Weekly Report for Week Ending December 21, 2006


LSC

Administration

Hanford Observatory

Livingston Observatory

Optical & Mechanical

Controls and Data Systems

40 Meter Facility

TNI

LASTI

CIT Science Group

Laboratory Computing

Adv. LIGO Development

Past Weekly Reports


Special Announcements: There will be no LIGO Executive Committee on Monday, December 25, 2006 or Monday, January 1, 2007 due to the holidays. 
The next meeting will be scheduled Monday, January 8, 2007. 
Happy New Year!

Weekly Report Highlights: The HAM-SAS prototype shipped from Galli & Morelli and is awaiting customs processing at Logan Airport!

HAM-SAS construction report with lots of photos & details (5+MB)


LSC Issues (Saulson)

The LSC is gearing up for an election for Spokesperson early in the new year. The Elections and Membership Committee (chaired by Norna Robertson) has sought nominations, and is assembling a slate. Peter Saulson has announced that he will not stand for re-election.

There will be a (telephone) meeting on 11 January of the LSC Council to consider the LIGO-Virgo MOU. A vote on the MOU is planned for that meeting.


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

MOUs that have been approved and signed off by all concerned, and will be submitted to DCC after the holidays are:

MOU

Attachments

CaRT

ACF, DAT, OPT, Z

Hobart

OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z

Loyola

DAT, OPS, Z

Michigan

DAT, OPS, OUT, Z

Oregon

DAT, OPS, Z

Southern

OPT, OUT, Z

Syracuse

DAT, OPS, OUT, Z

WashingtonS

DAT, OPS, Z

From the 1st group sent out for final approval by the PI and approved by Peter Saulson and Jay Marx are GEO, IUCAA and TexasB (I suspect that I will receive confirmation from them after the holidays).

Trinity and Wisconsin have been received, but will probably not get process until after the holidays.

Wishing all of you and your families a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!


PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

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

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)

>From: "Funaro, Catherine" <Catherine.Funaro@caltech.edu>

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

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

Document Management System (Lindquist)

I noted last week that the effort to implement the FileHold document management system has been put on hold (abandoned for now).  We are initiating a review of the requirements that we developed for the FileHold system in an effort to figure out a Plan B.  Albert has proposed a tiger team composed of Giaime (chair, cat-herder), Shoemaker, Coyne, Anderson, and Lindquist.  It will be my job to report progress in this weekly status report.

The team is reviewing the requirements that were established for the FileHold document management system to determine current needs and adequacy especially considering our experience with FileHold.

George Stokes and Linda Turner are assembling documentation as follows:

Some of these materials have begun to appear in my inbox, and I will distribute based on direction from the team.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

We have been notified that authorization for our funding for the first half of FY 2007 LIGO Operations has been received.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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


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)

High microseism continued through the week, with all three interferometers suffering in inspiral range in lock step (H1 - 10-14Mpc, H2 - 5.5-7Mpc).  Duty cycles were below target with H1 logging 77% and H2 higher at 82%.  Snow and freezing rain has complicated travel to and from the observatory.

Some S5 highlights from the LHO elog are bulleted below:

H1
H2

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

S5 Run (Valera Frolov)

The S5 running went smoothly this week given the seasonally high level of the micro-seismic activity. The duty factor for the week is
82% and the inspiral range was above 12 Mpc most of the time, reaching steady 14 Mpc level during the micro-seismically quiet weekend.
The TCS heating was adjusted to produce more optimal thermal compensation at 7 W operating point, which gave almost a Mpc improvement in
range. The 8.5 W operating point is still not giving us full advantage of extra laser power and will require further investigation.
There were brief disruptions of ilog and conlog operations. The ilog computer was shutting down due to a faulty power strip and
the conlog needed the file cleanup. Both problems were timely identified and proper operations was reestablished.
During the weekly maintenance the frequency control loops were adjusted to improve the stability. The excess magnetometer noise
was found to be due to the run down battery. After battery was replaced the noise largely returned to the reference level.

LIGO computing and network security (Roddy)
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Reported under General Computing, see below.

