There
will be no LIGO Executive Committee scheduled Monday, October 9, 2006 due to the LIGO
Staffing Committee meeting scheduled that morning. The next Executive Committee Meeting will be
scheduled Monday, October 30, 2006.
Prof. Gabriela Gonzalez has been awarded the 2007 Edward A. Bouchet Award sponsored by a grant from the Research Corporation. The Award was established to promote the participation of under-represented minorities in physics by identifying and recognizing a distinguished minority physicist who has made significant contributions to physics research.
The citation that will appear on the certificate reads as follows:
For her significant impact on the field of gravitation wave physics through her many important technical and scientific contributions to the Laser Interferometric Gravitation Wave Observatory (LIGO) and for communicating the excitement of this field to the scientific community and the public.
The Bouchet Award will be presented at the APS
April 2007 meeting in
Prof. Rainer Weiss and Prof. Ron Drever have been awarded the APS 2007 Einstein Prize supported by the Topical Group on Gravitation.
The citation which will appear on the certificate reads:
For fundamental contributions to the development of gravitational-wave detectors based on optical interferometry, leading to the successful operation of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory
The Einstein Prize will be presented at the APS April 2007 meeting in
Discussions continued on a variety of items related to our new relationship with Virgo. A highlight was good progress in drafting the MOU Attachments (containing specific details of arrangements for joint procedures). This work was accomplished by the LSC Analysis Committee working with its opposite numbers from Virgo.
>From: Rod Luna <rluna@ligo.caltech.edu>
>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>
>From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>
|
Week Ending 10/05/2006 |
In |
Out |
|
Packages |
25 |
15 |
|
Faxes |
21 |
11 |
>From: "Funaro, Catherine" <Catherine.Funaro@caltech.edu>
>From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>
>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>
>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>
>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>
>From: Julie Hiroto <jhiroto@ligo.caltech.edu>
We submitted the annual Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) data via FastLane this week.
A draft monthly report has been distributed internally for review, comments, and contributions.
>From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>
>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu
No report (vacation)
Mildly eventful week. Duty cycle (Thu Sep/28 to Wed Oct/4) was 83 percent for H1 and 77 percent for H2.
The binary range was 14 - 15+ Mpc for H1, and 6.5 - 7+ for H2.
S5 highlights from the LHO elog are bulleted below:
We had ~70 percent duty factor for the week, running at low power early on and higher power (7-8W) at the end of the week.
We had problems with the RM bias module. The replacement which had been installed on the 26th broke again on the evening of the 29th. We decided to limp along until Tuesday maintenance, but unfortunately we came up a few hours short. The bias module was replaced and given extra room in the crate. After some scavenging we now have four spares of varying quality.
The WFS gains were measured and found to be low, some gains were increased (WFS2A, WFS2B, WFS3 and WFS4) but there may be room for further improvement.
We had some impact from work on the SEC. A crane is now on-site and work is continuing on assembling the pendulum wall.
A periodic drop in the inspiral range has been happening regularly on an hour time-scale. So far we have failed to identify the culprit.
A PSL table IR scan showed no stray beams.
I have been working closely with Rupal Amin with his laser amplifier experiment in the optics lab, ensuring laser safe conditions with his many configuration changes. I have found no safety concerns due to his diligent laser safety practices.
All Laser Warning signs were checked for proper operation. Replaced light bulbs where needed.
Found no other laser/site safety concerns during my weekly site safety rounds.
Issued 5 replacement security swipe cards to LLO staff. Their cards were worn and inop.
Authorized 2 LLO staff safety shoe purchases for the up coming construction activities.
Took 113 pieces of electronics (computers, monitors, etc.) to the local recycling center.
Submitted necessary paperwork to CIT property for NSF/GSA disposal of three site forklifts.
Uploaded outreach material to SEC Web page
Worked SEC Opening Event issues including invitations, email announcements.
Continued work for teachers workshop in Oct.
