Weekly Report for Week Ending May 31, 2007

Past Weekly Reports

There will be no LIGO Executive Committee scheduled Monday, June 4, 2007 because a number of key personnel will be involved in or traveling to other meetings.

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Reitze)

  • The second joint LSC-Virgo meeting (and the first to be hosted by Virgo) was held in Cascina, Italy last week.  By all measures the meeting was a success, with approximately 130 registered participants; roughly half of the attendees came from the LSC.  Highlights of the five day meeting included a press conference to announce the beginning of the first Virgo science run and joint running with LIGO and GEO as well as a site visit to Virgo for the LSC attendees.  Meetings of the joint run planning committee and data analysis council were held to continue developing scenarios for post-S5 planning.  In addition, there were many reports from analysis groups and instrument science groups, including a report on the status of the GRB070201 search.
  • The LSC has kicked off a congressional letter writing campaign in support of Advanced LIGO.  As of this writing, approximately 25-30 letters have been sent.  Approximately 100 letters will be needed to be considered effective.  If you are reading this and haven't done so, please take the time to write.
  • Planning is underway for the next joint L-V meeting to be held at MIT on July 23-26.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

  • Working with Rolf Borke tp close and tag three Fabrication Accounts.
    1. LIGO.DAQ-3-NSFLIGO.FY02CA  LIGO.DAQ-2-NSFLIGO.FY02CA 
    2. LIGO.DAQ-1-NSFLIGO.FY02CA

Provided assistance to the Detector Group  (H. Armandula) with shipping and the preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US Customs Clearance of  eleven Fused Silica Substrates to CSIRO in Australia.  Account Number LIGO.OPT - 5.4 - NSFLIGO.FY02ON. Created a requisition for 21 linear voice coil actuators for Ken Mason @ MIT.  Account Number LIGO.HAMCH-5.9-NSFLIGO.FY02CA $203,000.00

  • Working with our broker in getting the Cylindrical Components shipment for Bob Taylor through US customs.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • Continued to process presentations from the LIGO/Virgo Collaborations Meeting. Worked on trying to identify the DCC numbers from a list of past year's publications that had no referenced document numbers.  A handful of these papers never made it into the DCC database.
  • Scanning Update - Progress continues on the scanning of all non-electronic "M" category documents.

Document Management System - Plan B (Lindquist)

I have no new information to report.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

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

  • Received the signed mod for Katherine Creath.  Inquired and responded to her inquiry pertaining to the dba name on her file. Resolved inquiries regarding tax statuses, credits for overbillings, submission of a duplicate invoice which should have been non-taxable, delivery inquiries, and order statuses.  Responded to inquiries on active encumbrances.  Requested for corrections to be made on invoices processed as invoice attached, and requested new vendors to be set up. Closed out completed purchase orders and submitted the monthly report. There are two pending p.o.'s open one of which has an outstanding invoice which has been submitted.  The second p.o. shows as unpaid, however, the vendor stated that the order has been paid. I am waiting to hear back from Payables.  The backordered item on that order had been cancelled by the vendor. Completed the modification for High Precision Devices and routed for approval. Received the updated certs for Hereaus and inquired whether a name change needs to be made to match the vendor's response. Followed up and received the signed modification for LSU.  The vendor is not submitting an A-133 for this subcontract. Waiting for the Debarment Cert from ANU to issue the order.  It is expected to be received by Monday. The request for the certs was sent to PSI.  The certs have not been submitted.  I am working on the order so that it is ready to go by the time the certs come in.
  • The order for the 4 plates has been placed.  The vendor informed me that they are still waiting for the drawings for the modified ports. He expects to receive the drawings within the next 1-2 weeks to meet Aug/Sept. '07 delivery date.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Submitted 4 new fabrication requests for Peter King.
  • Continued working on clearing up encumbrances that need to be closed.
  • Submitted requests to close fabrication accounts where work has been completed.
  • Checked on status of fabrication account requests previously submitted, approval has been delayed because Lucy Molina has been out of the office.  She indicated that she will try to get to them as soon as possible.
  • 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>

  • A contract is being prepared for Planning Systems, Inc., (PSI) for the production of the seismic isolation actuators for the HAM at LASTI.  PSI successfully built the prototype actuators, and is now being awarded the production contract for LASTI.

