Weekly Report for Week Ending October 18, 2007

Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, October 22, 2007 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

1.            Announcements

2.            Programmatic (Marx)

3.            Comments on Weekly Report

4.            LSC and Data Analysis (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 (Ottaway)
  • Lab computing (Anderson)
  • Data Analysis Group (Weinstein)
  • Instrument Science (Gustafson)
  • Enhancements (Zucker)

6.            Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)

7.            Change Control Board/Technical Review Board Session as needed

  • CR070010 – Increased Budget for SUS
  • CR070011 – Increased Budget for ARES Costs in FY 2007

Site and other business issues:

  • Status on fire suppression issue for LDAS rooms
  • Progress on inventory of LLO warehouse
  • Architect estimate for LHO SEC
  • Report on progress of possible wind farm near LHO

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Reitze)

Nothing of significance to report...

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • Hobart and William Smith Colleges (shown in table below) was approved and signed off this reporting period. It will be posted and submitted to the DCC.
  • Carleton College and IUCCA are pending re-review.
  • The table below shows all of the MOUs and their attachments that have been approved and signed off to date, by both the LSC Spokesperson and the LIGO Laboratory Director.

MOU

Attachment

Andrews University

DAT, OPS, Z

Embry-Riddle University

DAT, OPT, SUS, Z

Florida, University of

ACF, DAT, LAS, OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z

Goddard

DAT, OPS, Z

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

DAT, OPS, Z

Institute of Applied Physics

OPT, OUT, Z

Louisiana Tech University

DAT, OPS, OUT, Z

Loyola University

DAT, OPS, Z

Maryland, University of

ACF, DAT, OPS, Z

Montana State University

DAT, Z

Oregon, University of

DAT, OPS, OUT, Z

Rochester, University of

DAT, Z

Southeastern Louisiana University

ACF, DAT, OPS, Z

Texas-Austin, University of

DAT, OPS, Z

Texas-Brownsville, University of

DAT, OPS, OUT, Z

 

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

  • Working with Property Services on year end reports for Government-Owned vehicles and leased GSA vehicles.
  • Provided assistance to G. Billingsley with obtaining a Carnet to Export / Import without any restrictions an Aluminum Oxide piece from CIT to Japan.  Account Number: LIGO.OPT 5.4 NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
  • Assisted K. Mason at MIT in making shipping arrangements for three crates from High Precision Devices in Boulder, CO to CIT.  Account Number: LIGO.HAMCH-5.19-NSFLIGO.FY02CA
  • Continued working in gathering procurement documents for thirteen assets as part of the NSF review at LHO.
  • Assisted J. Worden at LHO by requesting a current GSA Supply sources letter.
  • Assisted K. Mason at MIT in making shipping arrangements for three crates from Zimmerman Metals in Denver, CO to AstroPak in Downey, CA.  Account Number: LIGO.HAMCH-5.19-NSFLIGO.FY02CA

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • Assessed and placed an order for 2008 CIT Personnel Directories for the entire lab.
  • Processed several papers for review for the Amaldi Proceedings.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Oracion)

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

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

  • Completed the order for relocation.
  • Completed change order #38 to Support Services and submitted to the vendor.  Working on #39.
  • Submitted the final routing for Northrop Grumman.
  • Working on the change order to Ares.
  • Received four no-cost extensions.
  • Transferred funds on one time purchase orders.  The transfer for MIT is pending.

>From: Karl Oracion <koracion@ligo.caltech.edu>>

  • Sent out reports for Visitor's program and Outreach award.
  • Submitted two cost transfers to project accounting for review and pre-approval.
  • Started review of invoices to be included in October 2007 monthly operations report.
  • Reviewed MIT 10/07 invoice and reconciled amount to MIT twonk report.
  • Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • Gina Salone and Guy Fish worked with Bonnie Wooley, Allen Sibley, and John Worden to gather the accumulated recurring and non-recurring costs associated with operating the two observatories over the past year.  These data were required for a presentation by Joe Giaime for the NSF review scheduled in November.

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

  • A copy of the original terms and conditions for the MIT subaward was sent to Kristin Spencer, of the NSF, in response to her request as part of her final report on the TBSR conducted in August.  This completes the compliance with all the requests for additional information stemming from the TBSR.
  • Bugs are still being worked out with the new imaging system from Accounts Payable, which requires the scanning of all invoices prior to payment.  LIGO Business Group staff are working with the Accounts Payable Office to address the problems.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Providing support and view graphs for the NSF OPS Proposal Review scheduled November 6 through 8.