Continued development work on Giant Slinky snack
Relocated exhibits in the SEC and made adjustments on the exhibits
Assisted on aluminum beam construction for the kinetic pendulum
SEC outreach collaboration with SELU: (Perez, Wagner and Gersch)
In the process of moving the gravitys rainbow exhibit to the education center the exhibit's trough was disconnected from the ramp. This allowed us to video the ball from the time it left the ramp to the time it landed in the cup. We were able to get 13-14 points for analysis when we uploaded the video into Logger Pro 3.3. We also filmed (and are in the process of uploading the video) a pingpong ball leaving the ramp and a free fall video for both the ping pong ball and the exhibit ball.
(
David Norwood and Sanichiro Yoshida met with Kay Gersch, Heather Wagner and Scott Perez. The Gravity's Rainbow data was reviewed -- preliminary fits were made to a theoretical calculation incorporating gravity and a quadratic drag force. The fitting indicates that the acceleration due to the drag force is measureable, but small (a few percent) compared to the gravitational acceleration. Efforts are now being made to obtain reliable error measurements of the trajectory of the ball and precise physical parameters (specifically, the radius and mass of the ball, and the air density). This will permit the team to determine whether the drag model is reliable. We discussed the Magnus force, but there is no clear evidence from the data that the Magnus force is present.
All stiffener plates are riveted and bolt rings are in place on all pendulums. One sub assembly of 10 pendulums on one axle is assembled. An engineer from HPD will be here today and tomorrow to support assembly and installation planning. Superior Steel is setting up the crane for installation testing this morning. We are still waiting for a number of machined parts and the locking mechanism weldments. We have a meeting at 9am this morning with the HPD engineer, Jonas Waterman, Superior Steel, our assembly personnel and Allen and I to work out an installation scenario, with the delay in parts delivery.
##MZ UPDATE: ALL PARTS ARE IN, PASSED FIT CHECKS, ASSEMBLY IS SUBSTANTIALLY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE- KEEPING FINGERS CROSSED
See Advanced LIGO.
- ejected tapes for shipment to CIT, imported and labeled replacements
- replaced failed disk in T3-4 and T3-21
- replaced failed memory in node73
- node186 is having problems, will investigate further
- restarted LDAS room temp monitor, still trying to make email notifications work
See Advanced LIGO
No report.
We have had 2 position sensor controller boards have failed and at present we have not discovered the cause. One possibility is that we had a Sorenson power supply fail. We have sent them back to ADE to be fixed. On a more positive note we have started the compliance testing on the ASI, at present all electronics for the ISI are working.
We tested our addtional two vacuum feedthru flanges for Advanced LIGO BSC. We observed leaking through both of them at the feedthrus for the voice coils of the ISI. Currently we do not have a leaktight version of these.
Brett has conducted a heat loading measurement on the Quad structure.
After a visit from Jay, Rolf, Richard, Alex and Mohanna the electronics for the suspensions used in the pondermotive experiement have been installed.
Duncan Brown
[dbrown@ligo.caltech.edu]
Eirini Messaritaki
[emess@caltech.edu]
I kept working on the S5 BBH search, mainly looking at the missed injections of small effective distance and trying to identify why they are missed. Also, met with Vibha Laljani, a Caltech undergrad who will be working on detection of spinning binaries with non-spinning templates.
Patrick Sutton
[psutton@ligo.caltech.edu]
Coherent network analysis topics: I'm continuing work on the GRB060813 analysis with Xpipeline. I also met with Tinto and Searle to plan how to test our new Bayesian-GWB-glitch analysis algorithm. I've studied the elliptic likelihood noise-only statistics. I reviewed the PRD proofs on the xpipeline paper (gr-qc/0605002) and returned them to PRD.
Miscellaneous: At the end of last week I submitted the combined reviewer report (by me and Pia Astone) on the LIGO-Virgo burst methods paper. I compiled summary data on S4 SenseMonitor ranges at Mike Landry's request.
I wrote a letter of support for Stephen Poprocki's application to his university for funds to visit Caltech.
Kent Blackburn
[kent@ligo.caltech.edu]
Completed adding of GPL license into TclGlobus source code and web site.
