Weekly Report for Week Ending August 3, 2006

Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, August 7, 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:

 

Special Announcements:

 

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

Dot Lloyd was busy this week (with support from Szabi Marka, Albert Lazzarini, and Peter Saulson) posting all of the contributions for the LSC MOU Review Panel meeting to be held 8-9 August at MIT.

Final arrangements are being made for the LSC meeting the following week at LSU.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

  • There was no site teleconference scheduled Thursday, August 3, 2006.
  • There are currently no open action items.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

  • No report.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • Continued to migrate the DCC database metadata over to the new Filehold system.
  • Two-thirds of the DCC database has been allocated to a specific one-to-one location in the Filehold system.  The remainder will be completed by Monday morning.
  • Had status meeting with Filehold regarding development progress on their side, data conversion on ours.  We are on schedule to have full LIGO functionality demo for upcoming LSC meeting.

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

  • Continued to assist in the process of conversion/allocation of current data to the new database.
  • In the process of determining if all of the latest revisions of the PSI As-Built drawings are on file in the DCC.
  • Scanning - Progress continues on scanning of contract closeout files.
  • Activity:

Week Ending

08/03/2006

In

Out

Packages

15

6

Faxes

14

5

 

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Cronin, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

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

  • Completed change order #6 to Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Coordinated the wire transfer payment to the vendor for the past due charges for FY05, and for the new FY06 period.
  • Received the large-dollar purchase order for LHO issued to Disk-O-Tape back from routing, and the purchase order was sent to the vendor.
  • Working on the order for the ILC brochure.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Completed and posted the report for Operations as of the end of July on the network.
  • Working on an Inter Award Cost Transfer to correct the charge for a Post Doc in the Detector Group, for the period from September 05 through July 2006, from 100% to 50%.
  • Working on an Intra Award Cost Transfer to move p-card charges from the MIT account LIGO.ADISC/5.6 to LIGO.ISCA/5.
  • Working on an Intra Award Cost Transfer to allocate a portion of the cost paid in July for the Solid Works Designer from Task 5.22 to Task 5.10.
  • Alerted Cindy that costs charged to the Visitor Award for students sent to Italy were charged to an incorrect expenditure type, which resulted in the imposition of $9000 of unwarranted Indirect Cost.  Will work with Human Resources Department to get it corrected.
  • Notified Cindy that travel expenditures were paid for students sent to Italy, according to Cindy no travel expenditures were to be paid.  She is to work with Irene to see how this can be corrected.
  • Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Florence)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

  • Nothing significant to report.

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

  • The contract with Lawrence Berkley Laboratories to provide network services to the Hanford Observatory has been extended to September 30, 2007.  The $12,000 fee for the coming year was paid in advance as required by DoE laboratories.
  • The State of Louisiana now has a new tax exemption form which essentially provides the same category exemption as our letter from the Department of Revenue, i.e., we, and our subcontractors, are acting as agents of the Federal Government.  We are finding that our letter is acceptable in some cases, and others require the new form.  In the latter case, the form simply needs to be signed by an authorized Caltech representative, who may be designated members of the LLO staff.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

  • Submitted the Annual Report for LIGO FY 2006 Operations to the NSF.
  • Submitted a Proposal for a Supplement to the LIGO Operations Cooperative Agreement to the NSF.  The Supplement is for a small amount of funding for materials to support the LIGO Video, Einstein’s Messengers.
  • Assembled a summary of LIGO Laboratory contributions for the LSC MOU Review and submitted it to P. Saulson.  Late additions will be inserted as needed.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

The LIGO Change Control Board met Monday, July 24, 2006 as part of the normally scheduled meeting of the Executive Committee.  Two change requests were discussed:

  • CR-060006 is for funds to buy enough data storage tapes to get through another calendar year of S5 data acquisition.  The board recommended approval.
  • CR-060007 adjusts the FY 2006 budgets to reflect actual staffing through June 30, 2006.  The board recommended approval.

The board recommended approval as indicated and the change requests have been signed.  Minutes of the CCB meeting have been prepared, and an electronic version has been provided to the DCC (LIGO-M060114-00-P).  The original signed versions of the change requests have been filed in the Document Control Center.

