Weekly Report for Week Ending July 27, 2006

Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, July 31, 2006 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

1.      Announcements

2.      Comments on weekly report

3.      LSC Issures  (Saulson)

4.      LIGO Lab Operations

  • Administration (Lindquist)
  • Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker)
  • Commissioning (Fritschel)
  • Optics and Mechanics (Coyne)
  • Control and Data Systems (Bork)
  • 40m (Weinstein)
  • TNI (Libbrecht)
  • LASTI (Ottaway)
  • Lab computing (Anderson)
  • Science Group (Lazzarini)

5.      Enhancements (Adhakari)

6.      Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)

7.      Change Control Board/Technical review Board Session as needed

  • No open change requests

Special Items:

  • Annual Report

Special Announcements:

 

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

Negotiations continue with Virgo on the MOU.  The draft MOU will be an important topic of discussion at the upcoming LSC meeting.

Wednesday was the deadline for submission of MOU revisions and Progress Reports from LSC PIs.  Szabi Marka invented a new pdf-based form that has simplified handling of the information.  Dot Lloyd, working with Albert Lazzarini, has been busy posting the reports as they come in, so that they can be read by MOU Review Panel members.  The meeting of the Review Panel will be 8-9 August at MIT.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

  • There was no site teleconference Thursday, June 27, 2006.
  • There are currently no open action items.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

  • Tagged and created records for three computers and one server (General Computing group).
  • Provided assistance to Mike Pedraza in shipping a package to ASA computers.
  • Coordinated the disposal of six old Laptops.
  • Resolved issues with the Purchasing department involving freight charges for equipment.
  • Requested to change the expenditure type from "Supplies - Allocable" to "Equipment - Caltech" on PO# S011848.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • No report.

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

  • Continued to assist in the process of conversion/allocation of current data to the new database.
  • Completed processing MOU's.
  • Scanning - Progress continues on scanning of contract closeout files.
  • Activity:

Week Ending

07/27/2006

In

Out

Packages

23

13

Faxes

30

27

 

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Cronin, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

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

  • Completed the expenditure type change on the Sun Microsystems order to indicate it is equipment, and not supplies.
  • Completed the internal fund transfer on Triad which had a pending invoice to be paid before the month-end closed out on Thursday.
  • Placed the large order for the audio test equipment for Hanford.  Corrected the expenditure type from Supplies to Equipment.
  • Routed the large dollar order for the data cartridges for the Livingston Observatory.
  • Working with several individuals to resolve differences on vendor's statements on old items still being billed.
  • Working on the change order to High Precision Devices.
  • Waiting for the remainder of the documentation to be submitted on the Support Services change order so that I can process it

>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>

  • The single bid for the Livingston SEC outdoor wall exhibit (kinetic facade) from Southern Enterprises was rejected and the procurement was cancelled.  This was because this bid was nearly three times the LIGO estimate for this effort.  Instead, Livingston will procure several items separately, and use in-house staff and the Livingston SEC construction contractor, Cangelosi-Ward, to fabricate, assemble and install this structure.  This effort is now underway.
  • The agreement with Charter Communications to provide backup fiber optics to Livingston was signed by LIGO on Tuesday.  This was after Charter dropped their requirement for the grant of an easement onto the site.  Caltech General Counsel responded that since we do not own the land, we could not grant such an easement.
  • Hanford has received two quotations from graphics companies in the Tri-Cities area two provide enhancement materials for the LIGO video.  This contract cannot be awarded, however, until the proposal is re-submitted to the NSF.  Caltech could not accept the purchase order from the NSF for these services.  It has to be received as a supplement to the current operations cooperative agreement.  It is expected that the proposal will be re-submitted Friday.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

We are scheduled to submit the Annual Report for LIGO Operations to the NSF next week.  Final edits in progress.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • A change control board was held as part of the normally scheduled meeting of the executive committee on Monday, July 24, 2006.  Minutes are being prepared (LIGO-M060114-00-P).  Two change requests were discussed:
  • CR-060006 is for funds sufficient to buy enough data storage tapes to get through another calendar year of S5 data acquisition.  The board recommended approval.
  • Change Request CR-060007 adjusts the FY 2006 budgets to reflect actual staffing through June 30, 2006.  The board recommended approval.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • No special activities to report.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

No report.

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

Summary of S5 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)

A major piece of work was completed on the 4k IFO Tuesday in the swap of both the PMC and it's associated servo card.  Initial indicators seem to indicate success (more here), in that lock losses associated with the PMC/ISS/PSL have not been observed since the swap.  However we clearly need more statistics as the glitching was transient in nature some times taking the 4k out of lock ten times in 8h, at other times not glitching for a full day.

Despite the twelve hour downtime on Tuesday, reasonable duty cycles were achieved on both machines: for the last week of running, H1 was in science mode 79 percent of the time, while H2 logged 85 percent.  Ranges were typical.

FJR writes on S5, "As of Tuesday, July 20, we have more than 30 percent of a year of triple-coincidence science data."

S5 highlights from the LHO elog are bulleted below:

  • a recent update to lists of instrument lines was posted; these are large ringers and those seen in pulsar analyses tend to be smaller and more difficult to track (later, another elog on the same topic was posted here)
  • IFO maintenance budget: currently for July we have used 25h 25m of 25h on H1, 11h 25m of 25h on H2.  These numbers include 8h on H1 for the PMC swap (12h total work, 4h under Tuesday maintenance, 8 additional hours to return to science mode).
  • more photon calibration measurements were made this week, and a summary of analysis from previous measurements was posted
  • upconversion studies were made on the 4k and analyses posted
  • radio noise was correlated against binary inspiral range in this study

DAQ, CDS

  • fb1 required a disk rebuild, taking out frame broadcast to DMT monitors
  • Tuesday maintenance CDS summary

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

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

LIGO SEC Kinetic Art Project

We only received one bid for the Kinetic Art fabrication and installation and the bid was nearly 3x the estimate so was turned down.  We have separated out the procurement and installation into packages and identified a responsible person for each package.  Currently, the pendulums are on order; we are waiting for shop drawings to approve.  The winches should be under procurement this afternoon.  RFQ packages for machining and weldments are going out tomorrow.

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

Input Test Mass (ITM) Coating Absorption Measurements

GariLynn Billingsley (7/13)

There have been four coating absorption measurements of 4ITM08 (coated with 4ITM07 - the piece removed from Hanford last year due to High absorption). An image of the surface profile of 4ITM08 can be found here:  http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/4itm08_hrabs_062706.  The raised (red) areas absorbed less than the low (blue) areas.  The surface structure was caused by aggressive cleaning before coating.  The blue areas are zones which have been etched away.  All measurements on 4ITM08 were higher than similar absorption measurements on cleaned portions of 4ITM07.