Added Globus socket new option to authorize clients using gridmap file. Start testing this new option within LDAS this week.
HIPE workflow is still at the 5th partition running at OSG_LIGO_PSU. 14390 DAG nodes are completed and we have 3 failed nodes. Rescue DAG hasn't been generated yet. So, it's still running.
Completed the functionality of auto-restart partitioning workflow. I have tested this new functionality at BU_ATLAS_Tier2.
Installed all software components required for submitting Condor-g scripts to OSG on validation test bed. Installed and began testing latest LIGO Workflow Planner app from cvs and reported bugs found to Michael Samidi.
Installed VDS 1.4.7 nightly release of 9/29 on LIGO-CIT-ITB cluster and tested in preparation of a release of VDS to the VDT team.
Began a test matrix using a small set of partitions to determine the readiness of OSG production sites to execute HIPE.
Working with the VDS development team, received a new partitioning method for controlling the number of DAG nodes of a particular type that are allocated to a partition. Will test this method with Michael Samidi soon.
Attended a meeting with Frank Wuerthwein, Kent Blackburn Ewa Deelman on milestones and methods related to OSG extensions.
Determined that Oklahoma University OSG site has not installed Terrence Martin's wrapper script so no testing of NFS-Lite occurred at OU.
Attended VDT, ITB, VDS and Storage-TG telecoms.
Rejean J Dupuis [rejean@ligo.caltech.edu]
Stefan Ballmer
[sballmer@ligo.caltech.edu]
In response to the review committee's wish I reran the stochastic radiometer code for S4 data with different way of mitigating the S4 timing transient.
Igor Yakushin
[igor@ligo-la.caltech.edu]
Shourov Keith Chatterji
[shourov@ligo.caltech.edu]
Gregory Mendell
[gmendell@ligo-wa.caltech.edu]
Examples of the type of spectrograms Rejean Dupuis and I are working to automate are shown in this elog:
These show a spectrograms of calibrated H2 DARM_ERR, from one week of SFTs, and shows noise around 93 Hz and 140 Hz started on Tuesday Sept. 26, 2006.
Otherwise, I am also continuing work on the S4 PowerFlux, StackSlide, and Hough paper.
>From: wallace <wallace_l@ligo.caltech.edu>
All of the bison parser code in LDAS has been modified to use the C++ class framework provided with the latest version of Bison. Debugging of these parses continues and should be done by the end of next week. The reason for the move is to have the parsers be re-entrant within the heavily threaded environment of LDAS.
A spin loop in the managerAPI has been tracked down to the use of the -async option on command sockets. The effects of its removal are currently being studied and will be part of this week's System Tests.
System testing of LDAS was done using version 1.8.319 of the code. Only the lsync test had issues. After putting in some debugging statements, the test passed which may indicate a latency issue. Also tested dataflow 7.1 from the ligotools package for compatibility with dmt.
Released to the DASWG community version 1.8.319 of the frameCPP RPM. This release was made to allow the building of the DMT offline tool using only RPMs.
(Erik Espinoza)
(Stuart Anderson)
(Fred Donivan)
(Igor Yakushin)
(Dwayne Giardina)
(Greg Mendell)
(Ben Johnson)
(Fred)
(Dwayne)
(
(Christine)
(Mike)
(Christian)
(Veronica)
(Bruce Sears)
Preparation of documentation for iLog administration and maintenance.
Cleaning up of installations at LLO and LHO to avoid maintenance confusion in the future.
(Larry)
From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu
From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu
On vacation, Bruce
reporting…
From: Bruce Sears bsears@ligo.caltech.edu
No report this week. Osamu is currently doing scimon duty at LLO.
Using a operator R(n,t) which has been complete already, the modal model EM field is being expressed in mathematica with the time dependent. So far, these expressions were not functions of time. When it finishes, the approximated fields itself can be validated.
