Weekly Report for Week Ending March 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 March 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
  7. Special Items:

Special Announcements:

LIGO has a new Assistant to the Director/Deputy Director, Julie Hiroto.  She begins work Monday March 7 and will be located in 102 E Bridge.  Her phone will be x3064.


Weekly Report Highlights


LSC Issues (Saulson)


Minutes of LSC Executive Committee meeting 18 Feb 2005 1130 Eastern

Attendance: Bruce Allen, Sam Finn, Joe Giaime, Albert Lazzarini, Irena Petrac, Dave Reitze, Keith Riles, Peter Saulson (minutes), Bernard Schutz, David Shoemaker, Daniel Sigg, Rai Weiss, Stan Whitcomb, Benno Willke, and guest Norna Robertson

Brief reports:

Preparation for the first meeting of the LSC MOU Review Panel is progressing well. Most member groups' reports have been sent in, and are available to panelists via a web site maintained by Irena Petrac. Albert Lazzarini and Alan Wiseman have organized the assignments of readers, and an agenda has been prepared for the meeting 4-5 March at MIT.

Bruce Allen reported that Einstein@Home was read for launch on 19 Feb. [The launch did indeed take place on that day.] Bruce noted that things were already working very well in the testing phase. There were 17,000 registered users, yielding 12,000 active hosts or the equivalent of a 9,000 node cluster. He expects that a scaling up of a factor of ten ought to be easy, with a factor of fifty perhaps possible.

Norna Robertson reported on the organization of the election for Spokesperson. The Nominating Committee, which she chairs, had assembled a list of two candidates, Dave Reitze and Peter Saulson.  She has solicited statements from each of them; when they are received, the committee will share them with the LSC and conduct the vote. [The election is now taking place, with the results to be announced by the time of the March LSC meeting.] Sam Finn asked if there was going to be a provision for LSC members to make additional nominations. Norna said no, the Nominating Committee had solicited nominations already, and was only asking for votes for the two candidates on the ballot. There was some discussion of this question; the consensus was that this was a reasonable procedure and in accord with the LSC Charter, but that the question could be revisited in the context of writing the revised Charter (or relevant by-laws) for future elections.

LIGO Thesis Prize:

Stan Whitcomb reported on behalf of the committee (himself, Albert Lazzarini, and Rai Weiss) looking into the organization of a LIGO Thesis Prize. They proposed to award a prize every two years, with the choice being made by a committee selected by the Spokesperson for that round of awards. No member of that committee can be a thesis supervisor of any of the nominated students.  The award should be made every other August (at the LSC meeting), starting in 2005, for theses defended in the previous two academic years. The LSC Exec Comm was very pleased with this proposal, but agreed with a suggestion by Sam that the final vote to set up the prize should be taken by the LSC Council at the upcoming March meeting.

Request to add John Cannizzo to author list of GRB030329 paper:

Szabi Marka had asked that John Cannizzo be added to the author list of the paper about to be submitted on the search for signals from GRB030329. In his request, he pointed out that John had been the key expert for the External Triggers group on the theory of GRBs, and was overall one of the most important contributors to the analysis. The consensus of the LSC Exec Comm was that this was an easy case: John is already an LSC member, and we have already voted to dissolve soon the LIGO-I distinction (beginning with papers using S4 data.) Thus, there was universal agreement to the request. [The paper has now been submitted to Physical Review D.]

LSC meetings beyond March:

Keith Riles offered to host the 4-5 June Observational Results meeting in Ann Arbor. He notes that it is only a 30 minute drive from the Detroit airport, which has excellent international connections. Downtown Ann Arbor hotels aren't available on that weekend, but others are available, with bus and shuttle service to the campus where the meeting itself will be held. Keith expected that the costs could be covered with a $100 registration fee and a banquet fee of $30. The consensus of the LSC Executive Committee was that this was a good proposal, and we accepted it with our thanks to Keith for offering to serve as host.

We also discussed the August meeting at LHO. Tentative dates are Sun-Wed 14-17 August. A few members (Sam, Bernard Schutz) may have difficulties with the date, but an alternative of a week later encounters other difficulties with the start of many members' academic year teaching commitments. We agreed to "pencil in" the 14-17 August date, and to confirm it at the March LSC meeting.

Draft of new LSC Charter:

David Shoemaker and Norna Robertson presented a draft of a new LSC Charter. The drafting was motivated by the ongoing restructuring of the relationship between the Lab and the LSC.  Sam Finn and Peter Saulson also participated in the drafting, and several other LSC Exec Comm members gave important comments during the drafting process to date.

There were a number of constructive criticisms of the draft as presented. Most focused on the proposed new structure of the LSC Executive Committee. In the new draft Charter, an effort was made to strengthen the legitimacy of the Exec Comm, by having membership determined by an election process. In turn, most of the seats would be filled by elected heads of various working groups of the LSC. It was this last point that got the most criticism, because it necessitated specifying the various committees and working groups of the LSC in the Charter in some detail. The drafters received clear guidance to try to find some way to come up with an elected Executive Committee while simultaneously allowing the committee structure of the LSC to evolve as necessary.

Several members spoke up in favor of ensuring that the Executive Committee contains a good representation of people with the highest level of technical expertise (which would have been automatic under the draft presented but which needs to be thought about again as the draft is revised.) There was also discussion about ensuring that the Spokesperson has sufficient power to do his/her job. An interesting exchange occurred concerning how to think of the LSC Executive Committee; Rai proposed it was best thought of as a body that advises the Spokesperson, but Stan and others countered that what we need to do (by making it elected) is to ensure that it has the legitimacy to act as a proxy for the LSC Council.

There was also discussion about the proposed extensions of voting rights (on some issues) to people other than Council members, and on the procedure elaborated for approving scientific results. Joe said he thought the rules seemed too complicated, and ought to be simplified.

David and Norna agreed to revise the draft in light of the comments expressed at the meeting.  The plan is for them to submit a revised draft to LSC members several weeks before the March LSC meeting, so that it can be discussed at the Council meeting. If things went extremely well it might be adopted then; another possibility would be another round of revisions, leading to a document that could be adopted in August.


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Petrac)

LSC MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports

Most LSC groups have submitted their research plans for 02-15-05 to 08-15-05 and Progress Reports through February 2005. These are undergoing LSC review.

