Weekly Report for Week Ending July 14, 2005

The LIGO Executive Committee meeting for July 18, 2005 is cancelled due to the Staffing Committee meeting.

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lindquist)

LSC MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports

  • Peter Saulson has issued a request for the LSC PIs to submit revised MOUs and attachments by Friday, Augusy 5, 2005 in preparation for the MOU Review Panel meeting scheduled for August 22, 2005.  He promised additional information and guidance.

Non-LSC MOUs

  • No report this week.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A brief site teleconference was held Thursday, July 14, 2005.  The following issues were discussed:

  • LIGO Cost Transfers—Using current practice, cost transfers between line items on purchase orders are not reflected everywhere in ORACLE.  We have a meeting scheduled to discuss this Monday, July 25.
  • Livingston Science Education Building—The pre-bid conference and site walk are scheduled for this afternoon.  Bids are due August 3rd.  A copy of the RFQ has been sent to the NSF.
  • TechMart Training—TechMart training has been completed at Hanford.  Training is being arranged for Livingston.
  • Change Request for LDAS HVAC and Electrical Power—There is insufficient cooling and electrical power at the sites for the planned upgrades of the LDAS equipment and a change request is being prepared (CR-050006).
  • The list of assigned actions updated through May 26, 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 documentation (Commercial Invoice) for one (1) Fused Silica Substrate, serial number 39, to the University of Glasgow (Dr. Sheila Rowan).  Account Number P204296.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing, shipping, and preparation of US Customs documentation (Commercial Invoice) for seven (7) commercially polished Fused Silica Substrates, serial numbers 10 thru 16, to CSIRO-Telecommunications & Industrial Physics (Dr. Roger Netterfield).  Account Number P204296.
  • Prepared a Purchase Requisition for payment to Air Courier Dispatch for transporting hardware produced by ASI to MIT (K. Mason). Account Number LIGO.BSCCH 5.18  NSFLIGO. FY02CA.
  • Assisted Price Waterhouse-Cooper with conducting a LIGO Property Audit.  No deficiencies noted.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • No report.

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

Week Ending

July 14, 2005

In

Out

Packages

28

6

Faxes

19

28
  • Organizing and processing MOU's and Progress Reports.

COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

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

  • The MIT subcontract is on the list for review by the PWC auditors. The file has been submitted as requested.
  • Completed change order #164 to Triad and submitted it to the vendor for two renewals. The certificate of insurance is forthcoming.
  • Change order #1 to Ares Corporation has been completed and signatures obtained.
  • Change order #2 to Raytheon has been completed and submitted to the vendor. It is in routing for the second signature.
  • Completed the order for the two modular buildings for LHO and submitted it to Apollo.
  • Working on submitting vendor's information to the Supplier Desk so that the vendors with subcontracts are updated in TechMart.
  • Coordinating with Solsoft on the credit for the overlap in the maintenance period.
  • Placed pcard orders as requested for delivery to Caltech and the sites. Reconciled billed pcard transactions and obtained invoices. The pcard orders are now current and the oldest order goes back as far as July 2005.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Held a meeting with Ruth Brambila, Esther Cunningham, and Gina Salone to discuss how best to solve the problem, which is created in the way purchase order balances are reflected when Cost Transfers are done.  The issue is that under the current system, while the total PO balance is correct, the balance for the tasks involved in the transfer is not adjusted, and therefore the Oracle system is showing incorrect encumbrance balances at the task level.  Ruth, Esther and Gina have come up with a method that would solve this problem.  The solution would mean reversing the original transaction and then re-entering it so that the expenditure is charged to the correct tasks.  A meeting is scheduled for Monday July 25th with Caltech's Finance Department to discuss this issue.
  • Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Florence)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow, Salone)

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

  • Nothing significant to report..

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

  • Alliance Spacesystems, Inc. (ASI) has been contacted to provide a proposal to make specific changes to their Advanced LIGO seismic isolation design with the purpose of "softening" the springs.  This design revision will be converted into production drawings by internal LIGO staff for the purpose of having the maraging steel company manufacture the springs.
  • A meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 25, with members of Financial Services, Purchasing Services, and Project Accounting, for the purpose of resolving several issues regarding cost transfers.  Currently, Project Accounting is performing cost transfers with the purpose of assuring the legitimacy of such transfers.  In performing these transfers, however, they are not moving the costs correctly from one task to another.  The Financial Services representative to LIGO, Esther Cunningham, has the capability to perform these cost transfers much more accurately, but is not allowed to do so under the current rules.  The meeting is to determine whether Project Accounting can perform the transfers correctly, or allow Esther to do so.
  • LLO is scheduling training on TechMart for one day next week.   Trainees will be current P-Card holders.
  • The two remaining checking accounts at LLO are being closed.  The PMA checking account has been closed and the money put into the PMA POETA for use with convenience checks.  The other account is a merchant account set up to accept credit card registrations for LSC conferences.  With the use of the registration web site, this account is no longer needed, and will be closed this week.
  • The pre-bid conference for the LLO Science Education Center was held at Livingston on Thursday, July 12.   Five attendees representing five companies were present, plus two contractors who were structural and mechanical consultants to the architect.  Presentations were given by Mike Zucker, Ed Jasnow, and Kevin Morris of the firm of Eskew - Deumez - Ripple, the SEC architect, regarding the LIGO Project, the bidding process, and specifics regarding the building itself. The contractors were then taken on a tour of the building site, including the Staging Building which has several interfaces with the SEC.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

No report.

>Julie Hiroto

  • OFFICE:  Assisted with new arrivals of LIGO SURF students and visitors.
  • TRAVEL:  Continued work on upcoming travel arrangements for Barry.  Created matrix for tracking travel reports and reimbursements using Access.
  • WEB:  Worked on established and created new web pages for Barry.

>Dorothy Lloyd

  • Processed the usual invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of July 4.
  • Processed requisitions for standard purchases, payment requests and change orders. For more detail see Cost Schedule Control Systems report by Ruth Brambilla.
  • Met with Stan and Phil, Albert, and Linda, and spoke with Peter (via telephone), regarding the transfer of LSC MOU responsibilities, and what will be required for the upcoming August review meeting.
  • Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

LIGO must submit an Annual Report for Operations by August 1, 2005 and this annual report must be accompanied by a request for a two year extension (FY 2007 and FY 2008) as well as a justification for supplemental funding.  A draft of the annual report has been made available to the members of the executive committee for their review and comments.  A first draft of the budget and proposal for FY 2007 and 2008 has been entered into FastLane and provided to management for comment/adjustments.

