Weekly Report for Week Ending February 3, 2005


 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  February 7, 2005 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)  

  1. Announcements
  2. Comments on Weekly Report
  3. LSC Issues (Saulson)
  4. LIGO Lab Operations
      • Administration (Lindquist)
      • Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker)
      • Commissioning (Fritschel), Detector (Coyne)
      • Campus Research Facilities
        1. 40 Meter (Weinstein)
        2. TN, ( Libbrecht)
        3. LASTI  (Shoemaker)
      • Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
  5. R&D and Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)
  6. 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 MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports

For a web page summary showing the status of LSC MOUs and associated Attachment updates through August 15th and Progress Reports through February 12th see:

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~irena/Revstatus/Reviewstat.doc

Non-LSC MOUs

  • No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, February 3, 2005. The following items were among those discussed:

  • Assigned Action Items: E. Jasnow previously assigned himself an action (#129) to get an account number assigned for web site registration for the LSC meetings.  The next LSC meeting is scheduled for March 19 in Livingston, so this has a short fuse.  This action has been accomplished.  However, there are a number of open questions that need to be resolved, so the action remains open.  In addition, an account will have to be established for the Hanford LSC meeting scheduled the week of August 15, 2005.  Accounts can be opened in three days unless we want to accept American Express; that takes an additional week.
  • Operating Budgets: Reports for the end of January have been published on the web.  The budgets have been adjusted to reflect approved change requests, the reduction by the NSF of the FY 2005 Operating funding, and some minor corrections.  As a result, our reserve to cover liens list items has been reduced by $1 million.  However, some returns are expected in FY 2005 from the commissioning and advanced LIGO efforts, and adjustments will be made to the Livingston budgets to reflect commitments that no longer exist.  This should help some.  The reports also show labor obligations through FY 2005 on an experimental basis.  A summary comparing FY 2005 to FY 2004 shows that we have spent less during the first four months.
  • P-Card Training:  P-card training for Livingston personnel is tentatively scheduled for February 23.  Ed Jasnow will notify the "victims."
  • Musical offices will begin next week in Bridge at Caltech because of scheduled building hazardous remediation activities.  Everyone is asked to be patient if communications are occasionally disrupted.
  • The list of assigned actions updated through January 27, 2005 will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

  • Nothing significant to report.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • All Aspen presentations have been processed and transferred for retrieval.  Notice of authors, titles and document numbers was sent to Veronica and she completed the posting to the web.
  • Worked on bringing all MOU's (attachments, progress reports) received from Irena to current status.  This was accomplished.  Over 200 documents were processed and archived.  I learned how to post these documents to the web MOU pages and of the 200 documents, 125 are now posted with the remaining to be completed when I return to the office the end of next week.
  • Particpated in the DCC Steering Committee meetings.  Compiled a detailed list of requirements from the perspective of the DCC that also can be used as a benchmark of what capabilities we currently have.  This will help us to make decisions that enhance our system rather than losing functionality in the process of selection.
  • Created an Excel spreadsheet that captures that status of MOU's and data about each attachment or report.  This may be a helpful tool if it can be linked to the documents in docspublic.

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

  • Completed processing Aspen Winter Conference presentations .
  • Packages: in - 14, out - 9
  • Faxes: in - 32, out 17

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

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

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

  • Followed up on several credit card orders to confirm the non-taxable status before contacting the vendor to issue a credit for sales tax that was applied to the order. Responded to Florence Kaufman's inquiry on the equipment expenditure type for one credit card order. Contacted the end user and inquired on the life of the item purchased and requested the Pcard administrator to change the expenditure type on a reconciled item.
  • Submitted Release of Claims to vendors for close out of several subcontracts.
  • Completed the monthly close out of LIGO purchase orders for the January 2005 month end. Submitted the monthly statistical report for January 2005.
  • Printed out the requisitions received, obtained signatures, and placed the requests for pcard orders. Submitted the signed requisitions that will be issued into purchase orders to Dorothy for preparation of the e-req and checking poetas, and other information.

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

  • No report this week.

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

  • The monthly report as of the end of January has been completed and posted on the network.
  • Adjustments have been made [in the report] to open encumbrances to reflect projected expenditures for labor and related costs.
  • Authorized funding realignment for one POETA.
  • 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)

  • No report.

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

  • The amendment to the lease between LSU and the NSF to cover construction of the Science Education Center has been approved by Caltech's Office of General Counsel, and will be presented to the NSF for review and signature on February 23 by Sandy Pool and Stan Whitcomb.
  • A final draft of the request for quotation for the electrical maintenance contract for LLO is nearing completion.  It is scheduled to be released by February 22.
  • P-card training for LLO personnel is tentatively scheduled for February 23.

SUPPORT (Baldon,  Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

  • Tracked Raindance Teleconference calls and assisted users with any problems that they might have incurred.  Set up and attended two (2) teleconferences with Raindance representatives and LIGO to go over new products, recent problems and any concerns we may have.  Ed Jasnow on Joe Giaime's recommendation has applied for another teleconference company's card and will test it out before making a decision on vendors.
  • Processed the paper work for six (6) new/revised trips.  There are three (3) trips to be completed and ticketed at this time.  Assisted several LIGO personnel with their travel arrangements using their P-Cards and made several reservations for outside visitors coming to LIGO/Caltech for meetings and/or workshops.
  • Completed seventeen (17) Expense Reports and there are twenty-one (21) reports yet to be done.  I continue to contact travelers who have outstanding Expense Reports (more than one (1) month old) to ask for their cooperation in sending me their receipts so that these can be closed in a timely manner.  Presently there are three (3) reports more than 30 days old.  Travel Audit's new policy of accepting only original signatures seriously holds up the process of closing reports.