While this is a blind end in our effort to investigate changes in 4ITM07 due to environmental factors, it may offer some interesting clues as to some of the origins of coating absorption.

Controls and Data Acguisition (Bork)

No report.

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO Commissioning

  • David and Osamu continue to develop the noise budget procedure and code. They are studying the effect of whitening on the noise spectrum.
  • Royal measured the oplev laser intensity fluctuations and determined that their contribution to the oplev pitch/yaw noise, on the order of 1e-12 rad, is negligible compared to other noise sources (jitter, electronics). She then quantified the jitter noise on mirrors due to the imperfect filtering of the oplev servos at high frequencies: ~1e-9 rad/rtHz at 100 Hz. She's working on the electronics (dark) noise, and is continuing her study of the mirror motion and noise budget in the oplev system.
  • Rana and Royal are going through the oplev whitening electronics and finding differences, and undesirable whitening stages. They designed some digital compensation filters to patch the problem, which seems to work. Rana replaced some filters on the ETMX oplev board, changed the digital filtering, and reduced the jitter noise above 100 Hz by 100x. More work is needed on the digital filtering to get a better loop design. We should replace the existing boards with RevB oplev interface boards on all four test mass oplevs.

IFO Modeling

  • Jenne continues to work with Rana on a simulink angular instability model for the mode cleaner.
  • Osamu continues to work on e2e simulation of the AdLIGO alignment instability.

DC Detection and Vacuum Squeezing Development

  • Darcy and Rob completed their measurements of the DC readout in-vac beamline, including measurements of the OMC finesse as a function of temperature. Darcy is writing it all up, complete with photos, plots, etc.
  • Darcy and Rob have completely dismantled the DC readout in-vac beamline (TT mirrors, OMMT, OMC, DCPD, breadboard) and inventoried all the parts. Everything is now ready for Bob to clean and bake.
  • Rob is fleshing out a detailed schedule / plan for venting and DC readout installation.
  • Go's in-vac components (picomotor translation stage and two mirrors/mounts) are now in Bob's hands and are being cleaned/baked.
  • Ben's new QPD Whitening board is being stuffed in the back shop currently. Jay's AA and AI interface boards are also in the queue.
  • Ben has finished all of the machining on the DCPD mount, including mounts for the black glass beam dump and the power resistor. The whole assembly is ready for cleaning in its current state. Because the mounts are going into the vacuum, and won't be touchable, the whole assembly is now in the machine shop being dimensioned including all of the modifications. This way, if anywhere else wants a DCPD, Ben can have ones made in the future with one phone call.
  • Ben has almost finished the system drawings for the OMC installation. He has finished the drawings from the point of the AA and AI chassis through to their modules in vacuum. The drawing at this stage was given to Bob so that he could order the in-vacuum cables from Accuglass.
  • Rich, Sam & Rob decided we don't need the fast shutter to protect the DC PDs, and it complicates the design.
  • From Rolf:  The OMC software is up and running. I still want Rana to come over and look at it to verify that it is correct.  Major items added during the last week to overcome a few hurdles:

-         M. Evans was in town and gave me some software for the fast generation of sine/cosine signals (5 sine/cosine signals required for OMC). I built a simulink part and then added the function to the code which takes the matlab output file and produces CDS front end code. It looks like these new oscillator signals run very well and all are produced in well under a total time of 1usec per 32kHz control cycle. The code, as written into the front end controller, allows for frequencies and amplitudes to be changed on the fly. So, we will not need to tie up 10 AWG channels to produce these signals. This could possibly also be applied at the sites to generate the cal lines or at the 40m for LSC dither locking signals?

-         The OMC controller to be installed at the 40m lab is based on our new prototype designs that use Myrinet as the realtime network instead of reflective memory to communicate to the Framebuilder. To allow data to be merged from the old and new systems, Alex modified the Framebuilder software such that it can take data simultaneously from both types of network. This will require further testing once the OMC system is installed.

-         The new OMC controls still need to use reflected memory to communicate signals to the existing LSC controller. Driver code was written and added to the new system to use reflective memory for this purpose and this seems to work fine.

-         Rich finished prototyping the HV driver for OMC length and tip-tilt drive to be used on the DC readout. A production version is now being created. Parts must be carefully researched to ensure availability and applicability. This is ongoing. Thanks to Paul Schwinberg for his suggestions on the design.

-         Rich is contacting the outside testing service I found during the LASTI build to see if they can help out on testing some of the OMC stuff.

  • Go & Shally put the green pump beam into the OPO and got some parametric gain, ~ 1.2. Aim for 10 or more. They need to tune up alignment and mode matching, using correct OPO cavity length. they suspected a probem in OPO cavity, disassembled it, noticed some heater burn, and repaired it.

PSL

  • The PSL FSS slow loop got into an infinite loop, requiring a reboot on the PSL vme cpu. Peter King came to look at it but doesn't know why / how it got into that state. Rana figured out how to reset it without having to reboot the cpu.

Electronics, Controls, Computers

  • Ben gave Sam the cross-connect drawing and installation instructions that he made for the new Mode Cleaner servo. Sam will work with Bob in installing the system, and will change the screens and code to match the new board.
  • Ben helped Sam make some tester boards for the new Mode Cleaner servo installation. With these boards, the whole system can be checked in short order.
  • Sam, Dave, Jenne and Bob worked on the implementation of the new mode cleaner servo board. They redid the cross-connect wiring for the new board and for the LSC photodiode interface board. They modified the epics databases ioo.db and mc_lock40m.db. David checked all the sliders and buttons on the new MC Servo EPICS screen, and they all check out at the cross-connect. They labelled all the wires and cables, and are preparing to install the board and commission it.
  • David and Osamu measured the transfer functions of the dewhitening filters for the four coil drivers in each of the four test mass suspension controllers. They used the spectrum analyzer tools to fit to a zpk model, copied it into Foton and compared with the raw data. They then designed compensation filters and installed them into the digital filter bank, and tested that they did the job. The DARM signal is unchanged between digital and analog dewhitening filters.
  • Ben showed David how to balance the dewhitening filters offsets, so that switching dewhitening on and off happens smoothly. Ben did ETMY, and David did the rest.
  • David implemented temperature sensors in the optical spectrum analyzers at the AS and SP ports. The data are going into frames and trending. The femp drifts seem high (2-3 degrees C); they will check the sensor calibration. They plan to observe the OSA drifts and see if they correlate with the temperature drifts; if so, they will install some thermal insulation, and if necessary, heaters and servos.
  • Jenne is working with Steve to acquire more optics for her AM laser test system.
  • Steve and Bob completed most of the RF cabling upgrade at the AS table, the LSC rack, and the RF distribution rack. All cables are strain relieved, and Steve tested signals through all the cables.
  • As part of the RF cable upgrade, the Mach Zehnder cable was changed. Sam and Jenne re-phased the signal, and made a new cable of optimal length. The pk-pk error signal at the MZ servo board is now 273 mV, and the servo works real good.
  • Dan set up a new GC hub and ran ethernet cables to two connection-less WinXP computers in the office area.
  • Dan is moving our old, rather primitive 40m Wiki into the new 40m section of the AdLIGO Wiki and adding lots of content. Work very much in progress.