Bruce - Continuing work at implementing user defined primitive nodes for the modeler. Alfi can now read and write these objects into box files, and Bruce is working on the modeler parser to enable it to read these objects as well. (4.5 days)
Melody - Support for modeler end user troubleshooting- problems using the build scripts in callisto. It turned out to be a result of a bad file system mount which was invoking a bad interpreter (/bin/sh) (0.5 days).
E2e modeling (Kinchen, Quave and Yoshida): We made some progress in the e2e modeling of the effect of reaction from mode cleaner triple suspension to the HAM-SAS table. Our new calculation on "the Triple Sus (based on Mark's SS) plus Valerio's IP (HAM-SAS horizontal model)" with a higher frequency resolution is much similar to the Valerio’s Matlab calculation (than our previous result with a lower frequency resolution). There is still slight difference in the detailed shape of the spectrum of the table displacement, but the similarity between our result and Valerio’s result indicates that our model seems to be correct. We are planning to repeat the calculation with further higher frequency resolution for confirmation.
We also started e2e calculation using "the Triple Sus (based on Mark's SS) plus Valerio's IP (HAM-SAS horizontal model)" with local damping actuation force fed back to the third mass (optic). Thus in this computation, the local damping actuation force was fed back to the HAM-SAS model as part of the reaction force (in addition to the above-mentioned reaction from the pendulum to the table through the suspension point). We used a very simple local damping filter for this computation, which damped the 0.7 Hz peak completely and lowered the 1.5 Hz and 2.7 Hz peaks when we ran the triple sus model alone. However, our preliminary calculation indicates that when the same triple SUS model is placed on the HAM-SAS horizontal model, the system becomes unstable for some unknown reason. Valerio is planning to reproduce this computation with his simulink model (using the same state space matrices for the HAM-SAS and triple SUS models) to see if any instability can result from the combination of the HAM-SAS model and the triple SUS model with the local damping on.
The result of our e2e calculation on the vertical HAM-SAS is quite different from Valerio's result in the frequency domain, although our model is based on the state space matrix created by the Valerio's model. We injected white noise to the base of our HAM-SAS model and computed the table motions in translational motion in z (vertical), rotational motions around x and y axes (the x and Y axes are horizontal). In all these three degrees of freedom, the table-motions time series show instability. The problem is curently being investigated by Valerio. This calculation was made without placing the triple suspension on the HAM-SAS table.
Bruce - No work on Alfi this week.
Melody - Continuing in graphichal implemention to enable Alfi users to create the new User Defined Primitive objects. (4.5 days)
From: Ken Mason <kmason@ligo.mit.edu>
A request for bid has been sent to four companies for the design and fabrication of the HAM single stage seismic isolation system. A teleconference will be held on Monday October 10th to review the design requirements and reference material supplied.
All the actuators and position sensors have been installed and are working. Richard Mittleman has started the modal testing, system identification, and system characterization.
From: "Joseph A.
Giaime" jgiaime@ligo.phys.lsu.edu
Agenda for the weekly SEI
telecom
Friday, Sept 22, 2:00 pm
Eastern, 1:00 pm Central, 11:00 am Pacific time
Announcements
HAM prototype progress
BSC prototype progress
Feedforward at Stanford
From: Dennis
Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu
1) Fabrication status
90% in cleaning, bottom of spring box held to try fit to new parts
clean room is ready
parts will soon arrive back at G&M from Soldi
large oven is schedule pacing item: waiting for insulation from Milano for the oven -- the electrical parts are proceeding
will set up a small kitchen oven with stainless steel box for small parts heating -- box will have argon flowing through it
Ric will travel to G&M this Thu for a 3 week plus visit, newly added parts (springs to compensate for tip/tilt instability and UHV compatible LVDT mounts) expected by this weekend -- will check for fit & then send for cleaning early next week, FTIR monitoring & check-out to begin next week when Ric is at G&M, Ric to work on coils (wind & apply/cure polyimide paint) next week, focus will be on QA at Soldi for cleanliness over the next few weeks, estimate 6 weeks to complete assembly & be ready for shipment to LASTI
cart shipped from G&M to LASTI not yet arrived at LASTI (stuck in customs?)