>Dorothy Lloyd

  • No report.
  • Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Nothing to report.

DCC Steering Committee (Lindquist)

We held a meeting of the DCC steering committee February 2, 2005.  The purpose of the steering committee is to establish a direction for the DCC over the next year or so.  This meeting focused on reviewing thoughts submitted so far and defining a next step.  It appears that additional time will be needed to ruminate on the requirements.
 
CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • A change request (CR-050002) to address actual costs less than amounts budgeted for the first quarter of FY 2005 was discussed during the meeting of the executive committee.  The change request was approved pending providing managers directly affected additional information.  This additional information has been sent to the affected managers.

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

  • A staffing meeting was held January 24, 2005.  The minutes and action items have been posted.  All files are posted and up-to-date on the web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Drafts of the safety audit reports for the LIGO campus labs were distributed to audit team members for review and comment.

 


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



 Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (Sigg)

  • "E12 light" is on its way.
  • On H1 the TCS power required at different input power levels was measured.
  • The H1 TCS Y polarizer mount was found to be loose.
  • Violin mode Qs were measured on H1 and H2.
  • Optical lever lasers that reached their expected lifetime were replaced.
  • Calibrations for H1 and H2 were done in preparation for E12/S4.
  • The "hamster" house was installed on ISCT4 and ISCT10.
  • The purge air for the "hamster" house was found to introduce dust.
  • To run at full power we will need more detectors---probably 8 on H1 and 16 on H2.
  • Both interferometers show a lot more 60Hz than just a few days/weeks ago.
  • An attempt to power up H2 was tried but the arm powers did not scale as expected.
  • Stuff happened.

LHO Outreach

LHO hosted about 50 Pasco High School students for a field trip on 1/27.  These two science classes are part of the Yakima Valley/Tri-Cities MESA program.  Students enjoyed using LHO's new gravity well exhibit.

 


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


 

FOR ALL THOSE WHO GAVE AND KEPT GIVING ON THE HEPI PROJECT, HAVE A LOOK AT OUR E12 UPTIME STATISTICS FOR L1. WELL DONE GUYS!!

 

L1 Commissioning (Valera Frolov)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Interferometer locking and running has been robust this week lending the successful start of the E12 engineering run. The sources of backscattering were identified on the transmission monitor and the reflected light optical tables. The mitigation of the backscattering noise and the increase of the interferometer input and detected power by a factor of two gave significant sensitivity improvement. We now routinely run with inspiral range of 5 Mpc with the best range close to 6 Mpc. The calibration team is very confident quoting the interferometer sensitivity now (much better then 20%).

 

Summary of commissioning activities:

 

- the lenses on transmission monitor optical table were replaced. The unused beam on reflected port table was properly dumped. The light on the POX was reduced and unused beam properly dumped.

 

- the new whitening filters were correctly compensated with digital filters

 

- two additional anti-symmetric port photodiode installed and commissioned

 

- the interferometer calibration was performed.

 

- The output matrices for the LSC and ASC were tuned.

 

- the automated NoiseBudget code was released. Now it takes just a few minutes to obtain the contribution of the main known noise sources ­ angular, shot, dark, oscillator phase, electronics ­ to the interferometer noise.

 

- the frame builder(fb0)computer was rebuilt. No CRC sum check errors were reported since.

 

- the liquid nitrogen leak was detected due to the stuck pressure relief. The block valve on the dewar was closed. The nitrogen level remained on 85%. The line was cooled down next morning. The cryopump is functioning properly.

 

- the main laser NPRO started overheating and going into standby mode. The NPRO cooling lines were cleaned. At the time of this writing the NPRO temperature as well as the main laser performance have been stable for several hours,and ifo locked in the low noise mode.

 

- one instance of channel hopping was reported.

 

Safety and Security (Riesen)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Found pinched wires ( intermittent short to ground) between the Kantech controller and the door contacts on the staging bldg’s 2nd floor foyer doors.  These wires were the cause of our numerous false “forced door” alarms we have been experiencing. Wires were replaced and the monitoring of the door appears to be functioning properly.

 

Modified the site security schedule to accommodate Gaby’s visitors this weekend (2-5 and 2-6).

 

Found no safety concerns during my site tour. (conducted before the E-12 run began).

 

L1 Commissioning (Peter King)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 I trouble-shot a few potentially dead boards.  An LSC differential driver board was found to have 3 of its 16 channels dead, this was turned in as a blown board due to a hot-swap.

 

L1 and AdL Mechanical Engineering (Spjeld)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

AdL Quad SUS Installation Fixtures

- Review of new design suggestion in weekly SUS meeting on Feb. 1

- Awaiting from input from Dennis Coyne (on design) & Ken Mason (on FEA)

- Checking feasibility of pneumatic actuator design with bellows vendor.

- Tested air bearing removed from pier at LLO for use as fine alignment.

 

AdL SEI Engineering Effort

- Finally got PDMWorks client working (thanks to Mike Pedraza!); able to log on to server at Caltech.  Will be posting AdL SEI models at the end of Feb.

- List of existing/expected AdL ISI drawings from ASI in progress.

- AdL ISI web-page in progress; will be up on main LIGO web-page by middle of next week.

- Still working on technical notes document from ASI meeting.

 

Misc. Engineering

- Shipped Photon Calibrator Shelves to LHO; updated drawings and BOM.

- Sent drawings of re-designed GS13 sensor platforms to machine shop; awaiting quote and manufacturing.