General computing and LDAS admin (Giardina)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Reported under General Computing, see below

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis & computing (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Storage/Condor/LDAS admin:
Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis:

Reported under Data Analysis activities, see below

LLO Outreach (John Thacker)

Prepared one school program and one Teacher PD program for 1st week of January
Conducted teacher PD for Tangischools MSP project on Saturday
Submitted revised budget for outreach for 2007
Distributed link to LA Public Broadcasting program on LIGO Science Education Center
Worked on Light Painting Exhibit
Conducted repair/maintenance on exhibits


Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

See Advanced LIGO


Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO


40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

# IFO commissioning, Electronics, controls, computers:

* Kirk, Valera and Sam locked the full IFO on double demod signals, and got part of the way through the common mode servo handoff.
* Kirk is finding all kinds of problems with the LSC whitening board for our DC signals. He'll take some time to fix that board up, which could make a big difference in lock acquisition.
* Osamu has taken free-swinging measurements of all the suspended optics and used Shihori's method to adjust the input matrices.
* Rana upped the oplev loop gains on ETMX by a factor 10 to see if the suspensions had a problem with having an angular loop with UGF greater than their bounce/roll mode frequencies. The BW went from ~3 to 30 Hz. The noise below 30 Hz was suppressed and even the bounce and roll modes went down in the perror/yerror signals. There was "no drama".
* Go and Osamu would like us to vent soon to install the flipper mirror for squeezed vacuum injection. We plan to do so in the first week of January. We will want to fix some clipping on the AS beam, if we can find out where it is happening. We may or may not be ready to also install new in-vac DC PD electronics. In the meantime, Osamu will work on developing a good method for locking the interferometer in a desired state with low transmitted RF power.

# DC detection:

* The front-end code for the output mode cleaner and alignment pzts has been updated to make the controls topology more flexible; the primary alteration has been the addition of ASC PZT control/excitation matrices. MEDM screens have been made/modified, foton file updated, testpoint parameter file updated, C0EDCU.ini updated, conlogger updated, autoBurt.req updated.

# Vacuum squeezing:

* Osamu built a servo in a NIM module for phase-locking the frequency-shifted subcarrier laser to the main PSL laser. Go rebuilt a RMS detector in a NIM module for noise-locking the squeeze angle.
* Go re-aligned the SHG and optimized the SHG conversion efficiency by adjusting the oven temp.
* Go reoptimized the OPO parametric gain by adjusting the crystal temperature.
* Go reoptimized the homodyne efficiency by realigning and mode-matching the LO field, and got a homodyne visibility of nearly 100%.

# Lab Infrastructure, Bake lab:

* Steve made plots of the 180-day history of the PSL, showing that the Mach Zehnder and FSS are much more stable after recent work


Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No report received

LASTI (Ottaway)

No report received

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

  ______________

Xavier Siemens

- Worked on neutron star population models, trying to turn pulsar
searches' strain vs frequency curves into more astrophysical things like
NS birthrates, ellipticities etc.

- Worked on time domain calibration: ran metric comparison code on S4
data to show the review committee
______________

Kent Blackburn

TCLGLOBUS:

Analyzed log files generated from LDAS and Globus to investigate
LDAS buffering problem. It looks like the Globus XIO never detects
the incoming data from TCP buffer. Currently reviewing the code to
understand how TclGlobus is calling Tcl_Notifier function which is
basically calling Tcl fileevent mechanism.

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT:

Currently running full HIPE with local cache at UCSD to satisfy
the first OSG milestone which requires us to use 25 slots at
UCSD continuously in one week.

Completed clustering study with 12 partitions with the clustered
factor is set to 50, 75, 100, 500 and 1000 at PSU. It is still
running at PSU with 25 and no clustering factor.

Added small enhancement into LIGO workflow preference menu to
support site validation using nano HIPE. This new feature re-
quested by David Meyers requested so he can run site validation
every night (first using ITB, then we will scale up to all OSG
production clusters). This could also be used for creating
"dummy" application client tool to verify LIGO application as
a site functional test.

OSG INTEGRATION & VALIDATION TESTBED ACTIVITIES:

Shutdown and powered up LIGO-CIT-ITB and VTB testbed systems
for power re-routing in machine room.

Replaced expired host cert on workflow planner submit host.

Reported to GOC that gridex has stopped monitoring LIGO-CIT-ITB.
Problem resolved a few days later.

David Meyers chaired this week's ITB telecom at the request of
Rob Gardner.

Installed Validation Testbed (VTB) software stack based
upon VDT 1.6.0.

Attended VTB meeting.

OSG DEVELOMENT:

Successfully tested copying gwf to/from UCSD SRM and deleting gwf
in UCSD SRM.