Lab Infrastructure, Bake lab

  • The air conditioning in the lab started to fail because the campus chilled water supply is overloaded, and the temperature went up to 81degrees; the laser chiller couldn't handle it. Steve reset the thermostat and opened doors, and got the temperature back down. We need a real AC system in the lab!

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No report from the TNI this week.  --Ken

LASTI (Ottaway)

Internal Seismic Isolator (ISI) Assembly (Contributed by Richard Mittleman)

Most of the last week has been taken up by tooling. The tooling supplied by ASI to pre-load the blade springs has to be reworked. Some of the problems were anticipated by ASI and some were not.

The stage 1-2 springs are installed and seem to fit properly, we will not know for sure until we release them. We expect to get the tooling back from the machine shop tomorrow and to finish installing the 0-1 springs. With any luck we will try to float the system early next week.

Quad-Pendulum Controls Prototype (Contributed by Richard Mittleman)

During the last vent the vent we fixed the coupling between the chains, installed one set of eddy current dampers and made a number of measurements to try and track down the changed pitch frequency. It seems likely that the eddy current damper is rubbing so we are planning to check on that during the next vent. Brett is getting together and cleaning the parts needed to do some preliminary thermal load testing on the structure, as soon as that is ready we will plan another vent.

HAM SAS

Cassie has nearly completed the model of the triple pendulum in IDEAS. Some nagging boundary conditions remain to get right. After this she will be ready to join this to the HAM SAS model.

Initial LIGO Suspension Testing (Contributed by Gregg Harry)

We changed the clamping system for the wires in the initial LIGO suspension experiment, putting on the wire collet block that Steve Penn designed and had machined. We were able to get everything reassembled and the collets hold the optic. We got a first round of violin mode Q's Wednesday, which were disappointing. The problem may be galling of the collet with its shank. We are now pumping down on a second attempt, where the collets were lubricated with some ethanol while tightening. There is evidence from work done in Steve Penn’s group at Hobart and William Smith College that retightening the collets does improve the Q's.

CIT Science Group (Lazzarini)

Data Analysis

Brown:

  • Worked with Diego on implementation of physical template family
  • Working on draft paper describing LIGO-EMRI search
  • Met with Michele and SURF student Alex to discuss his project and progress
  • Learned how to use the visualization tools for the SpEC numerical relativity code
  • Released glue 1.8 and bounced some segment database issues to Igor

Chatterji:

  • Developing text based QScan output for following candidate inspiral events.
  • Helped identify cause of coherent waveburst glitches as corruption reading frame data.
  • Continued preparing for low threshold Q Pipeline search of  early S5 data.
  • Continued working with Rubab Khan to develop and test clustering extensions to the Q Pipeline.

Dupuis:

  • performed (another) simple sanity check of LAL barycentering code
  • worked with Pinkesh to get him started on a pulsar project
  • looked at some more excitation channels at frequency of J0537-6910

Mendell:

I have revised the StackSlide sections of the S4 PowerFlux, StackSlide, and Hough paper, and I am continuing to make further revisions to have a close to final draft for the August LSC meeting.  Work with my SURF student working on proper motion studies is yielding results that I will report on at the August pulsar group F2F meeting.

Sutton:

My focus this week was again network analysis.  I have finished the edits to the coherent consistency test paper gr-qc/0605002 in response to the PRD reviewer's comments.  I have also tracked down a source of bias in the xpipeline detection statistic calculations to be due to the linear predictor error filtering code, and have fixed that problem.  Stephen Poprocki is now running large-scale analysis jobs on the LIGO-Virgo data set using the corrected code.

Yakushin:

1) Found a bug in the new version of the frame library that was not present in the older one shipped with ligotools. If a time series is read from a frame not from the beginning but from a specified time in the middle of a frame (calling FrFileIGetV from a ROOT script and giving it a start time and length of the time series in seconds), the time series starts a sample earlier than it should. As a result, if a job time interval is covered by several frames, the time series from the first frame is shifted by one sample while others are not (since they are read from the start of a frame) and a glitch can appear on the boundary between the first and second frames in a job (we found 5 such obvious huge glitches on S5 data that were very loud in H1 and H2 but not L1).

The incoherent waveburst results were obtained with older version of the frame library and are not affected by this bug.

The coherent waveburst results are affected by this bug and will have to be redone either by using older version of libraries or by making waveburst's readframe() function robust to this bug.

2) Corrected readframe() function used by waveburst to be robust with respect to the bug in the frame library: a time series in a frame is now always read from the beginning and the selection of samples for analysis is done inside my code rather than inside frame library.

3) Rerunning coherent waveburst on S4 and S5.

4) Preparing presentation on waveburst online analysis for GEO workshop.

Grid research (Blackburn)

TCLGLOBUS

Completed the official release of TclGlobus 1.3.0 source tarball, RPMs and web documentation. RPMs will be provided to Patrick Brady for inclusion in LSCSoft asap.

Began testing of the Job Submission Client using Condor 6.8.0 instead of the previously constrained version of 6.7.13 which has been in use for several months due to bugs in version between these two releases. Currently seeing issues at OSG production sites such as PSU, Nebraska and UWM which may or may not be related to the new Condor. Retesting with Condor 6.7.13 to verify.

Developed a LIGO workflow website with documentation for the job submission client providing the following:

a. software dependencies

b. installation instructions

c. download link for LIGO Workflow client GUI

In this week's DASWG meeting, several participants asked to hear details about the job submission client and would like to see a version put up on a common resource such as ldas- pcdev2 as soon as  the client is sufficiently stable and user friendly to warrant test-driving by interested LSC users.

GRID COMPUTING

Moved LIGO-CIT-ITB cluster from the 6th Floor Millikan machine room to the Synchrontron LIGO machine room. After tracing down an issue with internet connectivity, the cluster is back up and registered in the green on the OSG ITB map.

Determined that a bug exists in the VDS planning tool gencdag in VDS release 1.4.5. Worked to resolve this problem with VDT and VDS engineering teams. Since this release was about to go into the next version of VDT for OSG testing, contacted the appropriate members of the VDS, VDT and OSG to coordinate the generation of a new VDS release in time for the next VDT release to prevent the OSG software stack from being having this bug.

Worked with Michael Samidi and Kent Blackburn, on compatability problems related to fc4, glibc and DAGMan. These seem to have now all been resolve using the compat-libraries from FC4.

