Weekly Report for Week Ending May 18, 2006

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, May 22, 2006 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
    • 40 Meter (Weinstein)
    • TNI ( Libbrecht)
    • LASTI  (Shoemaker)
  • Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

5.      R&D and Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)

6.      CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED

  • No open change requests

Special Items:

  • Preparations for Advanced LIGO Review (May 31 – June 2)
  • LIGO Organization Chart (Executive Session)

Special Announcements:

 

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

  • There was no site teleconference Thursday, May 18, 2006.
  • There are currently no open action items.  The list of assigned actions updated through December 01, 2005 (the last update) will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

>From: Rod Luna <rluna@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with Packing and shipping of a metal test mass (LASTI Mode Cleaner) to Stanford (N. Robertson) Account Number LIGO.SUS - 5.10 - NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
  • Provided assistance to Barry Barish with packing and shipping of an LHO poster to FERMI Lab.  Account Number BCB.40145-1-ENDOW.401450.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • No report.

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

  • Continued to sort/refile those "P" documents that were extracted from the shelves for electronic scanning.
  • Scanning - Progress continues on scanning of contract closeout files.
  • Activity:

Week Ending

05/18/2006

In

Out

Packages

28

6

Faxes

20

15

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Cronin, Brambila, Kaufman)

>From: "Cronin, Holly" <Holly.Cronin@caltech.edu>

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

  • Routed the Exploratorium change order for the exhibits in Group C for review and approval.  Change order #5 will be issued once change order #4 has been approved and returned.
  • The 6-month funding allocation was submitted to MIT.
  • Submitted purchase orders for the sites which included the $20K order from CDW for the computer system for Hanford.
  • Working on charges received from JPL for Raytheon.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

  • Nothing significant to report.

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

  • Two modifications are being issued to the contract with the Exploratorium on the Outreach Cooperative Agreement.  The first, Change Order No. 4, allocates $128,000 to cover the final group of six exhibits, Group C.  The second, Change Order No. 5, allocates $145,000 to cover the remaining support for all exhibits.  This brings the total allocated for exhibits and supplemental work to $885,000, the amount contained in the Exploratorium proposal.
  • The prototype for the kinetic facade for the LLO SEC has been assembled at HPD's facility in Boulder, Colorado.  It will be inspected by LIGO personnel next week.
  • Slippage of the schedule by the Limerick Company in the development of the seismic isolation system prototypes for Advanced LIGO is being examined regarding the causes and possible recovery.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

  • Advanced LIGO—incorporated edits into the Cost Estimating Plan and returned to the Project Group.
  • Operations Annual Report—prepared a proposal for assignments for contributions to the Annual Report for Operations.  Will distribute.  Requesting inputs by June 23.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • No open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • A Staffing Committee meeting was held on Monday. The minutes and action items from the meeting are in progress and when completed will be posted on the SC web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Nothing significant to report this week.

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

Summary of S5 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by K. Kawabe)

Another week of good running. Duty cycle of H1 was just 85% this week, with typical inspiral range of 13+ to 14+ Mpc (15 Mpc was reported once). Duty cycle of H2 was a bit larger than 83%, with typical range of 7 Mpc.

Highlights from the elogs:

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

LLO Science Education Center Kinetic Art Project (Romie)

On May 23rd, we will go to Boulder to see and review the prototype. They are working this week on defining the position of the winches for the lock-down mechanism, so as not to hit the lamps in the gallery area. Charlie Danaher just circulated a number of views of the locking mechanism. Our regular weekly meetings with HPD & Exploratorium are Thursdays at 2pm Central.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

CDS

see weekly commissioning minutes in the commissioning archives

DMT

John Zweizig

Last week I worked on a new release of the DMT software. This changes arevmostly to support reading and writing FrStat structures in frame files.  This will pave the way for implementing a new Calibration frame format.  Software to read and write a prototype version of this calibration format is also being implemented to test that the FrStat support is sufficient for this purpose.

Scattered Light

See Bill Kells’ report on optical scattering in last week’s weekly report for Advanced LIGO.