Wrote engineering note on using srmcp on OSG for Pegasus developer.

Diagnosed VOMS proxy problem with Michael Samidi.

Attended DASWG and OSG Troubleshooting telecoms.

______________

Gregory Mendell

I updated the StackSlideFstat.c module of the Hierarchical code in
LALapps under lalapps/src/pulsar/hough/src2 to use the new dfdot and
extraBinsFstat params. I have started testing the code to experiment
with better ways to generate a candidate list beyond using a simple
threshold or toplist.


Laboratory Computing (Anderson)


LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

The getChannels user command has been extended to supply the sample rate
of FrProcData structures that are of type TIME_SERIES (PR#2152).

The ability to set the amount of virtual memory allowed to be allocated
to a process (PR#3002) has been tested using the frameAPI. When the
value was set low, jobs aborted with the expected error of StdBadAlloc.

To prevent the frameAPI from core dumping when the C++ layer receives a
{[list]}, the TCL layer modifies the construct to be [list] (PR#3092).

The documentation describing the different compression algorithms has
been edited to describe the newly added compression modes (PR#3072). It
now has a table form with the name and a briefly description of the
compression algorithm.

Work has resumed on trying to prevent the diskcacheAPI from hanging on
file systems that are non responsive (PR#3015).

System tests of LDAS were performed using version 1.8.400 of the
software. All tests passed.

When running the DMT test with globus sockets, there are some errors
with invalid foreign keys. This is due to SeqInsert not being able to
ensure the correct order of the XML files submitted to LDAS. This
problem has not been observed when using TCL sockets.

Both of the opteron boxes are having problems with globus. The Solaris
10 based system has an openssl padding check error when reading the
certificates to authenticate a user. For the Linux based system, the
manager's memory is corrupted when trying to create a globus listening
socket.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech
-------
(Phil Ehrens)
* Ongoing upgrading of Solaris machines to Sol10u3.
* Received Sun equipment delivery to Synchrotron 215A.
* Assisted with installation of newly received Sun Equipment.
* Cleaned up several hundred expired certs from LDAS machines. At this time only ldas-cit is known to have remaining expired certs.

(Erik Espinoza)
* Made a brick of an X2200.
* Configured BIOS for 2 X2200's.
* Built LIGO FC4 DVD for install on X2200.
* Configured ldas-condor, tested with frog pool as Negotiator/Collector.
* Applied whitelists into scutulum for Larry.
* Duplicated x509 issues experienced by Duncan.
* Reported x509 cert forwarding bug to condor team.
* Requested ligosysadm mailing list access.
* Sent node config details to Murali.
* Shipped mobo back to ASA.

(Stuart Anderson)
* Helped with racking and initial testing of new 6140 RAID units.
* Helped track down a Condor bug with Local Universe support in the 6.8 series that is planned to be fixed for 6.8.4. This was causing problems with online analysis jobs and an adequate workaround has been found.

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
* The new dataserver arrived.
* Working on a script to monitor replication between sites.
* Published missing LFNs, identified by Ben, to the segment database at LLO.

(Dwayne Giardina)
* Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT, imported and labeled replacements.
* Cleanup/config changes for cluster_mon.

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
* Nothing significant to report this week: just routine work to make sure archiving and transfer of raw, RDS, and trend data is running smoothly at the observatories.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:
(Fred)
-Built/installed Nagios on tintagel.mit.edu, successfully pages my cell phone
-Installed tikiwiki and request tracker for demo for DO
-Began install of bacula

Livingston:
(Dwayne)
- fixed SEC building printer, installed a scanner
- fixed arkeia backup on baronne
- upgrade to canIt pro
- spam filter cleanup
- other usual user requests and support
LLO mail summary for 14 December - 21 December:
Rejected: 20,582 (136 containing virus)
Accepted: 2,597
Total: 23,179

