The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, June 25, 2007 will be:
(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)
1. Announcements
2. Programmatic (Marx)
NOTE: This will be a CLOSED Executive Committee Meeting focused on the Continuing Operations Budget (FY 2009 – FY 2013) and Proposed Staffing Levels. Group supervisors will be informed on the call-in instructions.
3. Comments on Weekly Report
4. LSC Issues (Reitze)
5. LIGO Lab Operations
- Administration (Lindquist)
- Sites (Raab, Giaime, Shoemaker)
- Commissioning (Fritschel)
- Optical and Mechanical (Coyne)
- Control and Data Systems (Bork)
- 40m (Weinstein)
- TNI (Libbrecht)
- LASTI (Mittleman)
- Lab computing (
Anderson
)
- Data Analysis Group (Weinstein)
- Instrument Science (Gustafson)
6. Enhancements (Zucker)
7. Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)
8. Change Control Board/Technical Review Board Session as needed
- There are no open change requests
Site and other Business Issues:
Special Items:
Special Announcements:
Weekly Report Highlights
LSC Issues (Reitze)
No report. Reitze is traveling.
LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)
>From: Rod Luna <rluna@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Created property records for a Sun Computer (B. Johnson @ LHO).
- With Cleveland's help assisted the CDS group (J.Heefner) with shipping and the preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US Customs Clearance of one Analog Controller to the Australian National University. Account Number LIGO.EHOMC-5.6.2-NSFLIGO.FY02CA.
- Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing and shipping various glass parts to Stanford (R. Route). Account Number LIGO.OPT - 5.4 - NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
- Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing and shipping of ten a 3" x 0.100" thick fused silica substrate to the Trinity University (D. Ugolini) , TX. Account Number LIGO.OPT - 5.4 - NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)
>From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Scanning of all non-electronic "M" category documents is complete. Scanning has begun on all non-electronic "G" documents.
Update to Current Document Management System (Lindquist)
Recommendations have been forwarded to the Directorate. Pending any further instructions, the committee is not meeting.
FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)
>From: "Funaro, Catherine" <Catherine.Funaro@caltech.edu>
>From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>
- Transferred funds on the University of Michigan subcontract from LIGO.VISIT to LIGO.OVISI, as requested.
- Received the updated certificates for Great Impressions.
- Submitted the revised modification to MIT for acceptance.
- Working on removing active encumbrances submitted by Florence. This is a result of a change made in the interface with Discoverer. Each encumbrance needs to be looked at individually and determine why it's there and how to remove it. I was asked to look into two additional encumbrances showing up on the MIT contract. One appears to be a result of the payment being matched with the distributions made differently than the p.o. indicated. The other encumbrance still needs to be researched.
- Caltech procurement is being audited. I provided the audited files and submitted the two Sun Microsystem orders, as requested.
- Re-routed mod. 186 to Triad for corresponding signatures.
- Working on completing the package for High Precision Devices to submit for routing. The price analysis is still needed.
>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>
- The Cost Transfer required before the LIGO Visitor Award could be closed has now been made. I have requested Project Accounting to close the account for the Visitor Award LIGO.VISIT/1 NSFLIGO.VISITO, all expenditures for LIGO Visitors should now be charged to LIGO.OVISI/1.1.4 NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
- Working with Ruth Brambila to close out all unnecessary encumbrances in LIGO accounts, which appeared in Discoverer in June because of a code change in the system.
- Updating the monthly financial report to reflect the Change Orders that were approved at the LIGO Executive Committee Monday, June 11, 2007.
- Requested that notification be sent to MIT of a modification to the PO to add funds for the second half of FY07. The modification had been made in the accounting system but because notification had not been sent, MIT was not able to bill the entire amount due for work performed in May.
- Financial reports may be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Florence)
SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)
>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Gina Salone is attending a seminar on Advanced Issues and Proposal Selection in Washington, D.C.
>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>
- A meeting was held on Tuesday, June 19, with Ann Margaret Chrisney, the Manager of Property Services. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss coverage for LIGO by Property Services during the medical leave of Rod Luna, LIGO Property Manager. Agreement was reached on coverage, with the Property Management contact being Ernest Ngalula, with services most likely being performed by Alex Flores. Shipping services, both domestic and international, will be performed by Cleveland Mak, of the LIGO staff, during Rod's absence. Ed Jasnow will issue a memorandum announcing the specifics of this agreement.
