Weekly Report for Week Ending September 9, 2004

 Exec. Comm. Agenda

Highlights

LSC

Administration

Hanford Observatory

Livingston Observatory

MIT

Caltech

Detector

40 Meter

TNI

LASTI

Data Analysis

Adv. LIGO Development

Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  September 14, 2004 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)  

  1. Announcements
  2. LSC Issues (Saulson)
  3. Comments on Weekly Report
  4. Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
  5.  LIGO Lab Operations
      • Administration (Lindquist)
      • Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker)
      • Commissioning (Fritschel), Detector (Coyne)
      • Campus Research Facilities
        1. 40 Meter (Weinstein)
        2. TNI, ( Libbrecht)
        3. LASTI  (Shoemaker)
      • Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
  6. Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Shoemaker)
  7. CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED


Special Items:

Special Announcements:

 

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Saulson)

no report

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

 

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Petrac)

(LSC Research Plans through February 2005 and Progress Reports through August 2004)

ACIGA

Balearic

Carleton

CaRT

Caltech-CEGG

Florida

GEO

IUCAA

LSU

Michigan

Moscow State

Northwestern

SLU

Syracuse

Trinity

Columbia

Vassar

Groupe Virgo

VIRGO

 


SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was scheduled for Thursday, September 9, 2004.  The following issues were discussed:

The list of assigned actions updated through September 9, 2004 may be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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


DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

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


COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Kaufman, Salone)

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

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

>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>

Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Florence)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

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

>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>


SUPPORT (Baldon, Kammerling, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

>Sharon Kammerling

>Dorothy Lloyd


PROPOSAL and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Schedule of proposals and reports planned for the remainder of the calendar year.


CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

There are no open change requests currently in the system.

The Advanced LIGO SEI group proposed to the LIGO Excomm on 23 August that the budget be increased for the ASI contract, adding on the order of $750K in funds to cover a growth in expected expenses with a slight decrease in contract scope.  This will be discussed again next week.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

>From: Bill Tyler <tyler@ligo.caltech.edu>

No report this week.

.

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


 Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (Landry)

4K IFO
-----------
Current activities on the 4k IFO center on running with full power into the interferometer, trying out the new coil driver circuit, and FSS modifications. Some commissioning highlights of the past week include the following.

A 4k power budget was worked out, and a lower-than-expected PMC transmission of .76 (possibly due to higher order modes) was obtained.

Dewar accelerometer studies continue to suggest that insulation has reduced the strength and number of stick-slip events that may unlock an IFO. The question is, which is the next noisiest dewar, and what should be done about it?

Resonant gain was added to suppress an optic roll mode.  Modifications were made to WFS1 and WFS2 demod boards. Next, another attempt at high power running of the 4k IFO was made.

Still another TCS leak was observed.  A temporary fix is in place, to be followed up by a long term one.

The power-up script for the 4k typically took about 12 minutes to complete. This has been significantly shortened with the addition of gain ramping to LSC filter modules.

As noted above, at the end of the week, the 4k ETMX coil driver was out for modification.

2K IFO
------------
Progress was made on the commissioning of the 2K TCS installation.

ISC10 cleaning was underway; recall this was necessary in part due to visiting mice.  More nasty details are here,  followed on by a recent status report.

New LSC code that allows the gain ramping noted earlier was first installed on H2, and then later on H1.

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

no report.
 

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)


CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives:

CDS Software

Rolf Bork reporting

- Upgrade of 40m lab to latest DAQ in progress. We ran into some strange

problems, but the root cause seems to be trying to run the latest framebuilder

on an Ultra60. We swapped it out, replacing it with the SunBlade1000 from our

development system. Now, everything appears to be working. Last piece is to

bring up AWG. We still need to do more tests and some cleanup, but almost there.

 

- New LSC software delivered to LHO. Software has rampable gains in filter

modules and photodiode matrices. Appears to be working fine. Request now is to

also provide this ramping gain feature for MC2.

CDS Hardware

Jay Heefner reporting

AI Filters for Low Noise DACs: Replacement capacitors have arrived and the remaining boards will be stuffed and tested.

 

LLO EMI Upgrade: Continue to order cables, feedthroughs and panels for the upgrade.