First Iteration Budgets have been prepared for FY 2008 for all WBS elements with the exception of Advanced LIGO.  We will pick this up again as preparations for the NSF Review subside.

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 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by K. Kawabe)

As planned, post-S5 measurements continued.

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

Post-S5 closeout work (Brian O'Reilly)

  • Work continues on Post-S5 measurements. Aside from continuing measurements of the electronics, we've also been making cross-checks of the D.C. calibration of the actuation function and the cavity pole. Maintenance and staging activities occur daily from 8am-4pm local time, for which we transition the LVEA to "laser safe" mode. Wednesday evening was devoted to scattering measurements and mode-matching studies.
  • The interferometer has made it through the night a couple of times, and reacquires lock on its own, albeit slowly. There was some tuning of the WFS1 sign and phase, probably related to work in the electronics' racks and of the common-mode crossover. These changes appear to have improved stability during the up script.

LIGO Computing and Network Security (Roddy)

Reported under General Computing, see below

General computing and LDAS admin (Giardina)

Reported under General Computing, see below

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis & computing (Yakushin)

Storage/Condor/LDAS Admin

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data Analysis

Reported under Data Analysis activities, see below

LLO Outreach (John Thacker)

  • Prepared Post-visit surveys.
  • Hosted Tulane University visitors from Physics.
  • Mailed pre-visit packets.
  • Website update.
  • Confirmed field trip visits.
  • Designed 3 programs for group visits.
  • Developed activities for younger group visits.
  • Prepared programs and conducted visits for 3 school groups (two HS physics; one 5th grade).
  • Met with Inverness Research Assoc. (external evaluator) to discuss final report content.
  • Attended ASTC annual conference.

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

See Advanced LIGO

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

  • Rob has submitted a draft of his Amaldi paper on "DC Readout Experiment at the Caltech 40m Prototype Interferometer" for LSC review. His talk at Amaldi earned him a James B. Hartle Award, and was chosen as a highlight paper for CQG.
  • We had a 40m Tecnical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting scheduled for last week, but because of travels, etc, it has been postponed till Nov 8, 8:30 AM Pacific.
  • Stefan has used loopTickle/Opticle to build a length sensing and control model and noise budget for AdvLIGO and a next incarnation of the 40m, featuring the new 9.4 / 47 MHz control scheme and 10g ITMs (to move the optical spring peak above 200 Hz).
  • Andrey has been working on optimizing the suspension damping of ITMX and ETMX, by locking the XARM and adjusting the damping gains to minimize the rms noise on XARM_CTRL in the region of the suspension resonances, while keeping the rms noise in the stack resonance region under control. He is documenting the XARM lock procedure in the 40m Wiki.
  • In the process, Andrey is exercising the new matlab-based dataviewer and dtt facilities develooped by Justin.
  • Rob continues to work on issues related to locking the full IFO in dual-recycled-FPMI configuration. He'll measure the laser and RF oscillator noise couplings to RF readout and DC readout in that configuration, to compare with his measurements in the PRFPMI configuration and with his models. He notes that there are currently some large offsets on small signals in the REFL port, not yet understood.
  • There was a mag 4.2 quake in Wrightwood on tuesday early morning, which got all our suspensions shaking. This gave us a nice opportunity to study the ringdowns of the suspended optics, and has uncovered problems with one or two OSEMS (MC2 side is not working).
  • We continue to have problems with c1iscex, which controls the ETMX suspended optic. It times out and requires rebooting, every few days.
  • On Mon Oct 8, 5:45 AM where was a short power outage. Steve and Rob went through all the coldstart procedures and everything came back up OK.
  • Rana wants us to all start using a new improved 40m elog.
  • Sam, Pinkesh and company are measuring the optical properties of the Enhanced LIGO OMC at the 40m clean room. They measured the finesse, transmission, and modal structure, and estimated the round-trip losses. It will be moved to Bridge for integration onto its suspension sometime soon. Sam will start assembling a second OMC sometime soon as well.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No report.

LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC ISI

  • We currently have both stages of the ISI floating and all of the **sensors are running. That is the good news, the bad news is that there seems to be an asymmetry in the stage 1 corners, two of them require 120lbs of trim weight while the third wants about -10 pounds.  Fabrice was able to misalign stage 2 (2-3/1000 of an inch) enough so that stage 1 could be brought into its operating range. We are in the process of evaluating the possible causes, effects and fixes.
  • We ran into a number of small electronics problems; luckily Jay was here for the week and was able to take care of almost all of them.  The one remaining one seems to be inside of one of the horizontal GS13 pods, which appears to have a gain about a factor of ten less then the other GS13s.
  • On Friday we plan to finish installing the actuator connectors and cables and hope to start driving the system.

Quadruple Pendulum

  • Brett has been installing the top mass OSEMs on the two chains with the goal of getting some local damping running before we start system ID on the ISI.
  • We have started the process of aligning the quad to the ISI.  The theodolite and auto-collimator have been setup and adjusted we will be adjusting the yaw and pitch of the quad this afternoon.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

Kent Blackburn for the Grid R&D group:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPEMENT

  • Wrote agenda and minutes for weekly LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
  • Attended weekly LIGO-Pegasus, DASWG and OSG-USERS telecon.
  • Einstein@Home activities:
    • Joined Pulsar Group mailing list.
    • Prepare for and attend second D-Grid telecon scheduled Friday 10/19/07.
    • Inquiry about OSG  general policies (Suchndra) concerning: wall time limits, preemtion, network access.
  • Integration TestBed testing:
    • Read documentation on WS Gram job submission provided by Pegasus developers to understand how to use this interface for running workflows after receiving request to test LIGO Binary Inspiral Workflows under WS-Gram.
    • Resubmitted workflows at University of Chicago ITB cluster after hearing back that they had fixed the problems which were impacting LIGO and ATLAS jobs.
  • OSG-Production Grid testing:
    • Run workflows on FNAL_Fermigrid, FNAL_GPFARM, OSG_LIGO_MIT, UFlorida_HPC, UCSDT2, FIU_PG.
  • Local Cluster testing:
    • Ran two large wfs on ldas-grid.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT

  • Attended OSG Executive Team Meeting.
  • Attended two Campus Cyber Infrastructure telecons to discuss and plan for upcoming CI Workshop next week in Seattle.
  • Wrote presentation for Cyber Infrastructure Workshop on OSG and sent it to the organizers for pre-workshop booklet printing.
  • Accepted position on US ATLAS and US CMS Operations/Maintenance and Computering/Software review panel.
  • Worked with Einstein@Home developers and leadership to understand the potential of the OSG for E@H and to promote greater collaboration on some of the details of E@H I feel are necessary to assure a successful deployment onto the OSG.
  • Developed and distributed agenda for November 2nd OSG Finance Board meeting at Fermilab. Created Meeting page on OSG Twiki.
  • Arrange travel plans to attend in person as the chairman.
  • Assisted OSG Project Associate in tracking down NSF funding for year two.
  • Discussed strategy to improve reliability of NSF funds spent at all the sub contracted institutions for year one expenses after discovering that previous reporting mechanism only captured the paid expenses and was expected to be incomplete until roughly February next year.
  • Worked with LIGO and PMA to complete and sign paperwork needed by Caltech Office of Sponsored Research for sign-off on year 2 OSG Statement of Work to get the funds flowing from UW Madison.
  • Evaluated first set of applicants to be posted for the Grid Admin position here at Caltech. Changed superuser passwords on OSG ITB/SE/VTB clusters with the departure of previous admin. Worked with Britta to come up with a better solution to a permissions problem that was causing her workflows to fail after the previous administrator made changes to the system's gridmap files on his last day. This required several superuser actions to resolve.
  • Worked with Britta to improve LIGO-Pegasus meeting logistics by having standing items for the meeting agenda adopting the taking and circulation of minutes for the weekly meetings.
  • Continued to work on Year 2 Statements of Work for OSG funded institutions.
  • Worked with OSG Users Group and OSG ITB Group to understand a common failure mode between LIGO jobs and ATLAS jobs at one of the ITB sites.

Gregory Mendell:

  • As part of my data analysis efforts, last week I worked with Tobin Fricke and Rick Savage on documenting the S5 configuration of the fast (262 kHz) channels.