DCC Steering Committee (Lindquist)

There was no meeting this week.  Our next scheduled meeting will be on Wednesday, July 20, 2005

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • Change Request CR-050007 requests additional funding for LDAS power and cooling at the sites.  This request is urgent, so we may attempt to review it prior to the executive committee meeting scheduled July 25, 2005.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 18, 2005.  The DRAFT agenda for the Staffing Committee has been posted on the SC web page.  All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Nothing significant to report except for the new LIGO Rule that SURF Students are not qualified to be escorts for visitors in the Laser Hazard Area/Zone.

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

No report.

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

L1 Interferometer (Frolov)

The interferometer locking continues to be difficult during the day due to the logging within 200 meters from the corner station. There was also no interferometer locking on weekend due to the hurricane Dennis. The low noise spectrum is still about 20% worse than the best reference. The last night inspiral range was 8.5 Mpc with the same calibration which produced to the best reference of 10.5 Mpc (the calibration uncertainty for the reference was 10%). The broadband excess noise is under investigation now. The commissioning during the last three days is limited by the ifo instability which appears to be in the angular controls but the cause maybe elsewhere in the electronics or heating of the optics by the beam or the TCS.

Other interferometer commissioning activities: - there is an intermittent 1/f2 (white noise force) in the darm noise spectrum which was first attributed to the ITM bias module. The noise still appears to be in the spectrum intermittently even after the bias module replacement.

  • the 5/2 main sideband frequency multiplier installed to be used as non-resonant side band generator. The interferometer has been running in this state for the last week.
  • the lead bags were returned to the optical lever piers to move the optical lever resonances.

Education and Outreach (Thacker)

Continued working with SURF and RET personnel 2. Continued work on Outreach webpage.

Science Education Center (Zucker)

We held a contractor briefing and walkthrough on Thursday afternoon. Five of the six invited bidders attended, indicating an encouraging level of interest as well as healthy competition. Bid opening is scheduled for the week of August 3 at LLO.

Site Safety and Security (Riesen)

  • Found no site safety concerns during my weekly site inspection.
  • Found no errant beams on all 5 laser tables.
  • Updating Laser User and Machine shop user signage.
  • Replacing old tattered hazard warning/caution signs throughout the site.
  • Working on price quote for the retrofit of the staging bldg. crane and scheduling inspections of all 8 site cranes.
  • Troubleshooting Y-end Photon Cal. swipe system.

LLO General Computing and LIGO Computing Security (Roddy)

Photos of the fiber damage can be seen at http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~sroddy/fiber-photos/.

Working on a replacement DHCP server that will authenticate users.  Several times over the last few weeks I have had to try and track down a user via MAC address and was unsuccessful.  This should solve that problem.

Working with Lisa on some network architecture issues for CDS/GC.  Should be able to solve some problems soon.

Still haven't found an easy way to get decent reports out of snort for IDS sensor reporting.  The web console works great, but there is no way to get a structured report out of it suitable for a weekly report.

In 14 days we had 17,301 ssh brute force attempts on the network.

I think I have most of the spyware remnants cleaned out.  Still trying to associate a user with some of the network traffic.

HPLF, Optics Modeling, Data Analysis and L1 Commissioning (Franzen)

1)      HPLF: The laser is at IPG Photonics for evaluation and repair. So far no news.

2)      Have helped Valera Frolov to install the MC WFS relief code from LHO at LLO. Will test it as soon as possible.

Mechanical Engineering (Spjeld)

AdL Quad SUS Installation Fixtures

CDS code  (Khan)

1)      Continuing work on mapping of the CDS signals. The mapping is done with the help of medm screens designed in a hierarchical fashion. From a top down view, different block diagrams identify the functionality of the system and the interconnects. The essential part is to identify the location of faults in case of a signal malfunction.

2)      Help operations in routine maintenance including bringing up the system from power shutdown.

LDAS/Condor Sysadmin and Burst Analysis (Yakushin)

 Condor/LDAS/Data archiving admin:

1)      Collected estimates for AC and power upgrade from Allen and Rusyl;

2)      Upgraded controller and disk firmware on 3510;

3)      Dan upgraded QFS on dataserver and gateway;

4)      Upgraded linux kernel on the nodes, ldas-grid and ldas-pcdev1;

5)      Condor and LDR were upgraded;

6)      Running dd to mirror hda to hdb on the nodes revealved potential problems with 25 disks (although the corresponding nodes are still operational but the disks seem to be about to fail);

7)      Replaced faulty memory on node31;

8)      Installed second fiber channel card and second GigE card into dataserver;

9)      Reconfigured nodes and dataserver so that nodes communicate with /archive/home and /archive/frames through different network links;

10)  Old backup dataserver died (I have not looked yet why).

Data analysis:

1)      Together with Sergey found a bug in the quadruple coincidence waveburst script (manifested in incorrectly reconstructed properties of triggers for V1, the most noticable of which was timing);

2)      Reran corrected quadruple coincidence waveburst script on the simulated LIGO-VIRGO data. Generated ROC, efficiency and other FOMs for SG235 injections and noise triggers. The results look self-consistent now.

IOO E2E Modeling (Yoshida, Shivenand)

With a great help by Biplab Bhawal, we performed detailed e2e analysis of the effect of input beam pointing fluctuation on IFO performance. Keeping the seismic inputs to Core Optics off (by suppressing the suspension point input to all COC), we gave seismic motions to MMT1 ­ MMT3 and studied the resulting effects (a) COC cavitiesÅf Length Sensing Control on and (b) COC cavitiesÅf LSC and Optical Lever on. For the seismic input to the MMTs, we used EnvFull.box (the standard floor motion box used by the current SimLIGO).  ASC of COC was not used in this analysis.

Main findings we have so far are as follows. (1) When the seismic motion are given to all three MMTs simultaneously, the resultant excitation to higher order mode of the input beam to COC is up to 2.2% (vs. 0.04%, 0.1% and 1.6 % when the seismic motion is given to only MMT1, MMT2, and MMT3 at a time, respectively). (2) Under all these conditions, the arm cavity remains locked as long as the LSC is turned on. However, if the seismic motion is an order of magnitude higher than the nominal level (resulting in 78% of input beam optical power excited to higher order modes when MMT3 only is moving), the arm cavity loses lock even if both LSC and Opt Lev controls are turned on. (3) When the Opt Lev control is turned on in addition to LSC, the DARM/CARM error signals increase by three/two orders of magnitude, respectively, as compared with the LSC only case. In this analysis, the Opt Lev is placed on the BSC piers. (4) If the Opt Lev is placed on an ideally quiet table [i.e., no seismic noise to the Opt Lev with the other conditions the same as (3)], the DARM/CARM signals decrease two/two orders of magnitude as compared with condition (3). This indicates that the Opt Lev picks up the pier motion and causes the excess noise in the CARM and DARM. Comparison of (3) and (4) indicates that the noise increase associated with the pier motion picked up by the Opt Lev is comparable to the case when only MMT2 is moving due to the seismic input.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

from Dennis Coyne

CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

CDS Software

Rolf Bork

Finished testing the latest HEPI software, which includes tilt correction. This will be installed at LLO next week.