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

  • We received an e-mail approval of the HPD HAM-SEI contract from John Villalpando of the NSF.  As a result, the contract was FedEx'd to HPD on May 30 for their signature.  Upon its return, it will be executed here at Caltech, and a fully executed contract will be sent to them.  The NSF review resulted in a two-week slippage of the contract schedule.
  • The Caltech Office of General Counsel is continuing to work on acquiring legal representation and consultant services for LHO concerning the attempt by Northwest Wind Partners to build a wind farm near the observatory.  The current plan is to have Pamela Krueger, who served as our attorney last time from Perkins Coie, serve as a consultant, with another associate from Perkins Coie in a supporting role.  A teleconference is scheduled next week among David Flores, of OGC, Ed Jasnow, Fred Raab, and Ms. Krueger to confirm this arrangement and discuss strategy regarding the evaluation of test data generated by Northwest Wind Partners.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Trying to assemble first draft of the Continuing Operations Proposal (FTY 2009 – 13).  Our objective is to have a draft for review by the PAC by the end of next week.  An outline of the text with status and links to the text has been provided on the Operations Proposal Web page.  Please see me if you need access.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

I will put the following change requests on the agenda for a meeting of the LIGO Change Control Board as soon as possible.  This is likely to be scheduled during the week of June 11.

  • Change Request CR070004 submitted by P. Fritschel and D. Coyne requests the release of FY 2007 and FY 2008 budget to cover a priority subset of the Advanced LIGO "wish list" items.
  • Change Request CR-070005, submitted by M. Zucker, D. Ottaway, and R. Mittleman, requests funds to replace the aging main turbo pumps for the LAST facility at MIT
  • Change Request CR070006 submitted by M. Zucker modifies the budget for Advanced LIGO, Enhanced LIGO (ELI) Fabrications.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 18, 2007.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

  • I have nothing significant to report.

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

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

This week H1 ran in science mode for 93% of the time, with typical ranges of 15Mpc.  The H2 duty cycle was 84%, while inspiral ranges were more variable due to the same noise (below) observed over the last two weeks.  Typical H2 ranges were about 7Mpc.  Some loss of running time on both machines was due to high winds on Sunday evening, while commissioning hours were logged on H2 (spring compensation, below).

Some S5 highlights from the LHO elog are bulleted below:

  • summaries: Tuesday maintenance, CDS maintenance, most recent range & duty cycle weekly
    a new H1 downtime (uptime?) pie has been produced for nearly all of S5 (up to May 27 this year)... up 77% of the time, the largest impact on duty cycle is "Other" (commissioning plus miscellany).   Tuesday maintenance accounts for 2.2%. periodic H2 mystery noise continued to plague the machine, but not as frequently as previous weeks photon calibrator photodiode (and DAQ) response was found to be flat to within 1% from dc out to 300Hz
    using the full inspiral waveforms with ringdowns, a test of the blind injection mechanism was made on H2 H2 RM coil monitors glitch at times when H2 noise is high.  An electronics checkout found nothing particularly out of place, yet
  • spring compensation for future high power operations was tested on H2

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

S5 run (Antonio Lucianetti)

  • During the last week, L1 collected 75.1 percent science data. The binary inspiral range varied between 12 and 15 Mpc, depending on seismic motion.
  • On Wed May 23, Thurs May 24, and Fri May 25 we had three commissioning breaks to continue our investigations on the DC readout scheme and on the pOMC properties.  Every day except Sun May 27 and Mon May 28 (Memorial Day), during daytime, logging continued near the X-end station and caused the binary inspiral range to stay below/equal to14 Mpc.

CDS computing (Lisa Bogue)

  • worked on blind injections software.
  • began working on security planning with Dave.
  • began building a hot backup for llo1.

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

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

See Advanced LIGO

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

There will be a meeting of the 40meter Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) on June 7th at 08:30 Pacific. At Caltech, we will meet in the SCR.  All interested parties are invited.  TAC chair Ken Strain says: "Due to significant changes that have happened or are happening soon, we should try to take a long term view of the 40m plans this time round.  In particular we should look at how the tests needed for the current projects (such as DR readout, new sensing schemes) fit with longer term activities (squeezing, other configurations work).  Of course we should also have the technical updates as usual."