- Ed Jasnow and Criselda Rodriguez-Brodeur, of Purchasing Services, will be at LLO on Tuesday, June 26, to conduct both P-Card and TechMart training for several members of the staff.
PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)
I have revised the web site containing information and pointers for the preparation of the proposal for continuing operations (FY 2007 - FY 2013). The links now point to the latest staffing plan and budget models.
The web site may be found at: http://castor.ligo.caltech.edu/philinfo/OPsProposal/OPsProposalWebPage.htm
I also provided summary charts that I will use in the closed Executive Committee meeting scheduled for Monday, June 25 to initiate the discussion of the Continuing Operations Budget Model and the adequacy of the staffing:
http://castor.ligo.caltech.edu/philinfo/OPsProposal/LIGO-G070287-02-P.pdf
A user ID and Password are required. Please contact either Albert Lazzarini or me for the login information.
HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)
>From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>
- The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for July 16, 2007.
- The minutes and action items from the June meeting are in progress and when completed will be posted on the SC web page.
- All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page.
Quality/Safety (Tyler)
>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu
The next LIGO Safety Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, the 26th of June at 1300 PDT. The main agenda item will be the status of review and comments of the revised LIGO safety documents (M950046 and M960001) and submission to the Directorate for approval.
LIGO
Hanford
Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)
Summary of S5 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by K. Kawabe)
The duty cycle of H1 (from Thu. 14/Jun/2007 to Wed. 20/Jun/2007) was 87 percent, with typical 15.5 Mpc range. However, for H2 it was a very bad week. Though the duty cycle was 74.8 percent, a steady stream of problems meant that the range started from 6+ and eventually it came below 5. These problems are still under investigation.
Summaries: Range and Duty Cycle update. Tuesday maintenance summary.
Highlights from the LHO elog:
LIGO
Livingston
Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Giaime)
S5 run (Igor Yakushin):
CDS computing (Lisa Bogue):
- Worked on the iscex timing problem.
- Worked with Rolf at LASTI
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)
- Bryan is measuring arm cavity ringdowns in order to characterize the cavity loss, prior to venting.
- All the SURF students received laser safety training and 40m lab safety training.
- Keenan is working on modeling gravity gradients due to chamber vibrations.
- Sonia is measuring the damping time of our suspended optics, with the goal of optimizing the damping gain.
- Josh is working on implementing a frame grabber to record transmitted higher order modes of the output mode cleaner, and is learning how to model them.
- Sonia is learning about the RF photodiode preamp electronics.
- Darcy is working with Tobin on controlling the TCS system for eLIGO.
- Nick is visiting from MIT, working with SamW on the eLIGO OMC.
- Rob is locking the interferometer in the PRFPMI configuration to work on reducing loop noise.
- Rana and Tobin tweaked up the alignment into the PMC and the reference cavity in the PSL, improving the transmission significantly. They plan to tweak up the FSS loop, etc.
- We plan to vent on Monday, to drag wipe the ETMs.
Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)
Nothing significant to report this week. Akira is writing a paper. Eric is doing library research. Ilaria is working on the theory section of her Master's thesis, after a knee injury, and Greg is on scimon shift at Livingston.
LASTI (Mittleman)
- The large plates for the ISI are back in the States. We have been preparing for their delivery starting on Tuesday.
- Matt, Lisa, Brett, Fabrice, have made some progress locking the cavity, (see the entry on the Lasti ilog (6/21/07).
- Rolf, Ben, Lisa and Richard McCarthy have been here this week finishing up the ISI electronic installation and software upgrades, that seems to have gone very smoothly.
- Virginio has also been here this week working with Alberto to complete the HAM-SAS characterization.
CIT Science Group (Weinstein)
_________________
Igor Yakushin [igor@ligo-la.caltech.edu]:
_________________
Kent Blackburn:
OPEN SCIENCE GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT:
- Testint H(T) data LIGO workflows with different size template banks on OSG sites.
- Trouble shooting stdout transfer error (was mkdir problem) seen while running workflows at some, but not all, OSG sites.
- Trouble shooting MIT long idle state for workflows - now solved, the cause ... general cluster configuration, like directories exported in wrong location in the nodes etc ... Nothing to do with the osg software stack.
