The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, September 17, 2007 will be:
(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)
NOTE: This will be a closed meeting. The agenda has been distributed separately.
LSC Issues (Reitze)
No significant news this week.
LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)
STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)
Below are MOUs that were approved and signed off by both the LSC Spokesperson and the LIGO Laboratory Director this reporting period. These will be posted and submitted to the DCC.
| MOU |
Attachments |
| Institute of Applied Physics |
OPT, OUT, Z |
| Montana State University |
DAT, Z |
| University of Rochester |
DAT, Z |
| University of Texas, Brownsville |
DAT, OPS, OUT, Z |
DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)
>From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Sorting through and processing the large volume of documents submitted to the DCC over the last couple of months.
FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)
>From: "Funaro, Catherine" <Catherine.Funaro@caltech.edu>
>From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>
- Completed change order #7 to Frequency Devices.
- Moved funds on MIT as requested.
- Provided assistance to financial approvers and requisitioners with assistance in TechMart, and responded to inquiries on invoices, orders, and delivery inquiries.
- Completed change order #6 to the Exploratorium, and the vendor returned the signed mod.
- Working on the change order to US Civilian and Support Services.
>From: Karl Oracion <koracion>
SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)
>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>
- The contract with HPD for the HAM seismic prototype is being modified to include some of the required assembly work.
>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Both LHO and LLO are researching the possibility of extending both LN2 contracts with Praxair and Air Liquide for one year until the end of the current Cooperative Agreement. The LN2 contracts for both sites under the new operations Cooperative Agreement would be competed for a new five-year period.
- The property list to be reviewed by the NSF for the TBSR at LHO has been determined.
- The receipt of proposals for the third Pathfinder Optics Polishing contractor has been delayed from September 21 to October 5.
PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)
Completing the proposal for continuing operations (FY 2009 FY 2013). The proposal budgets have been sent to the Office of Sponsored Research. OSR had a number of suggestions that we will be addressing over the next few days. Rana proposed some revisions concerning QND section which Dave Beckett is assessing for impact, and Dave will provide before and after images to be considered for inclusion in this next go around. All such proposed changes will be carefully controlled and provided to the Director’s Office for blessing.
Inputs have been received for the monthly report and we will submit the report by the end of this week.
CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)
- CR-070007 requests funding to cover increased design and fabrication costs for SEI HAM Prototypes. A revision to the request has been received.
- A change Request for the Core Optics is not yet ready, but I am assured that there will be one.
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)
Quakes, and H2 laser troubles/ISCT10 issues kept the duty cycles a little lower than the recent weeks: H1 ran at ~14-16Mpc 88% of the time, while H2 ran at ~6-7Mpc 82% of the time.
Some highlights from the elog are below:
- summaries: Tuesday maintenance, latest range & duty cycle compilation
- H2 NPRO cooling lines were found to be obstructed, so the were replumbed and the laser noise returned to nominal levels
- Weiner filters prepared for a CIT Newtonian noise study may also be used to extract more performance out of useism/pepi feedback loops , which use DARM_CTRL as an error signal and feedback to the fine actuators
- the magnitude 8+ Indonesian quake, and subsequent aftershocks, caused the ifos to lose lock and suffer increased noise when locked
Outreach (D. Ingram)
- In a piece of new business for outreach, LHO hosted a visit from ~20 Portland-area tour operators on 9/11. The operators were in the Tri-Cities for a 2-day visit, sponsored by the Tri-Cities Visitor and Convention Bureau, to evaluate local attractions for the possibility of scheduling future tours. LIGO is a member of the TC VCB.
LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Giaime)
S5 run (Igor Yakushin):
- Most of the week the range was around 15Mpc except for the last day or so when we had a lot of seismic activity (earthquakes in Indonesia, Hurricane Humberto). Despite of the nearby logging the duty cycle for this week was 73%. 3.61 Hz wobbling of yet unknown origin was observed during this week.
CDS computing (Lisa Bogue):
- Working on email masquerading problems with the wiki.
- Working on ldap.