IFO Commissioning, Electronics, Controls, Computers

  • Tobin and Rana worked on restoring lock of the power-recycled FPMI with DC readout. They ran into a variety of snags, mostly associated with alignment (and some electronics noise from POX), so they realigned the optics and the oplevs, and are almost back to full lock; work in progress.
  • Tobin built a little contraption to measure RF oscillator amplitude noise, and took a spectrum of the relative amplitude noise of the Marconi RF generator from 100 Hz to 100 kHz; it falls from 5e-7 to 5e-8.
  • Tobin and Steve did a shootout of three different HeNe lasers, measuring their RIN for use as oplevs. The new JDSU model 1103P had the lowest RIN by far (10^-7) up to 550 Hz. Sam suggested repeating the test while swapping power supplies to see if that's responsible for the large differences in RIN between the different lasers.
  • Rana is working on retiring op140m by moving all the directories off of it; Alex will move the YP server off of it, and then it will be shut down. If it isn't missed, the box will be removed and used as spares for the computing group.
  • Bob tested the eLIGO OMC glue joints made by Sam; they all look good on the RGA, and they are now in the cavity ringdown test system. Sam will be working on the SP table to set up some OMC optics tests.
  • Rob returned from S5 shifts to find that the RGA logger was down. He restarted it, and he suspects a flaky cable or connector on the iServer, or on the ethernet hub in the EY rack.

DC Detection

  • Rob has been on S5 shift at LLO, so no progress here.

Vacuum Squeezing

  • Go is writing his thesis and preparing final draft of the squeezing-enhanced interferometer paper.

Lab Infrastructure, Bake Lab

  • We are preparing for the arrival of 5 SURF students, and making sure thare are working PCs for them.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

  • Ilaria is making good progress debugging the mode cleaner. She had tried to find the arm-cavity axes earlier without success, and we discovered that the mode cleaner was having problems and needed to be realigned before we could work with the cavities. This week, Ilaria successfully aligned the mode cleaner to lock in the TEM00 mode, with about 90% visibility.
  • Riccardo is visiting LMA and has asked them about the progress on our optimized-coating mirrors. They are still having trouble with fabrication. They have apparently found a workaround for periodic coatings, but they do not yet have a solution for aperiodic coatings.

LASTI (Mittleman)

No report

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

_________________

Gregory Mendell:

  • In the last week I responded to a long list of internal comments from the pulgroup about the S4 PowerFlux/StackSlide/Hough paper, and checked the changes into the pulgroup CVS repository.

_________________

Kent Blackburn:

OPEN SCIENCE GRID APPLICATION ACTIVITIES:

  • Organized weekly teleconference and agenda with Pegasus developersAttend weekly LIGO-Pegasus and DASWG teleconferencesContinued troubleshooting of problems running workflows for the  H(t) binary inspiral analysis on OSG sites:
    • discovered disk space issue at LIGO_CIT_ITBregenerated sites.xml and tc.data cataloguesdiscovered problem with L1 Data transfergenerated workflow using H1 and H2 data onlymodified properties file
    • checked and fixed several typos
  • H(t) binary inspiral workflow analysis:
    • modify segment files to generate workflows of different node sizemodify template bank parameters to generate workflows of different durationrun workflows an ldas-grid and LIGO_CIT_ITB
    • compare runtime and diskspace usage

OPEN SCIENCE GRID INTEGRATION TESTBED ACTIVITIES:

  • Updated several components of the Caltech ITB site.Discovered one of the reasons that binary inpiral workflows were failing early on was from filling up the temporary disk space used for staged data. Cleaned the disks space up and workflows progressed successfully beyond the first attempt to transfer data onto the ITB.
  • Tracked down subsequent problem with LLO data being transfered onto the ITB site due to all the tape drives on the CIT LDG archive being used for other activities. To resolve this worked with Britta to change workflows so that data is staged in from Penn States' archive. Tried similar staging from UWM but found that certificate's DN wasn't in all the necessary gridmap-files.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES:

  • Reviewed agenda and discussed plans for upcoming OSG meeting with new Science Advisory Committee (SAC).Continued discussion of year two planning for the OSG both for the Caltech Statement of Work and for the Resources Managers.Discuss year two science milestones to the OSG with the LSC Computer Committee to initiate discussion of some of points  raised in the email circulated by the LIGO OSG Council Person.Attended OSG Executive Board meeting.
  • Circulated announcements of the OSG Users and Applications Workshop to the LIGO-Pegasus, DASWG email lists.