Tested partitioning technique recommended by the VDS team for decomposing large DAXs. Reported on problems implementing the partitioning technique to the VDS team and requested more documentation.

Worked with VDS engineers on methods to add a site_verify.pl site admin script for testing proper VDS installation on OSG sites.

Attended the following OSG telecons this week: TG-Storage(DM), ITB(DM, KB), Council (KB).

Asked to co-coordinate a session entitled "Partnership & Communication" at the OSG Consortium meeting in August along with Paul Avery.

Reported to LSC Computer Committee an issue with the way LSC members request DOE certificates which began as a result of LIGO moving out of iVDGL and under OSG as the registration authority.

Laboratory Computing (Stuart)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

With Tcl/Tk 8.4.13 running successfully, development efforts for C++ are shifting once again to 64 bit compilation. The system tandem-ii has been set up for this testing. All unit tests except for one datacondAPI test pass. Work has started to put the 64 bit packages on ldas-dev.

The failure of the "All User Commands" test observed during system testing has been resolved by forcing a cancel at the end of the test. A problem report (#59) has been filed against TclGlobus as the usual flush mechanism does not work.

A memory leak in the diskcacheAPI associated viewing and getting directories was resolved by cleaning up job information when the ::$jobid array is unset.

System testing used version 1.8.249 of LDAS. All system tests except the one for lsync passed. Lsync still is unable to see RDSVerify and some /scratch directories. While running the tests, memory leaks were observed in the diskcacheAPI and the frameAPI. Problem reports were filed against these memory leaks. On ldas-dev, the "All User Command" test continues not to notify cmonClient when completed.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Helped with the final installation of the new /frames at LLO.
  • Working on scripts to collect stats about the files in each dump (ongoing).
  • Consulted with Ben about how to proceed after a multiple disk failure in a T3 (in /frames) at LHO.
  • Working on collecting info to guide our policy for releasing files in /home at CIT.
  • Did LDRdataFindServer upgrade.
  • Modified nfsfind on dataserver and gateway at CIT to report on any .nfs* files found rather than delete them so we can determine if this script needs to run at all and if so, how frequently.

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Experimented with various combinations of actions in the interest of pursuing the Solaris 10 u2 upgrade path. Successfully upgraded Suntest3 after breaking all mirrored devices, commenting out all unneccessary mounts from /etc/vfstab, and providing the upgrade script with a "backup" device.
  • Transferred the OSG-ITB cluster from the Millikan 6th floor machine room to Snchrotron 215A.
  • Worked with Mary Lei to convert the Tandem-IV system from a special purpose development platform to a clone of the Tandem-V system.
  • Much cleanup done to certcheck.tcl, shasumcheck.tcl and log_mon.tcl (and log_mon_mon.tcl) to make them run with minimal changes on Solaris and Linux. Also made many cosmetic changes to the report formats, removing ambiguity from email messages and redesigning the report context algorithm so that spurious context was not generated by publishing very old log entries as context lines to fresh incidents.
  • Made further research into the strategies of rootkits which target Solaris systems and added rules to shasumcheck.tcl specific to Solaris.
  • Discovered a source for video cards that can be installed in the small cases of the Dell executive series desktop machines.
  • Purchased a barcode reader for Dan Kozak, and a trio of non-contact thermometers for lab use.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Failed Condor Schedd replacement.
  • Restarted Condor on Saturday, after crash due to disk being full.
  • Reported pgsql autovacuum failures to condor team.
  • Removed non-root access to condor admin commands.
  • Worked with Ken to troubleshoot our 2 machines after shipping.
  • Scheduled and attended telecon w/ AMD, Supermicro, Kingston & ASA (RE: Cluster stability).
  • Node Crashes: node171 7/25 & 7/22.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Working with the Condor team to diagnose a severe Condor crash that occured 3 times under heavy load. We are currently running a patched version that partially addresses the problem.
  • Worked with our vendors to come up with a plan to address the remaining cluster node instabilites in the new Caltech cluster.
  • Working on various mitigating actions to handle the increase in Caltech campus wide chilled water temperatures and the adverse impact this has on our comptuer facilities.
  • Secured space to hold tapes that we will soon need to start ejecting as the 6000 slot tape robot is nearly full.
  • Obtined Change Control Board approval to buy another year's worth of 9940 tapes to hold S5 data.
  • Changed the default version of Matlab on the LDAS-CIT cluster from R14SP3 to R2006a.
  • Changed the default internationalization setting on the LDAS-CIT cluser from "en_US" to "C" for performance reasons.
  • Upgraded the LDAS-CIT cluster to Condor version 6.8.0.
  • Re-installed LDG-4.0 on LDAS-CIT to solve a problem with submitting remote Globus jobs.
  • Tested the enhanced LHO router configuration and verified an expected factor of 2 bandwidth improvement. It is now possible to stream data from LHO to CIT at 35MByte/s.
  • Finished mirroring the regenerated S5 h(t) frames from CIT to LHO and LLO.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Working on pcraid#5 - out of warranty for parts but still has another month of labor warranty.  However, to ship it back would cost more than it's worth at this point.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • fb1 got upgraded to 9.1 TB file system on two 3511s. All the data was copied from the old file system to the new one (it took about 5 hours). The old file system is still available in read-only mode. Once we verify that the new file system works properly, the old one will be decommissioned and used for spare T3 disks and controllers until we convert /archive file system from T3s to 3511s some time next year.
  • disk 4 in 3511-1 failed and was replaced by SUN.
  • u1d4@t3-10 failed and was replaced by spare u1d4@t3-16.
  • The east HVAC still misbehaves: although the cold air is blowing down the air ducts, the hot air seems to accumulate behind the racks much more than before and the temperature on east HVAC yesterday got to 84F and there was a high temperature alarm on the east HVAC panel. Apparently that HVAC is not working up to its full capacity. We put a fan behind the racks so that the hot air is blowing in the direction of the west HVAC. That solved the temperature problem for now but I think the real solution would be to fix HVAC.  Unfortnately at the moment it is not obvious what, if anything, is broken.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT, imported and labeled new.
  • Cleanup of maillog files on all machines where sendmail had been disabled.
  • More cluster_mon additions/changes.
  • Warranty check on seagate drives from T3s.  waiting on response..