CDS Hardware

Rich Abbott

Setting up a trip to LLO for the first two weeks of August.

DMT

no report

PSL

Peter King

In debugging a high voltage amplifier, where there was a problem with the gain, it was found that a blown OP-27GS was not totally blown so that things still marginally worked.  The part was replaced and everything is as it should be.

Visual Inspection of ITM07

Helena Armandula

AR Surface

  • After removing the aluminum cover, observed the sides of the mirror covered with a heavy layer of dust and smudges.
  • Inspected the AR surface with a high intensity light source in situ. Given the white background at the bottom of the aluminum case, surface imperfections were hard to see.
  • Did not see evidence of a film, however, I noticed what appeared to be a cleaning smear, which can look like a film but in a localized area.
  • There were a few pieces of lint and quite a few speckles of dust on the surface
  • Removed the mirror from the case and placed it on a mirror holding plate (dark background). I saw speckles of dust covering uniformly the entire AR surface.

HR Surface

  • Turned the mirror to inspect the HR side, did not see a film but a very heavy layer of fine dust particles uniformly distributed and a few pieces of lint.
  • To be able to compare this mirror surface with the surface of other mirrors, Bill Kells suggested to make an inspection, under the dark field microscope, following the inspection routine performed on other optics, like ITM04 and 40 m mirrors, when we were trying to evaluate scatter.
  • Moving the microscope across the optic, starting and finishing at ~1.5" from the edge, I looked at 36 subsequent (4mm field of view) areas and counted the amount of scatter points observed. Because I did not clean the optic I was not able to distinguish well between a dust particle and/or a coating/glass point scatter. The points ranged from 5 micrometers to 19 micrometers in dia., most falling into the 5 micrometers category. Magnification was 5x.
  • In ITM07 the minimum of scatter points seen per area were 35, the maximum 94 and I took 36 readings.
  • As comparison, when I looked at ITM04, I saw quantities of points (per field of view) ranging from 13 points maximum to 1 point minimum. I took 47 readings.

ITM07 Absorption Measurement

Note from D. Coyne: A plan for analysis of the ITMx optic just removed from H1 due to anomalously high absorption (~15 ppm) is being prepared by a group led by Bill Kells. The first step will be confirmation of high absorption in the Reflection/Transmission Scanner system at Caltech. Another HR absorption scan through the center is underway.

Liyuan Zhang, Lee Cardenas

We checked the HR absorption of the 4ITM07, an 11x11 mm scan was done at 80 mm from the center and compared with the same scan of 4ITM04, unfortunately, no huge absorption was observed. We also did a cross check with a 3" dia. mirror (MMT14K04) provided by Helena, its HR absorption is about 1ppm, recently measured at Stanford. All three scans are put in the histogram below. Comparing to Stanford's result of MMT14K04, it looks like that our calibration (which is based on the mean of absorption of a 1" cavity mirror) is about 2 x smaller.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

David Blair, Ju Li, and Seiji Kawamura are visiting for the summer. Please make them welcome!

We will have a review of our plans for a DC readout experiment, next Tuesday July 19, at 8-10 Pacific. All are welcome to participate. Contact ajw@caltech.edu for details.

IFO commissioning:

  • Rana and Rob have brought over a large number of autoalignment and autolock scripts from the sites and made them work at the 40m. Now, much of the locking and alignment process is automated, and it goes smoothly and reliably.
  • Rob reports that he can lock the full interferometer (still with offset lock of the CARM degree of freedom, so we're still not at the final configuration) routinely, rapidly, and robustly, over and over again. This is necessary, because each attempt to reduce the CARM offset to zero has, so far, caused the interferometer to lose lock; Rob wants to try many different things, so he has to be able to re-lock easily.
  • Rob continues to try out different CARM servo filtering schemes ("moving zero") to reduce the CARM offset without losing lock. Loss of lock may be due to saturation somewhere, or frequency noise, or something else. Under intense investigation.
  • Rob was able to switch the CARM control from DC offset lock to RF control (SP166), so the IFO was controlled entirely with RF signals. Unfortunately, it still proved impossible to reduce the CARM offset to 0.
  • Osamu notes that the AP166 signal (DARM RF) is much noiser than before, coming from the demod board; under investigation. There's lots more 60 Hz & harmonics than there was a month ago; and it's everywhere.
  • Osamu noticed that the MC length monitor was no longer working. It looks like the lockin amplifier is not working right. Turned off, for now.
  • Ryan is developing his noise budget model. He has re-installed our accelerometers, added new data channels with help from Jay, taken data with them, and filtered it through a model of our seismic stacks and test mass suspensions. He's compared this with a calibrated noise spectrum of the Fabry-Perot Michelson (FPMI) made by Osamu last year, and is taking new data in various configurations.
  • Osamu and Steve replaced three 1" mirrors on the IMCR beamline with 2" mirrors, with correct polarization. This completes the upgrade of the sensing beamlines.
  • Steve replaced a dying oplev laser diode on the SRM.

IFO modeling and DC detection development:

  • Rob continues to use his Finesse model to gain insight on how to reduce the CARM offset without losing lock.
  • Rob modeled the demod phase of AP133 and SP133 for control of the PRCL and MICH degrees of freedom of the dual-recycled Michelson (DRMI), and compared it with a demod phase sweep taken while the DRMI was controlled by SP33I and SP33Q. There is good agreement between model and data.
  • Marcus has made a large number of plots to explore the parameter space for the design of the output mode cleaner (OMC) for the DC readout experiment. He has considered the finesse, g-factor, internal angles, length & aspect ratio, etc. He and Rob have a good workable design.