_________________

Patrick Sutton:

  • Most of my available time this week was devoted to working with Siong Heng on getting X-Pipeline ready to run as a coherent follow-up test for Q pipeline in the all-sky untriggered burst search.  We succeeded in getting test X-Pipeline jobs to run following up a few Q triggers.  Also, Vicky Kalogera and I have taken over responsibility from Szabi Marka for editing the GRB07020 paper.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

  • A problem with frameCPP not properly decompressing data when the byte order of the frame file was not that of the host system has been resolved.  The battle for understanding with the diskcacheAPI dead lock continues.  The use of mdb and dtrace is being pursued.In the managerAPI, the bootstrapAPI proc has been modified to check if diskcacheAPI is down.  If so, manager can reboot it regardless.  If not, resource WAIT_FOR_API controls whether manager should hold off rebooting or not.In the genericAPI, fixed getPid to compare the first 8 chars of program name against ps results as ps only returns 8 chars for fname.
  • Performed system testing on dev 1.8.561. RDSVerify reports of frame gaps when run with /archive and /data in mount points but passed without them. lsync passed without /archive and /data.
    • rsync builds from dev to test and run in parallel with dev. ldas-test runs happily without errors with the latest build from dev and also the fixed dmt script.  But diskcache shows a leak of 10.647 KB/sec ( +/- 0.007 KB/sec ) 174.177 KB/job which is not seen on dev.
    • fixed dmt test script insertTrigsLoop.test to open pipe to SeqInsert to capture it's output for parsing.  If the job has been submitted, then send another else wait.  Due to the large set of mount points and slow job completion rate, dmt was barely running to completion and got restarted many times when there are errors resulting in invalid parent key errors.  Now dmt is more coordinated with the job processing rate of ldas.  Also modified dmt to just create SeqInsert server once instead of each loop of the test.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Continuing to verify md5sums for data on tape to detect bit rot and to allow us to relabel tapes.Confirmed that gettapes run with the right glob was getting the same metadata as when it was first run (and tapes ejected).  Waiting on Greg's gap checking to  make that this is _all_ of the data for the week.Filled in raw data (some caused by gettapes problems, others by need to rearchive data at LLO and reship due to a bad tape).Consulted with Igor on correct installation of Solaris fibre channel patches.Removed interim (IDR) fibre channel patch from ldas-cit/dataserver-cit and replaced with production patch.Worked on lag plot generation to make it easier to add/remove data sets from the graphs.  (This hasn't gone live yet.)Wrote /var/sam/virgomv to verify and move Virgo data from /archive/virgo to it's final resting place in /archive/frames.Worked with StorageTek on getting a bad 9940 replaced.Generated list of tapes for relabelling at LLO (some of them still need to be moved into the silo before then can be relabelled).Generated list of tapes for shelf storage at LLO.Did some cleanup work on our archive sets and added a new one for h(t) L1 data.Relabelled 27 L1.2 tapes at CIT.Consulted on L700 problems at LLO.
  • Did some work on LDR problems both kicking it to get it running again and generating full-update dumps for PSU.

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Helped Erik Espinoza update firmware on cluster nodes.Moved the LDAS workstation m8 from it's unused location in Bridge to the cubicle occupied by Greg McIvor.Discussed integration of the PSU Attachment X database with the MOU webforms project with Sam Finn via email.
  • Began installing pre-release version of MOU webforms project onto betelgeuse, which will be it's home under the alias "mou.ligo.caltech.edu".

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Expanded Condor spool directory on ldas-grid.Upgraded Condor on cluster to 6.8.5.Migrated cluster from nfs Condor install to local rpm install.Configured ldasadm1 for OS Committee testing w/ Ubuntu.Upgraded Cluster 3ware BIOS.Submitted ticket to condor-support for dag concatenation issue.
  • Worked with Livio to get data transfers working with Virgo.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

  • More ldap work on ligo-burst cluster; (proxy ldap, user account cleanup).
  • test/replace various disks lying around (cleaning up equipment).