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

Nothing significant to report this week.

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

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

Sufficient time has passed since the swap of the PMC and associated servo card (last week Tuesday) to confirm that the work was a success and that the glitch rate previously observed in photodiodes on the laser, the PMC error point and other PSL channels such as ISS ones is significantly reduced (see elogs here and here for example).

Duty cycles for the LHO machines this week were: H1 84 percent, H2 92 percent.  Some of the downtime on H1 is accounted for by periods in which PMC gains had to be reassessed, i.e. we expect that as the running conditions for this subsystem stabilize, future impact on the duty cycle should be negligible.

Processes on the h1awg0 machine that serve excitations to the 4k IFO became unstable last week; all injections were turned off temporarily, and this week, burst/inspirals restored. The awg processor has remained stable since. Historically during S5 h1awg0 has had periods such as this, in which excitations such as pulsar injections fail but cal lines remain. Why the processes stabilize is a mystery.

S5 highlights from the LHO elog are bulleted below:

  • a study to chase a wandering RF bump observed in the LVEA radio channels was performed during the Tuesday maintenance period
  • Final tallies for usage of the IFO maintenance budget for July were, including a slight overage on H1: 25h 25m H1, 11h 25m H2.
  • the range and duty cycle update is available here

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

LIGO SEC Kinetic Art Project (Romie)

Four RFQ packages have gone out to local machine shops and four other RFQ packages have gone out to local welding  shops. Comments are due Friday, quotes due 8/11.  Procurement of individual items on the BOM is ongoing.

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

Most of the group’s efforts are reported under the Advanced LIGO Project.

  • Migrated the PDMWorks vault server from 2005 service pack 4.1 to 2005 service pack 5.0. Connecting to the vault server prompts a request to upgrade. The new service pack seems to be working fine.
  • Considering an update to our SolidWorks seats (from SP3.1 to SP5.0). This will be coordinated with LSC partners.
  • Liyuan, Lee, GariLynn continue measurements on scatter loss on initial LIGO optics.
  • We’ve been informed that the current LIGO document revision sequence (defined for example in section 4.8.7 of Drawing Requirements, E030350-A) will be changed in favor of the FileHold revision sequence/approach. Engineering needs to determine the consequences and implications of this change. The hope is that by using the FileHold built-in approach, we will have a more error-free and seamless revision control. On the other hand, we use our version code to indicate other metadata (e.g. B2 indicates that the drawing has been formally released into configuration control with a DCN and it is the 2nd schematic revision to the B revision artwork for an electronics drawing). A means to adapt our configuration control procedures to the FileHold document control system needs to be developed.

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO.

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

All the SURF students have prepared five minute talks for their trip to LHO and are off on their junket.

IFO Commissioning, Electronics, Controls, Computers

  • Rana and Sam are going through the LSC RFPDs and re-phasing them (since the cables have all been modified to strain-relief them). Several single demod RFPDs have been rephased. They are encountering difficulty in phasing the double demod signals. Work in progress.
  • Steve is measuring the response of the electronics chain from RFPDs to mixer to whitening boards to ADC, by injecting signals at different frequencies. He's getting the response he expects, dominated by whitening board TF.
  • Royal measured the oplev P/Y dark (electronics) noise. She got generic whitening boards from Wilson House and will modify and implement them for all 4 oplevs, to try to reduce the electronics noise.
  • Royal measured the laser intensity noise of all 4 oplev lasers. She also measured the TF from input current to output power. Power could be modulated up to high frequencies, > 100 kHz. But intensity noise is not quite a problem right now.
  • Royal finished measuring the mirror motion due to servo for all 8 DOFs. Made a noise budget for all of these. And then through to DARM at the DC PD.
  • David, Jenne and Sam have implemented the new MC servo board; this required rewiring and debugging of the cross connect wiring, testing of digital controls with tester boards, testing of the board, etc. All seems to work ok, but there are problems with readback of some MC signals (err point, fast channel, and MCL monitors) into the EPICS screen.
  • The MC is now locked and working fine. After some PD phasing and tuning, they measured the MC loop gain: the UGF is up to 80 kHz. It could be better: the MC OL gain has odd resonances at ~80, 90 kHz, and seems to fall off at ~230 kHz, probably due to PMC. Darcy will measure the PMC finesse. One day we'll replace the PMC with a low finesse one. Sam says that more gain could be obtained by further tweaks to the AOM, but this is difficult to do because of all the stuff in the way on the PSL table.
  • The MZ stopped locking. Sam, with help from Jenne, David, and Rob, debugged the system and found a bat XYCOM cable connector. They gave it a good squeeze, and the MZ is now behaving.
  • David constructed some insulating houses for the OSAs on the AS ISC table. The temperatures on the OSAs are being monitored and logged. Steve will also move the particle counter to that table; it has a coarse temperature readback. David will watch all these, and the OSA display, to see if the temperature fluctuations are real, are reduced by the insulation, and/or are correlated with the OSA peak drifts.
  • Jenne's AM laser is all put together with flex tubing. She used it to check the MZ RFPD. She will measure all the RFPDs when she gets back from LHO.
  • Dan and Monica rotated the MC WFS's by 45degrees a few months ago, and has now changed the MEDM screens to correctly represent this. He needs to also change the MCLock screen, DC signals.