Electronics, controls:

  • Rolf and Ben have completed the conversion of the (in-vac) IFO PZT steering mirror controls from EPICS to the front end ASC system, with help from Virginio. Rob and Rana have fully checked out the controls. They can be excited through test points, and the bias sliders work.
  • Rana found while trying to center the spot on the ETM using the ITM that one of the ITMX coils were railing. Dan changed the resistors on the coil driver bias path for ITMX from 440 ohms to 100 ohms; now ITMX is the same as ITMY. All other optics have 440 ohms on the bias paths. All core optics have 100 ohms on the drive path, the 3 MC optics have 440 ohms.
  • Osamu is looking at implementing the common mode servo board. We have an old board, prior to the 2004 redesign. Osamu thinks it should be adequate for our needs.
  • Rob notes that the LSC front end cpu, which normally runs at 44 usec (out of 61 usec available before the next cycle) starts to creep up towards 61 usec sometimes. When this happens, strong 16 Hz and harmonics appear everywhere. Nothing fixes it except a reboot. Need Alex to help debug the problem, but it's intermittant.
  • At one point while Rob was taking measurements, ezcademod freaked out and started spitting out NaNs. He found that this can be fixed by reseting the testpoint manager. We need Rolf to protect the front end code against NaNs, and we need to prevent ezcademod from spitting out NaNs (and find out what causes it to do so in the first place).
  • The AP166 RFPD was found to be broken. Dan, Osamu and Steve managed to get it soldered back up.
  • Ben has updated the drawings for the end racks to include the rewiring for the IPANG QPD.
  • Ben will order four new RFPDs for the 40m lab.

Lab Infrastructure:

  • The big new air bake oven for AdLIGO suspensions arrived in Bob's lab the week before last, and now the electrical hookup is done and checked. It needs vent ducts installed, then Bob will clean it and check it thoroughly. First bake jobs from LASTI are expected in the next few weeks.
  • David Blair and Ju Li received lab safety training from Steve. They also had their entrance eye exam, and David noted that the exam was so perfunctory as to be useless. He will write a memo to Caltech & LIGO safety officers about it.
  • The TP3 dry scroll pump failed and Steve replaced it.
  • Our temporary color printer died, and Mike Pedraza replaced it with a temporary OKI printer, which works very well... except, we can't get the unix machines to see it. Need help from Alex.
  • Two of our PC crt monitor screens are dying, need replacements from Larry.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Since our last report, we have finished gluing the magnets on the new mirrors. We have removed the sapphire mirrors and their suspension wires from the North Arm Cavity (NAC), and we have installed the (thinner) suspension wires and both fused-silica masses. We are now in the process of balancing the new mirrors and doing the coarse alignment.

Chinyere has finished her matlab calibration code, and it accurately models the transfer functions of both the servo filter and the open- loop gain, as measured with the interferometer locked. She presented a talk on her work to the group in preparation for her final SURF presentation. Kate also gave a presentation on how we know the losses in a coating are in the tantala layers.

LASTI (Ottaway)

No report.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

E2E Weekly Physics Meeting

Shivanand, SURF student of Sany Yoshida summarized his work in a talk "Effect of the beam pointing fluctuations in the input beam". Following that Doug Fettig, Biplab's SURF student talked about his work on the effects of transverse Shifts of beam or optics on LIGO.[Viewgraphs at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~e2e/ME2ET/Minutes05/050714/ ]

Modeler

(Melody) Worked on several problems in building the E2E software: one involved a Linux FC4 compile error and the other a different format of "gcc --version".

Alfi

(Bruce-last week) Continued work on major upgrade of iLog entry creation tool.

(Bruce-this week) Misc issues in the Alfi problem report database.

(Melody) Continuing with fixing the Problem Reports (PRs). Continued fixing PR 483 - "check into new way to display java remotely".

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Charlton:

  • Worked on reproducing Sukanta Bose' results of testing the S4 stochastic hardware injection using version 3 calibration files. Results were close to Sukanta's original values for injected Omega_0 and error bars using DARM_ERR, as were values of Omega_0 found using AS_Q and LSC-STRAIN.  (details are on the stochastic ilog: http://ldas-sw.ligo.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=stochastic&date_to_view=07/12/2005&anchor_to_scroll_to=2005:07:12: 13:48:15-charlton)
  • Have started modifying the stochastic post-processing code so that it uses the same parameter files as the analysis code. This is so that the post-processing parameters will always be consistent with those used in the analysis.
  • When reading data from LIGOLW XML files, the LAL code uses a call to stat() to determine if the files exists, then calls functions in the metaio library in order to read the tables out of the XML files.  This week it was found that stat() conflicts with Condor. In order to be able to remove the stat() calls, I worked with Peter Shawhan and Patrick Brady on some changes for the metaio library, mainly to make it easier to determine if reading a file using MetaioOpenTable failed because either 1) the file was not found, or 2) the table was not found.

Chatterji:

Discussed the application of the Q Pipeline to detector characterization efforts with Keith Riles.  Considering the possibility of a DMT version of the Q Pipeline for control room use real time trigger generation.

Contributing description on near term extensions to burst search methods for inclusion in LSC white paper.

Continued working with Hormoz on an extension to the Q Pipeline to target positions of interest on the sky.  We are currently testing the initial implementation of such a pipeline.

Continued working with Sutton, Tinto, Searle, Stein and Lazzarini on coherent network search.  Contributed code for reading frame data, resampling of data to a common sample frequency, zero-phase high pass filtering and whitening, and amplitude spectral density estimation.

Helping to debug and test the initial implementation of such a pipeline.

Continuing trigger production for S3 detector characterization and veto studies.

Creighton:

This week I upgraded the Einstein@home validator to test angular separation rather than angle differences when comparing sky positions of sources.  I also began to add more verbose reporting of invalid results.

Mendell:

An update on the StackSlide search of S4 data has been posted on the password protected investigations page: http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/enote.pl? nb=puls4stackslide&action=view&page=2

Shawhan:

  • Worked with SURF students Sebastian Cassel and Sarah Caudill.
  • Reviewed pulsar analyses.
  • Worked with Erik Katsavounidis (MIT) to prepare responses to referee comments on S2 LIGO-only burst search paper.
  • Provided feedback to Andres Rodriguez (LSU) on "r-squared" inspiral  veto code.
  • Discussed modifications to metaio library with Patrick Brady,  Philip Charlton and others.

Sutton:

I've spent most of the last week setting up the simulations  infrastructure for the CIT coherent network analysis pipeline.  This  allows the user to add a wide variety of GWBs and also uncorrelated  noise glitches to the data analysed by the pipeline.  Thanks to a lot  of work by Chatterji, Searle, and Stein, the pipeline is now  functional (from frame data to sky maps); we're currently debugging  it.  I've also been studying chirplets as maximum-entropy burst  signals, and their application to modelling the sensitivity of bursts  searches over the LIGO cheese.  Finally, last week I did a simple  estimate of the upper limit that could be derived from a LIGO-TAMA  joint S3-DT9 bursts search, and compared to it upper limits from  other LIGO searches.  This will be used to help decide what  collaborative work we'll do with TAMA in the near future.

Weinstein:

  • intensive review of S2 BBH and S2 LIGO-TAMA-BNS papers.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

Enhanced the FrSample program to generate some test frames needed for completing Frame to ILwd test (PR#1736).