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO Commissioning

  • Rob, Rana and Sam have made considerable progress in lock acquisition. They have cleaned up many of the LSC PD signals, adjusting phases and gains, matching the 133 MHz and 199 MHz signals, etc. The DRMI now locks in only a few seconds.
  • With the DRMI locked on just the single demod signals (REFL33_I, REFL33_Q, and SP166_I) they can easily explore the full space of double-demod signal phases to optimize signals for each DRMI degree of freedom. They can then hand off the controls to the optimized double-demod signals in preparation for adding the arms.
  • Starting with a locked DRMI, they offset-lock the arms using the DC transmitted signals, and tune up the RF signals. They can then switch to the RF signals for DARM and zero that offset. The full IFO is now locking well and robustly and there is some confidence that the signals are well tuned up and understood. Up next is more CM servo work and reducing the CARM offset to zero to bring the carrier to full resonance in the arms. So far, they have been able to re-establish the digital common mode servo, and the fast AOM path was also briefly, apparrently successfully, enabled.
  • Rob developed the autoalign scripts, adding one for the SRM mirror. There is now an alignAll script which automates the alignment of the entire IFO.
  • The input MC reflected beamline and LSC diode is now on the AP table (much shorter beam path) and works well.
  • Dan and Rana have set up the MC WFSs on the AP table with 45degree mounts, and Dan is positioning lenses for the correct Guoy phases (modeled by Monica) and pickoffs for the correct amounts of power on each of the WFS heads.

IFO Modeling

  • Osamu continues to develop his e2e model of 40m and AdLIGO, his analysis of the AdLIGO length sensing noise, and development (with Kentaro) of alternative AdLIGO length sensing schemes.

DC Detection and Vacuum Squeezing Development

  • Rob and Sam have aligned the in-vac DC readout beamline that will go in the vacuum, using a crystal laser, and they are now switching to an NPRO (borrowed from the TNI) so that they can lock the OMC with it. They are adding the PZT steering mirrors onto their alignment chain. They may be ready to disassemble the system for cleaning and baking as early as next week.
  • The DCPD Satellite box is now successfully tested by Ben, and is awaiting front and back panels to arrive early next week.
  • Rob is specifying the correct alignment of the DC PDs in their mounts so that Ben can do the final machining on the DCPD head mount.
  • Ben continues to work on the QPD whitening board layout.
  • Jay continues to work on the OMC PZT driver board and the steering mirror PZT driver board.
  • Bob got in some cable so we can pre-make the cabling for the DC readout controls.
  • Vacuum windows for the OMC reflected and transmitted beamlines are being baked out by Bob.
  • Go and Osamu continue to work on the squeezer. With 1.5 W into the SHG, it gets hot, and the SHG cavity becomes unstable. They lowered the oven temperature, and the cavity became stable, delivering up to 400 mW of green light continuously.
  • Go optimized the alignment of the OPO cavity using the seed beam, and did a temperature scan to find the largest amount of green light from the OPO operated as a SHG. He then aligned the pump beam into the OPO. He is now trying to get some parametric gain in the OPO. converting one green to two IR photons.

PSL

  • Several laser tripoffs in the last month have been traced to user error with the PSL enclosure. Everyone is now fully aware of the care that must be used to avoid having the PSL enclosure trip off the laser inadvertently.
  • Steve will arrange to have the PSL enclosure interlock changed so that it only shutters the MOPA laser, not trip off its power. This should help to avoid tripoffs that could damage the laser.
  • In addition to tripoffs, the MOPA head temperature wanders and the temperature servo is unable to stabilize it. Steve believes that this is due to temperature excursions that are accompanying the squeezer work being done on the PSL table, stressing the ability of the MOPA temperature servo to maintain head temperature stability. Steve will consult with Peter King and other experts on what to do about this.

Electronics, Controls, Computers

  • Rana replaced the ETM and ITM suspension controller violin mode 1st (2nd?) harmonic (884 Hz) notch filters with 4th order Elliptic Bandstop filters, which work much better.
  • Rana noted that many of our EPICS channels have names that are non-standard, look nothing like the naming conventions used at the sites, and don't match front-end names. He has renamed a large number of channels in the LSC system.

Lab Infrastructure

  • Steve notes that the particle counters are recording extremely high values, presumably due to the weather. He'll keep an eye on it and keep the HEPA filters running as often as possible.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

This week we ran into some trouble with the mode cleaner. The OSEM controller for the input mirror is acting up. It is not damping the yaw motion to spec, and the side magnet of the output mirror is also exhibiting excess motion. We are in the process of correcting both of these problems.