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • Tapes for archiving the next year of S5 data have been ordered.
  • Previously I had generated and published into LDR SFTs for the science mode times between Dec. 17, 2005 and Jan. 31, 2006. Real-time generation and publication into LDR of SFTs has been running since May 16, 2006. This left gaps in the published SFT data between the beginning of the run in Nov and Dec 17, 2005, and between Jan. 31, 2006 and May 16, 2006. The gap between Jan. 31, 2006 and May 16, 2006 has now been filled in at LHO and LLO and the SFTs for this gap are transferring via LDR to Caltech.  I will next work on the gap between Nov and Dec. 17, 2005.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Resurrected about 10 nodes. LHO is now running with 201 nodes. All currently running nodes have had their OS install done via kickstart.
  • Refining firewall for LHO and CIT. My main stumbling block is ippool, which does not behave as I would hope (apparently I cannot change ippools once created...until a reboot...).
  • Installed Sol10 U2 on olddataserver to explore problems with ippools.  Also, since the server has 6 disks, I can experiment with ZFS.
  • On the LDR front, unstuck a Hanford second trend file that was holding up the works at CIT. Also, the GC router at LHO has been worked on by Cisco. We should theoretically have a 300Mb/s connection now (instead of 150 Mb/s).

General Computing (Wallace)

Note added by Anderson: The LHO network connection is now able to sustain 35MByte/s to Caltech in an initial one hour test thanks to the work by Christine and a Cisco Engineer mentioned below. This is approximately a factor of 2 improvement.

MIT

(Keith)

  • Continuing to interview possible sys-admin candidates.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

  • Troubles with kantech security server.  changed out boards, chips in controllers at X-End, replaced brittle wiring in MSR.
  • Installed Windows updates on kantech security server - completed setup of new laptop for Harry, handed over this morning - Continued training our spam filter
  • Other usual user requests and support

(Shannon)

  • Working on a test VPN setup between LHO and LLO.  I have the software installed, set up CA, server, and client certificates.  Next step is to set up the interface on the router.  I will likely do this while physically at LHO the 7-9th in case there is an issue with the router reconfiguration.  Will work with Dave on this.
  • More firewall rules changes concerning the mail server, temperature monitor, etc.
  • Worked with the fiber contractor for Charter Communications today to show him where the fiber will need to be pulled.  He says there will likely need to be bucket truck access, etc. down the right of way.  The only access available is from our side.  There is no access from Hwy. 63.  They will give me an estimate of the amount of time and access needed for pulling the fiber to the mid station, at which point I will need to work with the run coordinators to plan the installation.
  • Travel paperwork & planning, etc.
  • Helped Sany with a directory permissions problem with some software from one of his previous students.
  • Various issues with the spam filter & mail queues this week.  I expect this will go on for a while since we recently brought the spam filter online.
  • More work on the LLO vuln. assessment.
  • Looked at wiring, etc. for some HVAC controls in the new building.
  • Worked with Bernie to get power (220v) pulled in for the v490 in the computer user room.

Hanford

(Christine)

  • The Cisco engineer finally showed up yesterday afternoon.  After 3 hours of dealing with problems, he was finally able to get the IOS on the router updated to the latest compatible version.  He also moved the WAN and LAN GigE interfaces off the main bus and on to a controller card.  I'm no longer seeing congestion errors on the interfaces.  The bandwidth available should be close to 300 Mb/s, the max this router can deliver.  I've asked Stuart to stress the network and see how much bandwidth he can get.  The router is now able to handle jumbo frames, so this is an option for data transfers.  This IOS supports SSH, so I have turned off telnet.
  • The backup network works to ESnet.  We could ping the ESnet router and a traceroute to Cisco.com got to Cisco.  However, pings to Cisco.com and Caltech LIGO did not return and we could not get to any web pages.  The Cisco engineer thinks that ESnet is not broadcasting our IP address space so that packets can return via the backup circuit.  I've sent an email to ESnet to get their opinion and schedule testing for next Tues.
  • The Cisco engineer is also going to work with his sales rep to write up a quote for an upgrade of my router.  The current router can't do GigE speeds even though it will accept GigE interfaces.  The engineer suggests an upgrade to a 7600 router.
  • Still trying to get the Fedora Core 4 NIS+ client working.  For some reason the NIS+ server is unable to create a callback to the Fedora client.  Running snoop on the server while running a niscat command on the client showed that the client is sending destination unreachable, administratively down messages to the server.  I think this might be because I enabled SELinux.  Anyway there is more troubleshooting to do to get the NIS+ working.

CIT

(Bruce)  (0.5 days)

  • General iLog maintenance (user adds, keyword adds, systems work, etc.)
  • Rechecking the admin tools at LHO to be sure they are working after iLog was moved to ilog.ligo-wa.

(Mike)

  • Reloaded our backup server (atria) with Solaris 9. Robotic software stills needs to be loaded.
  • Finished up Melody's new Sun Workstation.
  • Worked the Spam Filters and mail servers.
  • Helped Christian swapped out the printers in Millikan, Bridge Annex, and Syd's office.
  • Moved some old computer equipment out of a cubicle for new user to work in.
  • Made room in my office to make room for another Sun workstation installation, plus to reload two DCC servers with server 2003.
  • Started reloading DCC servers. This is to be ready for a Monday's Synergy installation of their new software.
  • Other misc. user support, and work in B/A server room.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Working on the website of LIGO educational resources.  Worked with Dave Beckett on the how-to of web postings.  Installed the last newsletter.  Updates of the CIT and MIT homepages.  Elba website update.
  • LSC:  Updates of the MOUs.  In order to simplify the web posting of the updates, installed a database of the past and current MOUs and a script-generating code.  The new pages are up and running.  Updates of the LSC webpages.

CaJAGWR, Project Science:  Website updates/support.

(Christian)

  • Created a backup of Gina Salone, Ed Jasnow and Florence Kaufman workstation.
  • Ken Mailand - Setup external hard drive for backup proposes on Ken's workstation..
  • Helena- Assisted Helena synchronize her files offline in XP.
  • Millikan - Setup and configured new printer in Millikan with Mike.
  • Bridge Annex- Replaced 4600 printer with a duplex 5500 with Mike.
  • Replaced 2500 printer in Julie and Cindy's room with 4600 printer.
  • Syd Meshkov- Installed and configured 2500 network printer in Syd's office with Mike.
  • Replaced toner cartridges for Irene Baldon -Called Dell support to have my motherboard checked and replaced on laptop.
  • Worked on the Spam Filters with Mike and Larry.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support

(Larry)

  • Still working procurement issues. Placed orders for a number of workstations and related items.  Worked with Gina on a couple of different procurement items.  Purchased a number of misc. s/w items. In the process of updating the maint. contract on the Comsol s/w.
  • Assisting Mike with the installation of the s/w for the new DCC system.  This includes having to purchase updates to some of the support software.
  • Assisted different people that are working on different parts of the MOU renewal and posting process.
  • Took care of a number of problems the SURF students. For some reason a number of students lost the ability to ssh into the LIGO servers.  Reseting their account solved the problem.  There were other issues in labs dealing with printing and network connections.  Also, had to add a few more accounts. The students are still arriving.
  • Spent time tracking down a E2E workstation problem. One of the visitors attending the enhanced LIGO mtg. decided to remove a network cable from one of the E2E groups workstations and use it for their laptop.
  • Still working on the getting the backup server on-line. We've had a number of interruptions which has put us behind schedule.  The temporary backup system has been working well. It has been tested out a couple of times and has proven to be faster than the old system.  The problem is that it is not cross platform compatible. However, we are still going to go to a disk assisted backup system.
  • With the high temperatures, the computer room air-conditioning was not able to keep the room cool enough, we've had to move equipment around and turn some of the sandbox units off. This has been a minor problem for the end users but has taken some time to take care of things.
  • The mail system has been taking up some time. We've been getting a lot of spam storms. Also, spent a little time going over some of the configuration items with the Livingston group on their setup.  Presently, I estimate that 40%-50% of the e-mail being accepted on the system would still be considered spam. The number of messages being checked for false positives has also jumped to about 1000+/day.