- Received quote from Kaman on position sensor repairs; PO requested.

 

HEPI Valve Calibration

- calibration of new servo valves in progress; no valve failures lately

- waiting for bad valve in return from LASTI for analysis and re-calib.

 

Upcoming Tasks

- finish HAM door lifting fixture design (before S4?)

- look into shutter problem

 

LLO General Computing and LIGO CyberSecurity (Roddy)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Shannon is leading the LIGO cybersecurity meeting at LHO this week. Tom reports no unusual GC activity beyond the inevitable flurry of overloads associated with E12 visitor arrivals.

 

High Power Laser Facility, Optics Modeling and L1 Commissioning (Franzen)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

1) The broken IPG laser was packed and sent back for repair. The RTP crystal which was exposed to a >80 W, <0.7 mm beam for almost three weeks did not show any damage.

 

2) Participated in the Optical Workshop at Caltech. Gave a short presentation about recent Advanced LIGO mode cleaner Melody model results.

 

LDAS/Condor Sysadmin and Burst Analysis (Yakushin)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Condor/LDAS admin:

 

1) /frames is doubled in size and can now hold a week of raw frames (Dan).

2) /cluster was created and QFS mounted on fb1 and Condor nodes to communicate the output from astrophysical searches running on the cluster to the control room (Dan).

3) /fb0_frames was QFS mounted by both fb0 and LDAS servers (Dan, Alex).

4) E12 data archiving, RDS generation and publishing is running OK so far. There was an interruption yesterday caused by the fact that "segment. server", london, was not available for a few seconds. Since publishing scripts use LSCsegFind, they all died and had to be restarted.

5) Received GigE switch from CIT.

6) Two hours after the start of E12, there was a request from Brian to add several new channels to L1 RDS. The new channels appear in RDS starting from 791327328. Since at least some of those channels were not present in raw frames before that, we cannot regenerate the earlier RDS frames with the new channel list.

 

Data analysis:

 

1) Generated waveburst triggers on the whole S3 (final version of calibration was just released).

2) Setting up online infrastructure for waveburst. Automating job launching and visualisation of the results.

3) Generating triggers for E12.
 


Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)



CDS

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

At last Monday's commissioning call, we decided to *not* relocate the LHO racks before S5 and that we will *not* purchase any EMC

tight crates or racks for LHO. Some additional EMC crates are needed as spares for LLO and for the CIT test stand. It is possible that we will build acoustic enclosures around the existing racks and/or ISC tables, after S4.

CDS Software

Rolf Bork reporting

Not much to report, as I have been at LLO a fair amount, and will be again next

week.

I have started on the ASC software for the 40m lab. I built the Epics part

today, including a number of MEDM screens. Tomorrow I will start the front end

software and hope to be testing by Friday.

CDS Hardware

Jay Heefner reporting

Fiber Optic Timing Link (Sander)

============================

- First system built. Preliminary tests are positive.

- There is a mechanical problem with P2 on the Transmitter board, but board will function without the connector.

- Right now we have enough parts to make 12 of each board type. Sander will verify that this is sufficient.

LSC PD (Ben)

================================

- Waiting for list of desired frequencies from sites.

- Test plan is complete.

ISS (Flavio)

================================

- LHO has 3 boards. 2 are the final configuration, 1 needs to be upgraded.

TCS (Mohana)

=================================

- Waiting for final markups from LHO.

EE Shop (Todd)

================================

- Building two more ISS boards.

DMT

no report

PSL

no report

Optics Analysis

Mike Smith

I presented an overview of the TCS optical design at the Optical Modeling Workshop (held at CIT, 1/31).

I proposed several mechanisms for creating astigmatism in the AP beam of the LIGO IFO. UNL0CKED RECYCLING CAVITY--1) cold state: the as-installed BS curvature will introduce approx 2-3% astigmatism during a single pass of the input beam through the un-locked recycling cavity, 2) hot state: non-axially symmetric heating of the ITM may create cylindrical thermal lensing which would cause up to 10% astigmatism during a single pass of the input beam through the un-locked recycling cavity. LOCKED RECYCLING CAVITY-- hot state: the coupled fundamental eigenmodes of the optimally coupled (determined by optimal TCS heating of the as-installed mirrors) recycling cavity will exhibit approx. 20% astigmatism. This astigmatism could be worse if the ITM heating is non-axially symmetric.

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)
This chamber has two samples, white Ceramabond, and disks of TRA-BOND #2254
color light brown epoxy.  Cavity still pumping with Ion pump.
The turbo pump has been shut down and the whole system fully covered.

Absorption Test Measurement prototype  shut down

Scatterometer system  still in progress
The fused silica substrate RM06-B is in the scatterometer enclosure.
We are taking a second scanning for this substrate after a mirror surface cleaning has been done.
The scanning will last three days until Saturday and Sunday will be fully shut down and the
whole system will be covered for the A/C maintenance.

The Quantronix 60 watt laser  fully shut down and covered

Preparation to cover all the system in two rooms is  fully in progress
It will be done by Friday, except room F058 since scanning still in progress until Saturday.

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38 
Cavity #3                         no major changes
The contamination test for (6) new disks of VAC SEAL Epoxy samples
is in progress. Cavity is locked and we are taking measurements  for absorption
and ring down for contamination loss every day.
The measurements continue to be the same which means, samples are "clean"
The data will be treated later.

Cavity #2  in standby

Preparation of removing items  needed to stay is in progress
since the entrance of the lab will be occupied by Eric's experiment.
All this will be done also by Friday

Misc...task   Packed all the boxes related to the Co2 laser chiller parts plus
two chillers fully assembled, ready to be shipped, all these are storage.