LASTI (Ottaway)

No report.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Yamamoto)

Adv.LIGO FP (Osamu Miyakawa, Hiro Yamamoto, Mark Barton)

Using the FP model with quad suspensions, ASC scheme is being investigated.  In order to have the test mass to be pitch free when strong ration pressure is pushing the mass (not torque, linear force induces pitch because the mass is suspended) to tilt 4.7 micro radian, the top most mass should have finite pitch in opposite direction with almost the same magnitude, -4.3 micro radian.  So some kind of alignment sensing is needed to control the test mass pitch using the top mass.

There was confusion about the yaw dof, and a few bugs were identified and fixed. Still some results are to be digested before yaw control is achieved.

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro Yamamoto)

Adv.LIGO version of FFT-like simulation tool development -- still building fundamental building blocks and doing validation.

Simulation engine code (Bruce Sears)

Finished (1) modifying the input code to skip efficiently sections related only to graphical front end and (2) implementing the output control scheme using a template file to organize and reduce unnecessary output data.

ALFI (Melody Araya)

Continuing with the ALFI enhancement to have "comment" notes in an edit window.   Currently working on sizing and moving the widget.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Brown:

  • Worked on S4 ringdown analysis pipeline
  • Continued with review of BBH inspiral S3 analysis
  • Worked on LISA supermassive black hole analysis with Tapir group
  • Updated BNS glitch pages at observatories so that they glitches which do not have an associated DQ flag are highlighted
  • Provided segment database support to Igor and Ben
  • Gave talk at Riverside Community College on LIGO science

Mendell:

  • StackSlide jobs have finished at LLO with the final S4 L1 results.  Jobs are running at LHO and should finish with a few days.  The results will be incorporated into the S4 PowerFlux, StackSlide, and Hough paper, and presented at the June LSC meeting at MIT.

Shawhan:

  • Provided comments on a draft of the astrophysics section of the Advanced LIGO Project Execution Plan.
  • Completed generation of out-of-lock, light dip, and overflow data quality flags through May 2.
  • Did a study of the "safety" of the light dip and overflow data quality flags using hardware injections.
  • Worked with Erik Katsavounidis to draft a Charter for the LSC Burst Analysis Group.
  • Started writing the first draft of the S4 LIGO-only untriggered burst search paper.

Sutton:

I've spent most of my time on coherent analysis issues and the Xpipeline analysis package.  I used Lazarus black-hole merger results from Leo Stein's thesis to show that the coherent consistency test we detailed in gr-qc/0605002 works quite well for two-polarization GWBs.  I've been profiling and optimizing the sky-map function for Xpipeline.  I found a way to partially vectorize the "for" loop over sky positions to cut the analysis time by 40%.  I edited Stephen Poprocki's SURF project proposal on searching for black-hole mergers with Xpipeline.  I'm currently working on my coherent analysis talk for the GWADW meeting at Elba and a bursts talk for my visit to Benevento next week.

Yakushin:

  • Planning the work with my summer SURF student;
  • Together with Sergey debugging some problems with LIGO-GEO simulation using coherent waveburst.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

Work continues on supporting 64-bit compilation of LDAS for Solaris 10. The Build rules for TCL/TK 8.4.12 have been modified and are under testing. The previous situation where the peername of a socket was not being returned has been corrected with the modification to the build rules of TCL/TK.  This still leaves BLT and the globus toolkit yet to be compiled 64-bit.

The effort to make the diskcacheAPI not hang when performing an lstat on a hung NFS file system (PR#3015) did not scale to ldas-dev. This will need further investigation to understand why the modified code possibly caused jobs sent to the diskcacheAPI to timeout.

The system tests on ldas were done using version 1.8.178. Job rate performance has dropped significantly. Network traffic is being investigated as a possible cause.

TCLGLOBUS

Version 1.0.0 of TCLGlobus was officially released this week. This includes the RPM package for the lscsoft which is based on LDG 4.0.

The major effort continues to be the Workflow GUI tool. There were many fixes to the logic behind the buttons as it has started to be tested internally.