(Shannon)
-Worked on some documentation (network, IDS, etc.)
-Continuing to work with Foundry on planning network hardware here.
Have some technical issues to look into, but I think I have the better
part of a plan and pricing info put together.
-Met and discussed budgetary issues.
-Purchased the upgrade license for the spam software.
-Ordered some more patch fibers to move to the new fiber trunks.
-Worked with Bernie on installing a rack and cable tray.
-Reading through some security docs.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Set up two new laptops for two of the Operators.
- Put all the computers and electrical cords in the common areas up on
the desks and tables as Terry S. is shampooing the carpets over the holiday.
- Staged all the new servers and router in the server room. Installed
some more power strips.
- Created new user and email accounts for a new Advanced LIGO
contractor. Set up a laptop for him to use.
- Getting quotes and Justification forms together for some TechMart
purchases per Ruth's request.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Worked in the server room with Larry re-routing & labeling network
cables, plus other misc. clean up work.
-This week I had a lot of work on the Primavera server. A problem came
up when adding a new user. I could not login into the server. After
trouble shooting and calls to Primavera's tech support we figured out
this was an SQL problem. When the database is being updated this is also
updating all user account information username/password which corrupted
to the Primavera server. I'm still working on coming up with a solution
on how to prevent this from happening again. I will be running some
tests later on this week with Dwight Carter.
-Trouble shot an issue with the VPN server. After setting a new user
from LHO the server seemed to reject this user's computer from
establishing a connection to Caltech. I'm still looking into this issue.
-Continued work maintaining the mail servers, and spam filters searching
for false positives.
-Other misc. user support and sysadmin tasks.

(Christian)
-Kent Blackburn- Corrupted Linux partition. Created a full backup of
Kent?s Windows partition and restored Windows using ghost and Bootmagic.
-Michael Samidi- Replaced noise CPU fan on Michael?s system.
-Rejean Durpuis- Installed Parallels with Windows XP.
-Re-imaged laptops that were returned to the loaner pull from MIT this week.
-Working on upgrading Flexml license server from windows 2000 to 2003.
-Worked on the Spam Filters with Mike and Larry.
-Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Bruce)
-iLog Maintenance: (0.5 days)
General iLog maintenance (user adds, keyword adds, systems work, etc.)

(Larry)
-Placed orders for a number of new computers for different people. Still
a few more orders need to be placed.
The computer from Monarch has been returned, we need to check it out to
see if it has been repaired, that will not take place until next year.
Wrapped up a number of different procurement issues. Mostly, getting the
documentation corrected.
Received the orders Stuart had placed with Sun and we've started
installation of that equipment.
Worked a couple of license issues. Still concerned that CIT has not
received the new licenses for some of the programs that are due to
expire at the first of the year.
-Working with PMA on a number of issues. Moving equipment for the
renovation of different offices and labs.
Also, working with them on getting the air-conditioning augmented for
the computer room and more power for room 19.
-Working with Stuart and Dan on getting the new home account server up
and running. Still some work to do but things are now progressing. We
hit a few bumps, one of them being a inode limit on file systems larger
than 1TB.
We are to a point where the disk system does look stable and I will
start moving some of the less used accounts over for more testing.
-Continue working with the DCC in getting the old system repaired and
running a little better. There are a number of items on the list that
need to be worked on.
-Working with Erik on the new mail servers. So far things are looking
positive. A number of tables and related items need to be modified
before the servers get bumped up for real-time testing.
-Assisted a number of users with different issues.
-Worked the spam filters. Still blocking a large amount of spam even
though a lot is still getting through.

(Veronica)
- LIGO: Homepage makeover. Misc. web updates.
- LSC: Database of technical papers. MOUs. Roster database update.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Advanced LIGO Systems

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Modeling and Simulation (Hiro Yamamoto)

modeling and simulation (Hiro Yamamoto)

-----------------------------------------------------------

 

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

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lock acquisition of AdLIGO will be quite hard as a result of e2e

simulation. Currently a single FP cavity is being investigated. It is

not locked in the noisy time within several minutes with the mirror

speed by 1e-6m/s, and it can be locked in the quiet time within 3-10

fringe with the mirror speed by 2e-7m/s. Mirror speed is limited by

micro seismic noise around 0.2-0.3Hz where suspension or SEI won't help

any more. I recommend to have the SPI to reduce micro seismic noise by

factor 10 or something. For the single arm, it should be locked in the

first fringe at least from the 40m experience. Otherwise, lock

acquisition of DRMI + 2arms will be really difficult.  Other idea is to

improve lock acquisition algorithm to accept faster mirror motion, but

it has already clever algorithm. Too much improvement cannot be expected.

 

Static IFO simulation (Hiro)

-------------------------------------

Calculated the effect of the BS size, and found some inconsistent result with Mike's report (T050066).

 

Fast simulation of Dual Recycled Michelson Cavity  (Hiro, Keiko)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keiko's stay at Caltech is coming close to the end, and she is write a LIGO note to summarize the calculation to speed up the modal model based field evolution in the time domain.