 

RF photodiode redesign

Ben Abbott

1) I received further comments from Daniel regarding some component choices for the RFPD.  I will finalize the schematic and PCB, and  the PCB will be sent to PCB express, and these boards will be stuffed as soon as possible.

2) I continue to test and characterize the prototype board that I have.

PSL

PeterKing

I have been helping Flavio out with testing of the table-top intensity

stabilisation servo.  The state code I wrote to control the 10-W laser's AC

current adjust actuator was modified a number of times and was tested out

at the 40m Lab.  After resolving a user-problem associated with invoking

more than one macro, the state code was run on a processor.  The behaviour

of the code has not been fully checked out.

OMC

Ken Mailand

The main cavity spacer and the PZT holder bracket drawing are in process at the CES shop, along with the 'invar 36' material.
The mirror set-up location tools are also being made, Mike Gerfen estimated 10 more days until everything is completed.

TCS chiller

Ken Mailand, Lee Cardenas

I have received several components for the laser chiller task, and now completing the layout for the test assembly.

I have tested the acoustic levels and pumping properties on 4 pump set-ups; the gpm output is border line, with this style of pump, and the set-up is sensitive laser cooling tube shape and id.

The flow restrictions in the actual laser coolant lines are of some value not known to me, or anyone else at ligo. I have asked the laser company to send me a standard set of coolant line assemblies for our laser, [representing one laser], so I can work with the actual system, they should be here tomorrow.

I haven’t received any answers yet from LHO re. the existing plumbing terminations for their tubing connections, or if the chiller fluid is a contamination problem issue if there is a leak. It seems there are more unknowns and more development required in this task than as first described.

The test setup is in the west bridge OTF lab.

 

Simulation of the flow resistance for the Co2 laser cooling is ongoing. We have all the components needed such as: main reservoir(13gal),  Two different types of copper lines (0.187 ID and 0.25 ID ), pumps: RIO 1100, RIO 600, VIA AQUA 1300 Models. and Aqua clear model.

Test performed for noise & flow rate for each pump(goal is 1890ml / min.) Results for the 0.187" ID copper line(this ID is closer to the laser line) are as follows:
RIO 1100 = 1000 ml / min.
RIO 600   =  900  ml / min.
VIA AQUA  =  950  ml / min.

Astigmatic AS Port

Mike Smith

AS PORT ASTIGMATIC BEAM

I received a list of documents from Keita regarding the astigmatic AS port beam and am in the process of studying them. I discussed the problem with Hiro. The first approach is to ascertain whether the beam is already astigmatic when it exits the AS port. If so, the problem may be caused by vignetting on the HAM table optics (Faraday isolator is a limiting aperture) or  thermal lensing in the beam splitter may produce astigmatism on the AS beam. Is the astigmatism power dependent? I will create a model of the recycling cavity using Zemax and attempt to determine the effect of thermal lensing of the BS on the astigmatism of the AS beam.

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)
The chamber has two samples, white Ceramabond, and disks of TRA-BOND #2254
color light brown epoxy.  Cavity is locked.
We continue taking measurements everyday.  No Change

Absorption Test Measurement prototype   in standby

Scatterometer system  in progress!!
We have finished aligning and mode of the beam needed for scattering.
We have installed the Inner test mass 2ITM04 fused silica mirror in the scatterometer
enclosure and aligned and found the scatter beam from the ITM using a Photodiode.
We encounter with one situation, the background scatter beam is too high!!
meaning the mirror surface is dirty!  We are going to have it cleaned this mirror.
or We have to install the scatterometer head and proceed to see if there is any change.

The Quantronix 60 watt laser  No change

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38        no change!
Cavity #3
Chamber is pumping with (6) disks of TRA-BOND #2151 color blue epoxy and
 (4) disks of TRA-BOND #2902 color silver epoxy.  The cavity is locked.
We continue taking daily measurements.  

Cavity #2
Taken to the shop to weld the leg support in place, still waiting in this one.
new components have arrived and still gathering all the others.