- Still working on the t1000's
- Working on maintenance contract renewals
Commissioning vacuum prep (Tom Evans):
- We have received the first shipment of vacuum parts for the Faraday isolator for E-Ligo from UF, and are preparing to clean and bake the parts. We should receive additional Faraday isolator parts soon, and we also have seismometer pods to be baked.
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)
- Rob is returning to the task of locking the full dual-recycled FP Michelson configuration in order to measure laser and RF oscillator phase- and intensity-noise couplings in both RF and DC readout.
- Tobin, Rana and Andrey were trying to lock the DRMI and they needed more RF sideband power. Using the optical spectrum analyzer, they adjusted the modulation depth for both the 33 and 166 MHz sidebands to get Gamma = 0.22.
- Tobin found and fixed a broken cable that prevented us from reading the N2 pressure. Now it reads correctly, and under-pressure will trigger a vacuum interlock. Steve tested this and it worked perfectly. IN the process, we rebooted the c1vac1 processor for the first time since Feb 2006. Rebooting has no ill effect on the vacuum controls.
- More computer problems: The iscepics process on the c1dcuepics computer died spontaneously. Tobin restarted it, but if it keeps on failing, we may need to get another computer to run it on.
- Andrey re-worked the video switch MEDM screen so that it is more intuitively oriented.
- Elena continues to develop her adaptive filter for feed-forward noise cancellation of ground-motion.
- Valera is here, to work with Sam on the eLIGO OMC construction. Sam is gluing up the optics and running tests.
- Steve replaced the tp3 dry scroll pump, after over 8000 hours of service.
Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)
- This week we bid farewell to Ilaria, who returns to Benevento after a successful six-month visit.
- All of the mode-cleaner mirrors are now suspended and damped, and all of the steering optics leading up to the mode cleaner are in place. Akira has started gluing magnets on the arm-cavity mirrors.
- Electrical wiring is complete on the South 110V outlets and the roughing-pump 220 line. The North outlets are nearly done.
- Greg is in Livingston doing a scimon shift.
LASTI (Mittleman)
BSC ISI
- We ran into trouble with the small actuator installation and had to redo it. There was a problem with the initial assembly of the stages (mostly stage 1) and although they fit together the walls aren’t as perpendicular as they should have been. Were this has gotten us in trouble is that the actuator brackets do not have 6 degrees of freedom of adjustment but rely to some extent on the stages being in the location and orientations. We have managed to shim the actuator brackets to allow assembly, but at some point we are going to have to figure out what we missed in the assembly process. We did not have this particular problem ion the dirty assembly so we are pretty sure that it is possible to do it correctly.
Lasti Vacuum
- We have broken vacuum for modifications to the pondermotive experiment.
CIT Science Group (Weinstein)
____________________
Kipp Cannon
- Bug hunting in excess power pipeline's clustering code.
- Some maintenance work on XML utilities in Glue.
- Spent some time on FrameL/libframe packaging issues.
- Telecons: DASWG, bursts.
____________________
Kent Blackburn for the Grid Computing Group
GRID APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT:
- Write agenda for weekly LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
- Attend weekly DASWG and OSG-USERS telecon.
- ITB OSG 0.7.0 testing at TTU_TESTWULF, LIGO_CIT_ITB done, nsf-lite problem found at at CIT_ITB_1, the other remaining 6 sites still in progress.
- Problem with gaps in data fix by Inspiral Group. This fix is currently being tested. Initial results look good as was reported at the DASWG Meeting.
- Several new OSG production sites are now being tested: NERSC_Davinci, NERSC_PDSF, FIU_PG, OU_OUHEP_SWT2.
- Began looking in to how to utilize ReSS resource selection utility and the use of Condor classads to accomplish this.
OPEN SCIENCE GRID INTEGRATION AND VALIDATION TESTBED:
- Attend PEGASUS, DASWG, OSG ITB and OSG VTB telecon.
- Surveyed Britta's ITB site VO testing, sent emails to the fail site admins of those ITB sites.
- Initial draft dcache document on installation and configuration notes delivered to OSG ITB coordinator.
- Revised dcache installation/configuration notes, sent dcache document to Rob for review and post to twiki.
- Patched configure_gip.sh, and reconfigure. Validtate the right GIP info goes out the wire.