 

Modeler - e2e simulation engine (Hiro, Bruce, Melody)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Melody:  Working to resolve issues regarding the appropriate software copyright

  to be included in the e2e code.

 

Bruce : - Continuing implementation of user defined primitives and

 creating a common superclass for both these and FUNC_X

 primitives (PR 550 continuing.)

 

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew continued advanced LIGO HAM-SAS analysis, providing ground yaw motion to HAM-SAS IP model and placing advanced LIGO triple suspension model on the HAM-SAS model.  He computed the optic's yaw motion.  The result is being analyzed

 

ALFI : e2e front end (Melody, Bruce)

-------------------------------------------------

 Testing java version 5 in the Linux machines (using dubhe as the

  server) with ALFI version 6.5.1

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

*AdvLigo:*

 

*CDS Infrastructure*: (Rolf)

- Next schedule item: CDS infrastructure design requirements and

conceptual design - Docs by Jan. 15 for Feb. review.

    - Working on requirements document. As part of this doc, had hoped

to get a better definition of signals/chamber to work out some

electronics positioning and total channel counts, but the optical layout

still seems in too much of a state of flux to get much better than my

last count in August. I will do some more checking around after the holiday.

    - There were some problems reported with delays through the

prototype front end systems on the Lasti squeezing experiment ie ADC

input to DAC output delays in excess of 100usec. We repeated tests here

and came up with a delay of 14usec, same as we previously measured.

However, we could reproduce longer delays if the timing clocks feeding

the ADC/DAC modules were not phased properly. The present prototype

timing unit does not allow for phase/polarity selection, so we will want

a couple of additions in later designs. One, is a phase/polarity

selection jumper. Secondly, ADC/DAC units typically want a timing pulse

of short duration, as opposed to a bipolar clock, so we will want to

change that as well. In the meantime, we are making up two types of

timing cable, straight throughs and flipped, to get the polarity/phase

we want.

    - Alex is continuing work on our automatic code generator. At

present, we only support Simulink subsystems one level deep. He is

working the software to allow our system to detect and produce code from

Simulink files with multiple nested subsystems.

 

*PSL*: (Rolf)

- Next schedule item: PSL controls for the ELigo laser install at

Caltech - May

    - Met with Peter King and Rana today to discuss status. Peter will

provide a signal list and we will have another meeting Jan. 4 to discuss

how we can incorporate this into the existing PSL controls at the sites

for ELigo. We will further discuss how to provide a control system at

Caltech in the lab for testing.

 

*HAM SAS:* (Ben)

- Next schedule item: Continued controls install at Lasti: 15Jan through

26 Jan

- Remaining components being fabbed/tested, quantities in parens

(#required + #spare):

    - LVDT Driver (2 + 1): 1 being tested, 1 ready for test, one

stuffed, but needs boxing and testing

    -QPD Whitening (2 + 1) - 2 Installed, 1 here, needs testing and boxing.

    -QPDs (4 + 1) - 5 in hand, need testing.

    -Guralps Interface (1 + 1) - 1 tested, 1 built but untested.

    -Coil Driver (4 + 1) - 3 modified and Installed, 2 waiting for new

front panel (any day) and modification (~2hrs work)

    -In-Vac Breakout boards (2) Arriving 1st week in January, Connectors

ordered, due in 30 days, but I may score some samples on short

turn-aroundIn-vac machining-work due 1st week in January.

    -Stepper Motor Driver (4) - All due to ship 1st week of January.

    -In-Vac Accuglass cables- All 13 due to ship early January

    -Stepper Motor Drivers - All 4 due 1st week in January

    -Guralps cables - Specialty cables from Guralps Instruments Ordered

12/21 quoted a 30 day lead, but they'll "see what they can do".

 

*ISI:* (Ben)

- Next schedule item: Prototype controls installation at Lasti:

(March/April)

- Units in production:

    -ISI Interface - (3 + 1) I have begun the design process, and spoken

with Brian Lantz about the filtration, gain and whitening needed.  I'll

start to draw a schematic as time permits.

    -GS-13 Boards - (many) 15 boards came back from PCB Express.

They'll get stuffed sometime soon, and delivered sometime thereafter.