- Wrote LIGO_Pegasus telecon agenda.
- Attend LIGO_Pegasus and DASWG telecon.
- Preparation for H(T) V3 Level 2 Frame testing:
- install latest version of glue
- modify .ini files
- generate dax and dag with new glue version
OPEN SCIENCE GRID INTEGRATION TESTBED:
- Charles Huang has now joined us to work on OSG Integration Testbed Activities.
- Installed LIGO Data Grid ClientPro and used it to request a DOE user certificate.
- Studying Open Science Grid and Globus.
OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT:
- Worked with new hire (Charles Huang) to get started with OSG integration and validation activities.
- Introduced Charles to USC-ISI Pegasus developers and arranged for then to visit Caltech in July to provide training on the use of Pegasus and workflow management.
- Reviewed SciDac 2007 paper being presented by OSG.
- Provided template for statement of work to David Shoemaker based on last year's SOW for the OSG to assist in Advanced LIGO plans for distributed work.
_________________
Gregory Mendell:
- Working with Karl Wette at ANU, we have checked in independent code for testing the PowerFlux generalizations we have been working on into the pulgroup cvs archive under pulgroup/docs/SFTParamEstimation/testCode. I have also updated the draft presentations for Amaldi into the pulgroup cvs archive under pulgroup/presentations/AmaldiJul07, with the overview talk showing recent approved results also in dac/Amaldi07/.
_________________
Xavier Siemens:
- Investigated glitch at end of blind injection. Difference appears to be between actuation used to turn h(t) into ETMY and actual actuation.
- Still finishing H2 h(t).
- More work on lensing and microlensing.
_________________
Duncan Brown:
- Worked with Diego on spinning neutron-star binary search.
- Continued with review of burst/inspiral GRB070201 analysis.
- Continued with review of S3 SBBH analysis.
- Worked with Drew on S5 1 year BNS search.
- Helped Stuart test a new cluster home directory configuration.
- Putting together a new release of metaio with Drew and Jolien's new compression code.
Laboratory Computing (Anderson)
LDAS Software Systems (Maros)
- Continued work on stabilizing the diskcacheAPI. In this week's effort, a memory corruption issue was discovered inside of Tcl 8.4.15. A patch has been created and installed on ldas-dev and submitted to the Tcl development team.
- The cntlmonAPI now does proper cleanup for createRDS so it can support looping with level 2 or level 3 runs which require the level 1 files to be present.
- Multi-line excluded directories list is now supported in the diskcacheAPI (PR#3176).
LDAS System Administration (Anderson)
Caltech
(Phil Ehrens)
- MOU Report Project - Documentation updates, and bug fixes for pdf generation. Currently, generation of report in pdf format with uploaded images is working. Documentation is first priority right now, followed by porting of report pdf generator to "new attachment" related script. Navigation has been simplified based on feedback from Albert.
(Erik Espinoza)
- Performed RAID maintenance on ldas-grid.
- Restored data on ldas-grid after RAID rebuild.
- Participated in ldg-os-committee call
- Configured standalone Condor on two test CentOS 5 boxes.
- Building LIGO Security repo
- Built OpenSSH rpms, currently testing on desktop.
- Working through build issues with php rpms.
- Working with Stuart to test ZFS/NFS Server (x4500) in cluster.
- Tested dag fixes (6.9.4-LIGO_PRE).
- Tested Condor 6.9.3 on desktop.
MIT
(Fred Donovan)
- Wwo more disk replacements; to monitor status (esp. disk,), adding metric to ganglia via gmetric command-line; php web frontend (on gar.mit.edu) parser for resulting gmond data.
Livingston
(Igor Yakushin)
- It turned out that asntdiff/asntrep way of repairing replication, that was previously used, does not work well for big databases and big differences between the tables: it runs for couple days and fails at the end or even worse: reports a success when only part of entries were repaired.
- Worked out and documented on DASWG page export/load procedure for repairing replication; it takes less than an hour to repair the biggest table we have using this approach.
- The segment replication between the sites is running again.
- Segment publishing caught up with real time for L1, V1, and G1, while H1 and H2 are still 3 days behind. We also still need to check if there are any remaining gaps left.
(Dwayne Giardina)
- Tape eject for shipment to CIT.
- Tape storage eject.
- Replaced power strips on two more racks of nodes.