IFO Modeling

  • Jenne has completed a working Simulink model of the radiation pressure-induced angular instability in the mode cleaner, and has checked her results against the predictions from Sigg's paper. She will generate OLTFs with different input powers; the pitch/yaw pendulum response will be altered in the presence of the optical torques. She'll then try to measure these with the real MC, again at different input powers and different angular offsets of the mirrors.
  • Osamu is working with Kentaro on alternative length control schemes for AdLIGO. They are exploring different RF sideband configurations, and also ways to implement variable signal detuning. So far, 9 and 45 MHz works with fixed signal detuning, but implementing variable signal detuning is more difficult. He is preparing a talk for LSC meeting.
  • Seiji learned the current lock acquisition procedure from Rob, and is documenting it and studying it in simulation (Finesse) to see how our LA procedue works and how to improve it.

DC Detection and Vacuum Squeezing Development

  • Darcy and Rob disassembled the DC readout beamline and gave all the parts to Bob. Now they're preparing for re-assembly and realignment on the clean room flow bench. They are running the NPRO laser through fiber to get it to the clean room.
  • Bob has been preparing detailed travellers for all the DC readout parts. All parts cleaned, OMMT in for bake; will put all the OMC and other parts in by the end of the day. Baking copper at 120; anneals at 145. Working on in-vac cables and connectors.
  • No report from the Wilson House group; they're at a meeting at MIT.
  • Shally and Go made lots of progress on the vacuum squeezer. They Rebuilt the OPO oven and cavity. They still saw elliptical modes, but then they turned the (ostensibly spherical) output coupler, and got a circular mode. They temperature-tuned the OPO by maximizing green output. More alignment and temperature tuning got parameteric gain up to 7.8. They set up the homodyne detector with fiber-fed LO and seed field. Fringe visibility of 88%; good, to be improved. They looked for squeezing by dithering the seed beam path length, and antisqueezing observed. Hopefully can see squeezing soon. With 3dB of squeezing, they will do quantum noise locking to lock the squeeze angle and the OPO.
  • Latest news: they now observe 1 dB of vacuum squeezing (and anti-squeezing).  This is the first observation of CW squeezing at 1064nm with PPKTP in the world.  The seed was completely blocked.  So, this is the observation of pure squeezed vacuum.

Lab Infrastructure, Bake Lab

  • Dan continues to flesh out the new 40m Wiki.  He encourages anyone who pulls out a board to take a photo of it for the Wiki.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No report.

LASTI (Mittleman)

ISI  Assembly

We have succeeded in floating the first (with the second stage pinned to it) stage.  The spring stiffness was not what we expected; it came out about half way between the ASI values and the values that we measured on the spring tester.  We will have to look into this further.  After adding some weight we were able to get the platform to be level and at the correct height.

Jay has delivered and tested the first position sensor controller.  It is now working on the bench, installing and aligning them is going to be challenging.

Quad-Pendulum Controls Prototype

Brett is preparing for our next vacuum incursion. All of the components for the quad-structure thermal test have been assembled and are in the cleaning process.