    -Coil Driver - (3 + 1) (Information furnished by Mohana) - The Coil

Driver board is due back from the PCB Express on Friday.  The interface

board has been ordered yesterday. The final version of the Coil Driver

chassis metal work has been given to the Hamilton . I am working on the

bill of materials and ordering the parts.

 

*OMC:* (Jay,Ben,Rich,Rolf)

- Next schedule item: Controls to support in air, suspended OMC testing

at Caltech: February

    - I have been tasked to revisit the ELigo controls costs for the

OMC. As part of this, Jay has produced a block diagram of all the

electronics required to support the ISC, SEI and SUS components of the

OMC. I will add to this the CDS infrastructure items, such as timing, DC

power, etc. I am hoping to have a more or less complete picture and

resulting cost estimate by early Jan.

 

*40m Lab:*

- Next schedule item: Controls to support new alignment system: 15Jan07.

    - Alex has produced a baseline Simulink file and added software to

our system to support the new functions required.

    - We will provide the controls hardware out of our development

system here to meet the short time schedule and order replacements. The

only key item we may not have is the Anti-aliasing chassis (I need to

check with Jay).

 

- For the present OMC system, Ben has finished the new DCPD schematic

and pcb layout.  He is waiting for feedback on the schematic that was

sent out to interested 40m people.

Seismic Isolation

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

HAM-SAS:
Custom Electronics chassis: (# needed + #spares)
-LVDT Driver (2 + 1) -1 being tested, 1 ready for test, one stuffed, but needs boxing and testing
-LVDT Interface (2) Installed
-Stepper Motor Interface (2 + 1)  - Installed
-Coil Driver Interface (1) - Installed
-QPD Whitening (2 + 1) - 2 Installed, 1 here, needs testing and boxing.
-QPDs (4 + 1) - 5 in hand, need testing.
-Guralps Interface (1 + 1) - 1 tested, 1 built but untested.
-AA Interface Rev 4 (1) - Installed
-AA Interface Rev B5 (1) - Installed
-AI Interface Rev 3 (1) - Installed
-Coil Driver (4 + 1) - 3 modified and Installed, 2 waiting for new front panel (any day) and modification (~2hrs work)
-In-Vac Breakout boards (2) Arriving 1st week in January, Connectors ordered, due in 30 days, but I may score some samples on short turn-around.  In-vac machining-work due 1st week in January.

Commercial Electronics:
-Opteron Processor (1) - Installed
-Stepper Motor Driver (4) - All due to ship 1st week of January.
-I/O Chassis (1) - Installed
-Power Supplies (2) - Installed

Miscellaneous:
-In-Vac Accuglass cables- All 13 due to ship early January
-Stepper Motor Drivers - All 4 due 1st week in January
-Guralps cables - Specialty cables from Guralps Instruments Ordered 12/21 quoted a 30 day lead, but they'll "see what they can do".

ISI:
-ISI Interface - (3 + 1) I have begun the design process, and spoken with Brian Lantz about the filtration, gain and whitening needed.  I'll start to draw a schematic as time permits.
-GS-13 Boards - (many) 15 boards came back from PCB Express.  They'll get stuffed sometime soon, and delivered sometime thereafter.
-Coil Driver - (3 + 1) (Information furnished by Mohana) - The Coil Driver board is due back from the PCB Express on Friday.  The interface board has been ordered yesterday. The final version of the Coil Driver chassis metal work has been given to the Hamilton . I am working on the bill of materials and ordering the parts.

Suspensions

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

 

ALUK held its latest Project Management Committee on 15th December 2006 (See LIGO-M060329-00-K).

 

A brief activity summary follows:

 

RAL: Work was continuing to focus on getting parts for the noise prototype. Some parts had arrived and the residue were expected by the end of the year with the notable exception of the structures. The manufacturer had experienced problems making the sample welds to a sufficient standard and the weld preparation details were being modified. It looked likely that there would be a slip on the March 9th date for the noise prototype at LASTI. The laser for the welding machine had arrived at LASTI. The personnel safety risk assessment requested at PDR#3 had been started with a visit to Glasgow by the RAL safety officer. Beamsplitter suspension design proposals had been discussed within the community and a trial structure was being built for frequency testing.

Glasgow : Handover of CAC’s roles now complete; CAC had been thanked for an excellent contribution during her time at Glasgow . The laser was now behaving stably and work had begun in earnest on pulling well-controlled ribbons.