Hanford
(Greg Mendell)
- Tapes have been ordered for archiving data for the remainder of S5. I will next be working on SFT generation from the new h(t) data and more RDS testing.
(Ben Johnson)
- Fixed bad URLs at CIT. h(t) publishing at CIT was putting in "gsiftp://ldas-cit:15000" URLs due to a misconfigured command line.
- Working on GSI-authenticated (a.k.a. grid-authenicated) C-based dataFind server for demoing at CIT next week.
- Finished up LDAS NDS server's frameio module's flowchart along with some basic skeleton code.
- Assisted a new-to-LHO cluster user get some compiled Matlab code running here.
- Assisted Dave with the CDS Linux test workstation. Replaced what looked like a flaky HDD. Made plans for more thorough testing of the commissioning tools on CentOS 5 and Debian 4.
General Computing (Wallace)
MIT
(Fred)
- Misc. xp issues (laptops);
- Webmail issues;
- More work on ilog; purchases;
- Moved pellinore (webmail, ldap), camelot, enoki from my office to temp space; cleared office for re-carpeting & painting, shed old unneeded items.
Livingston
(Dwayne)
- Installed COMSOL and Matlab for SURF students, added memory to one of their machines.
- Installed Xubuntu inside of Parallels on my MacBook Pro. so far so good.
- Installed various software, including kantech workstation on new operator PC. waiting on one part to arrive then will put it in production.
- Removed HD from Odvars old PC, put it in an external USB case. OS problems when trying to run off that drive.
- Helping a user migrate from PC to Mac.
- html help on an outreach web page.
- OS updates on kantech server, rebooted.
- Usual user support requests.
- Cleared spam trap.
(Shannon)
- Set up some new IDS console software to test. The old software was falling over after a few months worth of alerts were in the data base.
- Set up some eval syslog monitoring software.
- Installed a machine in the lab for archiving data. Attached a surplus tape library to it.
- Archived Oddvar's solid works files, etc. to the above mentioned machine.
- Spent quite a bit of time trying to resolve some fallout from last weeks patches on the mail server. The newer version of software requires a port to be open which we do not want open. It only needs to be on the loopback, so the solution may just be to firewall that port.
- Deleted some files on abundance to free up some space. The filesystem was at 97% full.
- Troubleshooting Apache authentication to the ligo.org directory. So far, it is not working as advertised. Kerberos at the system level is working fine, but apache is not.
Hanford
(Christine)
- Conducted more BGP testing with ESnet on Tues. The BGP configuration allows me to change some parameters to swap between the primary circuit and the backup circuit. We tested these, they worked fine, the network didn't drop out at all during the swap. However, we did discover that the backup circuit is still having some latency problems. The BGP keepalive message is not reaching the ESnet router in the allotted time, so the connection is reset. This is happening at least twice in a 24 hour period. During testing when the backup circuit was busy with all the LHO traffic the connection was reset 4 times in 10 minutes. The probable cause is the fiber between LHO and PNNL. I'll contact Lockheed Martin again to discuss further testing and possible fixes.
- Added more IP addresses to the DHCP server as more visitors are showing up for the summer and bringing their own computers.
- Still moving home directories to the new disk system.
CIT
(Mike)
- Finished up loading surf student workstations.
- Did some maintenance on printers and replaced toner cartridges.
- Setup PAC meeting in East Bridge.
- Working on loading a computer to replace a workstation for the E2E group.
- Helped Larry moved some equipment to our storage for Rod to surplus.
- Other user support and daily sysadmin tasks.
(Veronica)
- LIGO: Support of the PAC meeting. Misc. web updates.
- LSC: Met with Dave Reitze regarging a makeover of the website. Set upand troubleshoot an online registration application for the July meeting, and an interface for connecting to an online payment gateway. (this required some troubleshooting with an outside provider at MIT.) Posting updates to the meeting's website. Updates of the database of technical papers, other web updates.
(Christian)
- Bill Tyler- Installed Adobe Acrobat 8 for Bill.
- Bob Taylor- Re-installed Office 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 8.
- Bill Kells- installed Mathtype and Mathlab for Bill.
- Re-imaged laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
- Continue working with the installation on WSUS clients for LIGO users.
- Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.
(Larry)
- Continual work on the procurement items. Renewed a number of licenses and ordered more misc. items for different people. The new workstations have arrived and are being setup for distribution. Reconciled p-card.