CIT Science Group (Lazzarini)

No report.

Laboratory Computing (Stuart)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

The ldas-dev system is now building 64-bit libraries for Solaris. These have been running each night for the past week with 0 errors. Currently the Tcl Socket interface is being used to submit jobs as there have been some issues discovered with compiling tclGlobus for 64-bit. These issues should be resolved soon.

The cmonClient has been enhanced to display a message of bad passphrase instead of the full text as returned by grid-proxy-init.  This makes error message easier for the user to understand. Also, a timeout value to gt_xio_socket calls has been added. The length of the timeout is controlled by the resource variable ::TCLGLOBUS_SOCKET_TIMEOUT. Lastly, printing of graphs is being  modified to allow queuing. This eliminates wasted banner pages.

When users are identified to have an invalid login to the ldas system, a message directing the individual to contact Edward Maros instead of Kent Blackburn is now generated.

The system tests were performed using version 1.8.256 of LDAS. All the tests except for lsync passed. The lsync test still is unable to see RDSVerify and some /scratch directories. This continues to be under investigation. The socket tests for 64bit Solaris to 32bit Linux were run. The results were similar as those with 32bit Solaris.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Continued working on scripts to collect stats about the files in our filesystems from the nightly samfsdumps (ongoing).
  • Collected data to guide our policy for releasing files in /home at CIT.
  • So far my modified nfsfind on gateway at CIT has reported only 3 .nfs* files found.  I'm going to wait until early next week, but I think the normal find and delete cron job should only be run once a week.
  • Did more work with the Sun 15k drives (so far they seem to have no advantage over 10k drives for us).  Waiting for Phil to finish with samtest to continue.
  • Fixed damaged SAM-QFS files at CIT that are now being reported by log_mon.
  • Set up /scratch on ldas-suntest4 (as per Mary Lei).
  • Generated tape list for shelf storage at LHO.
  • Compressed many of Alexander Dietz's files (ongoing).

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Completed portability enhancements to certcheck.tcl and shasumcheck.tcl and installed them into ldas-sw.  The shasumcheck and certcheck scripts are running on an ever-increasing number of machines as they are debugged.
  • Worked with Mary Lei to configure the ldas-tandem4 system to be similar to the ldas-tandem5 system. ldas-tandem4 had previously been configured for a special purpose.
  • Various and sundry x509 certificate related tasks.
  • Ongoing attempts to install Solaris 10 upgrade 2 via the "upgrade" path are proceeding slowly. There are still unknown dependency issues that require the use of a backup device when upgrading on some machines.
  • Discovered a number of expired certs on the machines kitalpha ad ldas-cit. Currently evaluating the significance of these apparently long unused certs and whether they should be replaced or simply removed.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Begun work on ldas-kickstart at MIT.
  • Corresponded w/ Supermicro about ram shipment.
  • Created gpg keys, asked Shannon for copy of Nessus scan.
  • Looked into ldas-pcdev1/ldas-grid grid-mapfile issue with Phil.
  • Tested Infineon ram shipped (accidently shipped by ASA).
  • Node264 rebooted on Mon July 31, will be replaced w/ node326 upon next crash.
  • Clean up of Condor crash July 29.
  • Will begin syncing of kickstart at LLO for Dwayne.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Helped track down cause of last Condor crash.
  • Worked on Cyber Security Vulnerability report.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • pcraid 5 board appears dead with the unit out of warranty.  Will try to swap drives over to another pcraid unit.

Livingston

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT, imported and labeled new tapes.
  • Added entries to /etc/hosts for new nodes and kickstart.
  • More cluster_mon additions/changes.
  • Received warranty check on seagate drives from T3s--not supported.
  • Unleashed another email flood from the nodes after power outages.   Caught my mistake this time and hopefully it won't happen again.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • Major gaps in 1800 second SFTs from the beginning of the S5 run up to the present have now been filled in. These SFTs are being generated and published for the pulsar group. The generation and publication of these SFTs is continuing to run in real-time, with the transfer of the SFTs from the sites to Caltech occurring via LDR.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Purchased workbench/shelving and several plastic containers to help organize and cleanup the LDAS room. Commenced LDAS room cleanup.
  • Working on ipfilter instructions and setups for LLO, MIT, and CIT.
  • Found a good guide on creating a SMF manifest for RPC service-dependent firewall rules.
  • Last of blank 9940 tapes moved to the LDAS room to acclimate. There are now a total of about 18TB of blank tapes left (includes blanks in the library).
  • Aided a few cluster and LDAS users, mainly dealing with the perennial question, "How can I access data?" and "I am having trouble with accessing data set X."