 

 


 

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)


  • IFO commissioning:
    • Osamu, Rob and Dan have been having working nights, to lock the interferometer in various configurations when the environmental noise is low. It typically takes ~30 minutes each night to tune things up well (alignment, demod phases, gains), with the help of dither-locking MICH and locking PRC with the carrier.
    • Once everything is tuned up, the dual-recycled-Michelson (DRMI) now locks quickly (<< 1 minute) with double-demod or differential demod signals (PRC w/ SP 133&199, MICH w/ AP 133&199, and SRC w/ PO 133; no carrier) for all 3 degrees of freedom. The SRC signal from POB 133 is more stable than 133&199 because the 199 MHz signal is very noisy due to low light power at POB, and poor PD response.
    • The unbalanced sidebands in the DRMI with detuned signal cavity distorts the PDH signals for the PRC and the arms; offsets are required to lock PRC, XARM and YARM at the peak of carrier resonance. All the offsets depend on each other, and depend on the state of lock of the arms. Some of these relationships are predicted in the Finesse modeling, others are not understood.
    • On Monday night, they locked the DRMI with the x-arm in at the peak of resonance, for the first time.
    • It is proving more difficult to do DRMI+YARM, but they managed to acheive lock by DC-locking to one side of the fringe, then switching to offset-POY lock. The POY loop shape seems to have an anomalous dependence on the offset; under investigation.
  • IFO modeling:
    • Monica continues to develop her e2e model of the 40m. She has reduced number of sidebands, now runs much faster. She is setting correct demod phases to agree with twiddle (e2e and Finesse & Twiddle all have same RF phase convention!) She re-installed Twiddle on her laptop, now it works fine. Working on swept-sine transfer functions from degrees of freedom -> outputs.
    • We need a good procedure for aligning the AP beam onto an output mode cleaner (OMC) in air, such that it will stay in alignment after pump-down. There is no obvious way to do this with the required precision. Virginio is calculating the coupling between ITM misalignment and OMC displacement.
    • Rob is continuing to study the design of an output mode cleaner.
    • Osamu found a numerical round-off error in Finesse calculations at very small signal frequency (near DC); so, he re-did the calculations and contour plots for the loop offsets and gains for the three DRMI degrees of freedom versus DDM phases at SP, AP, POB, with larger signal frequency. The changes were small.
    • Osamu is running and studying Thomas Corbitt's simulation to understand AdvLIGO quantum noise (amplitude & phase noise from all ports).
  • PSL:
    • Steve noticed that the laser cooling temp was several degrees higher on Monday. He cleaned the grille on the PSL chiller, and the temp went back down.
  • Electronics and computing:
    • From Rolf: I have started on the ASC software for the 40m lab. I built the Epics part today, including a number of MEDM screens. Tomorrow I will start the front end software and hope to be testing by Friday.
    • Ben is working on a prototype in-vacuum DC photodiode that he plans to test shortly for electrical and thermal concerns. He has talked to Dennis Coyne about possible materials to make the final mounts from, or coat the mounts with, to effectively dissapate heat in the vacuum. He is still investigating possibilities.
    • Ben and Jay are setting up EPICS controls for the new rev-D coil drivers, and getting the cross-connect wiring and other infrastructure ready.
    • Jay and Alex are developing PC/104-based EPICS controllers, with custom PCB cross-connects. Jay can run the EPICS IOC but can't make it connect to medm on pc. Working on it.
    • Alex and Rolf are working on a Linux framebuilder.
    • Still waiting for new firewall from Alex.
  • Lab Infrastructure:
    • Virginio and Dan have been implementing and studying the performance of the MC2 oplev. We need an oplev to help diagonalize the MC2 output matrix, to reduce the Pos->Angle coupling in Length control. The lever arm is very short (< 0.5 m). We have a 1 mwatt HeNe laser, reflecting 10% per bounce. We'd like to bounce it twice, but there isn't enough light. The OSEM signals look better than the oplevs. If we put the oplev QPD 2 meters away, we get good signals, but lots of noise. Work in progress.
    • Monica and Dan are documenting all of our as-built optical beamlines, and will work with Mike Smith to update his comprehensive AutoCad drawing.
    • Virginio reports that the ETMY STACIS was not working right; turns out, the servo board was not plugged in. He re-plugged it back in, and verified that the system is working well.
    • Daniel continues to work on TP3 readout and EPICS channels.
    • The AC in the control room died and was fixed, but it now smells like something is burning in it; so it is turned off while we await the return of the repairman.
    • Steve gave Virginio, Dan and Monica a lab safety indoctrination.
    • The TP3 dry forepump failed. Fortunately, we have a repaired spare, which was swapped in.
    • Steve has updated the MSDS files on methanol & acetone and followed up on a few remaining safety items.
  • Bake oven Lab:
    • Bob has been working in the synchrotron with Calum on leaf springs.
    • Bob cleaned, baked, and scanned micro-D connectors for quad suspensions.
    • Bob received 20 feedthrough flanges for Dennis Coyne / LASTI for clean & bake.
    • Bob has brought to life his bake oven web site, although it has lots of bugs to be squashed.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


 

This week we received four of our fused silica mirrors back from REO, who had stripped the old, silica-tantala coatings off of them and repolished their concave surfaces. We plan to have some of the new, lower-loss coatings developed by Jean Marie Mackowski and company applied to these mirrors. Once coated, we will measure the broadband coating thermal noise and see if it is as low as predicted.