lift table belt was found to be inadequate for the load -- will replace with lead screw drives (lower priority than getting the parts into cleaning at Soldi)
2) LASTI test plan
installed scissors tables on y-end HAM, but without the air
bearings. Ken is concerned that we will need the air bearings in order to
relieve the stress induced in the support structure as the floor tilts. The expectation
is that the scissors tables will require vertical adjustment of about 1 mm
after pump down to maintain levelness of the support tubes (and hence the base
of the HAM-SAS system). Do we need air bearings due to the compliance of the
LASTI floor?
ordered equipment for the long term drift measurements
3) electronics
final system interconnect drawing has been completed
specialty in-vacuum cabling RFQ was placed with Accuglass -- waiting to hear back on price & schedule, If the cabling is not available in time for the final clean assembly at G&M, then will use a standard 9-pin in-vacuum cable to test each coil at G&M & put final cable on system at LASTI
Guralp interface is next to work on, with 'static' (unswitched or ever-present) whitening, 3-4 wks could be ready to deliver electronics to LASTI, except LVDT electronics
LVDT electronics prototype is working fine, but need to check distribution of the oscillator -- board quality poor, have asked for Orcad5 files from the company -- intent is for Ben to re-layout the bds
4) simulation
Valerio is working with E2E group on coupling state-space models (HAM-SAS plus MC Triple SUS) -- step response, time domain simulation seems incorrect -- being debugged/investigated now
Valerio & Virginio's intent is to also use simulink to couple these two state-space models
Casi completed a finite element model of the triple SUS (using I-Deas based on the approach Dennis used for the quad) -- compare reasonably well with the experimental results. Not yet coupled to the HAM-SAS finite element model
Dave O. points out that the angular instability (tip/tilt) observed at G&M by Ric for the optical table with high center of mass [which is now corrected with horizontal springs added by Ric & Virginio] is the result of non-linearities in the springs. He is concerned that the present models don't include this geometric nonlinear effect. Dennis thinks that the models do include this effect, but perturbations from perfect alignment must be included to invoke the nonlinearity -- should be checked.
From: Ben Abbott
<abbott_b@ligo.caltech.edu>
HAM-SAS
I have redone the Coil Driver Interface schematic and PCB. I designed
the LVDT Interface, and am in the middle of designing the Guralp
Interface schematic. I am incorporating the whitening shape that was
suggested by David Ottoway, namely a DC gain of 200,
a zero at 10Hz, and a pole at 50Hz. I should be done with this module
shortly. After that, there is only an ADC Interface board to whip
together, then I can start the re-design of the LVDT
Driver from
I got a quote from Accuglass for the in-vac cables, but it seems a bit high. I'm going to consult with some people, and talk to Accuglass to figure out why that might be.
ISI
The new GS-13 board was sent out, and should be arriving from PCB Express any time now. When it is, it will be stuffed and attached to 26" cables for ISI.
From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu
Working on LASTI schedule for noise prototype work.
There is an OMC meeting this morning.
From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu
I received the final suspension and support frame dimensions from Ian, there are two feature changes in his support frame that we need to work out to allow enough clearance to pass thru the BSC opening. The CES shop has completed most of the parts for the basic arm. The fixture lift table for LASTI is at CES for re-assembly. I'm working on the lift assembly frame for the suspension.
The five-axis fixture is in the clean area in the synchrotron room, and is being re-assembled with stainless hardware, to prepare for a test fit to the arm.