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

  • Troubleshot webserver that had scsi drive not responding errors.  These errors are strangely similar to the powerd trouble on solaris 10 although I haven't changed any configuration on this solaris 9 box in some time.  A simple reboot brought everything back.
  • Continue working on replacement sys-admin stuff
  • Documenting various systems

Livingston

(Dwayne)

  • Created GC accounts for a few SciMon camp attendees.
  • Continued training our spam filter
  • Other usual user requests and support

Hanford

(Christine)

  • Most of the week spent working on the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Assessment report.
  • Moved some home directories around to alleviate a full disk.
  • Renewed the maintenance contract for one of the personal Matlab licenses.
  • Downloaded the latest VPN client from Caltech.

CIT

(Mike)

  • Finished up loading Melody Araya's Sun workstation and swapped out her old Sun workstation with the new one.
  • Worked on loading DCC servers, one as the web server the other SQL server. There is more work to be done on these servers. We are in Demo mode right now. Engineers from File Hold are looking into the many configuration issues we came across.
  • Worked the spam filters.
  • Loaded a Sun workstation for Bruce Sears.
  • Ran End of month ghost backups on all critical NTSRV's.
  • Started loading an X2100 Sun server.
  • Added an additional printer to our print spool for Syd. This printer can be used for Synchrotron as well.
  • Other misc. user support and additional work in the B/A server room.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Working on the website for Academic Advisory Council.  Troubleshooting the database on the back end.  Building a database update tool.  Updates to other LIGO-related webpages.  User support.
  • LSC:  Updates of the database of papers under review.  Updates of the LSC webpages and mailing lists.  Continue working on the database of the MOUs.  Advised Keith Riles on the setup for videotaping the scimon seminar at the upcoming LSC meeting.
  • Project Science:  Web updates.

(Bruce Sears)   (1.0 days)

  • General iLog maintenance (user adds, keyword adds, systems work, etc.) - Fixed the user-add admin tools at LHO (broken when the web server  was switched.)

(Christian)

  • Dorothy Lloyd- Created a backup of Dot's workstation.
  • Cindy Akutagawa- Helped Cindy print a mail merge document in word.
  • 3flr W/B - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
  • Ken Mailand- Restored backup image of Ken's workstation after the registry became corrupted.
  • Configured new workstation and laptop with the standard ligo image.
  • Worked on the Spam Filters with Mike and Larry.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support

(Larry)

  • Procurement issues still taking time.  Finally, received some information from Foundry. I have a few items I need confirm before I get a quote from them.  Checked on the order for a couple of workstations and still working on the quad cpu sandbox order.  Tracked down a number of items that were ordered last week. Some were just delivered to the wrong location and one was lost in the shipping process, replacement has since arrived.
  • Took care of a couple of licensing issues.  Still have a issue being worked on with the SUN backup s/w license. That should be resolved soon since I have copies of the paperwork verifying we do own the license.  Renewing the Comsole license.
  • Worked with Mike on the Solaris installation on various boxes. Updated the h/w on a couple of the SUN boxes. Also, helped him out on the setup of a new printspool for a printer that has been relocated.
  • Worked with the DCC, Mike and FileHold in dealing with the installation of the s/w for the new DCC system. A lot of time has been spent on this by all parties.
  • Continual user support. Regular account modification, e-mail changes and application support.  We've had another visitor show up and another SURF student. Both of which I need to still setup accounts for once they've turned in the paperwork.  Resolved a number of hardware issues for different people. Most have been driver issues but there were a couple of items in-which the h/w itself no longer functions.
  • Worked on documentation for various items.
  • Worked a number of e-mail issues. Spent time with Livingston getting rid of a internal spam storm.  People are still sending out large e-mail messages which has causes problems especially when we are getting large amounts of spam.