Livingston(Igor Yakushin)

  • SUN analyzed core dump files left from the recent crashes of gateway and dataserver machines and confirmed that both were due to the bug 6518348 and recommended the patches that we just installed ourselves: 125184-02 and 119130-33.Ordered replacement batteries for UPS.The replication of segments from CIT to LLO is broken.During the weekend the tape robot got stuck couple times and had to be powercycled.Installed fiber channel card into the new X4600, patched it and installed QFS 4.6.
  • Running burntest on the new X4500.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Tape eject for shipment to CIT.Tracked down a list of old tapes to be reused.
  • Replaced power strips on another rack of nodes.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • All RDS and trend data is up-to-date at LHO, LLO, and CIT. I have sent a list of segments to Keith Riles to update the segment database with three new short (<=384 s) real gaps that appear in the LLO data. One is from a Tue. May 8 maintenance period, and two are from the Mon. May 14 power failure. All are due to times when both framebuilders were down.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Got price quote for node power supplies from ASA. Will order 10 today.3511-2 had a single disk failure, but is otherwise functioning ok. Sun is shipping replacement parts.ldas-pcdev1's HDD finally failed completely. It was replaced, the OS reinstalled and its package revs brought to sync with ldas-grid.
  • Continuing development of LDAS NDS server. My basic threading + job queueing model has been tested. I am currently working on the command parser.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

  • Setting up another dual boot(xp/fc6) for grad studentMonitor issues (solidworks, aspect ratios)Finished up LDAS/LATSI security reportLicensing updates(matlab 2007), solaris ldap client (tls) working
  • Listing offices/ip addresses for upcoming move; imap tweaking

Livingston

(Dwayne)

  • Installed FC6 on a laptop for Natalia, and fixed her wireless problemPatches on quagmire, created a new DB for Shannon's useCreated a GC user account for a SURF studentInstalled a UPS on a couple of computersDreamweaver issues on a user PC.  site settings had been lost, now restoredTroubleshooting lost network connection in an office yielded a hub with no powerReplaced a bad cat5 on a printerWorking on trend graphs/reports on SEC building controls PCApplied windows patches to kantech serverUsual user support requests
  • Cleared spam trap

LLO mail summary for 10 May 2007 - 17 May 2007:

Rejected:  6,507(502 containing virus)Accepted: 3,694

Total: 10,201

Hanford

(Christine)

  • Working with ESnet to design the BGP peering configuration.  Right now looks like we will be ready to test on June 5th.Purchased a new laptop and monitor for a user.Started setting up computers for the SURF students and other summer visitors.Finished installing all the matlab patches on Solaris computers and am now running Matlab 2007a as the GC default.Removed user accounts for a contractor no longer working for LIGO.Investigating apparent problems with MRTG not reporting all the bandwidth usage.
  • Configured the backup network circuit on the router.  There are link lights all the way through to ESnet in Seattle.  This will be tested when testing the BGP setup.

CIT

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Ongoing updates of the upcoming NSF and PAC meetings websites. Helped Dwight Carter with web-related and general computing issues. Finalized the LASTI installation DVD; it has been shipped to MIT. Provided a high resolution image for a print publication.  Website updates.
  • LSC:  Posted the bulk of the presentations from the last meeting. Started working on the website for the next meeting in July.  Updates of the database of technical papers.

(Christian)

  • Gina Salone- Upgraded hard drive and added additional memory on Ginašs workstation.Florence Kaufman- Installed Visio 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 8.Rod Luna- Installed Adobe Acrobat 8.Bill Tyler- Working on upgrading Billšs workstation from Windows 2000 to XP.James Covington- Installed new DVD writer.40 Meter- Computer donšt boot. Working on replacing old system with new.Continue working with the installation on WSUS clients for LIGO users.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

  • Working on upgrading 2003 server (deneb) came across many issues when trying to upgrade this server. Larry ordered some additional memory to get this upgraded and back into service.Ran NTSRV End of Month ghost backups.Additional work on a Sun box downloading packages that are needed to put this server in service. This is an on going project.
  • More work supporting new SolidWorks users.