Mail Statistics for July 20-26, 06

Mail Statistics

7/27/2006

Rejected Messages

40,548

Virus Messages

1,773

Accepted Messages

30,316

Total Messages

70,864

 

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

Systems

See also:

AdL Systems wiki web page

AdL Systems email archives

Records Of Decisions or Agreements (RODA) status web page

  • Presented the Adv. LIGO status at the PAC Meeting #20.
  • Organizing an optomechanical layout meeting following the LSC meeting (either at LSU conference center or at the LLO site) for a small group.
  • Chaired the Quad Suspension Preliminary Design Review #3, (7/10) focused on mechanical design issues. The design team presented responses to the review committee’s questions. The committee’s report will be issued soon. The report will recommend proceeding to the final design phase including the fabrication of the “noise” prototype for testing at LASTI.

Vacuum Compatibility

Vacuum Preparation & Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

  • I have repaired the OSEMs that Brett shipped to me from MIT and I have shipped them back to him today.
  • I have been doing some cleaning in the clean room in anticipation of the work that the 40m is going to be doing in there.
  • I have been working on the OSEMs for Conor/ Janeen in between bake jobs and other 40m jobs.
  • I have completed the bake out of accuGlass cables for Ken Mason (LASTI) and have shipped them to him.
  • I am baking a large load of stainless conflats and one view port for Ken Mason (LASTI).

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

Cavity # 1: OTF Lab. at W. Bridge: No Change.  [Still measuring absorption & total loss on wire sample daily. Ready for new sample.]

Cavity #2: No change

Cavity #3: OTF Lab at Lauritsen Room 38:  A new sample, a HAM-SAS stepper motor assembly, is in the cavity. The cavity is locked. We were taking measurements every day for absorption and ring down. Preliminary indications are that this unit is clean. We will continue taking measurements until the test is completed.

Scatter/Absorption Test Measurement:

Absorption test and measurements for the ITM08 mirror have been completed. The existing HeNe laser was found to have a high noise background. We ordered a new HeNe laser, from Melles Griot, with better power and frequency stability. We are currently installing it and mode matching it.

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto <hiro@ligo.caltech.edu>

Modeling and Simulation (Hiro Yamamoto)

AdvLIGO LSC/ASC design using FP arm model with quad suspension (Osamu, Hiro)

We almost finished to write a technical paper for AdLIGO ASC. e2e PSD module is being fixed so that it gives accurate results for complicated spectrums (mixture of steeply changing structures) without manual adjustment. The next thing we should do before LSC meeting is to see a dependence of optical spring frequency on beam centering.

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro)

New results about the scattering loss calculation, which is closer to the definition of surface aberration COC group uses.  I set the rms of aberration after subtracting up to 36 Wyko polynomial. I should have subtracted only up to 3, i.e., tilt and power.   Now the new result:

rms = 1 nm  :  loss = 61 +- 20 ppm

rms = 0.5 nm : loss = 18 +- 5 ppm

These losses are around 60% of the previous calculation. These losses include the diffraction loss, but not ETM transmittance.  So, if we need to have the loss per mirror < 25ppm, rms of 1nm is too loose. With 0.5nm, 3 out of 20 cases had loss more than 25ppm.

Code developments still going. The schedule was changed so that Bill Kells and his SURF student can use the code for their PI study.

Modeler (Hiro, Bruce)

Bruce finished the front end support of template based primitives. He has started to work on the code in the simulation engine to actually utilize the new primitive families in the simulation.

Mechanical Simulation for Advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

(1) E2e modeling (Quave and Yoshida)

Continued e2e analysis of LIGO I Mode Cleaner. It seems that pos and yaw are cross-coupled and pos to pitch coupling is too high, and that these couplings have substantial effect on MC local damping and MC length sensing controls. The pos/yaw cross-coupling is most likely due to coil force asymmetry. The OSEM sensor/coil efficiency settings are currently investigated.

Started to build an e2e model of HAM SAS seismic isolation using the new revision of matlab model created by V. Sannibale.

(2) Outreach (Sutton, Anderson, Norwood, Parkinson and Yoshida)

In the last few weeks, the Southeastern Louisiana University group made some progress in LIGO outreach-related activities. We have been awarded the 2006-07 LIGO Science Planning Grant (funded by LaSIP, Louisiana Systemic Initiatives Program). Using the award, Anderson participated in the Summer Institute in San Francisco, Norwood attended the MISE (Modeling Inquiry Science Education) Summer Institute at Southern University at Baton Rouge as an observer, and Parkinson and Yoshida attended the RIPPLE (Research and Inquiry-based Physics Project with LIGO and Exploratorium) at Louisiana Tech as observers. Sutton started to design experimental procedures for a physics course offered for education majors at Southeastern Louisiana University, with the use of LIGO SEC exhibits in mind.

ALFI: e2e front end (Bruce, Melody)

Comment implementation is going based on more consistent strategy of alfi, instead of relying on tools of a commercial library package used in alfi for GUI.

Seismic Isolation

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

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

The rod end shims for the stage 0-1 required additional machining. We have received the cut down shims and will make another attempt tomorrow to install them. The installation tooling needed a longer power screw, which has been made.

Additional finite element modeling was done in an attempt to better understand the new blade shape and stress. These linear models agree with the values measured in the calibration fixture and show the maximum stress at 40% of yield.

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

BSC SEI status

  • received shims for the reduced-load spring configuration.
  • The stage 1-2 blade is installed and looks to be correctly aligned and flat.
  • New installation tooling for 1-2 was built and works.
  • For stage 0-1, the installation is underway.
  • We expect that the full-weight configuration will require a significant tooling redesign.
  • Ken has been working on a document detailing the alignment and tuning to reflect the new experience.
  • Pod cables in fab at Caltech.
  • L-4C pods at shop to get the incorrectly threaded holes drilled out.