Birmingham/Strathclyde: OSEM parts being made. System for testing IR LEDs being procured. Satellite box (PD signal amplifier) nearing completion – expected before end of year. Breadboard systems successfully tested and good agreement with simulation obtained.. Coil amplifier design work started. Contractors identified for PCB production. Work in hand to look for a way to further improve noise performance by minor changes to transmitter housing design.

Overall: still aiming to have the noise prototype at LASTI in early March but accepting that there was likely to be a slip.

 

From: Janeen Romie <janeen@ligo-la.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO

Participated in the Enhanced LIGO/Advanced LIGO output mode cleaner (OMC) review last Thursday. Decision has been reached to add lower blades and remove the eddy current dampers. Working this week on OMC top assembly. Helena and Bob Taylor searched for the spare input mode cleaner blades at Caltech, and it seems Bob's found some. Chris confirmed that there is spare blade material for fabrication of additional ones if needed.

 

Participated in a suspension schedule meeting with Carol and Dwight last week.

 

Coordinating with Carol, Jay and Florence , submitted the request for a fab account for OMC parts.

 

Submitted review comments on the earthquake stop prototypes to Dennis after discussion with Doug.

 

Coordinating with Stuart Aston and Dennis on clean and bake procedures for the osems he's sending for the OMC & noise quad.

 

From: k mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

 

The CES shop is continuing work on the LASTI installation tooling.

I have been working on the last details of the support frames, and with CES on the assembly.

I've completed a preliminary design layout for a suspended cavity, and cone beam dumps for Mike Smith.

ken

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

 

 

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

 

General Optics was to have delivered our LASTI test mass as of Dec. 19th.  They are anticipating a ship date of 2/28/07, more than 50% schedule slip.  We have a very good history with General optics, Ed Jasnow and I will be visiting them in January to discover what went wrong and why we were not informed.  This is a critical path item for the LASTI noise prototype.  On the bright side; LMA will be ready to coat the optic in early January.

 

LASTI Compensation plate polishing request for quote went out Dec 15th to nine companies.  One has responded with a no-bid.

The compensation plate requirements can be found as follows:

Material requirements (if we supply glass, this is what it will be.  If the vendor supplies the glass it needs to meet or exceed these requirements):

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/E/E060273-A/E060273-A.pdf Fused Silica Blank, LASTI compensation plate

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/D/D060527-A.pdf Fused Silica Blank, LASTI compensation plate

Polishing requirements:

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/E/E060274-A/E060274-A.pdf Fused Silica Substrate, LASTI compensation plate

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/D/D060534-A.pdf Thermal compensation plate

nb. this design is valid for LASTI only, the final CP may have different wedge, and will certainly have more stringent polishing requirements.  It's loss in LASTI is insignificant, so we are taking advantage of that and saving some money on the polish.

 

Thanks to Linda Turner for a quick turn-around in posting the documents to DCC for web access by our vendors.

 

Of the Ten companies solicited for the Pathfinder polishing RFP, all have acknowledged receipt of the documents.  One company, Goodrich, has informed us of a decision not to bid.

 

Thanks to Hiro for some modeling work on the Beamsplitter that suggests we may not need the 370mm diameter piece that we had planned on, a 340 piece is being modeled, the commonality would be a boon for us.

 

We now have an Electro Static Drive on the Compensation plate, Hiro is considering what aperture we can stand in that location along with the BS analysis.

 

Hiro has also looked at the temperature dependence of AR coating reflectivity and found that it should not be a problem over the anticipated thermal ranges of Advanced LIGO.

 

News that the BS and ITM need a wedge of 2° each came as a surprise at the last COC meeting.  Mike Smith is trying to find a solution where we can minimize this.  The problem is worse for the ITM, which has such stringent polishing requirements, a 2° wedge creates an off-center CG, which induces asymmetry in the polish.

 

Dave Ottaway and Phil Willems hope to get some time on H1 and L1 respectively to do more characterization of the optical absorption on the ITMs.  This is a particularly troubling problem for Advanced LIGO.  If it is real (which the measurements will help confirm) we need to find the source of the contamination.

 

 

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

 

Advanced LIGO

 

1) ERGO Arm

ERGO arm modification:

The face plate is done, except for the o-ring groove. The plate will have to be sent out, because the o-ring dia. is to big for Mike Gerfen's  n.c. mill.

Small ERGO arm:

A smaller ERGO arm is being manufactured to be able to be manipulated around the metrology labs; at the same time a detail print of both arms is being generated.