For a web page summary showing the status of LSC MOUs and associated Attachment updates 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, March 3, 2005. The following items were among those discussed:

  • Web Site Registration for LSC Meeting:  Process proved harder than anticipated.  Have a contact on campus who has done it and is working with V. Kondrashov.  If we get it running today will go forward with process.  Otherwise will go to back up systems.
  • February Tracking Reports:  The cost reports for LIGO FY2005 Operations have been posted.  As of the end of February we have spent $10.4 million (last year was $11.5 million).  Recurring costs are within $470K of last year.  Some narrowing observed as a result of labor rates.  Watch list items for Advanced LIGO have been included in the report.
  • Livingston Electrical Maintenance Contract:  E. Jasnow to integrate proposed changes into statement of work.
  • Livingston Science Education Center:  The proposed design was sent back for not-to-exceed cost adjustments.  B. Barish has to approve proposed modifications.  M. Zucker is to provide the package for B. Barish review.  The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for March 16 at EDRs offices.
  • Visa Issues:  There is an article in Physics Today that should be required reading for all visitors requiring Visas.  Copies of article will be provided to those affected.
  • The list of assigned actions updated through February 17, 2005 will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing, shipping, and preparation of US Customs Documents and a Commercial Invoice for seventeen (17) Fused Silica Substrate, various sizes, being forwarded to Lyon, France (Dr. JM Mackowski).  Account Number P204296.
  • Provides assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing and shipping of several Fused Silica test masses and beam splitter in various sizes to Stanford University (Dr. R. Route).  Account Number P204296.
  • Returned six sets of GSA License Plates to the National Science Foundation.

·        Assisting Caltech's Property Branch with the Campus wide inventory.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • Continued working with the DCC Steering Committee.  Began compiling a matrix of vendors associated with document and record management systems for next week's meeting.  Began to assist Phil in organizing the requirements matrix into a useable systems requirement document.
  • Finished updating all MOU postings for individual LSC members.  All that remains are about five MOU's that are problematic and the updating of the main MOU web page.  This will hopefully be completed by tomorrow or Monday.
  • Finished preparations for LIGO's whale watch excursion on Saturday.

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

  • packages: in - 15, out - 8
  • faxes: in - 19, out - 24
  • Relocated office, mailroom, and mailboxes back to their normal locations.
  • No special projects to report.

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

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

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

  • Closed the blanket purchase order to AT & T (1028096) and released the available funds in Oracle. Notified vendor of the closure.
  • Updated the Access file on the subcontract database. Followed up on expired subcontracts. Faxed the Release of Claims to vendors to close out the subcontracts to: Specialty Components, Pegasus Manufacturing, Intelligent Video, Barbara Ryniker Evans, Moon Security, Louisiana Tech University, E.G.O.
  • The Triad change order is on hold pending the return of the last change orders submitted for approval.
  • Working on the new Corning change order.

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

  • No report.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Completed and posted the report for FY2005 Operations & R&D as of the end of February 2005.
  • Noticed that Caltech's Property Services Department had changed the expenditure type for equipment purchased by the Data Group from Equipment to Supplies, which resulted in an Indirect Cost Charge of $22K.  Upon investigation, it was determined that the change of expenditure type was incorrect and the Property Services Department has agreed to make the correction.  I have requested that LIGO be notified before a major change in expenditure type is made in the system, so that we can respond if we feel that the change is not warranted. 
  • New account has been set up for Auxiliary Optical Systems LIGO.AOS/5.22 NSFLIGO.FY02ON.  A request for a fabrication account has also been submitted for this project but has not yet been approved..
  • 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.  (See above.)

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

  • The revised copy of the Statement of Work for the LLO electrical maintenance contract has been received and is being integrated into the Request for Proposal document.  This document is scheduled to be released next week.
  • Several options to reduce the estimated costs of the LLO Science Education Center will be reviewed next week.  The selected option will be sent to the architect, EDR, and a review of that selected option is scheduled for March 16 at the EDR offices in New Orleans.

SUPPORT (Baldon,  Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

  • Processed the paper work for twenty (20) new/revised trips.  There are ten (10) 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 ten (10) Expense Reports and there are thirty-six (36) 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 nine (9) reports more than 30 days old.

>Dorothy Lloyd

  • No report.
  • Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.  Jim is collecting needs for supplies this week

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Addressing budget short fall issues for FY 2006 through FY 2008..

DCC Steering Committee (Lindquist)

The DCC Steering Committee met March 2, 2005.  Completed first pass discussion on the requirements matrix.  Will now attempt to distill requirements to a shorter list and prepare a list of potential products to be evaluated.  The next meeting of the DCC steering committee is scheduled for Tuesday, March 9, 2005.  The location has been moved back to the ECR.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • CR-050003 was reviewed and approved.  The request is for funds for a Corning 7980 Blank to replace the sapphire test masses that were intended for LASTI.  Minutes have been prepared (LIGO-M050156-00-P) and posted with the signed copy of the change request in the DCC.

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

  • No special projects to report.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

No report.


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


Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (Landry)

The science run is off to a reasonable start at LHO, despite some concerns on both interferometers. Duty cycles to date for S4 are: H1, 75%, and H2, 81%. Ranges are typically 7 to 8Mpc on H1 and 3.5Mpc on H2. Problems being monitored include increased noise on ASPD 2 and 3 on H1, possibly due to alignment and/or burn spots on the photodiode, and a new wandering line near 1190Hz on H2.

Some highlights from the run are bulleted below.  Please see the elog for more details.

  • TCS noise continues to impact H1
  • PEM injections were made in all stations
  • hardware injections are likewise underway on all interferometers
  • a stuck chiller valve caused problems on the TCS laser
  • we have new astrophysical windows into the data in the form of online searches and new DMT FsOM. Coincident seismic events (presumably upconverted) were seen in the online inspiral search, and subsequently investigated
  • the TCS servo is described here
  • decommissioning of wells, including blasting to perforate casings, occurred routinely during the week and may or may not have been seen at times
  • realignment on ISCT4 of the AS photodiodes 2 and 3 improves the noise
  • FMY optical lever glitching is described
  • ISCT4 received a new fast shutter
  • the H1 TCS servo was adjusted

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


S4 Science Run (Brian O'Reilly)

At 4 AM local time on February 24rd we experienced a several hours long interruption of power due to a failure in the DEMCO (local power utility) substation. Repairs took several hours, and on recovery our power line voltage was quite unstable. Despite these problems all systems were recovered and we went back to Science Mode at 5:30 pm on the 25th. On late Sunday the 27th and early Monday the 28th we had unusually high seismic activity, which interfered with our ability to lock. Subsequent to this we found instability in either the Common Mode or Mode Cleaner servos, which interfered with our ability to run the interferometer in power up mode. Investigations into this are continuing, and we have had scheduled interruptions of data taking in order to characterize the problem. In the interim we are operating at reduced laser power.