 

We have also been working with Jay Heefner to put together a linux-based, epics system for automating lock and for data acquisition, with the goal of characterizing non-Gaussian noise in the mirrors and suspensions of the TNI. The automated locking system has been in place for some weeks now, and we are working with Jay to do data acquisition next. This week we ordered some computer equipment to replace the components CDS had loaned us to get this system up and running.

 

Finally, we have started setting up an experiment to measure non-Gaussian noise in silicate bonds. This experiment was originally to be located in the OTF lab, but the asbestos removal project will make that lab inaccessible starting Monday. We have a new location for the experiment, and have made arrangements for the move to be completed this week. Many thanks to Lee Cardenas, Denis Coyne, and everybody else who helped us find a new room for this experiment, and especially to Lee for helping with the move!

 


LASTI (Ottaway)


no report


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


 

(Hiro) I attended this workshop and summarized the works done using e2e and
FFT. The modeling results for the optimal heating of H1 and L1 seems to
be consistent with measurements. More accurate calculations using FFT
will be provided to be included in the summary report of this workshop.
Measurements of H2 is quite contradictory with a naive optical
calculation, and this issue will be looked into using FFT.

The effect of the beam splitter thermal heating was also discussed.
Both analytic estimations and FFT results using Phil's phase map were
presented. By heating BS, the load on ITMx can be reduced, but BS
introduces some astigmatism. It is necessary, if we go for this this
direction, to study the effect of this astigmatism to make sure it is
not harmful.

The beam profile on the output optics bench showed astigmatic behavior.
This was measured twice, by Luca&Joe and by Keita. Keita's measurement
showed that the major axis of the astigmatic beam is rotating. It has
been shown that this rotation can be explained by a large offset of two
waist positions, in x and y direction, and by a tilt of the beam
direction by a few milli radian. This is consistent with the accuracy
of the device placement on the table. The conclusion is that these two
measurements indicates that (1) beam is astigmatic by 20-30%, (2) the
axis of the major/minor axis of the beam cross section is off by 20-40
degree with respect to the table plane and (3) the waist positions in x
and y plane (or in the plane of major and minor axis) are off by 4 - 7
cm, i.e., around 1 Rayleigh range.

These documents (G050061 (e2e),  G050062 (FFT), G050063 (astigmatic
beam) ) are available from www.ligo.caltech.edu/~willems/IFOModes/
together with all other presentations in that workshop.

Analysis of Phase Camera Image
----------------------------------------
(Biplab) Worked on fitting and analysis of phasecamera images. Large
  variation in total energy in the sideband images for different
  Thermal states was observed but that did not have much correlation
  with the variation in Sideband recycling gain (i.e.SPOB). Trying
  to get measured data for the individual sideband gains.
This may
  provide better information about higher order mode content in beam.
  The beam center moves a lot on the camera and width also changes.
  Planning to make an estimate of such variations originating from
  either the core or output optics and understand the results.
  Presented results in the workshop on "Spatial Modes in IFO"
  (LIGO-G050068-00-E).


Simulation of 40 meter interferometer
--------------------------------------------
(Monica) Understanding of Twiddle simulation code.
Use of 40m Twiddle
code to compare with e2e results.
Some modifications in 40m e2e code
due to the implementation of "substrates mirrors" as done in 40m
Twiddle code.

Modeler
--------------
(Melody)  Documented the changes done to the E2E scripts.
   Finished documenting the FUNC_X code and script changes.

ALFI
--------------
(Bruce) Updating and rewriting Alfi documentation.
  This hasn't been
        done for some time and there are many new features.

(Melody)
Alfi is going to adapt a new version of JAVA library JGo, from 5.0 to 5.1.
Modified the code for the JGo 5.1 to fix some null pointer exceptions.
Continuing with regression testing using the new JGo library.
--
Data Analysis
==========

(Shawhan)

* With Vuk Mandic, performed hardware signal injections during the E12
engineering run.  We fixed some problems with the infrastructure (thanks
to Daniel Sigg and Alex Ivanov for rapidly tracking down and fixing one
problem) and tried out new software for stochastic and pulsar injections,
apparently successfully.
* With John Zweizig, evaluated data quality flags for S3 burst analysis.
* Released a new version of the LIGOtools 'segments' package.
* Created new cosmic string cusp time-domain waveforms.

(Igor Yakushin)

1) Generated waveburst triggers on the whole S3 (final version of calibration was just released).
2) Setting up online infrastructure for waveburst. Automating job launching and visualisation of the results.
3) Generating triggers for E12.

(Shourov K. Chatterji )

A new version of the Q Pipeline that incorporates calibration has been
posted at http://ligo.mit.edu/~shourov/q/code/.  This permits a coherent
search for bursts in collocated detectors by demanding both amplitude and
phase consistency in a given time-frequency-Q tile.  It is being applied
to the search for bursts in H1-H2 double coincident data.


LDAS: (Kent Blackburn)
===================

Finished configuring the LLO and LHO LDAS system with the 1.4 release of LDAS
once the hardware upgrade was completed. Only MIT remains running an older
version of hardware OS and LDAS at this time. No word out of the hardware
group as to when MIT will be in a position to upgrade.

Added new databases for the E12 run at LLO, LHO and CIT. The DMT lead was
contacted prior to the upgrade to confirm that this was acceptable. It is now being
used in the E12 run.

Continued to investigate the memory leak in the dataConditionAPI seen after
the upgrade to Fedora Core 3.
A series of unique tests are being carried out on
the LDAS-TEST system to try and learn more about the origins of the new
memory leak. The theory is still that the new OS is effecting the memory in a
new way when dynamically loaded libraries are used.