Have analyzed and made changes for the new leap second on Jan 1, 2006 (PR#2856). The leapsecond file used by cmon and as a backup for LDAS has been modified as well as the static table in the General::GPSTime class. This work has only been verified on a tandem system and will be moved to ldas-dev early next week.

The code base for supporting the new flag -metadatacheck (PR#2824) has been added and tested on a tandem system. User documentation still needs to be written. Once this is done, the code will be moved to ldas-dev.

Studies continue on the diskcache's blindness to files on /archive file system (PR#2722). It does appear that this is caused by locks not being released when a constructor throws an exception. I am enhancing the debugging capabilities to verify this condition.

Fixed one of the types in resource file for getFrameElements under the controlMonitorAPI.

Added code to cvs to cleanup defunctJobs and swig callchain commands (PR2844) that are causing callchain objects to leak.

Currently testing code in diskcache to control the amount of duplicate emails. The code has been in place for sometime, but regression tests have been needed.

System and Integration Testing: ran system test for ldas build 1.6.36 and updated test results to dev and cvs. Fixing fracc6.tcl verification for Proc tRange data. Working on fr2ilwd test with Ed. 

FrSample needs to be able to generate frame file with channel of only 1 data type. Fixed dcmangle to create /tmp/dcmangle if it does not exist.

Began to populate the new PR category for resource files added with the changes that will be needed in the next release of LDAS.

TCLGLOBUS

Began working on the Globus GASS Copy  package. A total of 37 functions exist in globus_gass_copy.h header file. Of these, 27 functions have been wrapped and tested on RH9 and FC3. Five functions have been wrapped, but they have not been tested (complete this by today). There are five other functions that are for Globus internal use so we will not support them.

Also begain working on theGlobus GASS Transfer package which has 64 functions to be wrapped up and tested.

OSG

Successfully tested inter-operability between the LIGO VOMS server at PSU with LIGO Gums server at Caltech. Retrieved entries from VOMS and received Group Mapping from GUMS to associate FQDN for users with Group VO LIGO using "gums generateGridMapfile" on the prototype cluster system node.

Began configuration of PRIMA for system node. More work is required to properly configure the GUMS server to authorize VOMS entries on a PRIMA-enabled Globus gatekeeper.

Discovered firewall rule changes required to enable Tomcat 5 and Apache to communicate via a TCP port. Discovered that the Proxy required by GUMS is the deprecated Globus Toolkit 1 proxy. This can be created by using the form: "grid-proxy-init -old".

Learned how to query the MySQL backend of GUMS in order to verify the user population within the database fields.

The iVDGL compute resources that were previously operating under the GRID3 grid showed up on the OSG production gridcat map this week as preparations continue for the OSG roll out consortium meeting to be held next week in Milwaukee. NOTE: the OSG Production Grid passed the 10,000 CPU mark today (13,800 when I looked)! For details see: http://osg-cat.grid.iu.edu:8080/

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Converted LHO's /fb0_frames to use md devices to support small files.
  • Worked on Mary's TCL problem (directories that can't be deleted on  ldas-dev).
  • Copied S4 L1 data to CIT cluster.
  • Did some experiments with methodology for copying data into CIT  cluster.
  • Helped with LLO 3510 firmware upgrades, did LLO QFS (4.3.11) upgrade.
  • Ejected tapes at LHO (with data from E11, E12, M5, postS3).
  • Reconfigured LLO dataserver mcf to use more HBA ports.
  • Continued to work on synchronizing files between LHO & CIT.
  • Have been replacing 3510 disks as fast as Sun can get them to us (3 disks outstanding as of this writing).

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Placed all of my scripts and maintenance tools and documentation  files under  subversion control on dziban.
  • Assisted in the shutting down and restarting of all 6th floor Millikan systems during fire dept. inspection.
  • Upgraded several machines to Fedora Core 4.
  • Tested 18 512MB memory dimms and failed 6. The failed dimms will be returned to Transcend for replacement.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Managed planned Millikan power outage for annual fire inspection.
  • Started working with Caltech Engineering on upgrading the LIGO  computer facilities at Caltech.
  • Helping to track down several issues related to running Condor jobs.
  • Started testing new version of openssl.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

No report -- vacation

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • Collected estimates for AC and power upgrade from Allen and Rusyl;
  • Upgraded controller and disk firmware on 3510;
  • Dan upgraded QFS on dataserver and gateway;
  • Upgraded linux kernel on the nodes, ldas-grid and ldas-pcdev1;
  • Condor and LDR were upgraded;
  • Running dd to mirror hda to hdb on the nodes revealed potential problems with 25 disks (although the corresponding nodes are still operational but the disks seem to be about to fail);
  • Replaced faulty memory on node31;
  • Installed second fiber channel card and second GigE card into  dataserver;
  • Reconfigured nodes and dataserver so that nodes communicate with /archive/home and /archive/frames through different network links;
  • Old backup dataserver died (I have not looked yet why).

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • Working with Albert on the proposal to upgrade the cluster HVAC for  the CCB.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Upgraded firmware on all 6 tape drives to 1.35.402 at StorageTek's  behest, they sent me the tape.
  • Investigated cause of bad md5 sum generation on H-R-803868448-32.gwf.  It looks like it was a T3 and/or fibre channel problem.
  • Upgraded firmware(s) on fb0's 3510. Dan Kozak upgraded the QFS filesystem on that unit.
  • Upgraded ldas-grid@LHO's kernel to 2.4.12-rc4 (a la the nodes).
  • Cloned ldas-grid to a new server which will become ldas-pcdev1 (the old pcdev1 will become pcdev2). I still need to change the various config files and turn off services to make it become a true pcdev1.
  • Made user scratch directories on ldas-grid@LHO.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

On vacation

Livingston:

(Shannon)

  • Photos of the fiber damage that happened over the weekend can be  seen at http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~sroddy/fiber-photos/.
  • Working on a replacement DHCP server that will authenticate users.  Several times over the last few weeks I have had to try and track down a user via MAC address and was unsuccessful.  This should solve that problem.
  • Working with Lisa on some network architecture issues for CDS/GC.  Should be able to solve some problems soon.
  • Still haven't found an easy way to get decent reports out of snort for IDS sensor reporting.  The web console works great, but there is no way to get a structured report out of it suitable for a weekly report.  In 14 days we had 17,301 ssh brute force attempts on the network.  I think I have most of the spyware remnants cleaned out.  Still trying to associate a user with some of the network traffic.