PSL Laser lab   Laser  in standby

 

 

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

no report

LASTI (Ottaway)

  HEPI Controls

We have the first results of the adaptive feed forward system in the X direction posted on the Lasti ilog on August 7, 2004.http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/ilog



The optics table was installed into the y-end HAM chamber. The table was placed on solid spools at the advanced ligo table height similar to our x-end HAM. All three of our HAM chambers and the BSC chamber have optic tables installed.

Ken  and Myron



LASTI TRIPLE PENDULUM INSTALLATION

We spent the last days checking and installing sensors electronics, We had to change position sensors on 2 piers, there was one bad set of electronics and one bad sensor. The sensor was bad due to a poor connection at the plug end. We changed the gain of the new version of HEPI electronics for the geophones (we reduced the gain to 2 instead of 100). We also finished the termination board to merge the HEPI electronics with the triple system. Now the signals going out the seismic interface are going to BNC and are added to the triple ADC with Jay's cards. Today we have all the sensors running and added to the dSpace acquisition so that we can see and analyze the 28 sensor's signals. We now need to correct the alignment of the platform (it seems it moved when we installed actuators or geophones on the optical table) and then we will be able to install the valves on the 8 HEPI actuators.

 

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

 Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Site related work
---------------------
(Matt) Continued work on ezsfft and related scripts.
(Biplab) Assisting Rick Savage (Hanford) to analyze modal content of light coming out of Pre ModeCleaner(PMC) of H1 interferometer.

Sideband imbalance
------------------------------
(Hiro) FFT code and Mathematica are used to further investigate the imbalance of upper and lower sidebands in the PRM. One possible explanation is as follows. The propagator of a sideband is like  1 - r1 r2 exp( -i phi1 - i phi2 ). phi1 = 2 * 2 * pi * L / lambda(SB) and this has opposite sign for upper and lower sideband. phi2 is gouy phase for higher order mode, which has the same sign for upper and lower side band. So the magnitude of the propagator of higher order SBs are different. As the curvature mismatch becomes larger, more higher order modes are excited, and the enhancement of the higher order modes can be different for upper and lower bands. This can explain the imbalance of the SB in PRM. This possibility is analyzed more carefully by comparing the FFT and Mathematica analytic calculation.

Simulation work for 40m interferometer
-----------------------------------------
(Monica)
 Mach-Zehnder : Comparison of e2e simulated curves and raw data from 40m group (feedback filter transfer function, open and closed loop transfer functions, power spectra density of the steering mirror displacement). Some improvements have been added in the feedback filter (slighty lower DC gain, 3 additional poles at 300 kHz to compensate cable capacitance,lower Q for the zeropair in the actuator) to match better the simulated curves and real ones. 40m/AdvLIGO configuration: New boxes have been implemented for the optical configuration, the mirror positions, the signals extraction. Test of the static configuration are in progress to validate field values expected.

FFT phasemap
---------------------
Xiao and Hiro are writing a LIGO document to summarize the creation of the mirror phasemap for FFT. It was found that phase maps originally created was wrong in scale (the mirror was effectively 15% larger), and Xiao has reproduced all.

Phasemap and WFS
--------------------
(Biplab) After Xiao's correction of mirror phasemaps, repeated FFT calculations for WFS signals. After pitch corrections last week, also finished correction of yaw degrees of freedom and now an H1 interferometer with corrections of all angular offsets (equivalent to asymmetries in mirror phasemaps) is ready.

Alfi
-------
(Bruce) Last Week:
        - Parser implementation for reading and writing box  settings objects completed.
        - Working on graphical interface for manipulation of these objects.
(Bruce) This Week:
        - Box setting dialog implementation along with associated utility objects.

(Melody)
Continuing modifications to display the FUNC_X variables in a friendlier user interface.   Currently working on the simple view which parses the C++ code in the MemberDecl primitive setting.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Mendell:
The emphasis for the past week has been on producing more plots showing the loudest events (maxima of StackSlide Power) for each sky position, for comparison with Hough and Power Flux, using S2 and fake data.  The results are shown under pgs. 14-16 on the pulgroup S2 StackSlide investigations page (pulg password required):
http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/pulgroup/investigations/ s2index.html#stackslide

Shawhan:
* Compiled a complete list of lock losses during the S3 run, many of which occurred a second or two BEFORE the end of an official science-mode segment. This is due to having based the segments on the Epics "state vector" channel, which takes a second or two to respond and switch off the servo after lock is lost.  Defined an "UNLOCKED" data quality flag to mark these times, plus a "PRELOCKLOSS_10" data quality flag to mark the 10-second interval before each lock loss, during which the interferometer might start becoming unstable.
* Investigating periods during the S3 run when the light level in the arm cavities dropped substantially but lock was not lost.  In L1, these are found to sometimes be associated with glitches in AS_Q.