- Assisted DCC on a couple of file conversions. The latest revisions in adobe and msword are bringing up compatibility issues with older documents.
- Worked with Mike and Christian on a few different projects, including setups of the new computers, the PAC meeting and logistics for the SURF students.
- Still working with the construction people and PMA. The computer rooms are pretty well finished up with a few minor items to be taken care of, however, we can now work in the rooms and the additional air is really helping out.
- Worked a number of account issues. We are still getting in new visitors and students.
- Worked a couple of mailman issues.
- Worked with Shannon on checking out some issues from a network scan.
- Assisted a number of users with different problems. Mostly, just getting things setup for their work environment.
- Started working on some of the logistics for the July LSC mtg.
(Bruce Sears)
- General iLog maintenance and issue handling.
Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)
Advanced LIGO Systems
Modeling and Simulation
From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu
Static IFO simulation (Hiro)
- The code now utilizes threads (generic way of utilizing multiple CPUs).
- The audio frequency dependence of the signal is being studied.
- Analysis has started to study (1) the mode coupling of the signal generated by the arm and the signal recycling cavity and (2) the effect of the finite size and thickness of mirrors.
Modeler : e2e simulation engine and ALFI : e2e front end (Hiro, Bruce, Melody)
- The release of the UDP functionality support is postponed to the end of September, because some serious problems were found.
- The share library has its own global variables and this turned out to cause serious interference between field objects used in the UDP code and standard primitives. This was not an issue for FUNC_X, because FUNC_X can handle only numerical values, not field objects.
- Another issue was related to the design of the interface between the front end, ALFI, and simulation engine, modeler. It was decided to use a cleaner design, and alfi needs to be modified to adopt this new design.
- The next visit of Bruce is scheduled in the middle of August, and, during this trip, the main work was focused on ALFI front-end, so that Melody can get necessary code from Bruce amap.
- More example UDP codes were developed, including a delay module for a clamp data stream. These example development and validation reveals new issues, like the shared library issue mentioned above.
Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany, Hiro and SLU team)
- Continued AdvLIGO Input Mode Cleaner e2e modeling. We found that the current frequency filter's phase margin needs to be improved, and currently working on it.
- Have been working at CIT with Hiro on Advanced LIGO Mode Cleaner e2e model. Found that when the identical model was run under SLU machine and LIGO (CIT or LLO) machines, the results were slightly different. The cause of this discrepancy has not been identified. Currently looking into the problem. What flows are reports from SLU undergrad students who work on campus.
- Satish Shrestha: I have been working on my code to find the amplitude. I had some problems with generating white noise (I was not sure if the one I created was a white noise). So I tried to do that from alfi box. I installed Linux but we could not install Adlib in my system. I ran my code with and without white noise to figure out if there was anything wrong with my white noise. Now I am going to play with amplitude as Dr. Yoshida suggested and correct my code so that white noise peaks would be less than the peaks of signal.
- Richard: Richard (undergraduate who joined us from this summer) completed installing Mark's mathematica models. The primary purpose of Richard's project is to include the violin mode effect. He encountered some problems in plotting figures in mathematica, which are new to us. We discussed the problem in the e2e weekly telecon with Mark, who will be helping us solve the problem. Douglas (another undergraduate) started to work on the AdvLIGO Input Mode Cleaner's filter gain optimization. Chris (another undergraduate) made a cavity consisting of two mirrors and beam propagators, which will be used to verify our tri-mirror cavity model.
- worked on violin mode quad model
- no more errors
- worked on the new quad files uploaded by mark
- received 9 error messages
- have emailed mark concerning these
Next Steps
- fixing new errors in new quad files
- develop a state space matrix from the quad files
- work on the cavity
- Christopher Hill: This week I added a sine curve to my mirrors. This allowed me to change the phase shift for my data. I am now working on matching my data to Doug's Tri-cav data.
- John Gaffney: Been working on acquiring 60Hz data with NI’s Data Acquisition equipment. Now I’m working on creating a Labview Virtual Instrument that’ll allow me to collect wavefront data over a period of time longer than 200ms, and then I’ll analyze that data using Matlab, by superimposing it on a sin 60hz graph to determine the phase shift of the 60hz line noise
- Douglas Carpenter: I compared the difference between poles at 100Hz and 1000Hz using MC_test_vco_to_laser_sine box. Surprisingly I found no difference at all leading me to conclude that, either I ran the simulation incorrectly, or there's a problem with modeler. Currently I am re-running the simulations and will compare the data with my previous runs. I'm also compiling a components list for a new server for our lab.