Stanford

  • Matt made some new measurements with the ETF platform, using new blend filters.
  • Night-time performance looks very good, especially at 1 Hz (2 x 10-11 m/√Hz).  Same old high vertical coupling to stage 1, but new higher moment of inertia of stage 2 limited its damage.
  • Relationship among GS-13 witnesses and the FB sensor changes from run to run in the 1 Hz vicinity.  This is not understood.
  • Stage 2 control deserves a bit more tweaking.  Then maybe 10 Hz feed-forward.
  • Tarm has assembled a vertical seismometer experiment prototype, and posted some photos.  This system uses BeCu flexures to constrain a horizontal bar to rotate in one DOF, supported by Euler buckling springs.  The new feature is test mass buoyancy compensation, so that it does not require vacuum or a hermetic box.

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

Clean room and grey room, new floor laid in schedule, no show of the company supposed to mount the clean room walls.  They promised to be here next Monday and deliver the clean room on Tuesday, one week late.  The absolute filters arrived and are presently stored in the clean room. Not yet critical path, but getting close.

Cleaning Facilities at Paolo Soldi.

I went to Soldi for a test etching of the welded parts (test honeycomb). The new cleaning plant was not yet ready and the the etching with Caustic soda solution, acid cleaning and neutralization with Tor-NS deoxydant and degreaser (HCl, HF and H2SO4 solution) and tap water was performed in a temporary vat outside the facility. No DI water rinsing was done in this test (the test was only intended to establish the procedure).  The cleaning was reasonably successful and eliminated all visible residues except some halo around the welding. The rest of the surface was all clear and pristine, including all the weldings and all machined surfaces. The halo around the welding, probably due to welding rod drawing grease, were enhanced by the basic etching, but disappeared immediately with the acid degreasing process. A faint halo, visible in the micro photos is probably due to the fact that the greasy residue eliminated by the degreasing step shielded the aluminum in that area from the etchant.  Micro photos also showed some small dark spots (weld residues) or micro-pitting on the end surface of some welds, most of the spot disappeared with the washings, while a few remained. These spots will be treated with hydro-jet cleaning, wire brushing and scotch brite scrubbing and/or somewhat longer alkaline etching, and/or alternating the two basic/acid processing. More tests to follow before the cleaning process is applied to the actual base structure. Please note that, contrary to the test structure, the welds on the actual structure were performed with degreased welding wires (the residue is likely to be weld-baked welding wire drawing oil) and these spots are present in much smaller amount in the base structure.

The new cleaning facility as Soldi’s is late and getting close to the critical path, but half of the acid proof floor was already laid and during my one hour stay at Soldi’s, the installation crew installed the 5th of the seven tanks and a half of the trolley structure that will dip the parts in the solutions. Given the fact that the installation had started (late) only two days earlier, I found it believable that the installation will be finished by coming Saturday, or Monday at worst. I have no idea of how long it will take to commission the plant, but it is not a complex one. It is likely to be OK for us.  The problem is how hard it will be to keep Soldi to a rigorous cleaning procedure. Chiara is made aware of the problem; during the cleaning period she will be present at Soldi’s plant at least twice a day, checking the process, as well as monitoring the cleanliness.

FTIR machine arriving from the US, expected delivery end of this week.

Finished the welding of the base structure, found and solved problems with weld contraction, that have been relaxed by counter-stressing and heating them independently.  At the end of the process the structure still had <3 mm bumb, to be compared with the 7 mm tolerance (overthickness) of the welded structure before machining.  The entire 5083 Aluminum structure was the relaxed in oven at 200oC for 2 hours, followed by slow cooldown (to 150 degrees after 12 hours) between 2 steel plates and about 200 Kg weight. The structure remained essentially as was before baking, without further relaxation.

A procedure has been identified and modification of drawings have been done to avoid the weld induced structure warping problem in further productions.

The structure’s resonances were measured, and we found a 35 Hz resonance, warping longitudinally the shelves connected to the cross tubes (high at the center of the tube and low at the two extremities, with the structure body essentially stationary). This mode will be dramatically stiffened by the cross tubes. The next resonances were above 100 Hz.  Virginio even questions if we need to bolt the base plate to the bottom of the structure, which appears to be rigid enough as is. We can decide later if to bolt it on or not.  The base structure is presently under machining. It will be essentially the last mechanical part to be delivered.

We also baked the spare (fifth) filter at 150oC for 12 hours, stressed by 6 blades under tension. The filter base plate did not move (measurement precision ~ 50 micron).  We properly suspended the spring box. Virginio measured the spring box without the stiffening bars, and found the lowest butterfly resonance at 46 Hz, roughly in agreement with the simulations. Now measuring it again with the stiffening bars.  Started assemblying the vertical calibration structure (to tune the magic wands using the fifth filter).  We have a possible problem with the delivery of commercial parts. Galli is being assured that we will get delivery before the beginning of summer vacations but he has doubts, some parts may produce critical path problems.

Electronics.

Virginio reports that Marwan is late with the reformatting of the LVDT drivers.  If Virginio does not get reassurance within a few days, Ben can make the circuit by September.

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

HAM-SAS

I am in the process of finalizing a schedule for the electronics delivery of the HAM-SAS system.

I am going to change the layout of the Coil Driver Interface board to match the existing DAC and ADC connector styles.  This shouldn't take too long to change, and will ensure that we have enough DAC and ADC boards available without having to order new ones.

ISI

The GS-13 and L4C cables and boards are finished in the back shop.  They will be mailed out before the end of the week, after a functional test can be performed.

Suspension

From: "Greenhalgh, RJS \(Justin\)" <J.Greenhalgh@rl.ac.uk>

ALUK held its latest Project Management Committee on 21st July 2006 (See LIGO-M060103-00-K).

A brief activity summary follows:

  • All: PDR#3.
    • Documents were submitted on 16th June with the exception of one document from Birmingham (see below).
    • Website www.eng-external.rl.ac.uk/advligo/_review
    • Reviewers comments were received; a response was generated and presented on 10th July.
    • Final review meeting pending.
  • RAL: Other technical work has included assembly of marionette; dynamics tests on “sleeve”; receipt of second controls prototype structure and preparation to test the upper part of the control structure (which is very similar to that of the noise structure) with the sleeve.
  • Glasgow: Prototype ears ordered; CO2 welding machine basic development phase complete; much work identifying suppliers and firming up on specifications for non-metal penultimate and reaction masses for noise P-type; started handover to RAL of technical spec for ribbon machine.
  • Birmingham: OSEM thermal tests; OSEM drawings complete; OSEM manufacturing study complete (placing of orders awaits outcome of PDR#3); one member of the team suddenly made unavailable by personal issues and a suitable stand-in sought (at least one good candidate identified) – this delayed the release of the OSEM drive electronics update document.

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Nothing significant to report.