Sutton:
With Lazzarini, I have continued to study how to perform a meaningful test of the reported 2001 Explorer/Nautilus excess using LIGO.  I think we have answered the last major question about performing the comparison: how to select signal amplitudes for the test (a simple Bayesian argument gives a well-defined distribution).  For LIGO-TAMA I have performed false rate and efficiency measurements for the network over the full S2/DT8 data set; these are posted on the joint working group web page.  Finally, with Zweizig I have continued work on the new easy calibration tool for the DMT.


LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)
A minor bug in the diskCacheAPI was found to cause a performance issue at the sites. This required a minor patch of the source code for the 1.2.0 release of LDAS. Fortunately, CVS was still in its frozen state when the problem was discovered. We were able to find a fix and test it in time to push the patched LDAS 1.2.0 release to the sits last Friday.

We have now put the release behind us, opened up CVS for new code development and have begun to tackle the major issues for the next release in preparation for the S4 Science Run. Key among the changes for the next release is the more flexible RDS creation code supporting multiple frames per file and the ability to concatenate time series data.

The usage of the CIT, LHO, LLO, and MIT LDAS systems from March 1 through September 1 of this year was tallied up from the log files using the controlMonitorAPI's GUI. Top level usage is...

CIT 197,995 jobs submitted
LHO 190,088 jobs submitted
LLO 152,705 jobs submitted
MIT   6,398 jobs submitted

There is a slight clustering of these jobs prior to the two LSC meetings spanned by this time interval, indicating that LDAS is still being used extensively to do science. It also indicates that LDAS at MIT is not seeing much use.

Fixed the C++ code for the cacheCheck utility so that it now distinguishes between different types of data. This has been tested on Tandem5 and LDAS-DEV and will go into CVS today.

Reverted diskCacheAPI C++ code back to the second resolution algorithms for file timestamps. The sub-second resolution is dependent on the file server software, not on the operating system capabilities and hence can't be implemented with complete confidence without standardizing file servers. This has been tested on LDAS-DEV and the new(old) code should go into CVS today.

Worked on new directory creation routines to provide more explicit log messages. This is a bit tricky to implement and needs more work within the diskCacheAPI.

Continued working on the generalization of the time interval code associated with PR 2392 in the diskCacheAPI. Incorporated the above mentioned changes into this new branch of diskCache code development.

Fixed the confusion associated with missing .frame.cache2 files that was appearing in the diskCacheAPI's log file. This was a change to the TCL layer.

Fixed the bug in the cacheDump Tcl code that was causing the -text option to be incorrectly recognized.

Studied the complexities of the multiply connected API to resource file dependencies associated with PR 2667.

Improved the documentation on the controlMonitorAPI's GUI. It was missing references to many of the new features of the 1.2.0 release. This will be fixed on LDAS-DEV and available in the next release.

Worked on the generic thread wakeup function to fix the thread wake up issue in the lightWeightAPI. Needs more testing on the LDAS-Dev system to know status of changes as this is a raw bug that is not readily reproducible.

Completed the LDAS-1.2.0 system testing webpage.