- Followed up on LIGO jobs failing on CIT_ITB_1 site because of nfslite, no fix and solution from OSG package yet.
- Created sub-directory under $OSG_DATA for each VO compute job to stage in data, as $OSG_DATA/$vo_unix_account osg-itb, osg-vtb, osg-itb-se server maintenance:
- coonfiguration backup
- log audit remove
- directories clean up
- Followed up with Rob about UCSDT2-ITB1 missing from VORs. Now entry show in VORs, but in fail state.
- Followed up with LIGO user about problems running on remote site.
- Changed VO validation table info with Abhishek.
- Discovered OSG-RSV probe huge log file problem, report to the OSG ITB mailing list, stop OSG-RSV probe at CIT site.
- Exchanged info and idea with Rob by eamil about current ITB pending issue and progress.
- Created VO subdirectory inside $OSG_DATA in upper case as $OSG_DATA/$VO.
- UCSDT2-ITB1 state turn into "PASS", inform LIGO user this ITB site is ready to use.
- Download/compile/install lastest PEGASUS nightly source release which fix the "pegasus::" prefix missing bug in the tc.data file.
- Write an upgrad document for installing a PEGASUS nightly build on osg-itb-se submit server.
- Added/edited local SE sites to the VO site validation table on the twiki page according to Abhishek's suggestion.
OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT:
- Worked with Project Associate to develop Caltech's Year 2 Statement of Work. Some items specified by the area coordinator for applications and extensions needed clarification with Executive Director resulting in a modification to the Work Breakdown Structure.
- Began reviewing preliminary versions of ten year two Statements of Work to various institutions funded by OSG.
- Held a teleconference meeting with the OSG Project Associate to define the best procedure for approval of the year 2 Statements of Work.
- Began working on agenda and planning for November 2nd OSG Finance board meeting to be held at Fermilab, which I chair.
- Reviewed several changes to WBS resulting from a shift in work associated with area coordinators face to face meetings at CHEP.
- Worked with LIGO's OSG Council representative to define and develop a plan for moving forward on LIGO's year 2 OSG scientific milestone.
- Working to organize a telecon and possible meetings with Einstein At Home developers in Germany to understand what they did to port this application onto the German Grid as a starting point for porting it onto the OSG and possibly the TeraGrid.
- Contacted Andrea Vicere of VIRGO to get a list of European Grids that are providing User Certificates to their community in hopes of being able to provide accurate direction to European users requesting DOE certificates for getting an equally accepted European certificate where the chain of trust can be established.
____________________
Kari Hodge
- I have been debugging my neural network code, through which I am currently running low mass H1L1 triggers from the S5 playground.
- First, I made new input arrays (with triggers from both two and three ifo time) so that the time slide and injection regions would have more overlap in effective SNR, since that is where all the work is.
- Second, I am trying to understand why adding certain parameters, like eta (even though the distributions of eta are not physical, so it would not actually be an input into the final neural net), cause a 'squashing' of the neural network's output from 0 to 1 to 0 to ~.6. I am investigating this behavior because it implies that the neural network does not find even the injections in my testing set to be more than 60% signal like, which is odd considering that my testing set should be statistically similar to my training set.
Laboratory Computing (Anderson)
LDAS Software Systems (Maros)
- System test integration (PR#3069) continues to dominate the development efforts. Some of the more complex tests are being integrated. The new model that is being used will allow for single button testing and a summary report of simple pass/fail results. This eliminates the tedious (and potentially error prone) task of visual inspection of result files.
LDAS System Administration (Anderson)
Caltech
(Dan Kozak)
- Imported rearchived version of old LLO L0 file at CIT.
- Continued work on cleaning up regenerated C03 h(t) situation (the end is in sight).
- Replaced failed disks (3510, 6140 & Thumper).
- Answered Alexander Dietz' question about strain-L1 data in the CIT cluster.
- Did some work debugging LSCsegFind problems at CIT.
- Temporarily fired up old (RLS backend) LDRdataFindServer on CIT to help Duncan Brown debug a problem.