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
  • Upgraded the LSC/GDS/GC analysis and monitor writing computer, to Solaris 9.  This computer had been kept at Solaris 8 in order to have compatible libraries with the GDS computers.  John Zweizig upgraded the GDS computers, so I was now able to upgrade the sandbox computer.  The connection from this computer to the DMT network is still down, pending new hardware.
  • Planning has started for the LSC meeting.
  • Ordered a laptop for use by the Advanced Ligo contractor, rather than have him using his personal computer.
  • While upgrading the sandbox computer, discovered there is a patch from Sun which causes secure shell to not work.  Spent several hours tracking this down and finding a fix for it.
  • Setup a new account for a teacher intern working here this summer.  Helped her change her password and get her e-mail setup.
  • Finally received a response from PNNL and Amerion on the status of the new network.  Seems they have found a solution to the lack of fiber between PNNL and APEL, so a backup network through Amerion is again an option.

CIT:

(Mike)

  • NTSRV: Updated a few of the NTSRV's with critical updates; looking through logs for system errors. I discovered the PDMWorks server lost one of  it's mirrored hard disks. Larry has ordered more drives to replace the one that died; plus to have a few additional drives for backups to prevent this from happening again. Because of this I have decided to ghost this server, just in case the other hard disk decides to die.
  • Synchrotron: Working on a lab computer that is having hardware issues. It seems to be a motherboard.  I'm rebuilding another computer to replace this one. This is an on going project.
  • Millikan: Brought down some surplus equipment for Ed Chargois. I went through these computers to see if I could use any parts for future rebuilds.
  • Worked the Spam Filters with Larry Wallace.
  • Added many additional wireless mac addresses to our mac address filtering access list.
  • Becrux: Problems with replying/sending e-mail. After running a few fixit scripts, that were unsuccessful, we ended up having to reboot the unit.
  • Installed windows updates, and tested them with GC + Engineering software before asking users to run windows updates.
  • Additional misc. onsite/phone user support.

(Veronica)

  • LSC:  Configured /troubleshot the interface for the online credit card payments, updated the frontend website at ligo.org, connected the two.  The application is now open for business.  Posted updates to the 'papers under review' webpages.
  • LIGO:  Security audits of the Windows servers.  Installed the latest security patches.  Updated the roster database.  Web-related user support.  High-resolution images for a publisher.
  • CAJAGWR:  User support.

(Bruce)

Ilog Development:                               (3.0 days)

  • Completing implementation of new iLog version.  This new version has much enhanced entry and replacement composing capabilities.

Christian)

  • Updated 6 laptops with latest security patches and virus definitions.
  • The workstation in LIGO mailroom needed to be cleaned out. The fan was built up with dust and the computer also needed security updates.
  • Mike and I replaced a bad HP 4550 Color LaserJet printer in 40 meter lab.
  • Recovered lost data from a Windows 95 system for a Surf student.  Installed different s/w pkgs. on PC

(Larry)

  • Worked a number of procurements. Ordered/purchased a number of peripheral items.  Received a couple of USB pocket drives for those that travel on a regular basis.  Replacement UPS units for the server room have been ordered.
  • Worked a couple of printer issues. Mostly, driver upgrades and setups. Still need to work on a couple of linux and SUN printing setups.
  • Resolved a couple more E2E unit issues. All of the systems are back on-line but one needs to be upgraded to FC4 for testing.
  • Working through a number of computer room issues. A number of servers need to be replaced and others moved to new racks.
  • Assisted the SURF students with a number of different items.  Software programs, lab equipment, extra peripheral equipment and a number of other misc. needs have been addressed.
  • Assisted the DCC in a number of items. Still evaluating different products in the upgrade process of the s/w being used by the DCC.  Assisting the working out the logistics for scanning the large amount of old documents.
  • Spent a little time cleaning up system files but still a lot more to do in that area.
  • Regular user assistance.
  • Worked with Stuart to start resolving some e-mail issues with the LDAS machines.

Mail Server Statistics for July 7-13,05

Mail Server Statistics

July 7-13,05

Rejected Messages

23,492

Virus Messages

1,338

False Positives

253

Accepted Messages

15,792

Total Messages

39,284

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO and supporting R&D

Systems and Management

Systems

from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

Records Of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

  • nothing new

Requirements

  • nothing new

Interface Issues

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

  • nothing new

Systems Design

  • Held a meeting at Caltech on a number of Systems related design issues. Topics included:

HAM isolation requirements

  • Review of 10 Hz noise reqs for HAM suspensions (PeterF)
  • Review of HAM suspension designs (Norna Robertson)
  • Control band RMS motion considerations (Rana Adhikari, open discussion)
  • Single stage active SEI option (Brian Lantz)
  • Suitability of the ETF/HPD design to HAMs (Joe Giame, Brian Lantz)
  • Passive isolator HAM concept (Riccardo DeSalvo)
  • Plan for establishing new HAM requirements (open discussion)

CDS Infrastructure & related topics:

  • Separation of processors and low noise ADCs
  • VME crates
  • Reflective memory, do we want a faster system for the future
  • Channel cost of slow controls if low enough, would permit the elimination of cross connects
  • Avoiding ground loops
  • Simple and standard electrical interfaces
  • Support of RFI goals in packaging
  • Timing (Szabi Marka)
  • Global architecture (Rolf Bork)
  • Slow controls (Daniel Sigg, Paul Schwinberg, Josh Myers)
  • Manufacturing and design activities at sites
  • Review of design process

Viewgraphs and minutes will soon be placed on the AL SYS web site under Meetings

Vacuum Compatibility & Preparation

Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

  • The electricians have done the electrical hook-up on the new oven " H "
  • I have alerted the heating and air conditioning people for the exhaust vent installation and they should be through by Monday or Tuesday.
  • I have finished the OSEM harnesses for the top mass on the Quad Suspension.
  • I am developing a baking (operating) procedure for oven "H" and I will be finished with that by next week.
  • I have made and effort to identify the safety hazards involved with the new oven and put up the appropriate signage.

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities (Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang)

No change

 

Cavity

1.       (Location)

Material/Item

Start

End

Comments

Cavity #1

2.       (OTF Lab, Bridge)

MMG nickel plated Nd-B-Fe magnets (Helena Armandula, SUS )

~6/8

TBD

No Change So far daily ring down & absorption measurements indicate that there is no change.

Added 40 small Nd-B-Fe magnets into the cavity

Cavity #2

(OTF Lab, Lauritsen)

NA

NA

NA

No Change

cavity is close to being ready for samples

Cavity #3

(OTF Lab, Lauritsen)

OSEM emitter & photodiode 40 of each, (Dennis Coyne, SUS )

~6/10

~9/10

No Change So far daily ring down & absorption measurements indicate that there is no change.