The HEPI system is performing exceedingly well, the only seismic activity, which seems to routinely interrupt science mode comes from earthquakes. These cause motion below 0.1 Hz where HEPI is not designed to provide suppression. Coincident with the power outage troubles we seem to have also regained some sensitivity to trains, although not all trains cause lock loss.

Even in the non-optimal configuration the interferometer locks stably for several hours at a time with an Inspiral range of ~ 5 Mpc (this compares to a range of ~6.5 Mpc in full power-up mode). Our duty factor in this mode is comfortably above 70%. Without interruptions for diagnostic tests it would easily exceed 90%.

We anticipate some downtime in the coming week in order to install a new crystal oscillator, which should reduce our high-frequency phase noise. We also hope to return to our optimal running power and then concentrate on collecting science data for the remainder of the run.

L1 Commissioning (Valera Frolov)

The only commissioning activity this week was to recover from the power outage last week. The common mode servo has been unstable since the power outage. We're still not able to increase the power into the interferometer from 1W to the nominal 2W due to this instability. The Mode Cleaner and frequency servo open loop transfer functions were measured but no smoking gun has been found so far. The interferometer inspiral range went down from 7 to 5 Mpc due to lower input power. The duty cycle has been high with reduced power over the last two days (for the 24-hour period ending noon yesterday we had 92% uptime).

Education and Outreach (Thacker)

1. established date for LEPAC and initiated agenda; forwarded final draft to Barry for comment.

2. established date for LEN; researched LEN plan: much ground work required here.

3. drafted support ltr for Tangi schools PD.

4. reviewed two exhibit labels with Dale.

5. drafted agenda for Directorate teleconference.

6. researched solar telescope needs.

7. Initiated summer 2005 LLO RET process.

8. Initiated draft agenda for Congressman Baker's visit.

Safety and Security (MZ for Riesen)

no report

L1 and AdL Mechanical Engineering (Spjeld)

no report

LLO General Computing and LIGO CyberSecurity (Roddy)

Due to the power outage I lost the motherboard and the internal hard drive on our applications and backups server.  Sun came out and replaced the failed components.  I spent all of Friday rebuilding the OS and services on the server.  There are still some bugs to fix on it.

Spent most of Monday trying to get the new Dell server repaired by Dell.  It had a bad DVD-Rom drive and I had to spend most of the day on the phone with Dell to convince them that the drive was bad. After convincing them, they sent out a replacement drive.  This fixed the problems I was having installing the OS, but I am still having some issues with this server.

Evaluating some commercial PGP software for use by windows users. There have been some issues with it and I am going to evaluate a couple alternative packages. The mail server did not come back up happily after the power outage.  For some reason RAV refused to function after the reboot and I had to spend quite a bit of time reconfiguring the mail server.  This will force me to move off of RAV and install CanIT, etc., which we have been needing to do for a while.

There were lots of miscellaneous problems to work on after the power outage. Converted a couple of matlab licenses for a couple users who made a platform/OS change.

Made some configuration adjustments on the firewall due to LDAS and a couple of other issues. Started looking into a VPN issue on Linux. Still unsolved at this point.

#MZ ADDS: Shannon also accomplished a major coup (much engineering, some politics, and a bit of psychology) and got the network to support realtime streaming of S4 data back to Caltech; Stuart Anderson writes:

"Shannon, we have made it through our first 24 hour period of sustained high-speed LLO frame data transfer. We are now averaging 7-8Mbyte/s and are catching up on S4 data at a rate of 40 hours of full frame data every 24 hours. It should take about 1 week to catch up to S4 real-time data generation. Thanks for all your hard work on this."

CDS Software Support (Khan)

no report

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

1) The people at IPG finished the production and installation of the new fiber block Monday February 28. Since then the repaired laser have been tested. We are waiting for the outcome of this test, which should arrive March 3 (today).

2) Have continued to modify the Melody Advanced LIGO mode cleaner model. The goal of this is to investigate how much better the reflected MC carrier beam would be if we inject from the curved mirror instead of one of the flats at high power. I think I have a working version. Am having several OS, Matlab and Femlab installation problems on my desktop which started when I upgraded my machine to FC3. At the moment calculations are performed at decatur which is rather slow.

LDAS/Condor Sysadmin and Burst Analysis (Yakushin)

Data/Condor/LDAS admin:

1) After some changes in GC, ldas-jobs lost its ability to mount user home directory on Saturday, which caused createRDS jobs to fail. After Shannon fixed GC configuration the scripts were restarted. It was decided to move createRDS jobs from ldas-jobs to gateway not to depend on GC.

2) Publishing script for /frames crashed on Feb 28 and online jobs were stalled for a while until the script was restarted.

Data analysis:

Working on automatic postproduction of triggers produced by online wave burst jobs.


Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)


CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

CDS Software

Rolf Bork

  • Finished up software for ASC system at 40m lab and ran thru preliminary testing. System should start to go in tomorrow.
  • Working on post S4 software list. So far, have changed the standard filter module library to ensure all inputs, calcs and outputs are handled as doubles. All site realtime front end code has been modified to use this new library (but has not yet been installed at the sites – will wait till after S4).  Also, modified LSC and optics controller software to transfer LSC signals as doubles on the reflected memory networks (previously done as floats). Next up on my list is adding 4 more ASPD to the LSC software.
  • Alex is working on a combined framebuilder/ADCU to run on a Linux PC (for TNI). It has a PCI ADC module installed. The ADCU part is working now (read in ADC synchronously and send to Framebuilder). The Framebuilder code still needs to be ported to Linux to complete this project. The end result should be a relatively inexpensive, standalone DAQ system which can make use of all the LIGO tools, such as DTT, dataviewer, etc.

CDS Hardware

Jay Heefner reporting

Fiber Optic Timing Link (Sander)

  • Link installed in the 40 meter for tests. Each end and one SUS front end in the vertex are running from it.
  • 10 more receiver boards received. Phoenix is stuffing more boards needed for LLO.
  • Paul is building the third fanout chassis.
  • The needs for LLO are: 1 transmitter + 1 spare (2 total), 1 fanout + 1 spare (2 total) and 12 receivers + 2 spares (14 total). These will be installed by Sander after S4. He will coordinate with Rus.