- Found that a bad copy of L-RDS_R_L3-870543616-256.gwf had made it thru LDR and to CIT (/archive & cluster node) due to the file being published and transferred during a T3 outage. Had the file republished at LLO and made sure it made it all the way thru the process at CIT. Still need to follow up with other customers.
- Worked on planning for new 4Gb fibre channel switch and possible metadata disk purchase.
- Worked on decommissioning the old SAM-QFS /home (with the goal of getting a Booth fibre back and returning a 3511 to GC).
- Worked on getting shared QFS to work through a network tunnel, so far unsuccessfully.
- Flagged some bad Burst-MDC files in the cluster and notified Keith Thorne.
(Phil Ehrens)
- Ongoing support of MOU review process.
- Various certificate related support tasks.
- Got quote for fans for cluster nodes.
- RMA return to ASA Computers of 2 drives, 7 memory dimms, 3 fans and 2 disk drives.
- Began to reintegrate into the LDAS support structure to help with automation of LDAS testing regime.
- Evaluated Nessus based security review of ldas-sw server. A few minor issues were actively addressed based on the review document.
(Erik Espinoza)
- Built 32/64 bit rpms for Condor 6.9.4.
- Testing configs for updated Condor.
MIT
(Fred Donovan)
- Replacing some more failed disks.
Livingston
(Igor Yakushin)
- Working on coalescing segments in the segment database.
(Dwayne Giardina)
- Tape eject for shipment to CIT.
- Tape storage eject.
Hanford
(Greg Mendell)
- I am continuing to work on the next release of LDG and some cyber-security work, and as usual I am making sure the generation, archiving, and transfer of S5 raw, RDS, and trend data is up-to-date.
(Ben Johnson)
- Writing up NDS design document.
- Wrote up and sent an LDR publishing "optimization techniques" document to Scott Koranda.
- The metadata for the CIT_S5 pset at LHO has been fixed by Scott. I still haven't gotten LDR to schedule any files for transfer from CIT. It is currently a work-in-progress.
- Running the ZFS benchmarks for the x4500 here nearly finished. These runs should be finished today.
General Computing (Wallace)
MIT
(Fred)
- More equipment deactivation (clean-up).
- Moved some more machines to new ip address range (need to get off 18.120 ipâ€s in nw22).
- Working on Ilog – command line user interface.
- Moving gc (burst) home dirs to tubera
- Purchasing (thinkpad conf).
Livingston
(Dwayne)
- WebDAV configuration, tweaks, debugging, etc.
- Rebooted security server after a kantech software problem.
- Created mail accounts for some new hires.
- With Shannon, tracked down the cause for some failed emails from wikidev.cds.
- Other usual/unusual user support requests.
- Cleared spam trap.
LLO mail summary for 6 September 2007 - 13 September 2007:
Rejected: 10,169(78 containing virus)
Accepted: 4,804
Total: 14,973
(Shannon)
- Working with IDS Policy Manager to test more managed IDS installations. Working well with the LLO IDS so far, will have to write custom scripts for start/stop of snort, etc.
- Spent several hours looking into a mail issue.
- Running some software at three sites to track MAC addresses for Kent, etc.
- Ongoing switch configuration/VLAN assignments.
- Documentation...
Hanford
(Christine)
- Spent quite a bit of time trying to find equipment listed on Rod's spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has some problems which made it more difficult.
- Provided remote assistance to the Advanced LIGO contractors with email problems and problems with the Primavera VPN server. I will have to modify the IP address list used by the VPN, but I need to change the settings on the contractors' laptops and none of them are on-site this week or next.
- Provided info for the TBSR group coming to LHO on the 24th.
- Started installing the latest OS on the servers to be used for DNS and email. This required a re-think of which computers to use. The ones I had originally planned on using are no longer supported by Sun and I couldn't upgrade the accessories. I "borrowed" newer computers from CDS and will replace them when FY08 money is available.
- Still providing information to Veritas Support to fix my tape backup software. My request has been "elevated" and a new engineer will contact me soon.
- Modified the access list on the router to block non-LHO IP addresses from accessing the insecure pop ports. So far no one has reported any problems using SSH for off-site email.