Continued to prepare code changes to the diskCacheAPI for inclusion into
LDAS.
These code changes address several open problem reports from last
fall that are not critical, but would be nice to get out of the way.

Put a fix into CVS for PR 2776 - extraneous bytes in archiveIndex. This fix
involves serialization of the updates of the archiveIndex by all APIs.

Completed the system tests for version 1.4.9 of LDAS. Results are on the web
in the usual place. Continued running datapipelines on LDAS-Test in an effort
to better understand the memory leaks in the dataConditionAPI.
Will be using
the trivial I/O DSO to speed up the testing.


The upgrade at LHO was done without backing up the databases first. This
resulted in the lose of some data from E11  and S3A which can be regenerated
when the DMT is available to rerun through the triggers (if there is an interest).

TCLGLOBUS:

Added a status report page to the tcl/globus web site which captures the current
state of the wrapping, testing and documentation of the different Globus toolkit
packages (http://tclglobus.ligo.caltech.edu/status.html).

Discovered a minor problem while testing globus_io_read(). The problem is
how to handle end-of-file flags issued by globus_io_read() and carry the data
from the SWIG layer to the TCL layer. NOTE: globus_io_read() is different
from globus_xio_read() in that we didn't have this problem while testing the
XIO package version. Further investigation is needed.

Currently working on implemention of several TCP functions of Globus I/O
package for testing in a TCL client/server model.
These functions are:
   globus_io_tcp_connect()
   globus_io_tcp_create_listener()
   globus_io_tcp_listen()
   globus_io_tcp_accept()

The Globus I/O package currently has 19 of the 36 functions SWIG wrapped
and tested.

In order to gain more experience with using MyProxy servers and to establish
a more realistic test bed for the routine testing of the TCL/GLOBUS project a
new server was setup to only run the MyProxy service. A very old (original)
compute node from an LDAS cluster that wasn't being used was upgraded to
Fedora Core 3 and had Globus and MyProxy packages installed and configured.
In the future this will also be used as the myproxy server for LDAS once the
development team integrates Tcl/Globus authentication and data movement.

Began wrapping and testing of the globus_gass_copy package used for data
movement, e.g., gridftp.
GRID:

Met with Duncan Brown to learn how to run the Inspiral code on the LSC
Data Grid. This will be modified to run on the Grid3 grid and will be used
as the LIGO application testbed for the Open Science Grid.


LDAS System Administration (Anderson)
===============================

Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
* Added 4 T3s to LLO /frames filesystem.
* Created /usr1 scratch dirs on CIT cluster, ldas-grid, ldas-pcdev1 &
  ldas-pcdev2 for any users/nodes that didn't already have them.
* Installed/configured LLO's fb0 /fb0_frames filesystem (QFS, 3510 RAID array).
* Audited all tapes in the LLO L700 tape silo to resolve problem with
  tapes incorrectly showing 0% used.
* Configured LLO /cluster filesystem out of available T3 RAID units.
* Set up/debugged login problems with some grid accounts.
* Worked on keeping globus-rls-server running during E12;wrote watchdog
  script to restart it when it fails.  Ultimately playing with the timing
  of when it was started seems to have "solved" the problem.
* Set up cron job to plot how far behind LDR publishing has gotten.
* Worked on tuning LDR.

(Phil Ehrens)
* Debugged and updated scancluster cluster maintenance
  tool to accept list of explicit machine names on the
  command line and to write log output to stdout instead
  of to file.
* Debugged and continued ongoing development of patch.tcl
  remote system patch/unpatch utility. there are some
  problems specific to running patch remotely that are
  still unsolved.
* PR #2782 - getChannels interprets time as 1-second-long
  range, matches two files, gives error.  fixed and closed.
* MPI API error message associated with remote failure of
  LAM made more descriptive and helpful.
* Testing curl-7.13.0 on ldas-dev system. Initial test did
  result in some problems, but these may have been due to
  cacheing.
* PR  #2773 - Gap in datacondAPI memory usage.
  seems to be due to an incorrect truncation mechanism used
  to handle 64 bit integers.

(Al Wilson)
* Upgrading ldasboxes 1,4,5 to fedora3.
* Setting up BB for fedora, upgrading to the new version.
* Finalizing the RPM's for the datacaches.

(Stuart Anderson)
* Working on multiple E12 LDR/Condor/NFS problems.

Livingston:

(Igor Yakushin)
1) /frames is doubled in size and can now hold a week of raw frames (Dan).
2) /cluster was created and QFS mounted on fb1 and Condor nodes to communicate the output from astrophysical searches running on the cluster to the control room (Dan).
3) /fb0_frames was QFS mounted by both fb0 and LDAS servers (Dan, Alex).
4) E12 data archiving, RDS generation and publishing is running OK so far. There was an interruption yesterday caused by the fact that "segment. server", london, was not available for a few seconds. Since publishing scripts use LSCsegFind, they all died and had to be restarted.
5) Received GigE switch from CIT.
6) Two hours after the start of E12, there was a request from Brian to add several new channels to L1 RDS. The new channels appear in RDS starting from 791327328. Since at least some of those channels were not present in raw frames before that, we cannot regenerate the earlier RDS frames with the new channel list.


General Computing (Wallace)
=======================

MIT:
(Keith)
-Installing new matlab license and software on server.
-General user support.
-Just a lot little items.