Joseph Betzwieser:

  • Code/Search review for the wide parameter crab search.
  • Preparing off-line comparisons for Pulsarmon using SFTs from all of S5.
  • Preparing for Hannover F2F and LSC meetings.

Kipp Cannon:

  • With Drew K., Diego F. and Stuart A., helped track down a Condor bug that has been affecting standard universe jobs on the UWM and CIT clusters, corrupting non-ASCII output files.
  • Co-ordinated with the X-pipeline people and UWM on the migration of the X pipeline code from CVS to a newer version control system (and voluntered to chair a group to provide a recommendation to daswg on one or more LSC-wide replacements for CVS).
  • Discovered and corrected a live time book-keeping bug in one of the excess power pipeline's dag construction scripts.
  • Discussed a paper on the use of Bayesian inference for coincidence tests in trigger-based gravitational wave event searches with the burst review commitee to seek input on how to bring to publication.
  • Ttelecons:  bursts, daswg, ring-down review.

Alan Weinstein:

  • Prepared talk on LIGO Lab data analysis effort for NSF Review.
  • Reading and commenting on the latest draft of GRB paper.
  • Reading and commenting on papers by Rob Ward, Kipp Cannon, etc.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

  • Efforts continue with porting LDAS to CentOS 5 and the latest updated version of Solaris 10. As part of this upgrade, the LDAS code base is being modified to compile with the version of GCC supplied with CentOS 5.
  • This week also saw progress with converting more system tests to the standard System Test harness. Most of the datacond MDC scripts have been converted. The ndas tests were completed are now part of SystemTest.tcl.
  • Version 1.9.81 of LDAS was used for system testing. All tests passed. The dbperformance test had to be run a second time. This issue is being investigated in a more comprehensive look at memory usage (PR#3218).
  • The system ldas-test locked up twice during the week. A problem report (pr3221) was filed which describes the problem.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Tape ejections for shelf storage at LLO/LHO.
  • Vetting tapes in ERROR state at the sites to free up slots (ongoing).
  • Cleaned up /var/sam at CIT, restarted archiving with new archiver log file and reactivated cron job to move metadumps to /archive.
  • Fixed "damaged" h(t) files at CIT for transfer to LHO via LDR.
  • Finally got 2nd fibre between the 2Gb FC switch and opterondata-cit working (much debugging required...).
  • Helped with multiple T3 problems at LLO (ongoing).
  • Got /home archiving running again at LLO.
  • Worked on debugging loss of access to /fb0_frames from dataserver at LLO--it now seems that a bad fibre may have been the problem all along (waiting for a fix to be sure).
  • Staged back a bunch of L1 data for Lindy, did first draft of "megastage" program.
  • Discovered that CL0426 had never gotten a new leader block so I retransfered the data from the sites.

(Phil Ehrens)

  • The usual certificate related tasks and user support.
  • Ongoing support of MOU review process and data.
  • Installed and configured Elog with 2 databases for Rana Adhikari.
  • Raid Controller Notable Reports: OBE! Drive failure on cluster 3ware controllers is now detected by a simple predictive model: 40 controller events in 5 days will cause a warning email to be sent with a log of the events.
  • Wrote zfs-cache-tool.sh to query and optionally coerce cache status on Sun x4500 raid "Thumper" boxes.
  • Cluster fan issues: There are currently 47 fans reported failed in the cluster.  The highest cpu temp reported is 55C, well below the critical value of 75C.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Debugging and fixing "amber" light issue on CIsco switch.
  • More work on LACP documentation.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

  • Stable; rebuild arrays data4/8.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • LDAS lost connection to /fb0_frames.  It looks like the fiber cable got broken and needs to be either replaced or reterminated.
  • /archive was flaky during the last couple weeks. First t3-10 kept appearing and disappearing in fabric and eventually became completely unavailable until it was powercycled.  During recent few days t3-5 keeps appearing and disappearing in fabric but so far did not go offline.  Powercycling it did not help. u1d7 did not survive powercycling and was replaced with u1d2@t3-1.  Periodically there appear error messages about other T3s as well. It is like somebody pulled the fibers out of the switch and disturbed the whole thing or the fiber channel switch is getting tired moving bits and needs to be powercycled ...
  • 3 bad disks were replaced in dataserver.
  • The segment replication from/to LLO is broken.  Restarting replication at all the sites did not help.  It looks like more invasive actions might be needed to revive it.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Tape eject for shipment to CIT.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • The prerelease of LDG 4.5 for testing was made last week. No major problems have been found and the final release will be made soon. There have been unrelated problems that affect the LDAS filesystems at LHO and more so at LLO, and I am working with the other sys. admins to solve these.