Optical Layouts
From: Dennis Coyne mailto:coyne@ligo.caltech.edu
- Working on layouts which employ a horizontally wedged beamplitter. This would enable the beamsplitter design to use metal wire suspensions instead of fused silica ribbons which would be simpler and reduce vertical to horizontal coupling. So far it appears feasible. I have looked at a stable power recycling and stable signal recycling configuration for the straight (non-folded, or H1 and L1) interferometer. I've also looked at the marginally stable recycling geometries for the H1/L1 interferometer and done a quick look at the folded (H2) interferometer configuration. A report is in preparation.
- I've issued a 3D envelope drawing for the combined ITM/FM suspension assembly, D070165-00.
From: Luke Williams mailto:luke@phys.ufl.edu
- New layouts for folded IFO have been completed, based on the new FM/ITM footprint.
CDS Prestabilized Laser
From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>
- I made some minor modifications - related to evacuation procedures, earthquakes ... etc - to the 2-W NPRO SOP.
- I have completed a first draft of the hazard analysis relating to the use of the AdLIGO Laser and installation of the laser area enclosure and laser diode enclosure.
- Having figured out that the Beckhoff Automation software does not like 64-bit Windows, I now can see the BK1120 bus coupler and its associated terminals. From within the TwinCAT system manager I can see other EtherCAT devices plugged into the network. A simple program I wrote to take the output from an analog output board and input that into an analog input board did not work. The error reported by TwinCAT is that there was an invalid device request, which I presume comes from trying to link a software variable to a hardware point.
- A problem was observed with the 35-W laser losing 1 W in 5 days, a power decay that is disturbing at best. Fortunately the decay was traced to a spot on the output window. The window was replaced and the laser power is measured to be back to the 35-W level. Since this happened in the revamped LZH labs, this might be a concern.
Control and Data Systems
From: Rich Abbott abbott@ligo.caltech.edu
- Received OMC length heater driver boards. The boards were stuffed, tested and are 100% functional. These boards drive the in-vacuum OMC thermal actuator, and also read back the in-vacuum temperature of the OMC thermal actuator.
- Designed QPD transimpedance amplifier board to the schematic level with Mohana. This board serves 4 QPDs, and differentially interfaces with the ADCs.
- Designed whitening stages up to the schematic level for the in-air portion of the electronics serving the DCPDs.
- Working with a manufacturer of custom braids to obtain a PEEK braid and also a Kevlar braid to see if it works in the vacuum environment. These braids are to avoid damage and shorting of internal wires in the vacuum envelope.
- My technician (Chub) and Gary (our ordering guy) made a vendor visit to the new Flame-spray facility here in Los Angeles. This facility is coating all the in-vacuum electronics the needs to be able to cool by radiation.
Seismic Isolation
From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu
BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test
- The (9) large plates has gone through customs and is scheduled to be delivered to Arland Tool on Thursday afternoon. Ken will inspect them and bring clean lifting eyes. Arland will then deliver the (2) stage 0 plates and (2) stage 2 optics plates early next week.
- The clean assembly is scheduled to start on 6/25. Hugh Radkins (LLO) will be at MIT to help.
- We have received all the parts for the new spring installation tooling designed by Laurent. These will be class "B" cleaned at MIT.
- Jay, Rus Wooley, and Alex were at LASTI last week to install the electronics. Rolf, Richard McCarthy, Ben Abbott, and Lisa Bogue here this week testing the hardware.
Single Stage HAM Design and Procurement
- PSI has redesigned the actuators for the HAM and are currently detailing the fabricated parts. The long lead magnets, wire, and polyimide resin has been ordered.
- Andy Stein is checking HPD's fabrication drawings as they are completed. Ten drawings have been checked which include the three large plates. HPD still has 19 part drawings and 11 assembly drawings not completed.
