation copy of their Research software. It has 4x the node capacity as the University Advanced license we have now - so 512k nodes as opposed to 128k nodes. Calum will test drive it this week. If we decide to procure the software, ANSYS will require a case study. It is our hope that the paper Calum, Russell and I are working on about the MC resonances will work as a case study.

Supported Justin Greenhalgh's meeting on RAL scope.
Attended the COC Conceptual Design Review.Provided comments to Gari and Helena.

40m
Currently, I am writing a DCN to document the change to the RM right side plate to avoid beam clipping. I will send the new revision of the print to Steve Vass for rework of a spare part.

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

Adv LIGO SUS

Placed the order for the work and delivered to JPL's Chemical Lab samples of Teflon AF and Fluorinet solvent to analyze for the presence of trace HF by Ion Chromatography.

Core Optics

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

The first results obtained by FFT simulations are posted in my web page
so that everyone can have a look at them. If all the mirrors are of the
same quality and their figure errors uncorrelated, I predict the low order
mode distortion should be below 6nm not to increase the shot-noise spectral
density by more than 1%.

In my runs I used a LIGO-I map and extended to the LIGO-II diameter
the content of the first 32 Zernike polynomials. One motivation is that
a similar effect should be induced by the low order mode deformations on
the two LIGO-II configurations: ROC=54km and ROC=2076m.

I used the first one in order not to increase the number of pixels, as smaller
pixels are needed when we switch to a configuration with a small waist that is
w0=1.15cm if ROC=2076m compared to w0=5.88cm if ROC=54km.
If polynomial-like perturbations are considered, the coupling to higher
order modes should be the same.

Other Laboratory R&D

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

Maddalena working on the super low frequency springs.
this week I did the calibrations for the LVDT to find the linear region, then I calibrated the Offset and the Gain to understand how they work on the position and on the K value of the spring respectively. I did some measurement of the frequency in function of the z position of the springs, changing the K total value of these springs by the gain, to find the minimum height region, then I fixed the LVDT in the minimum position and I studied the behavior of the Frequency in function of the gain value to extrapolate the gain value that will permit to reach 0 Hz frequency.
We now easily control the system down to 100 mHz. Soon we will mount "a source of vibration" to measure the transfer function of the system below 100 mHz where, because of supercritical damping, the springs do not oscillate anymore.

Barbara
this week we are working on the first version of the cavity mechanical structure design. To check how feasible it is to build and handle a 8 m cavity FP we built a wood prototype in the synchrotron and we have check the dimension in the WestBridge lab and its access.
Also I began to work with the Erika's simulation.
Moreover we had the first meeting to fix the plan to coordinate the work.

Flat beam test cavity meeting minutes (by Barbara)
present: Erika, Phil W., Riccardo, Barbara

The meeting is to plan the things that we have to do.
The first priority is finish the mechanical design to built the cavity structure with low expansion material (invar) and the vacuum pipe to suspend it minto and to provided it stable.
about the mechanical part it is decided to:
Confirm with minor changes (replacing the 20 mm spacers with 25-30 mm ones.) the initial design for the cavity and continue in this direction.
Start the design of the pipe.
We decided to initially start with 3 Piezo (Buying 4) replacing the other 6 (nominally redundant) with spacers .
To procurement of the invar rod has 2 week delivery time and 3 weeks for the piezos.

For the optical part it is necessary to:
Decide the diameter of the MH mirror. We prefer the smallest one that SMA can do, because if it is too big it may be difficult to control the surface quality on a larger diameter. (So far in the simulation Erika used mirror with 2cm of diameter, 3 and 3.5 cm will be studied).
Discussed the thermal expansion coefficient of BK 7 and fused silica to choose the best material for the substrates of the mirror (The temperature variation in the lab is about 1 K, we will build a thermal box ~<10mK). A discussion with SMA is necessary to settle this issue.
We discussed the expected power distribution between the input gaussian mode and the resonant flat beam mode for different values of finesse to understand which value of finesse we need to filter out the gaussian mode.
Large finesse makes that cavity difficult to control, Small finesse may not filter out the gaussian mode sufficiently. Simulations will be necessary to settle this point.
We will build an initial interferometer with spherical mirrors, we will switch to MH mirrors later in the game. Phil determined the radius of curvature of the spherical mirror to have a spot of about 4 mm for this first step.
We decided that we will need to design different input telescopes for each different configuration of the cavity to increase the spot of the input laser and match the cavity spot size.

Weekly Report for Week Ending January 8, 2004

Special Announcements:

LSC Issues (Saulson)

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

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

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)