(Ben Johnson)

  • /var/sam became full this past Saturday. Had to powercycle dataserver, and delete+recopy many hours of L0 files.
  • The 3511-test controller spontaneously resets itself in the evenings.  I'll see what I can do to fix the problem (e.g., use the new "spare" controller we just received).
  • Still transferring LLO h(t) Level 2 data to Hanford, then putting it on the nodes. Will do a final reconciliation once the last wave of LLO data transfers.
  • Nearly completed Secure and Enhanced NDS (SENDS) documentation. I am now to the point where I am describing implementation-specific details.
  • Tape space is getting very tight again. Lookback may need to be reduced to less than one month for both L0 and L1.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

  • Installed yum-security rpm on tintage.
  • Nepal, ligocalendar to limit updates to just security -- integrated with nagios for alerts.
  • with nagios for alerts. More work on ilog command-line interface.
  • Work on gwdaw12 site(registration page payment page).
  • Replaced Andy S machine with refurb dell 530.
  • Replaced x30 keyboard; battery, power adapter for Brennan trip to europe.
  • Testing dell 530 in control room.
  • Clone laptop (clonezilla).
  • Purchasing/invoice issues.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

  • Working on an inventory control system, database is mostly ready, need to start importing data.
  • Other usual/unusual user support requests.
  • Cleared spam trap.
  • Mail summary is screwed up due to a recent canIt upgrade. Last three days:

Non spam:  2,179

Spam: 7,508(10 virus)

Total: 9,687

Hanford

(Christine)

  • Finished rack mounting and installing OS on computer to be new mail server. Larry will be here next week to help install the mail software.
  • Installed the OS on the computer to be the new web server. This computer will also be the slave DNS.  Started setting up the files for that.
  • Waiting to hear from Caltech ITS about becoming the DNS authority for our domain.  All is ready when they say I can start broadcasting from my DNS master.
  • Amerion has made some changes to their router configuration for our backup network.  I've tested the changes, but they have not made any difference.  I tested a few configuration changes to my router as well, but with no difference in performance.  Amerion thinks that there may be some configuration mis-matches with the ESnet router that are causing the poor performance on the backup network.  I'm compiling test results to send to both ESnet and the Cisco engineer.

Caltech

(Christian)

  • Dennis Coyne - Replaced hard-drive and transferred all of Dennis's files and settings.
  • Guy Fish - Installed and configured new workstation for Guy.
  • Ben Abbott - Called Dell support to have motherboard replaced on laptop.
  • Re-imaged laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
  • Toner cartridge replacements- 3flr W/B and Irenešs local printer.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

  • Worked on securing a newly built web server.
  • Rebooted all NTSRV's after windows updates were pushed out by Christian. There is a problem with the 2000 server's shutting down I don't know if this problem was caused with the updates or was on-going. For sure there was a problem compacting DCC's database on Antares. After getting the database compacted I was able to get this server running again.
  • Re-cabled the W/B 2nd floor network closet.
  • More purchasing for users per Larry’s request.
  • Rack mounted and loaded Solaris on a new X4500 server. This is an ongoing project.
  • Other on site/phone user support and other sysadmin tasks.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  A website for the upcoming NSF review.  A website and related logistical issues for the dry run.  Update of the roster database. Attended a demo on Leopard OS. User support for LIGO seminars. Assistance to MIT with credit card payment interface.  Misc web updates.
  • LSC:  Updates of the database of technical papers, website updates.
  • CaJAGWR:  Encoded the video of the last talk for streaming, updated the website.