LSC RFPD (Ben Abbott)

I have made up a list of the available photodiodes that can be allocated to necessary frequencies.  I will mail the list to people in the know, and figure out what frequencies will go out in the next round.

DMT

John Zweizig

This week I managed the DMT machines for S4 and worked on getting early S4 Data Quality feedback.

PSL

Peter King

nothing new

Analysis of Scattered Light Coupling between 2K and 4K

Mike Smith

1. Both IFOs locked

I calculate that approximately 1E-7 W may be scattered from the arm cavity of the 2K IFO directly into the 4K IFO mode, and vice versa. The arm cavity baffles would prevent this scattered light coupling, but they are not in place. (In fact the arm cavity baffles can't be put into place, as currently designed, or they would interfere with the TCS beam.) After discussions with Hiro, he pointed out that this will produce a negligible coupling of the 2K arm motion audio sidebands into the 4K IFO detection port because the displacement amplitude of the locked 2K mirror is extremely small.

2. 4K IFO locked, 2K IFO unlocked.

The scattered light from the 4K IFO may retro-reflect from the "wildly" swinging 2K IFO mirror and re-scatter into the 4K IFO. The similar scattered power of 1E-7 W will have much larger phase noise from the uncontrolled 2K IFO mirror. In this case, audio side bands from the 2K IFO motion may appear in the 4K IFO detection port. (It is not clear that the arm cavity baffle, were it in place, would suppress this light coupling.)

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge) 
This chamber still has two samples, white Ceramabond, and disks of TRA-BOND #2254 color light brown epoxy.  Cavity has been recovered and locked.

Absorption Test Measurement prototype  shut down

Scatterometer system  in progress
The fused silica 2ITM02 is  in the scatterometer enclosure for   for beam scattering.  It needs to be cleaned.

We have checked a 1.00"  inch 70ppm mirror and took the scan and the result is the same as before. 

The fabrication of a new mount to accommodate one inch mirror under the scatterometer is done

The Quantronix 60 watt laser is in standby

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38 
Cavity #3
The contamination test for (6)  disks of VAC SEAL Epoxy samples has been completed and the result shows to be clean/acceptable

We have introduced a new sample into the chamber.  (20) pieces of Glenair, Micro-D-connectors for contamination test.  The test is in progress. Cavity is locked and we are taking measurements  for absorption and ring down for contamination loss every day.

Cavity #2  in progress
We continue the assembly of this cavity.


40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)


  • IFO commissioning:
    • Osamu has completed auto alignment scripts for the dual-recycled Michelson (DRMI: ITMX, ITMY, SRM, PRM) using various reference signals. It all seems to work well, but if IFO does not lock at TEM00, you need to align it manually until you get TEM00. After you get TEM00, the script will optimize it automatically.
    • Osamu has completed scripts to automate the tuning of the LSC output matrix (to minimize coupling between MICH, PRC, and SRC), and the demod phases of all RFPDs for the DRMI to maximize all the signals. The scripts seem to work well.
    • After exercising all these scripts, the DRMI lock is now much faster and more robust, allowing Osamu to find and fix several more problems:
    • The dither on the BS to lock the MICH was not strong enough. After Ben installed the new coil drivers, Osamu switched to dithering the ITMs, and is now getting a stronger signal.
    • The SP RFPD DC signal had low frequency fluctuation. Osamu traced the problem to the electro-optic shutter (EOS). Small beam jitter fluctuations were causing clipping at the EOS because beam is rather elliptical and large there. Also, the EOS was getting heated up, and polarization rotation depends on temperature; so transmission changes by factor 2 as it warms up after PRM is aligned. Osamu removed the EOS and replaced it with a HWP for manual control. Now the low frequency intensity fluctuations are much better.
    • The POB DDM signal was quite small. Osamu replaced a beam splitter on the POB table from 33% to 10%, to get more light on the RFPD.
    • The DRMI is now much more stable with the ITM dither. This allowed Osamu to tune the AP DDM phase much better (and automate the process with a script). He can now transfer MICH from the ITM dither to AP DDM much more easily. This, in turn, allowed him to tune the SP DDM phase better (and automate it), and then switch PRM control from SP 33 MHz to SP DDM more easily.
    • Osamu noticed that the demod phase required to maximize the POB 133 signal is changing by a huge amount. He traced this to an offset of the POB 133 signal, apparently due to the LO demodulating itself, by an amount that drifts... due to loose sma cables? He tightened all the cables and got rid of some ground loops; now the offset is much smaller but still there. So, he and Rana installed an RF amplifier onto the POB RFPD output. The signal is now ~3x bigger, and the effect of the offset is that much smaller. Still under investigation.
    • Rana and Rob are developing a new approach to lock acquisition in which the arms are locked first by offset locking to the transmitted light TRX DC, normalizing to the POB DC signal so that lock can be maintained even when the PRM swings through resonance during DRMI lock acquisition. Then, the DRMI can be brought into lock as a second step (rather than the other way around). They tested the new signal normalization and it worked well for xarm but not so well with yarm; this may be due to ETMY suspension issues, which have since been resolved (see below). They will try again.
    • Rana suggests that we replace many of the 1" optics on our ISC tables with 2" optics, to minimize beam clipping.
  • IFO modeling and DC detection development:
    • Rob continues to develop his noise propagation modeling with Finesse and RSEnoise.
    • Rob continues to look at other lock acquisition and signal extraction schemes. His modeling suggests that the CARM signal using 166 MHz at SP instead of 33 MHz is better because it's less intolerant of demod phase imperfection. Osamu is also modeling this.
    • Monica continues to develop and debug her e2e simulation of the 40m, with help from Hiro. She's tracking down TFs that don't agree well with Twiddle. The CARM and DARM signals look fine in the PRFPMI case, but there are discrepancies in the signal recycling case; probably related to the detuning in SRC. Under study.
  • PSL:
    • Ben and Rich changed the settings on the MINCO temperature controller for the frequency reference cavity (FRC), to get rid of ~3 min oscillations that have been present since installation.
    • In the process, they discovered that the FRC temperature sensor was not on the FRC, but rather was on the table(!). They moved it to the FRC, and discovered that the FRC was at 75C (!). This was traced to a mis-stuffed servo board, which they then fixed.
    • The FRC cooled down over the weekend, and since then, its temperature has been stable at ~38C with no evidence of oscillations.
    • Steve noticed that the HVPS for the ion pump on the FRC was reading 0V. Dan performed some magic on the HVPS and it's back up to 5 kV. The current is reading 0, as it always has. There's no way to directly measure the vacuum in the FRC, but no reason to expect that it isn't working well, with virtually no leaks.
    • The large temperature change meant that the input beam to the FRC needed re-alignment; Osamu and Rana did so, and the transmitted power is now significantly larger than it has ever been.
    • Osamu reports that the frequency stability servo (FSS) is now performing as well or better than ever.
  • Electronics, controls, and computing:
    • Ben has now installed RevB coil drivers for ETMX, ETMY, ITMX, and ITMY. The databases are all working. The new, smaller resistors (100 Ohm) in the drive path give much more drive control for lock acquisition (at the expense of more noise after acquiring lock). Osamu has already taken advantage of this by dither-locking the MICH using the ITMs instead of the BS.
    • However, the bias voltages are not getting to coil drivers; Ben is debugging.
    • We are moving ahead with new RevB coil drivers for the remaining 3 core optics (PRM, SRM, BS). Jay put out PCBs and Ben is doing front panels.
    • 3 out of 5 OSEM signals in ETMY were zero in the front end controls (but ok in EPICS); this was fixed by rebooting the controller. This may be due to accidental wiggling of the ICS110b ADC cable causing the ICS timing to mess up, causing channel hop to a channel with nothing on it.
    • Rana and Dan are designing and building an n-times RF multiplier circuit (n=4,5,6) so that we can servo on the 33 MHz RF frequency for maximum transmission (and minimum phase shift) through the mode cleaner, and have it coherently change the 133, 166, and 199 as well.
    • Rolf and Jay finished up the testing of the software for our new ASC system, at Wilson House. Jay, Ben and Alex installed the system today (Thursday). Bob made some cables for them. After some birthing problems, the system now seems to function; serious in situ debugging and commissioning can now commence.
    • We may need to re-instrument one of our key QPD readout chains to make it available to the new ASC system.
    • Ben helped Sander install his Fiber Optic Timing link in the 40m on Friday. They needed some extra cables that Phoenix made on Tuesday. The front-end controllers for ETMX, ETMY, and part of the vertex suspension controller system ran on these timing links for a day, with no problems. However, no real testes were done to compare the timing phase jitter to what we had before with copper cable. Ben and Sander then uninstalled the FO Timing Link on Wednesday.
    • Bob is making HV BNC cables for our optical spectrum analyzers.
    • Rob Rana, and Dan are developing saverestore scripts and medm snapshot scripts so that multiple alignment and LA_settings can be stored for different alignment and LSC configurations.
  • Lab Infrastructure:
    • Dan and Monica continue their work on beam line as-built documentation & characterization (BLABDC).
    • Steve is getting a quote on work required to install more rain gutters on the roof, to reduce the chance of leaks like we had after last week's rain.
    • Osamu found that the POB table was wobbling. Steve shimmed and clamped it.
    • Virginio found that one of the STACIS controllers was not communicating to EPICS and not responding to front-panel button pushing, but the isolation performance was still working fine. This is a long-standing problem, with no simple solution.
  • Bake oven Lab:

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


·        This week, Jay and Alex finished installing linux and the control software for the TNI's new computer, including modifying the kernel. The framebuilder data-acquisition box is almost done too.

·        For the bond-noise experiment, Akira has completed the pulley system for the bell jar, and he is working on the optical layout. A new breadboard is also being machined to go inside the vacuum chamber and support the fiber suspension cage.


LASTI (Ottaway)


No report.


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


SIMULATION AND MODELING (Bhawal)

[Mechanical Simulation] (Mark Barton)

I did a simplified Mathematica quad model similar to the triple of last week. For AdvLIGO I used it to generate a set of symbolic matrix elements in Matlab format that models the blades more accurately than the old GEO code. For e2e I used it to generate some numeric state-space matrices that will be efficient for time-domain simulation. I also tidied up and posted http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~mbarton/SUSmodels/ a lot of the stuff I've been working on recently including v2.0 of the modeling toolkit, the new simplified triple and quad models and new manual, T020205-01.

[Scattering noise] (Hiro)

Worked with Mike Smith to calculate the scattering noise

  • revisiting Jordan's old calculations.

[FFT studies] (Biplab)

Worked on analysis of differences in images of sidebands at dark port under various thermal states represented by simple assumption of variation of refractive indexes of input mirrors.

[Phase Camera Studies] (Biplab)

Studied how the resolution of the camera and its dimension may affect the accuracy of modal information obtained from its images.  Started putting all studies in a new document.

[Simulation of 40m dual-recycled interferometer] (Monica)

E2E simulations for the Power Recycling case and Signal Recycling case: Twiddle and E2E simulations match very well in the first case, still some differences for minor signals are found in the second case. In order to understand the discrepancies, the evaluation of error signals in the DC case both for Twiddle and E2E has been done.

[Outreach] (Hiro)

Worked with Sany and his students of Southern Louisianna University to setup their computers so that they can use and upgrade easily e2e and SimLIGO.

[Modeler code] (Hiro)

The expression template in matrix class has been rewritten. The new implementation allows to handle expressions without explicitly defining the expression. This is part of the efforts to speed up the calculation of the state-space based simulation of mechanics.

[Alfi] (Bruce and Melody)

Worked on dealing with unresolvable connection types. Sometimes connections extracted from bundles are not immediately resolvable but must still be tracked until they can be resolved.

·        Misc problem report bugs.

Worked on fixing existing Problem reports. Currently working on disabling/enabling appropriate menu items (PR 371).

Also looked at issues concerning upgrading ALFI to use Java 1.4.2 and Java 1.5.

LIGO DATA ANALYSIS SYSTEMS

<SOFTWARE SYSTEMS> (Blackburn)

[LDAS]:

Worked on a fix to the frameAPI to allow merging of frames from LLO, LHO and possibly GEO, which are not aligned due to IFO drop outs unique to the individual sites. A 1.5.1 release of LDAS will be pushed out with this fix prior to the completion of the science run to enable custom frames after the run to be generated.

Upgraded the IBM DB2 database to 8.2.1 on the Tandem4 system to verify that its compatibility with LDAS. It does require a rebuild against the developer's toolkit to run, but the performance is about 50% better with this upgrade. This will migrate onto the other LDAS boxes after the 1.5.1 release.

Identified a unique source of the memory leak in seen on the Tandem systems in the dataConditionAPI. It appears to be associated with a single job class (the burstwrapper datapipeline jobs). When these jobs are taken out of the mix (and the mix is made the same as on the LDAS-DEV system) the memory leak is consistent with that seen on the LDAS-DEV system. Further investigation will be needed to understand what it is about the burstwrapper jobs that triggers the 5000x increase in the memory leak.