Began our TclGlobus activities with a new energy now that our ITR2003 hire is on board. Tested out the Tcl wrappers with the new Globus 3.2 and discovered that it lacks much of the thread support that was standard in the older Globus 2.4 package. This is a bit of a problem since the removal of the thread support seems to be out of the Globus camp to make thier code work so we will need to investigate possible workarounds. We are about to start tests of our code using non-threaded builds of Globus 2.4 and with experimental partial threaded builds of Globus 3.2 to learn more abou the source of the problem being encountered.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
* Continued the transfer of non-run second trends for both LHO and LLO (about 1,000,000 files total) from HPSS to SAM-QFS (and their subsequent deletion from HPSS).
        Of the 458620 LLO files, we've transferred 458613 (100%).
        Of the 526258 LHO files--we've transferred 415085 as of this
        writing (79%).
* Still working on getting a quote from STK for silo maintenance.
* Still working with Sun on the problem where shared clients (in this  case
  alterf) ask for files, but they never get staged.
* Got Sun to send out an engineer to replace the bottom controller in  the 3510 in Millikan (3510-10).  The amber light is out and it's not  beeping  (both of which are improvements).  We'll see how it behaves now.
* Dealt with hung T3 at LLO as regards /samrds.  Lesson learned before  now confirmed: don't reboot host in this situation.
* Ordered 9940 cleaning tapes (and retrieved cleaning tape stuck in  drive).
* Have been working on problem with corrupt LLO second trend files in  CIT archive that Peter Shawhan reported.  Files are good at LLO, so I'll  be copying them over, but I'm also trying to track down the likely source of the problem.

(Hari Pulapaka)
* Helping Michael with some issues on setting up globus and getting  some tcl globus tests to run.
* Moved the condor setup on ldas-grid to use /grid.
* Working on moving ldas-pcdev2 to use gsi-ssh.

(Stuart Anderson)
* Collecting price quotes for additional disks, tape drives, servers,  network switches and cluster nodes.
* Wrote script to automate monitoring of stuck SAM-QFS files.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
* Rebuilding both 3ware raids on pcraid1.
* Ordered pcraid#8 .

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
* Besides routine tasks, I've requested quotes from for media
  racks/cabinets from three suppliers to store 9940B tapes.

(Ben Johnson)
* Assisted in debugging framebuilder issues last week. Initially, the problem appeared to be with QFS, but eventually turned out to be 
related to the installation of a Syskonnekt (sp) Optical Gig-E card.
* Grid account backups have now been moved from defiance, to
  /samrds/backup/cluster (a corresponding archive set "backup" was
  created). Backups occur daily at 01:00 local time.
* Presently spraying L1 data across the cluster. I estimate spraying to take a week for all S2/S3 LHO/LLO data. Publishing to start after the first S2/LHO set is sprayed.
* Working on GRB/segment archiver GUI + aux archiving script. Coordinating with Justin Garofoli to give the control room something that works for them.
* Concluded firmware tests on the test 3510-10. Despite problems inherent to the test unit, the new firmware appears to work, and basically installs by the book (minus a few syntax errors in the instructions).

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Working on FlexLM license server for Matlab 14
-R14 Matlab compiler does not work on Solaris apparently...
-Continuing to test RedHat WS Enterprise Edition on pc
-Experimented with TeamSpeak VOIP utility

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Spent many hours working with Bell South on the phone and on site again this week.  They have:
1) replaced a card at LLO, then came back and changed it back to the old card.
2) fixed some issues with their SNMP alarming functions.
3) removed a piece of redundant hardware at the Denham Springs CO.
4) tested light levels
I now have an even better understanding of the equipment that lies between LLO and LSU on the circuit.  It turns out that we make many changes between single and multi mode fiber.  I am not sure that this is the best available way of implementing this circuit, and in my opinion offers too many points of failure.  When Bell South removed the piece of redundant hardware at DS, I asked why it was there in the first place.  The answer I got was that it was just engineered that way, and they were not sure as the engineering group is totally separate from the support group.  In Denham we used to make a transition from single mode (SM) to multi mode (MM) several times. This is what it looked like from Livingston:

MM -> SM -> MM -> SM -> MM -> SM -> MM -> SM -> MM
LLO       |            Denham                  |   Goodwood   |    LSU

Ihave asked about other hardware possibilities since the current hardware seems overly complicated and introduces way too many failure points, etc.  I have been told that there is only one solution and that it is non-managed.  However, the person informed me that they are usually very stable and he even complained about the fujitsu equipment being unreliable.  The non-managed portion really would not be that different than what we have now, since when the connection goes down, my phone does not ring like it should.  Instead I have to call them and notify them that the connection is down.