Queue

Priority 1

2 Cleaned 50ppm transmission mirrors, 1 in dia., REO coated --

TBD

TBD

witness samples for the LHO vertex volume (added in 6/29/2005 vent)

Queue

Priority 2

OSEM Flexi-circuit cable, qty ~ 45

(Helena Armandula, SUS)

To be supplied by Univ. Birmingham (Stuart Aston); Helena is finding out date

TBD

TBD

DuPont Flexible Circuits. The whole part to be constructed of 'flexi' i.e. no 'rigid' sections. (Stuart Aston,Univ. of Birmingham, SUS/UK subsystem)
- Start Laminate: Kapton (LF8515)

(document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73244.pdf

Coverlay (x2): Kapton (LF0110)

(document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73245.pdf

DuPont Pyralux Series - Kapton / Acrylic Adhesive system.

(document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73246.pdf

 

Queue

Priority 3

Stepper Motor (Riccardo DeSalvo, possible SUS or ISC use)

TBD

TBD

3.       Stepper Motor sample had been placed into Cavity #1: Power dropped from 175 mW to ~25 mW after introducing the stepper motor sample, and continues to decrease. It is very hard to keep cavity locked. The stepper motor may have contaminated the mirrors. Will re-test when a cvity becomes available again.

 

Advanced LIGO Project Management

from Carol Wilkinson

Progress updates for Advanced LIGO subsystem development for the period from May 1 to June 30 are due July 14. Sub-system leaders will be asked to work up Estimate-to-Complete the development portions of their sub-systems – due end of July.

Meetings & Reviews

Future near term planned meetings & reviews are indicated in the table below.

  • Report from SUS Requirements Update Review held on June 15, 2005 is available: M050216.00.

BSC Critical Design Review 3 was held July 7, 2005. Report in progress.

  • CDS Infrastructure and HAM Isolation Requirements meetings were held on July 11-13.
  • SUS Electronics Requirements review was held on July 12.

No Change since last week:

 

Date

Subsys

Review

Topic(s)

Enabling event(s)

Schedule motivation

 

Jul 7
8:30-10:30 PT

SEI

BSC Critical Design Review 3

review basic requirements, interfaces & dynamic coupling

available analysis/reports

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

 Report in progress

Jul 11-13

SYS

SYS Mtg

CDS Infrastructure & HAM Isolation Requirements

 

 

Report in progress

12-Jul
8-11 PT

SUS

PDR, Review 2

Electronics req & design; Focus is on the front end electronics (UK) -- limited Digital controls/electronics (US) review

 

 

Report in progress

Jul 19
8-10 PT

ISC/40m

40m DC Readout Review

DC readout experiment

 

 

scheduled

~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

 

~Sep

SUS

PDR, Review 3

Quad design

Completion of the quad controls prototype assembly;

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

 

~Nov

SUS

PDR, Review 4

Quad Installation

Completion of installation at LASTI

Inform the UK final design & noise prototype design effort ASAP

 

~Dec

SUS

PDR, Review 5

Triple design

Available SUS/US staff

Enable SUS/US final design phase

 

~Feb

SUS

PDR, Review 6

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 7

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

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

 

 

Sep 28

AOS

Stray Light Control, DRR/CD

 

SYS PDR?

primavera late finish 6/15/05

 

TBD

AOS

Thermal Comp., DRR/CD

 

SYS PDR?

 

 

~Oct

SYS

PDR, Review 1

Engineering & Implementation ('generic') Requirements;
Interfaces
Revised Optical Layout
Optomechanical Layout

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

 

~Dec

SYS

PDR, Review 2

CDS Infrastructure
Stable Recycling Cavities
Lock Acquisition
Modulation Scheme
Power Induced Instability

Sufficient CDS requirements & concept work (also 7/11-13 mtg)
E2E Modeling for AL
40m Progress on Acq. & Mod.

CDS Infrastructure is key to subsystem electronics req.
Stable cavity is key to IO MMT design

 

~Sep

IO

PDR Review 1

Faraday Isolator

SYS PDR?

 

 

~Jan

IO

PDR Review 2

Electro-Optic Modulator

 

 

 

~Mar

IO

PDR Review 3

Mode Matching Telescope

Determination of whether a stable recycling cavity will become part of the AL baseline

 

 

~Oct

COC

PDR

Review 1

 Metrology

 Review and select  vender and in-house metrology

 

 

TBD

COC

PDR

Review 2

 

SYS PDR?

 

 

 

CDS for Adv LIGO

Rolf Bork

  • Produced an AdvLigo CDS discussion document for this week's meeting at Caltech. After a little cleanup and an addition that Rich Abbott and I discussed today, I will turn it in to DCC next week.
  • We received an evaluation copy of Realtime Linux that we have been testing this week on our dual AMD-64 Sun box. It loaded easily into our Fedora Core 3 64 bit Linux system. So far, we have only modified their examples of realtime interrupts, messaging and timers, but the results have been very good. Interrupt latencies and timers have run consistently in the few microsecond range. We have also been able to transport data between realtime threads locked into one CPU and non-realtime Linux applications on the other CPU via shared memory segments. Over the course of the next week, we plan to port some of our code on to it. For the test, our realtime code for suspension control will run on one CPU and the associated EPICS will run on the other CPU.  If this works out, we could eventually get rid of separate EPICS boxes and the associated realtime network traffic. This is geared more to future system prototype testing than installation into present systems at this point.

Rich Abbott

Put together agenda for the CDS infrastructure meeting and am presently writing a document that summarizes the content of the meeting.  Several action items have been generated from the meeting, Jay is volunteered to put together a plan for using some of the new architecture ideas for testing at LASTI.  Vern volunteered to put some thought to a library of sorts containing standard LIGO approved design solutions for electronics that might allow us to repeat successes and avoid past failures.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

SEI Structure:

A meeting was held with ASI to discuss changing "softening" the stage 0-1 and stage 1-2 spring assemblies. Brian Lantz generated a design using a program given to us as part of the original contract from ASI. Oddvar Spjeld then took the new spring sizes and fit them into the BSC solidworks model. We will be meeting again tuesday to discuss cost and schedule.

A procurement strategy for the seismic structure has been generated which breaks down responsibilities for preparing bid packages and interfacing with suppliers.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Suspensions

Tim Hayler from RAL joined us for a week here at Caltech. He went home yesterday. Ian and Joe from RAL came yesterday for another week and a half. Their visits are greatly appreciated. We all met with Mike Gerfen yesterday to discuss the upper structure progress and dimensioning/tolerancing. Mike said that the work has gone more slowly than he had hoped and plans for it to be completed on Friday. Calum has managed the lab tasks through next week such that we can work around that delay. We are working on the lower structure now.