The creation of RDS frames at LHO and LLO continues to go smoothly.

The LDAS CVS repository is in a code freeze awaiting the fixes to the frameAPI needed for merging nonaligned framesets due to drop outs.

[Tcl/Globus]:

  • Completed 60 functions out of 96 in the Globus I/O ROBODOC user manual.
  • Working on Tcl test cases to exercise globus_ftp_client package.
  • Working on Tcl test cases to exercise the following I/O functions:
    • globus_io_cancel()
    • globus_io_register_cancel()
    • globus_io_register_select()

·        One Globus I/O function is still buggy in this package:    globus_io_secure_authorization_data_get_callback()

[Grid]:

·        Continued to work on getting the OSG testbed up and running. A reinstall of the operating system had to be performed on Monday due to a mysterious hardware failure. In addition, a new version of the OSG software was released and the testbed was upgraded to the latest release. The integration group intends to have a new release each week while the testbeds around the country are being evaluated.

·        We currently have everything but the Condor computing components back up and working. A complication with condor exists due to the sharing of the nodes with the LSC Data Grid and an existing condor that is not the spec'ed out condor for OSG being reserved by the system administrators of th LSC Data Grid. We are trying to figure a way to have the two versions co-exist at this time.

·        We began looking into the installation of "Ganglia" onto the OSG testbed. The official "word" from the integration group is that this product will be optional, but many of the monitoring tools for OSG, e.g., Monalisa, need it installed.

<HARDWARE SYSTEMS> (Anderson)

[Caltech]

(Dan Kozak)

  • LDR work:
  • More LDRTransfer tuning, after Scott patched it so that the   number of streams variable affected the transfers.
  • Also tuned intervals for metadata updates and scheduling.
  • Continued improving lag.html graph.
  • Spent time monitoring average transfer rates via LDR and tuning   parameters for file transfers.
  • Got GEO & LLO L0 data transferring to CIT via LDR.
  • Published Burst-MDC frames at CIT.
  • Started doing end-to-end md5sum checks on L0 data. LDR failed to   transfer some data from LHO at the beginning of the run, so I've   handed that off to the LDR guys (Scott & Brian).
  • Replaced 2 failed 3510 disks with spares.
  • Did a little disk cleanup work in /dso-test.

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Installed Fedora Core 3 on the 'systemimager' machine.  The second hard drive failed during the upgrade and I replaced it with a 250 Gb drive.
  • I am installing and learning about the SystemImager program and it's allied software packages.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Working on tuning and debugging LDR to keep up with full frame transfers from both LHO and LLO.
  • Moved a few users off of /dso-test in the CIT cluster to free up a few hundred GB of cluster home directory space.
  • Replaced failed hard drive in cluster node.

[MIT]

(Keith Bayer)

  • Upgraded ldas-pcdev1 (via yum).
  • Troubleshooting pcraid8 w/ FC3 (gnats: 2766).
  • Replaced 3 failed 200GB Maxtor drives in pcraid3a (lost the raid).
  • Rebuilt pcraid3a with FC3.
  • Will try to send drives back to Maxtor w/ Phil's account.
  • Need to coordinate adding local LDR and condor statistics to webserver running on ldas.mit.edu with rsync script from Caltech.

[Livingston]

(Igor Yakushin)

  • After some changes in GC, ldas-jobs lost its ability to mount user home directory on Saturday which caused createRDS jobs to fail. After Shannon fixed GC configuration the scripts were restarted. It was decided to move createRDS jobs from ldas-jobs to gateway not to depend on GC.
  • Publishing script for /frames crashed on Feb 28 and online jobs were stalled for a while until the script was restarted.

[Hanford]

(Greg Mendell)

S4 data archiving and RDS generation has been running smoothly at LHO and LLO for the most part. Minor network problems at both sites caused scripts driving RDS generation to hang last Saturday. These were restarted and caught back up to near real-time generation without loss of data. Except for the power failure at LLO, there are no unexpected gaps in the data so far.

(Ben Johnson)

  • With Dan Kozak, published S3 Burst-MDC frames at CIT.
  • Continuing to work on improving the publishing code's stability.
  • Working on cleaning up/reconciling grid-mapfiles at LHO.
  • Creating more accurate 'locked' statistics for postS3 data.

DATA ANALYSIS ACTIVITIES (Lazzarini)

(Shourov Chatterji):

·        The S2 H1H2 double coincident burst search is complete and final results have been posted at http://ligo.mit.edu/~shourov/q/results/.

(Vuk Mandic):

·        With Peter Shawhan, I worked on the software needed to automate hardware injections into the interferometers. We also performed a number of inspiral and stochastic injections.

·        I worked on the follow-up stochastic analyses needed for the S3 stochastic paper.

·        I started working on a code for studying instrumental correlations.

(Greg Mendell):

A major reorganization of the StackSlide code was checked into lalapps/src/pulsar/StackSlide on Feb 28, 2005. This splits the loops over the parameter space for the search for CW waves from binary and isolated stars into two modules: StackSlideIsolated.c and .h and StackSlideBinary.c and .h. This will make the code for these two types of searches easier to develop. Otherwise, the main focus now is on making further comparisons between the Hough, StackSlide and PowerFlux codes and preparing the StackSlide code to generate S3 results for the March LSC meeting.

(Peter Shawhan):

  • Worked on hardware signal injection software and procedures.
  • Released new version of the LIGOtools 'segments' package.
  • Posted a script to list nearby galaxies (drawn from the Tully catalog).

(Patrick Sutton):

·        During the past two weeks I visited Japan to give a talk at the TAMA symposium on the status of LIGO data analysis, and to meet with TAMA people to discuss S2 and S3+ analyses.  Nobuyuki Kanda and I agreed on revisions to the LIGO-TAMA MOU, and I've circulated the revised draft to the joint working group for comments.  I'm now making final edits to the LIGO-TAMA bursts paper before it is released to the full collaboration.

·        I also produced the full-data-set MDCs for the S3 LIGO-AURIGA joint analysis.  The frames have been published thanks to Anderson, Johnson, and Kozak.

(Igor Yakushin):

·        Working on automatic postproduction of triggers produced by online waveburst jobs.