At this point we are in a "wait and see" mode to see if the circuit goes down again.  Bell has not had sufficient diagnostic capability in the circuit for the last 10 months it turns out, but that is fixed now. If the circuit does go down again, they should be able to more closely pinpoint the location of the failure.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Network usage can be seen at
http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~christin/mrtg/ 198.129.208.1_198.129.78.122.html
- Continued to install Spyware Exterminator on PCs.
- Rebuilt a Win2k PC because it kept dumping memory and re-booting.
- Investigating an ssh problem on the mail server and LSC sandbox.
- Cleaning up the SURF student user and e-mail accounts.
- The usual user support.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Mohana Mageswaran: I had to reload her workstation due to a virus. This computer had to be wiped cleaned and reloaded from scratch. Plus loaded various engineering software and transferred over users data from backup.
-Linda Turner: I finished up loading an updated PC for Linda, but came across a hardware issue that is going to require the motherboard to be replaced. I called Dell to get the motherboard replaced, that should arrive today.
-Control Room W/B: I finished up reloading and setting up a PC rack mount unit back up in the control room 352.
-Loaner Pool: I started reloading a laptop for the loaner pool. I have four laptops that were turned in, these will require complete rebuilds.
-Much other misc. onsite/phone user support

(Veronica)
- LSC website: Updated the author list posting. Other updates to the website. Updated the roster database to reflect changes in LSC memberships and status of some members.
- LIGO website: Updates to various pages. Worked on an overview of a web security class that I recently attended.
- Project Science website: Updates and user support.

(Lisa)
- Vacation
- Working out some video problems on hadar.
- Discussed with Larry options regarding the spam filters.

Mail Stats 9/2 - 9/8/04
Messages Accepted:      14851
Spam Rejected:          9002
Viruses Rejected:       573
False Positives:        8
Total Mail Thru:        24426
% spam blocked:         38%

(Larry)
-Still doing a lot of work with different procurements. Trying to get some more disk space and upgrade the backup system to handle the increase in data we are now handling. Purchased new machines for different people. It looks like we need a few more laptops to replace some of the old ones that are not functioning correctly and can no longer handle the applications being loaded on them.
-The computer room is still being worked on. We have some cleanup to do before the testing of the fire suppression system.
-Added a number of new users and cleaned up a few more old accounts. Still a lot of work to do there.
-Tested a number of web conference items. Things are improving but we still have a number of items to work out.
-Spent a couple of hours on the new sandbox unit. The NIS+ installation is still being worked on and a number of applications still need to be loaded.
-Worked a number of e-mail issues covering logs to aliases. Thanks to Albert, David S., and Stan a number of aliases have been cleaned up but still more to go.
-Worked on some backup items and a few licensing issues.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Systems and Management

From: "Thomas Frey" <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>

 

Progress Period from 09.03 to 09.09

 

Out of the Office on vacation 09.03 and 09.06.

·         ·         See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html for a complete listing of all project related cost and schedule data.

Accomplishments:

·         ·         Sub-system PLANNING activities

§         §         Continued work on preparing web space for posting Adv. LIGO reports. ("The Whole Enchilada")

§         §         Continued the input of changes / preparing RFIs / responding to RFIs, as a result of the meetings with Carol and the Subsystem Teams.

§         §         Executed a telecom with Carol W, Benno W., and Peter King. regarding PSL progress.

§         §         Executed a telecom with Carol W., Phil W., and Mike Smith regarding AOS progress and schedule / cost changes.

§         §         Executed a telecom with Carol W., and Janeen R. regarding SUS progress and schedule changes.

§         §         Executed a telecom with Carol W., and Larry Jones regarding SEI progress and schedule changes.

§         §         Started work on the progress schedule update with progress through August 31, 2004.

§         §         Started work on 40-Meter schedule changes for remaining work.

§         §         Corresponded with Benno regarding a challenge with the PostOffice application.

·         ·         ROSTER DATABASE:

§         §         Continued to work with Irena to provide Barry with information regarding FTEs and Institutions.

§         §         Will update and post a revision to the approved version of the LSC S2 Authorship List

§         §         http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/authorship/compare.htm

·         ·         COST BOOK DATABASE:

§         §         Nothing new to report.