GRID COMPUTING

Added staff member to grid-mapfile for testing the LIGO work flow planner.  Upgraded to VDS 1.4.4 on submit host.

Added preference items using cascading menus and tabs to GUI specification for the LIGO Work Flow Planner.   Assisted Mary and Michael on integration issues with Virtual Data System (VDS) components and inspiral pipeline examples. Began testing partially completed functionality of the LIGO Work Flow Planner on the OSG ITB.

Monitored some of the OSG Support Center meeting via VRVS conferencing system.

Determined that the Burst Analysis team needs more time to complete a release of the analysis for use in the LIGO Work Flow Planner.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Normal S5 tape ingestion stuff.
  • Helped Greg with re-adding SFTs to CIT's collections.ini and adjusting LDR queue depth (ongoing).
  • Got lots of Sun replacement hardware.  Many T3 power supplies, 3510-10 chassis and 3510 disks.
  • Worked with Sun enginner John Higgins to find the root cause of 3510-10's strange behavior.  We've got it narrowed down to disks.
  • Restarted globus-gridftp-server on ldas-cit.  Two child processes were still hanging around, but the main process had died at some point.
  • Fixed (either cleared and restaged or recopied from sites) damaged files at CIT.
  • Followup work on LLO upgrade, mainly a problem with a tape that had failed to label.
  • Unstuck non-staging files on CIT gateway (by staging them on dataserver).  A umount/mount of /archive is in ldas-cit's future.

(Phil Ehrens)

  • General grid cert support tasks.
  • Updated Fedora Core 4 on machines m9, m27, m28, m90, m94, and couch. Wrote script to automate a set of configuration tweaks for desktop machines and to run yum update.
  • Diagnosed strange behavior of globus enabled processes which causes all shared objects related to globus to attempt to search /home/condor for dependencies.
  • Installed utility in /ldcg_admin/log_mon for dumping BIOS configuration information as reported to OS at boot.
  • Various cluster maintenance tasks.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Upgraded the LDAS-CIT cluster BIOS version and enabled ECC scrubbing.  This significantly increased the stability of the cluster nodes.
  • Enabled condor QUILL service but there are problems with this.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Upgraded to Condor version 6.7.19. This allows the setting of a few default cluster configuration settings for users. Initially just  WantRemoteIO is set to False.
  • Enabled condor setting to prevent permanent allocation of cpu resources to individual cluster users.
  • Reported a segfault problem with condor QUILL.
  • Installed the first DMT offline RPM build from Junwei Cao on the LDAS-CIT cluster.
  • Upgraded LDAS-CIT to LDG version 4.0, both 32- and 64-bit versions from Junwei Cao.
  • Received 3 more equipment racks and installed in 215 Synchrotron.
  • Reported slow kernel response to deleting a large list of files to Sun.
  • Staging additional data into the cluster for parallel access (All LIGO minute trends, S5 second trends, SFT files).

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Condensation pump servicing wall mount sayno a/c units failed.
  • Ordered, received, and replaced pump
  • Dataserver V880 panic'ing with memory troubles sun called (Case 1045484) and will be onsite to swap memory tomorrow.
  • Replaced failed hdd in cluster node45.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • 3510 firmware was upgraded.
  • SAM-QFS was upgraded on dataserver and gateway; simultaneously Lisa and Dwayne upgraded SAM-QFS on fb1; if no problems with the upgrade are found, we will upgrade SAM-QFS on fb0 during the next Tuesday maintenance period.
  • Studying Q-replication documentation (segment database is using Q- replication).
  • There were occasional network problems observed in the LDAS network. It is not clear yet what causing them and whether they still present after dataserver and gateway were rebooted this Tuesday; if this problem continues, we might have to powercycle the LDAS network switch.
  • LDRed WNB1B_BN_S5 burst MDC frames from PSU to CIT.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT and imported and labeled new tapes, problems arose with a drive during labeling. Dan fixed the issue with the tape drive and I was able to continue.
  • Samfs upgrade on FB1 with Lisa.
  • Worked with Ben to get trend publishing, realtime frames publishing, Disk2Disk scripts, and createRDS monitor scripts restarted and working correctly after Tuesday maintenance.
  • Continued working on a ganglia replacement to monitor our cluster statistics, made some progress on Monday, but haven't had time to do more.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • SFTs generated from h(t) for the pulsar group have been published at LHO and LLO between Dec. 17, 2005 and Jan. 31, 2006.  Most of these have transferred (or are in the process of being transferred) to CIT and then to AEI via LDR. The SFTs can be found using LSCdataFind, using 1_H1_1800SFT_hoft, 1_H2_1800SFT_hoft, or 1_L1_1800SFT_hoft with the -type option. The 1800 refers to the fact that these are 1800 second SFTs. Work on generating SFTs for the other S5 times, and how to generate and transfer 60 s SFTs is underway.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Brought up several nodes via kickstart. Everything essentially works.
  • CRC mismatch scans completed on Monday. Completed initial write-up of results, and I am on to stage 2, finding out which channels were affected by the mismatches.
  • Sent LDR PR fix priorities to Kevin and Brian.
  • Replaced bad disk on t3-23.
  • Finished initial lscsoft-user-env cleanup utility, in perl. I need to figure out how to incorporate it into the current sh/csh scripts.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Keith)