GENERAL COMPUTING (Wallace)

[MIT] (Keith):

  • Spec'd and ordered thinkpad for postdoc
  • Changed wireless network name in NW22 from AIRLIGO to AIRLIGO22 due to interference between buildings. Not sure if network name had a max limit on chars... works so far.
  • Patched sun desktop
  • Patched several windows computers

[Livingston]:

  • Due to the power outage I lost the motherboard and the internal hard drive on our applications and backups server. Sun came out and replaced the failed components. I spent all of Friday rebuilding the OS and services on the server. There are still some bugs to fix on it.  Spent most of Monday trying to get the new Dell server repaired by Dell. It had a bad DVD-Rom drive and I had to spend most of the day on the phone with Dell to convince them that the drive was bad. After convincing them, they sent out a replacement drive. This fixed the problems I was having installing the OS, but I am still having some issues with this server.
  • Evaluating some commercial PGP software for use by windows users.  There have been some issues with it and I am going to evaluate a couple alternative packages.
  • The mail server did not come back up happily after the power outage.  For some reason RAV refused to function after the reboot and I had to spend quite a bit of time reconfiguring the mail server. This will force me to move off of RAV and install CanIT, etc. which we have been needing to do for a while.
  • There were lots of miscellaneous problems to work on after the power outage.
  • Converted a couple of matlab licenses for a couple users who made a platform/OS change.
  • Made some configuration adjustments on the firewall due to LDAS and a couple of other issues.
  • Started looking into a VPN issue on Linux. Still unsolved at this point.

[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
  • Tried to fix a laptop from Caltech for a visitor. The laptop couldn't be fixed, so I installed Mathematica on one of my loaner laptops for the visitor to use.
  • Rebuilt one of the other loaner laptops. All of the software needed upgrading. The only other loaner laptop needs to be fixed by the Dell technician, the battery will no longer charge even when putting in a new battery.
  • Purchased a new printer for the receptionist office.
  • Created a couple more user accounts for LSC members coming to do science shifts.
  • Purchased a Linksys wireless AP to try as a replacement for the Orinoco 2000 AP which have never worked well.
  • Rebuilt Windows on two guest PCs that had corrupted system files.
  • Continued installing OpenSSH on the Sun workstations.
  • Updated Firefox on two guest PCs and the Sun application server.

[CIT] (Mike):

  • Loading a new laptop with OS, and GC software.
  • Setup a Sharon's old workstation for Julie Hiroto. She starts Monday 7th.
  • Finished up moving all users back to their offices. I still have to re-setup these temp office locations for visitors.
  • Much needed onsite/phone user support that included networking, software, and printing issues.
  • Trouble shooting an issue with Symantec 9.0 anti-virus software.  The new e-mail tools that are included in 9.0, have a problem with SSL. To correct this, choose custom installation and deselect the mail tools; everything works like the previous versions of anti-virus software, but with added security. Still have many users that need this software update.

[CIT] (Veronica):

  • LIGO: High-resolution images for a publisher. Website updates.
  • Installed the March newsletter. Updated the roster database.
  • Updates and security checks of Windows servers.

<LSC>:

  • Worked on a credit card submit form for the March meeting. The implementation methods recommended at the merchant's website did not work, so after many trials and errors we had to look for alternative methods. I am finalizing the application to make it ready to use in a day. LSC website and meeting updates.

CaJAGWR: Captured and compressed a video of the last week's seminar. Website updates.

[CIT] (Larry):

  • Worked a number of purchase items. Still have a few more hardware purchases to make.
  • The licensing for the IDEAS s/w has been finalized. We should be getting media and licenses by the first of next week.
  • Purchased a number of misc. items for different groups.
  • Now looking into purchasing a new modem pool system.
  • Spent time going over things for the air-conditioning shutdown.  So far everything has tested out OK. Also helped track down cables and other items for the work being done on the building.
  • The move back to the offices went well, thanks to Mike. He put in a great deal of time getting things back into the offices.
  • Assisted the DCC with a few minor items.
  • Worked on the e2e systems and now looking a computer replacements and shuffling for that group.
  • Finished up the user account backups, still need to wrap up the system backups of different systems.
  • Worked a couple of web issues for the LSC. Still have a number of items to work through and will address a mail server issue next week.
  • Spent a number of hours going through the spam filters. Mail Filter Stats Feb 25-March 2 Accepted 18,713 Rejected 16,502 Virus 1,701 False Positive 131 Total 35,215.
  • Restored a number of files for different people. Worked on a number of accounts for reconfiguration and new ones. Assigned another group of IP addresses out for the 40M and LDAS.
  • Assistsed Mike in testing out some of the e-mail tools and related issues.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Systems and Management

Adv. LIGO Systems
from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

 

Planning

·        reminder: installation sequence/plan discussion will be an agenda item for the SUS breakout session at the upcoming LSC meeting (a follow up discussion to a presentation/meeting last October)

 

Records Of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

·        Justin Greenhalgh (RAL) has revised the OSEM Count RODA, M040088, with reference to the UK work scope document, M030162-04. Draft circulated for comment/review.

 

Requirements

·        nothing new.

 

Interface Issues

See the "Interfaces" section of the AL Systems web page

·        Continuing coupled SEI/Quad dynamics analysis in modal basis -- a report is being prepared. Have also started to integrate a more up-to-date SUS structure model.

Reviews and special meetings

·        Reminder: AL PSL DRR, 3/24  8:00-11:00 CT

·        other reviews in the near future are listed below. These reviews have possible (early) completion dates in CY2005 according to the project Primavera schedule (though many have late end dates well into CY2006):

Date

Subsystem

Review

Topic(s)

Enabling event(s)

Schedule motivation

3/24/2005

8-11 CT

PSL

DRR

design requirements & conceptual design

laser design approach selection, definition of PSL system requiements

enable preliminary design work

April, 05

SEI

BSC Critical Design Review 2

update on actions from M050025

 

timely decision on proceeding with SEI/BSC prototype for LASTI for integration with the SUS quad prototype

June, 05

SEI

BSC Critical Design Review 3

review results from ETF testing & recommend prototype fab

completion of ETF initial functional & performance testing; completion of model based extrapolation to BSC

~Aug, 05

SEI

HAM Critical Design Review

Recommendations w.r.t. HAM prototype development based on ETF results

Completion of SEI/BSC critical design reviews; LSC review of ASI HAM configuration design

timely decision on proceeding with SEI/HAM prototype

April, 05

SUS

PDR, Review 1

Requirements update

completion of the DRD update
fleshing out interface & generic requirements

ensure RAL effort working on proper baseline

~July, 05

SUS

PDR, Review 2

Quad design
Triple design
Electroncis req & design
(front ends only -- not digital controls?)