From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu
Besides ongoing PI analysis:
In the last couple of weeks we (Liyuan Z. conducting the measurements) have realized very interesting new results on LIGO I HR mirror surface scatter/loss. Recall that the ongoing puzzle concerning HR scatter has been that, although observations at the sites indicate that point [defect] scatter appears to dominate the total loss, direct surface scans in our lab did not appear to show such a dominant "point" scattering component. However these scans have been somewhat intermittant (we started them ~1.5 years ago, but then this was interupted by the "crash" program to analyze surface absorption wrt the LHO removed ITM). The key concept was to compare scatter measuring scans under identical conditions except for variation of the probe beam diameter. This should probe and "granularity" in the surface. Easier said than done! Finally we have had good, comparable, scans where the incident beam diameter varees a factor 5 (25 in probed area). And indeed we see significant differences in the scatter distributions. I am still working on fitting a good model to these results, but the following seems clear. A strong, characteristic, probe beam diameter effect exists on all samples (including small superpolished "standard" mirrors which have much lower loss than LIGO I TMs). This indicates that, all along, we have been observing scatter which is dominated by point scattering. The background "micro-roughness" scatter has hardly been measured, and not resolved since we have not been able to go to sufficiently small probe diameters. Since this has come now as somewhat of a paradigm shift, a lot of checking and extension work needs to be done to confirm the picture. For instance our "calibration" of surface loss in terms of observed scatter intensity, needs to be reconsidered. Until now we have relied on the absolute loss of vacuum cavities, the mirrors of which are then scanned in our surface apparatus. However the "probe" spot size in these cavities is large (>/= to the largest incident probe diameter we scan with). Hence the "calibration" is probe diameter dependent in a way we have not at all taken account of. Further we will be reviewing our previous studies (back to LIGO I path finder !) of surface "micro-roughness." There seems to be a puzzle here since all those studies appeared not to indicate any anomalous "point" component (and they "micro" profiled the surface with a resolution that should have distinguished a high "point" density). On the other hand most of those studies were on bare substrates (and it is the coating that is highly suspect for our TMs). But not all: there were witness sample cavity ring-downs, and some coated surface "micro-roughness" determinations. We will examine details like the patch size scanned (for micro-roughness), the probe wavelength, and the sampling methods (e.g were any "point" contaminated scans "thrown out" ?).
From: GariLynn Billingsley
Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu
From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu
CSIRO (as reported by Mark Gross)
1. They have carried out some experiments to get a TaTiO film close to the LMA/Virgo mixture of ~15% TiO in TaO.
2. For the Glasgow experiments: they have deposited SiO2 (measured at 1 micron +/- 1%) onto 1xSi and 1xSiO2 diving board (both survived, although rather bent due to the film stress) and have annealed these together with one uncoated version of each at 600C for 24 hours (still bent, but less so).
The SiO2 sample has a little roughness near the root of the cantilever and there is also a slight non-uniformity of the coating on the Si sample, again near the root of the cantilever, due to shadowing by the fixtures. They have modified the fixture a little so that this should be less on subsequent samples. There is also a very thin deposit evident around the edges of the rear of the Si sample due to back-sputtering from the fixture and chamber surrounds (there is, no doubt, a similar effect on the SiO2 sample, but of course it cannot be seen). They made modifications to the fixtures to minimize this as well, but given the shape of these parts it may not be possible to completely prevent this effect. As they did not clean the samples very vigorously there is some staining on the Si samples that became evident only after annealing.
LMA
Made a coating run with best doped Ta on a thin and a thick substrate to measure optical absorption. The results seems promising : absorption=0.7 ppm and scattering = 2.6 ppm for thick substrate. The parts were shipped to MIT and Glasgow respectively.
From: Michael Smith
<smith@ligo.caltech.edu>
I have completed the conceptual design requirements document for the AOS OPTLEV & VIEWPORTS subsystems. It will be submitted to the DCC in the next day or so, T060232-00.
From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu
LASTI Squeezing Experiment
AdL ISI
Ham Sas (Ben)
I have redone the Coil Driver Interface
schematic and PCB. I designed the LVDT Interface, and am in the middle of
designing the Guralp Interface schematic. I am
incorporating the whitening shape that was suggested by David Ottoway, namely a DC gain of 200, a zero at 10Hz, and a
pole at 50Hz. I should be done with this module shortly. After
that, there is only an ADC Interface board to whip together, then
I can start the re-design of the LVDT Driver from
ISC (Rich)
For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini or Phil Lindquist