(Larry)

  • Went through a number of purchases. Most of the misc. items and one of the workstations has arrived. Worked with Gina and group on a couple of different procurement/contract items. Need to order a couple more workstations and monitors for different groups.Worked with Mike and Christian in upgrading the memory on a couple of computers. Still waiting for new memory for one of the units. One workstation needs to be checked out, it appears to have a problem with one of the boards but will have to wait until the end-user can give up the box for a few hours.Debugged a number of web items for different people. Mostly getting the correct files in the correct locations and the correct syntax on the url's took care of most of the problems.Performed the monthly backup on the home accounts.Moved another home account over as part of the check for missed items.Setup a couple more new users accounts. Cleaned up a couple of other accounts.Continual work with the construction people and PMA on the room modifications. The air-conditioning should be finished by the end of next week.
  • Usual user support; fixing files, printers and cabling.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Static IFO simulation (Hiro)

  • Coupled cavity code is being optimized to run faster.
  • Thermal deformation code used in the code has been tested by John Miller.

Modeler : e2e simulation engine and ALFI : e2e front end (Hiro, Bruce, Melody)

  • Essentially all known issues of modeler and alfi related to UserDefinedPrimitive (matlab mex file equivalent) are addressed. Bruce and Melody are preparing examples and writing documentations.
  • Last week, Hiro revised triangular cavity code so that frequency control servo can be implement. Executables on Caltech machines are updated.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

  • Continued working on AdvLIGO e2e modeling. With the summation cavity model (called TriCav) that Hiro modified last week, the locking performance is much better. There is some uncertainty regarding the computation time step (related to the way the summation cavity model handles time derivative). We are testing this effect by running the same Mode Cleaner model with the standard e2e time step on the order of 10 micro sec and an order of magnitude smaller time step (1 micro sec).

CDS Prestabilized Laser

No report

Control and Data Systems

No report

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

  • Riccardo Desalvo took FTIR samples from the large parts cleaned at Galli & Morelli. The samples arrived at JPL and we should get the results on Friday.
  • The scaffolding which will go around the test stand has arrived at MIT and is being cleaned by Myron and Bob.
  • The ADE position sensors have returned from calibration at the factory and are being prepared for cleaning.
  • Rolf, Jay, and Alex will be coming to MIT between 6/11 -6/22 for electronics and software installation.

Single Stage HAM Isolation System

  • HPD has completed the assembly drawings, fabrication drawings, and assembly procedures. Andy Stein has been checking the drawings.  A FDR is scheduled for 6/5 to review the documentation package.
  • The purchase order to HPD for the fabrication of two systems has been approved by the NSF and will be sent to HPD soon.
  • The actuators, GS-13 seismometers, and ADE position sensors have been ordered for these systems.

From: Brian Lantz <BLantz@stanford.edu>

SEI telecon notes, Friday, May 25

HAM contract status

ˇ        verbal OK in from NSF on Thursday, written approval should be in Friday (5/25) M Zucker & K Mason putting together contract for HPD for next week.

  • table size, cutting corners? Rich Mittleman points out that it will be difficult to get the HAM doors on and off with the table corners sticking out. Dennis says (on 5/29 call with  HPD) to leave them there, because the optical layout guys have already used some of that space for dogs for various optical suspensions.

Progress on the BSC

cleaning status -

  • G&M parts scheduled to be done about now. Then we have to wait for FTIR. Riccardo will do the test.
  • Other parts coming back from Caltech to LASTI
  • new LASTI scaffolding in
  • new 16" flange with 7 x 4.5" flanges installed
  • Ben will ask Bob Taylor to test the
    • Tungsten carbide carbon (Balzers) Trade name ~balanite-B
    • Nedox (passed RGA)
    • cap sensors ??
    • actuators, 80 deg bake didn't get clean enough will rebake at ~150C?

ISI electronics -

  • Layout for ETF AA and AI board to be done today (5/25). Parts should be back next week, panels should be out today. ISI interface boards almost stuffed, will test next week
  • STS-2 interface to be stuffed next week
  • AA and AI chassis tested and ready to go.
  • MIT should already have a binary IO interface, and STS-2 board. Please check this.
  • still waiting to hear back from SRI hermetics, about the 3 pin feedthrough for drive. (this is an alternate)

pods at LLO -

  • cleaning mostly done
  • Ben will send a second readout box, all GS13s seem OK with corrected connectors.
  • STS-2 about ready for putting into pods.