§         §         http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/rd2005/Acct_Stats.htm

 

Seismic Isolation

 

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

Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure


SEI Structure:

ASI continues to work on tuning their estimate for the cost of HAM unit design; it's now expected on 17 September.

A meeting between Stan Whitcomb and Rene Fraudet, president of ASI is scheduled for 10 September, to discuss cost issues.

Stage 0 detailed drawings, expected last week, are yet to be released.

Budgetary needs are being developed for FY05.


Actuators:

Weather problems associated with Hurricane Frances in Florida have delayed fabrication of the actuator parts for the BSC prototype unit. This is not expected to impact the prototype schedule.


Displacement Sensors:

ADE is proceeding with fabricating and testing the 14 displacement sensors for the BSC prototype structure.

Accu-Glass is proceeding with fabricating and testing the 3 feedthrough flanges for the BSC chamber at LASTI, with 16 feedthrough fittings each.

Seismometers:

Nothing new

Galling/Dusting Test:

Nothing new.

Suspension

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


AdLIGO Suspension
Continuing to work with Caroline Cantley, Sheila Rowan, Helena Armandula and Thomas Frey about the ribbon process design and the optic ribbon attachment design. We had a meeting on Friday. Will review responsibilities for these items in final design and fabrication phase with Thomas tomorrow for review with Helena and Caroline after that.

Working with Norna and Calum on flexibility study for suspension design for sapphire and fused silica. Calum distributed  a  preliminary flexibility study. We will discuss this on Tuesday.

Worked on a magnet holder for an eddy current damper design.

Provided Primavera updates to Thomas. Participated in a meeting with Carol and Thomas on suspension progress.

Finished the RODA M040283 on the sapphire and fused silica baseline sizes for ETMs and ITMs. Forwarded to Gari.

Gin Gin
Sent the blades and clamps to Conor at AMU. He should receive them next week.

 
 From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>
 
1. QUAD Update

The drawings for the lower masses that we will use in the controls prototype, that is to say the test mass and penultimate mass in both the main and reaction have been completed. they are on the PDMWorks vault. I hope to have the completed drawings in the shop by the end of the week.
The next set to be done are for the penultimate test and reaction mass.

Russell Jones and I have worked through the detail of switching to a "3&1" assembly technique rather than a "2&2". We are confident that the "3&1' approach makes it easier to assemble and install the suspension. It should also simplify the interface with the fibres / ribbons. The approach involves the Upper Intermediate mass becoming part of the lower half of the structure thus leaving only the top stage and the top masses to be installed with the seismic system (at LASTI). The larger "lower-half" can fit through the BSC chamber door and works in conjunction with Ken Mailand's and Ken Mason's installation approaches. http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ctorrie/QUAD_ETM/RdeJ/lowerhalf%20plus%20UImass_in%20BSCdoor1.jpg More to follow.

2. Flexible ETM

The suspension team (Norna, Janeen and I) have been looking at what would be involved in keeping the ETM, both controls and noise, flexible for either silica or sapphire. This will discussed in more detail at next weeks SUS and design meetings.

3. Blades

Both Valley Precision and CES have started manufacturing the controls prototype blades.

4. Design Meeting

For a review of this week's design meeting please refer to the following link: -
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ctorrie/QUAD_ETM/quad_etm%2520setup%20page2.html

5. Visits

Tim Hayler October 3rd to October 23rd 2004  - CONFIRMED!
Mike Perreur-Lloyd October 18th to November 18th 2004  - Caltech to conform!
Ian Wilmut Nov 8th to Nov 25th  - JG to confirn!
Russell Jones Nov 29th - Dec 4th TBC
Caroline Cantley, Justin Greenhalgh & Norna Robertson  (TBC)

Janeen Romie and I are visiting Stanford next week.
 

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


Adv. LIGO SUS

The mask to be used for the gold evaporation on Pyrex plates to make the electrostatic drive will be delivered this Friday. The Pyrex plates attach to the metal masses used on the quad controls prototype.
Next Monday I will visit Navitar Coating Labs to confirm that the mask is acceptable; they will deposit a very thin layer of inconel and 10,000 angstroms of gold on the Pyrex plates to manufacture the electrostatic drive.