 

2) The mirror carrier box is about 3/4 done.

 

3) A mock up SUS structure is complete and it will be used to develop "in situ" mirror cleaning techniques.

 

4) The Adv. LIGO - Penultimate mass ESD mask is at the EDM shop, and will be back by the first of the year. after that it will go back to the lapper.

 

Adv. LIGO Coatings - CSIRO

1) Samples coated with Ti doped Ta were delivered to Andri Gretarson, Sheila Rowan and Stanford.

Ashot Markosian at Stanford has measured the absorption loss at some points on the witness plate and they all seem to be less than 0.5 ppm

This film contains about 10-20% of TiO in TaO although for some reason this has been difficult to work out accurately using XPS.

 

2. CSIRO received  two 1" witness samples to be coated with gold and to do TOPO measurements before and after gold coating.

This task is part of the scatter measurement studies. CSIRO expects to complete the work sometime in January since most people in the lab are now on Holiday and summer vacations.

 

LMA

LMA will be ready by mid January to coat the LASTI test mass.

 

Once again, both coaters are planning a visit to Caltech by the end of January. CSIRO plans to be in Pasadena on January 30th; JMM will try to be here at the same time.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

 

SLC

The cryopump baffle will be suspended inside the spool piece and will be damped with Eddy-current damping, to reduce the excessive scattered light noise caused by the large horizontal motion of the spool piece (the horizontal motion measured by Robert Schofield at the manifold will be is assumed to be the same as the spool piece).

 

The Stray Light Control (CLC) Conceptual Design Requirements document T060263-00 is complete and is being circulated to the AOS group for comments.

 

 

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

 

Absorption in Livingston ITMs:

Analysis of the data collected by Sam Waldman, Valera Frolov, Dan Hoak, and

myself on the spot sizes of the IFO input beam reflected from the ITMs as they

cool down are difficult to interpret conclusively, but appear to show ~10 ppm

absorption in ITMx and <2 ppm in ITMy.  The main difficulty is due to variations

in the cooldown time constants, which could indicate corruption of the data by

thermal effects in the Faraday isolator.  This measurement should be repeated

when the opportunity arises.

 

Discussions with VIRGO:

The group headed by Eugenio Coccia at the University of Roma Tor Vergato is

undertaking thermal compensation for VIRGO.  Apparently VIRGO is at the same

state as H1 three years ago- overheating much more than expected, with the RF

sideband gain in the recycling cavity becoming uselessly small at high laser

powerAlessio Rocchi and Viviana Fafone visited from Rome to learn more about

how we do TCS, and to show us their very nice technique for measuring

absorption, which tracks the changes in the ITM acoustic frequencies as the ITM

temperature changes.  They get clear measurements of the absorption in this way,

with the hassles of telescopes and thermal effects in the Faraday isolators that

we have.  I understand we tried and dropped this idea early on, but perhaps we

should revisit it.

 

CP design:

We recently recognized that there will be significant thermal interaction

between the CP and ITM-in essence, the compensated CP radiates heat onto the

ITM.  This has us investigating thermal insulation of the barrel of the test

mass and making the CP thicker to make the resulting thermal lens minimal.  As a

result, the baseline CP design is a thick as the reaction mass on the ETM.  So,

it appears now to be a practical matter to put an electrostatic drive on the CP

and have wide bandwidth global control of the ITM.  This is likely to become

part of the CP design.

 

The optical layout of the ghost beams of the interferometer will require the CP

faces to have a significant angle to the IFO beam so as to prevent parasitic

etalons from forming in the recycling cavities.  This means that the

Fizeau-style WLISMI thermal compensation sensor proposed by the IAP group in

Russia will not have two separate wavefronts to interfere against one another

for thermal lens measurement.  This sensor could compare two wavefronts both

taken from the HR face of the ITM, but this seems much less elegant than using a

Hartmann sensor for the same purpose.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>

    The experiments on germanium photodiodes have results different to

those obtained at the AEI.  I have contacted Frank Siefert to ask what Ge

photodiodes he used and under what conditions.  Results from the AEI

suggest that Ge diodes are somewhat noisier than InGaAs or Si photodiodes.

 

    I still have not made any progress with the Beckhoff interface hardware

or programming environment.  Their field engineer was apparently busy with

Justin Timberlake - who apparently uses FieldBus.

Input Optics


For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini or Phil Lindquist