Mail Statistics for July 27- Aug. 2, 06  (Doesn't include the internal spam storm)

Mail Statistics

08/03/2006

Rejected Messages

35,706

Virus Messages

1,335

Accepted Messages

28,423

Total Messages

64,129

 

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Systems

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

Systems

from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AdL Systems wiki web page

AdL Systems email archives

Records Of Decisions or Agreements (RODA) status web page

  • Assisted Justin Greenhalgh with the nonlinear impact dynamic analysis of the earthquake stops for the quad suspension and interpretation of impact test results.
  • Provided weld non-destructive evaluation & cleaning qualification guidance to RAL for the quad structure (to be included as an update to the Generic Requirements and Standards for Detector Systems, E010613-01).
  • Advised the SUS/UK group that the beamsplitter suspension structure design should be approached as a minimal enclosure around the suspended mass chains, stiffened with stays or struts to the optics table (rather than making the suspension frame considerably larger in an attempt to meet stiffness requirements). This approach is possible since the layout has eliminated the two pick-off mirrors in the BS chamber.
  • Provided FTIR rinsate guidance to G&M for the HAM-SAS prototype cleanliness qualification (using high purity isopropyl alcohol).
  • Assisted MIT summer student with finite element modeling questions for the triple suspension (to be joined to the HAM-SAS dynamic model)
  • Reviewed and approved solid model to be used by Flomerics in analysis of the BSC in-chamber, laminar air shower concept (a concept proposed by Riccardo DeSalvo; see pg. 14 of G060130-00)
  • Received cable clamp liners for LASTI & 40m Lab (composed of the low outgassing flourel formulation); to be put in the queue for vacuum baking
  • Assisted in writing the Enhanced LIGO review committee report
  • Optomechanical layout meeting scheduled at LSU/LLO just after the LSC meeting, Thu 8/17 late afternoon and Fri 8/18 morning
  • Working on the Quad Suspension Preliminary Design Review #3, committee’s report
  • Working to finalize the ETM wedge angle (with GariLynn Billingsley and Mike Smith). The angle is needed very soon for the quad noise prototype suspension. The basic issue is whether to dump the first few ghost beams in the beam tube baffles or in an arm cavity baffle. We do not want the beam to hit the cyropump surfaces. In initial LIGO the ETM wedge is large (2 deg) and the beam is separated from the main beam before the cryopump & beam tube.

Vacuum Compatibility

Vacuum Preparation & Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

  • I have received the cables from Ken and I will not be able to get them in an oven until Monday due to the multiple bake jobs that are in progress from the 40m DC detector Project.
  • I have completed the stainless conflats bake out for Ken at MIT

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 HAM-SAS stepper motor assembly is in the cavity. The cavity is locked and we are 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:

The new 1.0 watt HeNe laser from Melles Griot has been installed and aligned. Performing a test to measure the noise.

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

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

If electronic noise of WFS PD is tuned to high power case, relatively the electronic noise with low power will be high. In AdLIGO, high and low power ratio has a factor of 1000, so it is interesting to see noise performance with low power case, specially control noise for penultimate mass due to the f^3 filter. I am adding electronic noise to the model and if noise is over the dynamic range, actuation to test mass should be considered.

Static IFO simulation (Hiro)

The effect of mirror surface aberration was studied further. Summary and support figures are available in www.ligo.caltech.edu/~hiro/AdvLIGOSim/COC.  In short, the rms of the surface roughness needs to be required to be less than 0.5 ~ 0.6 nm. With this requirements, statistically 10% of the surface can have loss more than 25ppm. There is no simple figure - rms or p-v in central region or coefficient of zernike polynomial - found which is strongly correlated to the loss.

The code development is going. Better lock point finding, faster relaxization of field, better beam setting, lens in mirror out of various sources, dual recycled Michelson.