Core Optics

 

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

 

Pre-Stabilized Laser


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


AdvLIGO PSL
===========
    A progress meeting was held with Carol, Thomas and Benno to report for the month of August.

The high power stage has been injection-locked to the front end and the output power was 170 W.

Auxiliary Optics

 

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


AOS
I am in the process of updating the development schedule and cost for the AOS subsystem.

LIGO
AS PORT ASTIGMATIC BEAM
I received a list of documents from Keita regarding the astigmatic AS port beam and am in the process of studying them. I discussed the problem with Hiro. The first approach is to ascertain whether the beam is already astigmatic when it exits the AS port. If so, the problem may be caused by vignetting on the HAM table optics (Faraday isolator is a limiting aperture) or  thermal lensing in the beam splitter may produce astigmatism on the AS beam. Is the astigmatism power dependent? I will create a model of the recycling cavity using Zemax and attempt to determine the effect of thermal lensing of the BS on the astigmatism of the AS beam.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>


Barbara

Finished the thesis work and left for Italy, the defense will be September 30th.  Her work on the mex hat interferometer will likely be carried on by Marco Tarallo.

 

Anamaria:

I am still gathering as much data as I can and am beginning to trace the Q-factor dependence on frequency for Maraging. It is a pretty slow proccess, and there is a lot of noise that has to be taken into account. By next week I should move on to the Copper-Berrylium blade.

 

Nicky

Started the school, her Maraging blade creep measurement setup was finally started and it is taking data.  She will continue to come over occasionally to look at the growing data.

 

Maddalena

The anomaly in the frequency behavior as a function of the vertical position (which we thought caused by the appearence of higher order corrections) is, in the new, faster measurements, disappeared. The effect that we measured could be due to temperature drifts because the old measurements were in the frequency domain (that meant 2 days of integration for each measure). Now with the faster time domain analysis (several measurements per day) the effect disappeared.

We are also studying again the slope behavior for different resonant frequency values (by separating the slope from the resonant frequency meqasurements we now can measure 4-5 slopes/day instead of one every two days). We confirmed the unusual behavior the transfer function slope decreasing from slope 2 to slope 1.5 below 100 mHz.

If we extrapolate the behavior of the slope and considering a ideal system (without saturation) we obtained that all transfer functions corresponding to resonant frequencies below 100 mHz have an intersection point at ~3Hz.

We still do not understand this behavior.

I have also been helping Barbara with her thesis work.

 

Justin

Gianni has completed the final designs for the new Ultra sound transducer. We are now planning a meeting in Lucca to discuss manufacturing details. Also, I am preparing a powerpoint presentation on the design process of the new transducer for my return.

 

Simone

Working on my final report, prepared the massholder

for the Q-machine and done some pictures with the exercise flexjoint

 

 

 

 

Juri

I helped Barbara for the alignment of our cavity and finally it was locked quite easily. I learned from Maddalena how to take measurements with the apparatus in the Synchroton for studying the properties of the blades for the vertical attenuation system when she will be gone.

I found a problem with the simulation program for the dynamics of the Mexican-hat cavity and is now under investigation. I am sending the summaries for the GR17 proceedings. I am working on the calculation of coating thermal noise for finite mirrors.

 

Francesco

 

The flex joint fixture presently available present resonant frequency close to the silicon thermoelastic dissipation peak.  In order to generate an oscillator with resonant frequency far from the thermoelastic peak, I simulated a new design of joint with an 8g iron mass in the middle instead of the thin silicon mass (few milligram inertial mass). The resulting resonant frequency for the high frequency mode ranges from 1 to 1.2 KHz for loads from 1 to 10 Kg. These frequencies, lower than the previous design, should avoid the thermoelastic region, giving more space to detect the Q due to the internal dissipation, up to 106.

I assembled an high-freq transformer with a gain of 100 times to provide an excitation electrostatic force to excite the rets mass in the Q-machine and now I am trying to connect it to a power amplifier. Within next week we should be able to mount the laser and the photodiode to the machine and try a first measurement.

 

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