Caltech
(Mike)
- Programed and installed a Wireless Access Point for W/B 2nd floor.
- Worked in Bridge/Annex server room 19 installing an additional UPS + Transformer.
- Some more work on a webserver. SSL still needs to be configured plus a few other tweaks before we put this online.
- Installed and tested backup software on pherkab.
- Ordered equipment through Techmart for Larry.
- Worked with Karl by setting up his email and local computer account, plus giving him access to Florence's data.
- Other misc. user support plus other sysadmin tasks.
(Christian)
- Created a backup of Cindy Akutagawa laptop and workstation.
- Florence Kaufman - Created backup of workstation.
- Rolf Bork - Configured new laptop.
- Toner cartridge replacements- 3flr W/B and 2flr W/B.
- Installed new 24 inch LCD monitor for Aidan Brooks and Stan Whitcomb.
- Helena Armandula - moved monitors and computers to new location in the Synchrotron building.
- Working on recovering data from dead hard drive for Phil Willems.
- Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.
(Veronica)
- LIGO: Updates of the roster database. Working with Melody on migrating the LAAC database to a wiki. Working on a new graphics for the homepage. Addressed an issue of image use permissions. LIGO website updates.
- LSC: Updates of the database of technical papers. Misc. website updates.
(Larry)
- Worked a number of procurements. Ordered more network edge switches and worked with Mike on getting a SUN equipment order placed. The new plotter should be delivered in the next day or so and the Dell workstations have arrived. There is a need to order a number of new workstations we are still short. Finalizing a couple of different maintenance contracts.
- Did a little more work for the TBSR group. This will probably go on for another couple of months.
- Setup a number of new accounts. Also, locked a couple of accounts of people that have recently left.
- Working with Melody and Veronica on a web project to help augment the LAAC web service.
- Worked with PMA and the construction group on getting some issues resolved in the labs that are being modified.
- Finished up some documentation for Kent and the review coming up next week.
- Moved a couple of systems to different locations.
- Updated a couple of s/w development pkgs. and licenses. Added s/w on a E2E server.
- Wrapped up the home account backups. Moving backup files to tape. Performed a full backup on one of the ldas servers.
- Worked out some of the logistics for the temporary relocations of different people on the project. A lot of computer shuffling is taking place.
- Regular end user support.
Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)
Advanced LIGO Management
From: Carol Wilkinson <wilkinson@ligo-wa.caltech.edu>
Upcoming Advanced LIGO Reviews:
OMC SUS 2nd prototype fab readiness review, Chair Ran Adhikari. Thursday 13th Sept at 8am PT. The wiki review site is at http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/OMC_Suspension#reviews
PSL Infrastructure, which includes the pump diode and laser enclosures, utilities upgrade / modifications, and safety documentation
Chair: Doug Cook
Wednesday 12th September at 9 AM PT.
Advanced LIGO Systems
Modeling and Simulation
From: Sanichiro Yoshida <syoshida@selu.edu>
I put together our group's weekly for Hiro.
Modeling and simulation (Sany Yoshida)
Based on Mark Barton's most updated mathematica model, Richard created a state space matrix in the e2e format. This model simulates the Adv LIGO quad suspension taking the violin dynamics into account. We tested the model by including the state space matrix in our e2e quad sus code. For the position (translational motion normal to the mirror surface) DOF, the resultant power spectrum shows a peak around 420 Hz, as expected.
e2e weekly meeting
Attendees: Osamu Miyakawa, Richard Williams (SLU undergraduate student) and Sany Yoshida
We discussed the progress on e2e modeling of the Advanced LIGO baseline HAM seismic isolation. The Southeastern team has made an e2e model based on a matlab model provided by the SWG. The computed table top motion seems to be reasonable, but needs to be verified by the SWG. Osamu confirmed that he could still use the simplified HAM seismic isolation model for his e2e Advanced LIGO optics simulation so that the Southeastern team would have some time to verify the HAM seismic isolation model. We also discussed possible Southeastern student's visit to Tama next summer.
Static IFO simulation (Hiro)
Hiro was on vacation.