Seismometry and Corner station SPI

  • seim. noise plots for ground motion still in progress
  • SPI freq noise measurements unbalanced arms 10 cm didn't see noise.
  • computer: Rich M and Brett S have worked with quack5 to fix it up. WARNING: must test filters after digitization with Matlab sometimes the digitization process returns crazy results. A bode plot is sufficient to see that it has gone wrong, or the mag/phase of a few points wrt the original continuous time version will show if the c2d process was successful. Also, must test the foton filter after installation into foton. Not sure of the best way to do this part.

Suspensions

From: k mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO

  • All  LASTI installation tooling assemblies arrived at LASTI
  • A video document was made describing the operation of each assembly and sent to Myron.
  • I finished a layout of the faraday assembly suspended in an LOS, and the pick off  telescope, for Mike Smith.
  • I'm working on the pick off mirror suspension.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

  • We (with L. Zhang) have continued pursuit of imaging the beam spot illuminated surface of HRs in air now with some success. It has been possible to cleanly see the sort of "globular cluster" pattern that is typical of the LIGO I surfaces under resonant cavity illumination. Having now established that this technique works we want to integrate it into the ongoing studies of surface scatter. Our principle background, uncontrolled at this point, is the fresh accumulation of dust on the HR surface: each recleaning of the surface results in substantially different patterns.

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

  • Four fused silica substrates have been characterized using the Fizeau interferometer at Caltech.  These substrates are to be used in an annealing study at Hobart and William Smith.  They will be mechanically characterized, then annealed then recharacterized both at H&WS and CIT

From: Liyuan Zhang <zhang_l@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • We did a scatter test for the First-Contact (FC) protection using the current integrating sphere set-up. Helena applied the FC on half of a  SPETM. A scan of 2mm (w) x 40 mm (l) crossing the FC border was done two times before and after applying the FC. By comparing the two scans, we don't see any FC  induced scatter in the systematic error range of about +- 0.5 ppm. We may do a similar absorption test in a near term future.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Phil Willems willems@ligo.caltech.edu

Photon Calibrator:

  • Stefan Hild and I reviewed his article describing the calculations and measurements of the corrections to the recoil displacment amplitude during photon calibration due to the elastic deformation of the test mass under localized photon pressure.  We generated an improved FEM of the effect that gave good agreement with both the analytical approximation of the elastic deformation and with the experimental data from GEO600.

Thermal Compensation in LIGO:

  • Tobin Fricke performed simultaneous in-loop and out-of-loop measurements of the intensity noise of our stabilized CO2 laser and found that the out-of-loop PD saw excess noise below 400 Hz, likely due to beam jitter.  The laser is not so rigidly mounted and so we are looking to improve this first.
  • While at the Virgo/LSC meeting in Cascina I learned a great deal more about how Virgo relates test mass frequency shifts (and other data like arm cavity power) to optical absorption in the test masses.  With Alessio Rocchi of the Roma Tor Vergata group I am applying the full Virgo model to LIGO test masses.

Mesa Beam Research:

  • John Miller is has calculated how the arm cavity deformations due to optical absorption would distort a mesa beam resonating in the cavity.  For absorptions above about a watt the mode shape becomes substantially non-flat-topped.  However, the thermal noise of these distorted modes is calculated to be even lower than for the undistorted mesa beam.  We are trying to independently verify this surprising result.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Wan Wu:

  • The test of the wedged crystal modulator has been finished and current measurement sensitivity is limited by the phase meter. 

ELIGO stuff:

Luke Williams:

  • Working on the in-vacuum FI layout for ELIGO

Rodica Martin:

  • Thermal lens measurements on DKDP for ELIGO

Antonio Lucianetti:

  • Measured the rotation angle for a TGG along the magnet axis of the compensated Faraday for ELIGO. The incident laser power was 1 W. The angle varied from zero to +23 degrees as the crystal was moved  along the axis. (22.5 degrees will be the amount used in the application, as there are two crystals in this design.

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