  • Rebuilding hacked windows lab pc that was offering anon ftp
  • Received backup server w/ AIT4 tape drive
  • Working on integrating stunnel into new mailserver/fileserver

Livingston

(Dwayne)

  • DNS entries added for CDS
  • KVM trouble in control room for Allen's computers - replaced Sany's old PC with new one, old hard drive in an external case so he has access to old files
  • security server Windows updates and reboot - logs on new loghost were growing rapidly,  turned of named query logging, did a little cleanup (i.e. zipping old log files) - www.ligo-la.caltech.edu is now hosted on a different machine.  we no longer have ~{user} websites on www.ligo-la.caltech.edu.  They are still available on alix for now, and should soon be available on touro. I was attempting to find a way around this and ended up temporarily removing shared /home accounts from GC machines.  Shannon pointed out my error and corrected it.  In the long term, we want to find an alternative to the ~{user} websites.
  • minor assist to Shannon troubleshooting auditorium audio system problems
  • still having some issues with site gates and the kantech security server.
  • applied latest Solaris patch cluster to touro, going to configure it to serve user websites
  • created new GC account for user
  • other usual user requests and support

Hanford

(Christine)

  • The Sun computers Larry ordered for me through the Sun matching grant arrived.  I have 5 new computers to set up.
  • The PR for the new disk and tape backup systems has gone through, that hardware should be showing up soon.
  • Shipped a new laptop to Daniel at MIT.  The laptop he originally took with him has died several times and Dell has been unable to permanently fix it.

CIT

(Christian)

  • Millikan - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
  • Created a backup of Rod Luna and Ed Jasnow workstation.
  • Rich Abbott - Configured new laptop with the standard Ligo image for Rich.
  • Worked on the Spam Filters with Mike and Larry.
  • Continuing working on updating all of the visitors' workstation this week.
  • Worked with Mike on getting backup images burned to DVD.
  • Worked with Larry in removing some of the old monitors.
  • Reloaded laptop that was returned to the loaner pull this week.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  An ongoing work on the website for the Advanced LIGO NSF Review.  Updates of the LIGO website.  User support.
  • LSC:  Updates of the database of the technical papers.  Addressed a few mailing list related issues.  Updates to the presentations of the past meeting.  Dealt with a failed hard disk on one of my machines.  The replacement was DOA so took some troubleshooting; now loading the s/w, hope to have it back up and running shortly.

(Bruce Sears)

  • (BS) iLog Maintenance: (0.5 days)  General iLog maintenance (user adds, keyword adds, etc.)

(Mike)

  • Testing Microsoft's critical updates with GC and engineering software. All have passed. I spent time updating all NTSRV's with this series of critical updates.
  • Worked on documentation for PDMWORKS installation and backup process.
  • This week there was a lot of work on the mail servers. Clamd seemed to be having problems. Multiple clamd processes were started which stops the out going mail from working. We have updated the clamd software and are watching the servers closely.  So far everything seems to be working ok.
  • Surplus some old computers/monitors that had hardware problems.
  • Cleaning up our ghost backup server, to free up some disk space for end of month backups. Burning old ghost images of NTSRV's to DVD. Christian gave me a hand with this, by using his DVD burner as well.
  • DCC issues: The database needed to be compacted. Users were not able to get in. After many reboots and killing processes, I was able to compact the database which enabled users to login.
  • Spam Filters: Ongoing work searching for false positives, and adding additional rules.
  • Other additional onsite user support, plus some work cleaning-up, and labeling network cables in the Bridge Annex server room.