Livingstons:
(Shannon)



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
- LDAS has started really using the bandwidth available on the network.
They are averaging around 70 to 80 Mbits/s with a few spikes up to 100
Mbits/s
.  They are running continuously without interfering with other
network users.
- Last Sunday LDAS reported two network outages for short periods.
Investigation of the router does not show any network down time.  It is
possible the network was just so slow it appeared to be down.  The logs
on the servers don't show any problems either.  Will continue to monitor
the network to see if it happens again.

- Continuing to talk to NoaNet about an alternative WAN connection.
Richard's contact at Qwest has provided preliminary pricing for a GigE
connection to Caltech which looks very promising.  Albert and I will be
meeting with PNNL this week to discuss their new network connection.
- Finished a presentation for this weeks Cybersecurity meeting.
- Misc. user support.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Worked on a Solid Works/PDMWorks issue for Oddvar over in Livingston. This
is an authentication problem when reloading the pdmworks client software.
In order to correct this issue I will have to reload the PDMWORKS server.
-NTSRV's: I ran monthly ghost backups on all NTSRV's.
-Cleaned up and updated loaner laptops for the up coming LSC conference. I
have turned these over to Ed Chargois, for shipping.
-Janeen Romie: Currently loading a new workstation with GC software and
many Engineering packages.
-Hiro Yamamoto: Setup wireless network for a conference over in East Bridge.
-Other onsite/phone support, that included networking and software support.

(Veronica)
- LIGO:  Website updates.  Windows server maintenance.  Prepared several
high-resolution images for publishers.
  Roster database updates.  User
support for Sydney Meshkov with files/ images for the Aspen website.

- LSC:  Updates to the March meeting website.  Assisted the DCC with web
postings of the MOUs, helped Linda with the basic how-to of web updates.

Helped Irena Petrac with web setup for the MOU reviews.

(Larry)
-Placed a few more orders for computers. More people are needing notebook units
with dual boot capabilities.
Resolving issues on the maintenance contract for the Foundry equipment. A couple
more iterations should have it wrapped up.
Put a hold on any more P-card purchases since I will not be around to reconcile
this month.
-Spent time working different licensing issues. We have the Ansys group sending
the latest version of the s/w.
The IDEAS pkg. is held up because of a breakdown in communications. I gave the
new CIT s/w rep. the contact information for the IDEAS software pkg. and they
have since communicated causing some confusion in getting new licenses for the
LIGO group. I hope to get this cleared up in the next few days.
Took care of some SUN s/w licensing that is going through campus.
-Spent some time working with Lisa in getting a new backup server built. So far
all of the h/w is not cooperating so we may have to use equipment set aside for
other purposes and order replacements for that equipment.
-Took another stab at getting some information/permission on getting a ligo.org
mailserver and another machine located at another institution to fall under the
ligo.org domain.
-Assisted the DCC with various items. File conversions and transfers. MOU
related assistance.
Added more disk space for the DCC to put the public documents. The whole system
needs to be reworked but there should be enough disk space to take care of
things until after the LSC meeting in Livingston.
-Still working logistical issues related to the abatement taking place at
Bridge.
-Installed a couple of new computers. Testing out a new KVM switch. Helped Mike
install a couple of rack mount computers that he will be building.

-Worked a number of backup issues. Recently, the robot backup system is not
working properly, I've reset everything and we will find out tonight to see if
things are back in working order.
Performed full home account and DCC backups. Just need to backup the root
systems on some of the servers.
-The mail servers have been working OK this past week. Just the regular
babysitting of the filters.
The filter limits may be bumped up a little. This
will probably allow more spam through but should cut down on the time we spend
having to go through the filters checking for false-positives. There will be
some testing done before we make any changes.

Mail Statistics Jan 27, 2005 - Feb 02, 2005
Rejected        11,301
Virus            1,112
False Positive      98
Allowed         13,367

Total e-mail    24,668

-The regular user support and account cleanup/modifications.
Assisted Mike on setup and cleanup of conference room.


Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Systems and Management

Adv. LIGO Systems
from Dennis Coyne

See also the AL Systems web page

Records Of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

·        A new RODA has been issued:
M040005-01, CP to be the ultimate mass in the ITM reaction chain
The CP location, dimensions and mass are base-lined. In addition, the SUS is to accommodate a ring heater and thermal shield to be provided by the AOS system (details TBD).

 

 

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


Systems Modeling
    Hiro has asked me to make a start on implementing an AdvLIGO SUS/SEI model in e2e. I created a new library for my Mathematica pendulum modeling toolkit which exports state-space results in a format suitable for use in e2e. I then installed e2e/ALFI on my computer and started translating the Simulink AdvLIGO SUS model for e2e.

Seismic Isolation

 

From: Ken Mason <kmason@ligo.mit.edu>
 

Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure


SEI Structure:

ASI has posted the finite element model of the BSC structure onto the ASI web site this week. We are having difficulty opening these files with our analysis packages and are looking at options.

There have been no additional fabrication drawings submitted to the ASI web page.

A meeting is scheduled for 2/3 with ASI to review the status of the drawing package deliverables.

Actuators:

Nothing new.

Suspension

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


AdLIGO Suspensions
Participated in the Glasgow Monolithic Suspension Workshop last week. It was a great success and I was glad to have participated. Caroline compiled notes from the discussions and has submitted them to the DCC under T050010-00-K.

Mike Perreur-Lloyd has joined us here at Caltech for a few weeks. We welcome him again and look forward to a fruitful collaboration.

I submitted the front and back ring drawings of the top mass tablecloth to the Physics machine shop. I continue to work with Tim on the interface to the upper structure.