Modeler (Hiro, Bruce)

Bruce stated to learn how instances of primitive objects are created on the fly when the simulation runs.  With this knowledge, he will implement primitives with variable inputs and outputs.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

(1) E2e modeling (Quave and Yoshida)

MC transmitted light?s pitch spectrum computed by our e2e model shows much higher peaks near SOS pitch and position resonance than the corresponding DAQ signal. On the other hand, MC transmitted light’s yaw spectrum computed by the same model is very close to the corresponding DAQ signal. Obviously, this is due to the fact that the pitch local damping is not as good as the yaw local damping. So we started to modify the local damping of our SOS e2e model. To begin with we made a simple damping servo model. Initial tests with step inputs to suspension point z (normal to optic) and yaw look good. Also with the same ground motion as before, the pitch and position peaks in the optic’s motion are much lower than before.

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

Sutton and Anderson drafted lab procedures for six LIGO SEC exhibits (Giant Slinky, Standing Wave, Variable Length Pendulum, Pipes of Pan, Hot Light Exhibit and Soap Bubble Interference). These procedures will be discussed among Southeastern LIGO Outreach team members in the next few weeks. The master copy of the draft is available at LLO. We will keep updating this copy as we revise the draft. The procedures will be tested in our Physics Lab courses for non science majors in the fall semester.

Seismic Isolation

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

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

The springs and rods for stage 0-1 and stage 1-2 have been installed. Before floating the stages we instrumented the system with 3 sets of dial indicators from stage 0 to stage 2. Each "corner" has a vertical, radial and tangential indicator. The system was initially set up to accommodate the softer spring constant that we measured on the spring tester and the original blade launch angle. This translated to ~550lbs less then the nominal load on stage #2 and -150lbs removed from stage #1. When we started to release the 0-2 pin we found that the platform wanted to rise by about 100mils, we added 349lbs and were able to bring the optics table to its nominal position and level to within .001" over the table surface.

The next step is to float stage 1 separate from stage 2 and to set the locator stops. We found that tooling will be required to hold the locators in a locked position before they can be installed.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Provided the annual update of the LIGO Lab input to the LSC MOU Review/Planning Process. Norna provided helpful comments and edits. Thank you Norna.

Coordinating with Gregg and Doug on how best to fix the broken quartz wire standoff on Gregg's thermal noise experiment optic. Doug will handle the regluing as spare standoffs are at LHO. I will send more music wire to Gregg from the same spool as the wire I sent originally.

Provided an ITM drawing to Gari Billingsley for review. Talked to Helena about upcoming visits/meetings to coordinate the ribbon/fiber/welding/bonding/ear development and deployment for noise prototype.

Updated the LASTI Controls Test Document. Will update it again with the blade ECD damping test.

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 table and other parts are at the paint stripper, the parts will be chrome plated next week for use in the clean area.

I'm working on the DLC mounts, the PO Telescope, and cavity beam dumps for Mike Smith.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

 

 

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

I have been going over the design and implementation of various digital filter topologies for programming the DSP since I ran into a limit with the canned routines.

I completed stuffing an interim-power photodetector board.  I hope to test it later this week.

The interfaces for the frequency shifter is being added to the PSL interface.

Controls, Data systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

AdvLigo

  • An AdvLigo CDS design and planning meeting was held this week at MIT.
  • Lasti ISI: Capacitive position sensor chassis and 4 sensors have been delivered to LASTI for test. We will test them starting tomorrow.

Lasti Ponderomotive Experiment

  • The SUS receiver module has been designed and is due back from PCB Express next week. The front panel has been ordered and is also due next week.
  • System drawings for the suspensions are in progress and should be complete very soon.
  • AA and AI chassis are on hold for delivery of DRV135s which are due next week. The interface and power boards are complete as are the chassis.

ADC Testing: quick test of the PCIX ADCs using 128KSPS decimated to 16384 SPS shows that the input referred noise drops to ~3uV/rtHz.  This input noise and the 40Vp-p dynamic range compare very favorably to ICS110s used in LIGO. Further tests will be conducted to verify and document performance.

Other Laboratory R&D

From:

Marie M. Giron <giron@caltech.edu>

Marie, Mike Floyd, Mike Koyfman

This past week we have fit a good sized portion of the data.  We finished tests on both springs at 40 degrees and are now moving to a higher temperature.  We are going to start comparing the different runs of the same setups to choose the best data, determine the Q-factors, and create plots of the Q-factor and frequency.

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