(Larry)

  • Worked a number of procurement issues. Reconciled last months p-card.  Delivered a number of items out. The USB pocket drives have become popular for those that travel, we will need to get a few more of those units.  Tracking down a couple of orders. Our SUN order should be arriving soon and a couple of Dell items are still on back-order.  Presently, working on another procurement from SUN.  Assisted a couple of the other groups on getting their procurements started.
  • The computer system sent to Monarch for repair has been returned.  Hopefully, we will be able to check it out in the next couple of days.
  • Working on getting things ready for the SURF students. This includes removing the old SURF accounts.  Along the same lines old unused accounts are being looked at and listed for possible removal in the near future.
  • Worked on the mailservers. The clamav has been having problems. It has been updated but we are still keeping an eye on things.  We've had a couple of good sized spam storms which has also been causing some concern.
  • Worked on a couple of network switch issues. The problems appeared to have been caused by bad cables.
  • Worked a number of printer issues. Including resetting the printserver. Most of the problems were caused by a couple of print files requiring the wrong size of paper.

Mail Statistics for May 11-17, 06

Mail Statistics

May 18, 2006

Rejected Messages

29,231

Virus Messages

2,060

Accepted Messages

25,280

Total Messages

54,511

 

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems, Management

Preparing for the Upcoming Baseline Review.

Systems

from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AdL Systems web page

AdL Systems email archives

Records Of Decisions or Agreements (RODA) status web page

Working on preparation for the upcoming NSF review of AdL costs, schedule & planning.

Vacuum Compatibility

Vacuum Preparation & Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

  • I received word from Jannen that they need a new set of cables for the Quad SUS at MIT (Brett). I am just about done with the first three and I am waiting on some more Cooner  wire to build the other two. If it comes tomorrow I will be able to complete the task and ship to cables on the 15th. [The cables were finished by the 17th.]
  • I have built the temperature controller for the bake out of the stepping motor. I am continuing to work on the oven that I will be baking the stepper motor in; this should be complete by Friday. I will begin the bake on Monday the 22nd. . I would like to be around ( present in the lab) for a least the first 8 hours of the bake to make sure the electronics is functioning properly and for safety. [The stepping motor is used by the HAM-SAS system and may have application to other AdL systems.]
  • I received two view ports from MIT that I have cleaned and am baking.

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

Cavity # 1: OTF Lab. at W. Bridge: No Change.

  • The new sample wire used for in-vacuum cabling is still in the chamber.  The cavity is locked and we were taking absorption and total loss (ring down) measurements every day. Total test hours 1728. Can be replaced when another sample is available.

Cavity #2: nothing new

Cavity #3: OTF Lab at Lauritsen Room 38: No Change.

  • The flex circuit material is in the cavity.  The cavity is locked and we were taking absorption and total loss (ring down) measurements every day. Total test hours 2136. Can be replaced when another sample is available.

Scatter/Absorption Test Measurement prototype   In progress!

  • Dr. Zhang has completed the scanning of the 4ITM07 mirror for the influence of the particulates on scattering. The test was performed in two stages, one when the surface is dirty/contaminated and the other when the surface is cleaned. We have a witness sample IM04 which has a nominal absorption of 3.3ppm/cm.

Misc. tasks: the design for the enclosures for the two NPRO'S; one in West Bridge is in progress. For the one at Lauritsen, will be looked into to comply with safety.  Most likely the enclosure will be similar to the one for the 60 watt laser in West bridge.

Seismic Isolation

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

Stage 0, 1, and 2 has been assembled to the test stand using alignment pins. We are now waiting for spring, locator, and actuator parts from Limerick Machine.

The design modifications of the spring tester for the longer stage 0-1 springs has been designed and sent to a machine shop. The actuator sensor target has also been redesigned to accommodate availability of material.