Working on getting some Glenair connectors to start vacuum compatibility testing. This will reduce risk for they Birmingham hybrid osem design. Jay procured 2 9pin connectors and gave them to Bob Taylor to clean and bake. Bob reports that they passed the bake RGA.

Compiling Primavera data for Carol and Thomas. Working with Helena, Caroline, Norna, Calum and Mike P-L.

Working with Jay and Mohana on the electrostatic drive electronics, getting ready for wiring up the gold mask.

 
From: Ken mailand <kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu>


Adv. LIGO
I'm currently working on the lower suspension installation arm to move the suspension
from a carrier outside the BSC chamber, to the fine locating adjustment table inside the chamber.
Ive looked up some information on bake oven hardware and cleaning solutions for possible in house use for Adv. LIGO parts.
I spoke to Riccardo re. his previous experience with the air bake ovens, for possible configurations and space requirements. This will lead to preliminary hardware cost estimates and a cleaning procedure.
I have requested a ball park baking estimate from NTS based on our visit, not a quote, just for our budgeting use. We can use this with Astro-Pacs cleaning estimate and other shipping and handling costs estimates to compare with our in house estimate.

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


Advanced LIGO Suspensions Weekly Report (Probably in fact a monthly)

Design Meeting

Our weekly Suspension design meetings are continuing and notes can be found via the following location.
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/SUS.html


Glasgow workshop

The notes from the Glasgow Workshop are available on the DCC at: -T050010-00-K.pdf


Structure FEA

RAL, Glasgow and Caltech continue the work on the structure. This is split into 3 sections. Upper Structure Tim Hayler and Calum Torrie. Lower Structure Russell Jones and Mike Lloyd. Overall Structure Janeen, Calum, Tim and Mike Lloyd. We are close to meting the goals laid out in the Quad Interface issues document by Dennis Coyne and hope to present our results and assumptions to Dennis and the design team on Monday of next week.
Mike Gerfen has been involved in the concepts we have developed for the structure and under our current plans will make 2 structures. One for the controls prototype for MIT and the other for Stanford. In order to support the effort of eventually testing this structure on the technology demonstrator we sent a LIGO I structure to Stanford this week as a "guinea pig".
 

Parts at machine shop for Controls prototype

Work is finished on all of the suspended items for the controls prototype, apart from the drum ended wires mentioned below.
Work has started on the top stage and tooling for the blades. This is being done by a combination of campus and outside workshops.
The Wire Jigs and tablecloth for the top mass will go to workshop this week.
Structure work will hopefully start after our summary next week!
That leaves only a couple of outstanding items including the suspension eddy current dampers and modifications to our gazebo.

Drum Ended Wires

The current plan is to incorporate drum ended or double nail ended wires in the top stage of the controls prototype, wire diameter 1.1mm. A design for this and its associated clamps are at present being released. The wire will be manufactured in Italy through a contact of Ricardo de Salvo.

Core Optics

 

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


Arranged a meeting with Gregg, Sheila and J. Hough to discuss "Q" measurement results up to date.
A few discrepancies in the results between the thin and thick coated substrates are being re-checked in order to have the characterization of all coatings compiled in time for the LSC meeting. With the acquired knowledge on hand, a new coating development program will be drafted to address coating research on fused silica substrates.


Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

 

   A high power photodetector is undergoing long-term exposure tests at
the 300 mA level.  The plan is to let the photodetector run for a week and
re-measure its dark noise characteristics and then increase the power on
the photodiode and let it run for a longer period of time (about a month).

Work continues on the conceptual design document.

Auxiliary Optics

 

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



CIT OPTICAL MODELING WORKSHOP 1/31/05

I presented an overview of the TCS optical design.
I proposed several mechanisms for creating astigmatism in the AP beam of the LIGO IFO. UNL0CKED RECYCLING CAVITY--1) cold state: the as-installed BS curvature will introduce approx 2-3% astigmatism during a single pass of the input beam through the un-locked recycling cavity, 2) hot state: non-axially symmetric heating of the ITM may create cylindrical thermal lensing which would cause up to 10% astigmatism during a single pass of the input beam through the un-locked recycling cavity. LOCKED RECYCLING CAVITY-- hot state: the coupled fundamental eigenmodes of the optimally coupled (determined by optimal TCS heating of the as-installed mirrors) recycling cavity will exhibit approx. 20% astigmatism. This astigmatism could be worse if the ITM heating is non-axially symmetric.


Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>
 
Hareem
The maraging paper is now available on NIM Author Gateway article tracking service from Elsevier
Article title: Study of quality factor and hysteresis associated with the state-of-the-art passive seismic isolation system for gravitational wave interferometrc detectors
Reference: NIMA42883
Journal title: Nuclear Inst. and Methods in Physics Research, A
Corresponding author: Dr. H. Tariq
First author: Dr. R. DeSalvo
Received at Elsevier: 14-SEP-2004
We would like to inform you that your article is now published online via ScienceDirect:
http://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0168900204020637

Alban Remillieux
news about the Mexican Hat production are available in
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/Alban-Mexican-Hat.ppt

juri
Studying material properties in thin films and coatings and their effects on thermal and thermoelastic noise.
Studying the effects on the mesa beam profile of the measured deviations from a theoretical curve of the prototype mexican hat mirrors (using LMA provided maps)

Marco (03 Feb)
We are preparing the OTF laboratory for the asbestos removal works which will begin the next week.
I took the last data by BeamScanner which will be substitute by the BeamView Analyzer.
I tested the correct behavior of the two PZTs driver boards and now Im assembling its box.
Im continuing to take data at 170oC at the creep experiment.

 


 

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