Suspensions
From: Dennis Coyne mailto:coyne@ligo.caltech.edu
Justin Greenhalgh, Ken Strain, David Shoemaker, Ian Wilmut, Norna Robertson and Dennis Coyne held a meeting to discuss and approve clearance to start procurement of the following items for the production ETM and ITM assemblies:
- The metal masses (top, Upper Intermediate, Penultimate Reaction)
- The structures
- The OSEMs and their wiring looms
- The associated mechanical fittings, earthquake stops, and eddy-current dampers
- The UK-scope non-metal masses (Penultimate, ERM) and associated ears and prisms; ears for test masses; prisms for compensator plates
Relevant documents are T070096-00-R and T070097-00-R (Norna's test plans and OJEU risk issues). Once our UK partners place the OJEU advertisement for bidders, there will be a period of at least 2 months' pre-selection before we have to definitively state when we will sign contracts. If we start now, the soonest we could sign contracts will be in ~January 2008.
From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu
- The reaction mass has been gold coated with the ESD pattern. The mass will be shipped to LASTI during the first week of July.
Core Optic
From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu
Advanced LIGO Coatings
- Received from LMA several substrates coated with the same coating design as the LASTI test mass. They will be distributed during the LSC/VIRGO meeting to different individuals / institutions to perform a variety of tests.
- Inspected the LASTI mirror under a dark field microscope, several point defects were noted. Inspection at LMA also reports several defects on the uncoated substrate. Scatter measurements will take place shortly. We are having multiple interruptions on account of labs being remodeled.
- CSIRO: Finished a run of Ti doped Ta. The Ti dopant level is higher than required (>40%), but, there were testing some doping techniques, so, measurement of the sample may give us a new data point to understand doping characteristics.
Auxiliary Optics
From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu
Stray Light Control (SLC)
- Mike corrected the scattered light calculations by taking into account the latest note by Fritschel and Zucker (T070089-02), which pointed out that light scattered from an outside surface into the IFO arm mode scatters into an effective area which is the area of the arm mode beam waist and not the area of the mode at the mirror surface. This reduces the scattered noise by the factor (60/11.5)^2, which in turn reduces the requirement on the reflectivity of the baffles. He is in the process of rewriting the Scattered Light Control CDD.
- Luke presented a preliminary design of the suspended arm cavity baffle prototype for LASTI. The AOS Group agreed that the baffle suspension should be attached to the stage "0" of the BSC optical table structure, as close to the edge of the BSC chamber wall as possible with the use of cantilevered suspension brackets. Earthquake stops will be mounted to the chamber walls, instead of to the quad suspension structure.
- As a result of the reduction in the reflectivity requirement for the elliptical baffle, it may be feasible to use a single piece of black glass with an AR coating to achieve a reflectivity < 1%, instead of the cavity design with multiple reflections that was being considered.
- The single glass baffle may be accomodated close to the ITM Compensation Plate and not obscure the CO2 laser TCS beam.
- Dan Riley, a SURF student, presented a conceptual design for the BRDF measuring apparatus that he is in the process of constructing at CIT. He discovered a problem of scattering from the chopper blade with a previous beam-splitter arrangement we were attempting. The present design eliminates the problem by using a mirror with a hole to pass the beam and reflect the back-scattered light to the photodetector.
- Ken completed the conceptual design layout of a four-wire suspended Faraday Isolator in a modified LOS structure.
Pick-Off Telescope
- Chris is working on the conceptual design for the ETM telescope suspension.
Input Optics
From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu
Muzammil Arain:
- The mode mismatch measurements at LLO by Valera has been analyzed. A LIGO technical note (LIGO- T070140-00-Z) is now in the DCC. It looks like that about 6% mode mismatch is due to the incorrect positioning of MMT2 and can be recovered by changing the position of MMT2. To determine the cause of power dependent losses, we should perform some diagnostics tests as outlined in the document. This will be very helpful in operation of e-LIGO.
Wan Wu:
- We have repeated the measurement for the EOM using the phase meter. We added a notch filter to attenuate the carrier-carrier beat signal so that the carrier-sideband beat note can be amplified in order to increase the measurement sensitivity.
Rodica Martin:
- We have made a new cost estimate for ALIGO suspended IO mirrors for the stable recycling cavity configuration. Also, specs for ELIGO in-vacuum non-suspended mirrors were written. (These are relay mirrors for signals from the MC reflected beam, the beam transmitted through SM1, and the beams from the Faraday isolator.)
For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini or Phil Lindquist