From: "Joseph A. Giaime" jgiaime@ligo.phys.lsu.edu

Agenda for the weekly SEI telecom

Friday, May 12, 2:00 pm Eastern, 1:00 pm Central, 11:00 am Pacific time

BSC SEI status

  • Complete stage 1 mounted to stage zero.
  • They expect to mount stage 2 next week.
  • small actuator parts, locators, spring ass'y parts still due from Limerick.
  • Ken is happy with calibration fixture design mods for stage 0-1 spring.  Rich will go over Ken's dwgs.
  • Weights seem to be coming in low by a couple of hundred pounds.  MIT would appreciate any extra load cells from HEPI.  Joe will look.
  • seismometer inventory is needed,  Each of us will inventory our site and submit results to SEI log.
  • Brian has prototype of L-4C readout amplifier and wiring harness.  Ben will finalize the design, including the L-4C version to be sure that we all agree.
  • Requirements for 'dirty' test of the BSC SEI prototype:
    • fit check: does it hang straight, can we carry out the spring mount adjustments to center the payload?
    • modal freqs of rigid body and stage flex modes.
    • tilt-horizontal coupling versus requirements.
    • (Electronic 'LIGO-brand' rack equipment won't be ready, so we will use dSpace.)
    • Need to install and drive one vertical and one horizontal actuator per stage.
    • Need (TBD) geophones per stage.

Stanford: seismometer, platform

  • Platform work: frame crated and paperwork underway to ship to the U.K.
  • Platform re-balanced, re-commissioning underway.  Ballast moved to outer rim of optics table, to lower roll and pitch modal frequencies, and achieve better passive isolation.  Stage 1 loops closed.
  • Four L-4C vertical witness seismometers to on the optics table to be used to flesh out data for coherent noise extraction paper.  Also, there are two GS-13s and an STS-2.
  • Matt is almost finished machining parts to hold down L-4Cs.  After they are mounted, then sys-id for stage 2 can proceed.
  • William is setting up second dSpace machine to control 1-Hz pendulum, which will eventually be used to control Tarm's vertical seismometer.
  • Tarm has finished initial design of the vertical seismometer experiment, and will begin making parts.

From: Jay Heefner jay@ligo.caltech.edu

LASTI HEPI

  • Completed installation of all electronics hardware and cables for BSC and Y HAM. Initial checkout of all input and output channels was successful. Testing of controls has been started and will continue for the next few weeks.
  • X HAM electronics are currently tied up with Laurent's tests. When he is finished, they will be moved to the BSC racks and tested.

AdL SEI ISI

  • Prototype of capacitive position sensor interface chassis has been assembled and is being tested.
  • Internal pod cables and preamps for GS13s, L4Cs and STS2s are being assembled.

LASTI Ponderomotive Experiment

  • Began collecting and assembling components for controls

From: Ben Abbott <abbott_b@ligo.caltech.edu>

SEI

I am working with Virginio on the LVDT Driver.  We're finalizing a design scheme.  I have begun to gather the information that I need to start working on the ISI coil driver.

LED Failures

I have gotten the results from the Eraser Company.  I went over them results with Bob Taylor, and we decided that the best way to go is the Stripping pot method.  They are available at www.eraser.com.  Their part# is AR1221, and they are $1609.00 each.  The materials that go with them are as follows:  Dip strip $43.00, Dip Clean $22.50, and Dip Strip Neutralizer kit $59.50.  Bob and I looked at their samples under magnification, and the result of the chemical strip is a clean, unmarred surface.  I think that the cost is well worth it.

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

HAM-SAS

1) Fabrication Status (Riccardo DeSalvo, Dennis Coyne)