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I'm using the latest information from Ian and working on a lower quad installation arm shop drawings, also a 'conveyor' version to be used at the LASTI site.  The existing 5 axis fixture has been disassembled, the fine steering ratio has been doubled for better control. Ken Mason wants the lift table for future assembly, it is being stripped of paint, and chromed for use in the clean area.

I'm working on the DLC mount, the PO Telescope, and the 6 Cavity beam dumps for Mike Smith.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

First, participated in (last week's, I know) TCS review for AdL (see comment forwarded to P. Willems, et al via PF). Then into this week worked on questions to the designers and transmitted to PF.

Main items had to do with PI.

  • I completed (and am still polishing and communicating with D. Ottaway who is pursuing similar and will speak on my behalf at LSC) a T note (T060159-00-D, and see my last Autumn's NSF review talk, based on the same simulation, G050578-00-I) on PI with both SCR and PRC and arm Gouy difference. For one, this speaks to the issue of how choice of SRC and/or PRC with significant Gouy phase (making "stable") impacts thePI thresholds.
  • Finished LSC review of latest paper on PI by Braginsky, Vyatchanin, Stagin, which also extends their previous analysis to include SRC. This will be aired (no doubt) at the LSC meeting. Their is one major point they discuss which I may/may not disagree with them on (its not so clear what they conclude: some contradiction between text and equations)
  • My SURFstudent and I are now getting first results on calculating PI thresholds but not in the traditional (~ Russian, Australian) individual mode pair method. Instead we use FFT to determine the entire cavity field generated by each acoustic mode. This should settle the question emphasized by K. Thorne that a "continuum" contribution to Instability may have been missed in the previous mode selective caculations.

From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>

Absorption and scatter caused by cleaning and handling materials for Advanced LIGO optics were studied in a gross contamination experiment and found to be benign.  A LIGO1 optic was cleaned, measured, then deliberately contaminated by cleaning solvent and by gloves dipped in cleaning solvent to determine if we should undergo further contamination cavity testing on gloves and solvent.

Absorption changed fro a baseline of 2.2 ppm average to 2.1 average with dried solvent and 2.7 average with solvent washed gloves.  Scatter changed from 40ppm baseline to 45 with dried solvent and 904 with solvent washed gloves.  The scatter calibration is not absolute, we are planning further study for purposes of determining the cause of scatter in LIGO optics.

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

LIGO I - Scatter and Absorption Studies

Supported Liyuan with some experiments aimed at measuring absorption and scatter on a coated surface after exposure to gross contamination (methanol and wetted gloves).A report on the subject will be available shortly.

Advanced LIGO Optics

A shipping case for Advanced LIGO optics was reviewed with a SILTON Cases rep. After a few modifications on the drawings take place, it will be circulated for comments.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

After trying a few simple tests to include the Simulink blocks within System Generator to perform operations on the ADC output, my conclusion is that operations on the ADC output will have to be done using Xilinx's building blocks.  This requires somewhat more knowledge of the hardware than I had hoped to get away with.  Otherwise implementing a digital filter is relatively straightforward.

Controls, Data systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO

  • There will be an AdvLigo CDS design workshop held at MIT Tuesday and Wednesday of next week (Aug1,2).
  • We are presently testing our realtime code on our first multi-CPU computer with multi-core processors. This testing is being done to try and get some systems, such as Ponderomotive front end controls, up to 64KHz and beyond. After a couple of problems and false starts, we are making progress. While prototype systems to date have locked the realtime code to one cpu, we are now able to divide the code up among three cores (fourth core runs EPICS, AWG, etc). Where the Ponderomotive code was running in 20usec/cycle on a single CPU, it now runs in 8usec/cycle when split up among three cores. Initially, we had seen some timing problems in sending code synchronization signals between the three cores, but that is no longer the case.
  • Internal Seismic Isolation (ISI)

-         Mohanna is beginning work on the coil driver units.

-         Jay, Ben and I will be visiting Brian Lantz at Stanford on Aug. 7 to further detail the ISI controls requirements.

-         The GS-13 and L4C cables and boards are finished in the back shop.  They will be mailed out before the end of the week, after a functional test can be performed.

  • HAM/SAS

-         Ben is the process of finalizing a schedule for the electronics delivery of the HAM-SAS system.

General Electronics:

  • Mohanna is finishing up work on the OSEM / Satellite Amplifier adapter boxes.
  • Rich met with a local sheet metal shop and is developing a custom LIGO electronics chassis for our future use.  They indicated that a custom design can be supplied in a 1u 19 inch format for about $91 per unit, which is cheaper by 50% than the versions we are currently using.  The custom design is a RF tight version that will allow easier access to internal circuitry.
  • Rich received custom tester boards for ASC diodes.  Will be taking them along to MIT for analysis there next week.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: John Miller <miller_j@ligo.caltech.edu>

John

I have been trying to fine tune the alignment of the cavity to improve lock. At present I am able to achieve a strong lock or a good mesa beam, but not both. I am only able to tilt the end mirror by around 6microrad before lock is lost. This is down around 50% on past experiments. Hence I have been unable to improve on previous tilt sensitivity measurements, although I have been able to produce similar results tilting about a different axis. I have also begun to study possible future developments for our cavity e.g. PDH locking and power recycling.

Marie

This past week, I worked with one of my friends on understanding the fit functions we are using and making sure it is a suitable fit.  In the process, we learned more about the beating caused by two different frequencies for the motion of the mass and pendulum connected to the spring.  We have started to organize our data and put it in a binder so that the three of us can compare easily.  We also started taking measurements with the maraging blades (as opposed to the glassy metal blades) and figured out how to acquire data from it.  Mike found a problem in the setup of the piping to drop the balls in, and we are getting the right tools to fix it.

Yumei

  • finish the report about flex joint
  • simulate the small flex joint of leg and the bottom box of HAM-SAS

Michael Floyd

This week I fit graphs using a 5 variable fit, but had to switch over to an 8 variable fit in order to fit in beatings of the graph. Also, I finished making adjustments to the copper piping which ran to the Maraging Steel and switched the connection so that we could start taking tests with the Maraging Steel.

Antonella

This week I simulated the Pound-Drever-Hall error signal with different phase values. I will now lock a laser to a cavity using the Pound-Drever-Hall method to prepare me for work at the TNI. The idea of this method is to measure the laser's frequency using a Fabry-Perot cavity and feed this measurement back to the laser to suppress frequency fluctuations.  My simulations show that the error signal is linear near resonance; this will allow us to suppress frequency noise.

Michael Koyfman

This past week, I have been fitting and analyzing graphs of our experiment, especially looking at the relationship between the frequency and attenuation factor.  I have also continued researching the systems involved in our experiment.

Livia

This week I have designed and constructed a voltage divider which reduces the input by a factor of ~0.25.  I have tested my circuit and its performance is in close agreement with theory. I will now use this device to improve the resolution of my tilt sensitivity experiment.

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