Modeler : e2e simulation engine and ALFI : e2e front end (Hiro, Bruce, Melody)
(Melody Araya)
ALFI
- Worked on the draft for the Use of User-Defined Primitives in ALFI. Integrated Bruce's changes into the document.
- Installed a standalone version of ALFI 6.6.2 in Hiro's laptop.
CDS Prestabilized Laser
From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>
- In going over the requirements for the laser diode enclosure, I found that the interface document was sadly out of date - it dates from when the laser still had an injection-locked front end. I have been updating the interface and signals, keeping in mind the division between local control by the Beckhoff Automation hardware and EPICS.
- I finally finished laying out the circuit board for a quadrant photodetector. Parts for said board arrived from Digi-Key.
- Benno has started drafting a testing plan. It's in point form at the moment as we are deciding which tests to include (and where).
Seismic Isolation
From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu
BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test
- Both stages are now floating and the locater/locks are installed. We have begun installing the actuators and cabling.
- Balancing of stage 1 has been difficult with over 100 lbs needed in two of the three corners. We believe this is due to tolerance buildup in the spring mounts and shims and are looking at ways to accommodate this amount of trim mass.
Single Stage HAM Procurement and Test
- Bob Taylor has completed the cleaning of the actuator bobbins and shipped them back to PSI. They will be winding the coils next week. Andy has completed the design of the coil wire termination using peek terminal blocks supplied by Accu-Glass. All parts have been ordered and received. They will be cleaned and sent to PSI for integration into the enhanced LIGO actuators. This eliminates the use of epoxy in the actuator.
- To prevent escalating costs from HPD, we have instructed them to "red-line" drawings instead of creating an ECO for each minor change. We will update drawings after completion of the prototype assembly and create an "as-built" drawing package.
Suspensions
From: Norna Robertson <nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Attended ALUK PAG (Advanced LIGO UK program advisory group) meeting in Glasgow.
- Chaired schedule update review for enhanced LIGO at ExComm telecon on 4th Sept. Mike Zucker presented the current schedule and plans. General summary: timing of end of S5 and post S5 calibration period is pacing item in schedule. Various issues being closely watched (septum delivery date, HAM ISI progress - no longer pacing item, Faraday isolators - installation logistics and manpower, EQ stops - procurement/fab, cleaning and baking organisation - now in hands of Stephanie Foley at MIT, and site assembly space - competing with maintenance needs). Short report being prepared by NAR.
- Checked eddy current damping (ECD) level and associated thermal noise for current beamsplitter triple pendulum design for longitudinal and vertical directions assuming the same ECD units as used in the quad design are applied. Damping is good enough for acquisition mode (damping time ~ 12 secs or less) and thermal noise is less than technical noise requirement at 10 Hz (1/10th of fundamental noise requirement). All good news. Other degrees of freedom to be checked, expected to be OK.
- Got guided tour and demo of ribbon pulling machine, bounce tester and profiler in the lab in Glasgow, all of which will be heading to LASTI later this year.
From: Janeen Romie <janeen@ligo-la.caltech.edu>
Advanced and Enhanced LIGO Suspensions
Nothing of significance to report.
Recycling Mirror Suspension
Nothing of significance to report.
Output Mode Cleaner
- Working with Norna on documentation for the review on 13 Sept. Working on vertical lift mechanism for the optical bench.
Earthquake Stops
- Preparing RFQ for screws. Working with Mike and Joe LaCour on screw design details. Getting parts in from vendors.
From: k mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu
Adv. LIGO
- I have taken apart the suspension in the 056 lab for Mike Gerfin to modify, and set up the test faraday 4 wire style damper test in Phil Willems lab.
- The preliminary assembly of the installation arm tool is in progress, also work on a test setup has started.
From: Chris Echols cechols@ligo.caltech.edu
No report.
From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu
Adv. LIGO SUS
- Ears are bonded in LASTI's penultimate mass and ETM optic. The bonds look good and they are curing at this time.
- Bonding of ears on a second penultimate mass will take place sometime in October.
Core Optic
From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>
- I attended the SPIE exhibition and was able to look two of our possible polishing pathfinder vendors in the eye and say "you've got our RFP?" The answer in both cases was affirmative, they also indicate that they will be submitting proposals.