  • Assembly: The "dirty" (i.e. not prepared for ultra-high vacuum service) assembly planned for week of 6/5, will now to be limited to GAS filter assembly due to welding problems for the aluminum support table. Ric and Dave still plan to visit G&M to assist in assembling and testing whatever can be done at this time. The schedule is delayed at least a week. Once the welding plan is settled, then the schedule will be re-evaluated. Riccardo DeSalvo arrives at Galli & Morelli (G&M) next Monday. He plans to assemble 6 Geometric Anti-Spring (GAS) filters (if ready). Ric then goes to the Elba conference and then back to G&M.
  • Welding: Caltech received some aluminum weld samples from Tecnoinox for evaluation. Ric and Yumei sectioned the welds and took photos. A draft report on their findings has been prepared. While some of the T-joint welds look promising, there is a clear line at the interface where fusion was not complete. The egg-crate welds were all poor. Technoinox is trying some significantly different weld preparations (machining). These weld preparations are similar to the weld details used by Allied Engineering for the initial LIGO aluminum structures (drawing D972202-E ). Tecnoinox will test weld this week & send samples to Caltech for sectioning, photo-microscopy & approval.
  • UHV Clean Testing: G&M (Chiara) will speak with Eurolab tomorrow regarding FTIR testing of the UHV-cleaned sample parts. Caltech (Dennis) will send samoe sample FTIR reports to Chiara for Eurolab.
  • UHV Cleaning: G&M's subcontractor for cleaning, Paolo Soldi, has completed their building modifications (not doen for LIGO, but had to be completed to allow our work to begin). G&M (Chiara) will discuss plans and the possibility of installing a dishwasher @ G&M for small part cleaning local to the assembly.
  • Clean room: G&M's subcontracted company is working on building the clean room. Frasconi (Virgo) has been helping with project, esp. clean room setup. G&M is preparing the space (cleaning & painting).

2) LASTI Test Plan (Dave Ottaway)

  • MIT (UROP) student will start in late May.
  • We plan to instrument the floor with 3 Guralp seismometers (3 axis each) and 6 L4Cs for the table top. All instruments are on hand or orders have been placed.

3) Simulation & Controls Design (Virginio Sannibale, Valerio Boschi, Yumei Huang)

  • A dynaflex model of the HAM-SAS system has been assembled by Virginio & Valerio. Dynaflex is a 'toolbox' for Maple that creates a symbolic dynamic model, which can then be reduced to linear state-space model (for example to import to Matlab for control system synthesis).

4) Electronics (Ben Abbott, Jay Heefner, Virginio Sannibale)

  • Promec (Gianni) is making cable drawings (incl. strain relief).
  • Jay, Ben and Virginio will finalize wiring/cabling so that cabling orders can be placed soon (in-vacuum cable lead times are 6-8 weeks).
  • Ben & Virginio are working on the LVDT Driver to finalize a design scheme.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Bob Taylor got the new osem cables to MIT this morning.  I spoke with Dave Ottaway yesterday after the SUS Weekly and filled him in on the meeting discussion on the quad frequency measurements and damping tests. He feels sure they can accomplish what we need by June 12th.  These results are needed for the quad review by the UK group.

Working with Dwight, Carol, Justin, Norna and Dennis on the SUS cost and schedule presentation for the NSF Review. Provided a combined cost of each suspension to Carol & Dwight.

From: Mohana Mageswaran <mohana@ligo.caltech.edu>

I am designing the AdL Satellite Amplifier. And ordering the needed parts

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I'm working on a lower quad installation arm concept, and a simpler part that may be used at the LASTI site, will send out an email for comments and input. I'm cleaning up existing fixture drawings for the DCC.  I sent Frédéric Cleva, @ virgo information on our quiet chiller coolant per his request.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

  • reviewed the PI status for Peter/ Dave O
  • Prepared talk for Elba
  • participated in the COC "internal review"

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO COC

Started the manufacture of the prototype mirror carrier to be used for the LASTI test mass.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

After much testing, the Xilinx evaluation licence expired.  Unfortunately I did not get to test the hardware during this period.  The full-blown version was ordered; this version according to Xilinx's technical support works for the development kit that we have.

Auxiliary Optics

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

TCS

A Zemax conceptual layout of the CO2 laser heater has been added to the SW Vertex Layout for both the non-folded and folded IFOs. The CO2 laser heater beam may be occluded by the structure of the Fold Mirror and ITM combined SUS in the folded IFO.

LAYOUT

The positions of the COC mirrors for the non-folded IFO were corrected in the Zemax model to agree with Coyne's T010076-01 specification. ^The solid works vertex layout is being revised.

NSF Presentation

The Cost/Schedule presentation slides and back-up supporting data were sent to Carol and David.

For additional information about this report, contact Stan Whitcomb or Phil Lindquist