Completion of the quad controls prototype assembly & installation at LASTI;
Sufficient work on electroncis to enable definition (inadequate to date)

timely transfer, to RAL & UB efforts, of lessons learned from the controls prototype

~Oct, 05

SUS

PDR, Review 3

quad controls prototype test results
ribbon process/design

completion of LASTI testing

timely incorporation into final design effort on the noise prototype

TBD

SUS

PDR, Review 4

BS, FM/ITM SUS design
RM design
non-cavity SUS

design work completion (has yet to start on FM/ITM, not mature for RM)

 

TBD

AOS

Stray Light Control, DRR/CD

 

SYS PDR?

primavera late finish 6/15/05

TBD

AOS

Thermal Comp., DRR/CD

 

SYS PDR?

 

TBD

SYS

PDR, Review 1

 

completion of generic requirements definition; completion of first draft of ICD; revision to optical layout; establish integrated opto-mechanical equipment layout

timely system level definition enables/helps define subsystem reqmnts & design

TBD

IO

PDR

 

SYS PDR?

 

TBD

COC

PDR

 

SYS PDR?

 

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

Progress Period from 02.25 to 03.03

Out of the office on 03.01

·         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 work on the 40-Meter schedule changes.

§         Executed telecoms with Carol and Dwight.

·         ROSTER DATABASE:

§         Assisting Irena as needed on record changes.

§         Continue to assist Irena with setting up her web site to accommodate review of attachment As.

§         Confirmed content of the PI mailing list with Peter Saulson.

·         COST BOOK DATABASE:

Working with Carol and Dwight

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

SEI Structure:

ASI has delivered the documentation package to Ed Jasnow and Ed has distributed copies to Dennis, Joe G., Brian L. and myself. Several assembly drawings have not been signed off as released until Scott VandeZyl returns from a trip.

We have instructed ASI not to charge any additional hours to this contract until further notice.

The buy-off meeting scheduled for next week at ASI has been put on hold until we can thoroughly review the contents of the documentation given to us.

Actuators:

I met with the engineers working on the actuators at PSI. We reviewed the status and specifications of the large and small actuators. We also compared the thermal analysis done at PSI to the thermal testing done at Hanford.

PSI will ship one large and one small actuator to Jay Heefner, the remaining actuators will be shipped to MIT on 3/10/2005.

Along with the actuators PSI will send to us:

  • Description and write-up of the test procedures used.
  • Test results will be included for each actuator showing the actuators meet specifications throughout the full travel of the actuators.
  • Winding procedures.
  • All thermal models used in the design of the actuators.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Suspensions

Norna Robertson visited us for the day yesterday. We were in the lab all day, suspending most of the quad. It was a good exercise in understanding the assembly steps. I believe Norna, Calum and Russell Jones will agree that the exercises were fruitful. We thank Norna for coming down for the day. While she was here, we also discussed topics of discussion for the March 21st SUS breakout meeting of the LSC.

Working on SUS R&D budget.

Working on tablecloth model for fea.

From: Ken mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO

I'm currently learning solidworks, and working on the lower suspension installation arm to move the lower suspension into the BSC chamber.

Also I have finished designing a platform for the modules for the BSC chamber, to fit either the large or small port tube, and to allow positioning possibilities to clear obstructions that may be near the chamber. One assembly is in process at the CIT shop and should be finished next week.

I spoke to Riccardo re. his previous experience with the air bake ovens, for possible configurations and space requirements. This preliminary hardware design showing an oven with a integral wash cleaning platform was sent for quote, the hardware configuration was modified this week. The preliminary cost estimate for this bake oven/cleaning station is ~$45,000 +shipping.

I have requested a ball park baking estimate from NTS based on our visit, not a quote, just an ROM for our budgeting use.  The NTS response is $18,750.00 to clean the large parts per set, [one BSC] and $4,870.00 per bake out cycle, times the number of bake outs required.

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

Pretty much all my work this week was dual purpose. I did a simplified Mathematica quad model similar to the triple of last week. For AdvLIGO I used it to generate a set of symbolic matrix elements in Matlab format that model the blades more accurately than the old GEO code. For e2e I used it to generate some numeric state-space matrices that will be efficient for time-domain simulation. I also tidied up and posted (<http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~mbarton/SUSmodels/>) a lot of the stuff I've been working on recently including v2.0 of the modeling toolkit, the new simplified triple and quad models and a new manual, T020205-01.

Core Optics

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

Advanced LIGO Coatings

  • Sent to Stanford a coated substrate for absorption measurement. The coating was made using Xenon as sputtering gas.
  • Working with Roger Route to verify cleaning processes through absorption measurements.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

AdvLIGO PSL

o       So far so good with the high power photodetector exposure test.  A little over 2 weeks running at 375 mA without any obvious signs of damage.

o       A new photodetector topology is being explored.  However a limitation is the amount of photocurrent the design can handle.  I have not thought of a way to overcome this as yet.

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

STRAY LIGHT CONTROL

o       I have completed a preliminary stray light budget for the ADV LIGO IFO. However, I am working with Hiro to verify the proper magnitudes of the scattered light/noise transfer functions for ADV LIGO.

o       The size of the MMT3 affects the size of the errant beam baffle, which scatters light into the recycling cavity. However, this has a negligible effect on the scattered light budget for ADV LIGO.

BS SIZE

o       I completed an analysis of the power loss around the edges of the  45 degree tilted BS and the corresponding elliptical baffles at the ITMs and the PRM. The beam optimally placed on a 336 mm diameter BS produces a 100ppm power loss in the recycling cavity; a 411 mm diameter BS produces a 1ppm power loss.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu

Erika

Updated simulations with optimized tilt correction using the map of the prototype mex hat mirror.  The updated results are in http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/temp/Erika-simulations-update.doc

Marco, Phil and Riccardo

On shift in Hanford

The laboratory has been cleared of all asbestos that needed removal and most of old air conditioning.  Now reconstruction is beginning.

Juri

I made further improvements in my simulation program; I tested the routine I built with Mathematica for the automatic length control in order to achieve the resonance condition in the cavity and it worked pretty well: it is very fast and easy to modify. I run a simulation with curvature mismatch and the result was in agreement with the theoretical prediction. In the next days I will focus on the characterization of the input beam in order to improve the coupling with the cavity.

The creep experiment: from the measurements I took this week the system seems to have reached a stable configuration and in the next days we will came back to the temperature of 40 C and then we will move to 200 C for the last run.


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