- The main purpose of the visit to SPIE was to meet with Ted Mooney from QED. We went over the status of the pathfinder optic at QED. The final conclusion "it will be in spec but it may not be what you really want" For more detail see the QED weekly report at LIGO-C070158-00. This is one of the purposes of the pathfinder, to discover if our specification really covers what we want. QED has presented a possible remedial step. We will discuss this further at the final review, scheduled for October 5th at QED. Rochester NY.
Auxiliary Optics
From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu
STABLE RECYCLING CAVITY
- Mike modeled the diffraction loss due to the clipping of the beam by the beamsplitter and the MMT3 mirror, with and without an elliptical baffle, using ZEMAX. One elliptical baffle is placed in front of the MMT3 mirror to block the portion of the beam that spills over the tilted BS. Two other elliptical baffles are placed in front of each ITM, to block the beam from the arm cavity that spills over the tilted BS from the ITM direction.
- With an input beam size w=2.23 mm and wavefront curvature of 76460 mm at the MMT1 mirror, the cummulative round trip loss without an elliptical baffle is 720 ppm; and 880 ppm with the elliptical baffle. A power point presentation describing the results is found at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~smith/G070614-01_stable-recycling-cavity-loss-ZEMAXL.pdf .
Input Optics
From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu
Rodica Martin and Luke Williams:
- Cleaning, baking and helping on measurements on the e-LIGO Faraday magnet.
- Measurements of the separation angle of the e-LIGO calcite polarizers.
- Packed parts and shipped them for vacuum bake for e-LIGO
Muzammil Arain:
- Tested Silicon Carbide in vacuum for baffle material testing process. An e-LIGO size and power beam was incident at SiC. No visible damage or glow was observed. The test lasted three hours. There was some outgassing but pressure stabilized in 20 minutes.
- Antonio and Valera measured the back reflected beam with recycling mirror misaligned. The low-power data shows that the beam has changed since the last known measurements, made in 2003. This could be due to some shift in the position of MMT2 or could be due to some thermal lens in the Faraday isolator. Further investigations are underway.
David Tanner, Guido Mueller, Dave Reitze:
- Made strawaman staffing assignments for the e-LIGO assembly/installaton of Faraday isolators and EOMs, based on Mike Zucker's latest schedule. No one has to be two places at once.
Other R&D
From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>
Arianna:
- I'm working with labview to build a program to find the working point of my system, by doing a scan in amplitude.
- A program for synusoidal excitation scans is already done (by John) and i'll use it to take data by changing the frequency of the input sinusoidal signal.
- I hope to find the way to do everything as soon as possible.
Maria:
- Back to high school; made some manual hysteresis measurements, with interesting results, showing hysteresis for different axcitation amplitudes and pointing out the importance of thermal corrections.
- Writing a report, but will continue showing up in the lab in her free time.
Andrea:
- I'm studying the schematic top view of the arm interferometer, in order to calculate the angles at which we can physically put our scatterometer photodiodes.
- Thanks to the BRDF vs angle curves, I can infer the power scattered at the elected angles and from the responsivity information of the photodiode, I can find the current produced. An I'm going to compare this current with the noise measured.
- Made measurements of signal to noise with light fluence similar to what expected in the beam line. Tomorrow I'll go to talk to Rich about my electronic work, I Found some mistake with the electronics, and I'll perform the measurements without any resistance in parallel to the photodiode.
- Just right now, I'm going to correct the first part of the report, and I'll add the new measurements. Preparing to leave
Alberto:
- Left from MIT, visiting Caltech, given HAM SAS presentation in Caltech, working on the paper during forthcoming shifts before returning to Italy for graduate school applications.
Zeb:
- Out for a break, will continue the work on polyhymide resin when Caltech resumes
Sachin:
- Back to high school.
- Zeb and Sachin completed a polyhimide resin curing without visible bubbles, must section to inspect interior.
John:
- Waiting for the lab to be rehabilitated.
- Written two reports for the Grlasgow doctoral school.
- Assisting Arianna.
- Measuring mirror losses to verify the Mexican Hat power recycled design.
For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini or Phil Lindquist