Attended the SUS UK Electronics Review on Tuesday. Attended parts of the HAM isolation requirements meeting on Monday. Attended the SWG on Friday. I have a meeting with Carol about budgets this morning.

Working on the spacer assembly for the LASTI mode cleaner.

Working with Betsy on getting a number of spare parts for LHO.

From: ctorrie ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu

Tim Hayler was visiting from RAL last week to work on the upper and lower structure. Ian Wilmut and Joe O'Dell are visiting this week from RAL to work on the assembly of the quad suspension. One of the last items, the upper structure, should be finished its post welding machining stages by Friday.  Lots of photos to follow.

From: Ken mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

Making simplified S/W drawings of the Adv. LIGO optical component assemblies for import to Zmax, for Mike Smith, and converting Mechanical Desktop LHO full site layout to S/W

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells <kells@ligo.caltech.edu>

My work has been entirely dominated by:

1.      The critical effort to understand the [absorptive] properties of ITM07.  Our preliminary partial scans have indicated no anomalous HR absorption.  However there was significantly high fine dust contamination. Nothing on the AR side yet (other than it seems clean per visual insepection), nor on bulk absorption. So, this effort may be protracted since we are not immediately finding properties consistent with the in situ symptoms.

2.      Review of the parametric instability issue. For me this is amounting to a rather full re-assesment of the theory, and circumstances for LIGO and Adl. A lot is being uncovered which was not properly appreciated before. I am constantly in discussion with the visting Australians. I believe they are learning a lot, and many claims will (or ought to ) be revised.

 

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Visual inspection of ITM07

AR Surface

After removing the aluminum cover, observed the sides of the mirror covered with a heavy layer of dust and smudges.

Inspected the AR surface with a high intensity light source in situ. Given the white background at the bottom of the aluminum case, surface imperfections were hard to see.  Did not see evidence of a film, however, I noticed what appeared to be a cleaning smear, which can look like a film but in a localized area.  There were a few pieces of lint and quite a few speckles of dust on the surface.

Removed the mirror from the case and placed it on a mirror holding plate (dark background). I saw speckles of dust covering uniformly the entire AR surface.

HR Surface

Turned the mirror to inspect the HR side, did not see a film but a very heavy layer of fine dust particles uniformly distributed and a few pieces of lint.

To be able to compare this mirror surface with the surface of other mirrors, Bill Kells suggested making an inspection, under the dark field microscope, following the inspection routine performed on other optics, like ITM04 and 40 m mirrors, when we were trying to evaluate scatter.

Moving the microscope across the optic, starting and finishing at ~1.5" from the edge, I looked at 36 subsequent (4mm field of view) areas and counted the amount of scatter points observed. Because I did not clean the optic I was not able to distinguish well between a dust particle and/or a coating/glass point scatter. The points ranged from 5 micrometers to 19 micrometers in dia., most falling into the 5 micrometers category.

Magnification was 5x.

In ITM07 the minimum of scatter points seen per area were 35, the maximum 94 and I took 36 readings.

As comparison, when I looked at ITM04, I saw quantities of points (per field of view) ranging from 13 points maximum to 1 point minimum. I took 47 readings.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

Maik Frede (LZH) gave me some information about the pump diodes used in the current laser design, although he did note that there was a possibility that the pump diodes would change.  Nevertheless I contacted JenOptik asking for other information.

Auxiliary Optics

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

AdLIGO Thermal Compensation Research

We have fired up our 25 W carbon dioxide laser and are beginning measurements of its intensity noise spectrum using a Boston Electronics photovoltaic cell.  We have successfully reengineered a conference projector to run with the multimirror array externally accessible and are preparing to remove the cover to test it to exposure to 25 W of CO2 radiation.  We have learned that while the projector is designed to toggle each micromirror at roughly 200Hz, this feature is only for the convenience of the projector and the mirror array can be run in fixed orientations for long periods of time, as needed for AdLIGO.

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

OPTLEV

Aabeg has assembled the OPTLEV receiver apparatus and is beginning alignment.  I am awaiting help from Ben Abbot for the QPD readout.

SLC

Shasta is in the process of aligning the BRDF apparatus.

40METER IFO

I am in the process of designing the output mode matching telescope and updating the optical beam lines.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu

John

Still working on fitting experimental data to theory ­ both 2d intensity profiles and frequency spectra.

Also performing frequency analysis to determine noise sources in our experiment. When using side-lock we see strong (and as yet unidentified) peaks in the 30-40Hz region. Using a dithering lock, peaks are seen at 120Hz and harmonics thereof. These results are based on measurements taken over nine seconds at a sampling rate of 10,000Hz. Over the coming week, longer data sets will be produced (once a broken PC as been repaired). We may also try different techniques to excite resonances in the structure.

The reflection/transmission coefficients of the cavity mirrors have been experimentally measured. Input ­ 0.9620, Folder ­ 0.9988, MH ­ 0.9990 . These results will permit us to calculate the finesse of the cavity for different modes, perhaps explaining why it is difficult to lock to the fundamental.

Chiara

I will start with the test for horizontal attenuation system with four legs, so I'm working on new mechanical set-up. We made the hardening process (100 hours, 435 celsius degrees) for the eight new joints and then we have measured the hardness. The result of this measurement shows that the hardness of these joints is high (56 of the C- Rockwell scale).

Juri

I finished writing the paper which will be published in the proceedings of  the SPIE conference "Optics and Photonics". It will be posted soon for LSC review. In this paper I reported on the status of our experiment on Mesa beam. 

Francesca:

Alberto and I controlled the maraging cooking.  I'm studying Lab View using some demo files and I'm trying to understand how to implement a real-time PID control system for the low frequency electromagnetic anti-spring actuator.

Marco (12Jul)

Since cavity spectrum shows the first two peaks very close to each other and the best beam profile looks like a linear superposition of the theoretical TEM00 and TEM01, I decided to switch to the dither lock scheme: no Mesa beam profile has been grabbed yet. TEM10 (with a good cylindrical symmetry) seems the most stable transverse mode for the "aligned" cavity.  Thus, we decided to investigate the efficiency of the coupling between input and transverse modes: measurements are in progress. We are also checking if some systematics or high level noise can be the reason of lock instabilities.  I helped Juri to write SPIE conference proceedings.

Alberto

I have just completed a first draft of the drawings of the damping arm I'm working on. While I'm waiting for the delivery of the carbon fiber pipes, I'm designing the spring junctions. In order to extend the surface available, I'm trying to find the way to fix the flex joints to the springs through a plate bolted in central point. I expect to have the definitive designs to send the constructors by the end of this week.

For additional information about this report, contact S. Whitcomb or P. Lindquist