(Larry)

  • Continual work on procurement items. Received the notebook computers and those will be distributed next week. Still working on getting a number of workstations in. Purchasing a number of misc. items such as fiber cables since the stock has been depleted. Still working on some p-card issues. Evidently, that will continue for a couple of months. Finished up the SUN maint. contract and that should now be in the system. Working on getting more solidworks licenses.
  • Working on a new backup mailserver. With all the updates and new v ersions of s/w it has proven to be a little more problematic than planned. There have been some compile problems with the type of whitespace being put into the files. This has caused some hand editing of the final file. Presently, it looks like we are about half way there.
  • Still setting up new accounts and getting ready to lock a number of old accounts.
  • Worked with Mike on getting some equipment installed. Still a number of logistical items to work out as we start swapping out the old equipment.
  • Working with PMA on the labs and getting the network installed in them.
  • Support for different meetings that are taking place. Getting things ready for the review coming up next month.
  • Finished up some of the backup tapes to where we are now caught up to the most recent backups.
  • Regular end-user support.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

  • No report

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

e2e weekly meeting

  • Sany Yoshida talked about the frequency noise induced by the seismic motion of the MC HAMs.
  • He compared two SEIs, HAM-SAS and a single state active isolation, and compared with the requirement.
  • His study also includes the effect of radiation pressures.
  • Mark Barton talked about his recent work on the suspension systems, one about ribbon/fibre length budget (T070138-01-K) and another about torsional modes in suspension Fibres/Ribbons (T070227-00-K).

Static IFO simulation (Hiro, John)

  • The loss of the signal due to the curvature mismatch of RM and ITM were calculated for MSCC and SCC. The effect of RM curvature error is less harmful with SCC than with MSCC, but the effect of the ITM curvature error is almost the same for both systems. This is because the diffractive loss in the ARM becomes dominant source of the signal loss than the loss due to the Michelson cavity dynamics. The ability of adjusting the mode of the SCC by changing the distance between MMT2 and MMT3 was also investigated, and found that there can be some limitations.
  • John has started investigating the effect of the thermal deformation in the AdvLIGO arm. He is trying to find optimal ring heater compensation to keep the beam shape the same that in the cold cavity.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

See the report of the weekly meeting above.

CDS Prestabilized Laser

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

  • As part of updating some cost estimates, I have gone over the signals list for the PSL and categorised signals to get the number of analog and digital input/output cards required.
  • Good news on the laser front.  The laser output power is now 176W.  The higher order mode content was measured with the diagnostic breadboard to be less than 10%.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

  • The two stages of the BSC stack has been released and balanced. One of the three corners was higher than anticipated. A temporary shift of the masses was done and Fabrice is looking into a longer term solution of tweaking the shims below the blade springs.
  • Jay Heefner connected the STS-2 and GS-13 seismometer cables. One of the GS-13 seismometers has a much lower gain than the others. We are continuing with this GS-13 and may open it in before it goes into the chamber to find the source of the problem.

Single Stage HAM Assembly and Test

  • All parts have arrived at HPD and the assembly is continuing. Myron, Corey, Andy, and Joe are at HPD this week. We are hoping to get stage 1 onto stage 0 this week.
  • Several problems have come up this week primarily with the quality of several parts we have received. The actuators had excess polyimide coating on flat mountings surfaces, was missing a locating pin hole, and had setup shims stuck between the magnet and coil. We are working with the supplier to make sure these get resolved before the next two sets come in.
  • Several parts received this week from Limerick Machine had dings, scratches and were missing some chamfered edges. The reason for this was that they worked all weekend long to get these parts to us and were careless. Neither the actuator nor machined part problems affect the structure (cosmetic) and were repaired by us and HPD.
  • The large plates and remaining structural parts at HPD are scheduled to be picked up on Friday and sent for cleaning. These are the parts which make up the isolation system for enhanced LIGO at LLO.
  • Next week we will be adding the locater/lockers, actuators, attaching the springs, assembling the GS-13 pods, and setting up the controls computer.

Suspensions

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

  • ALUK held its latest Project Management Committee on 12 October 2007 (See LIGO-M070363-00-K). A brief activity summary follows:
  • RAL: The noise prototype is suspended at LASTI on the locked-down ISI and LASTI staff will be able to make final adjustments once the ISI is suspended. FEA and experimental work on the BS structures have concluded that they do behave as predicted; this remains true when the bolts are clean. The first set of designs for the BS masses will be ready for detailing soon. The first set of returns from the OJEU process is now due (expressions of interest + returned questionnaire from blade manufacturers).
  • Glasgow: Ears have been bonded to the test mass and the first penultimate mass. The spare PUM is at LASTI awaiting ear bonding (expected during November once “d” distances have been agreed). Ribbon pulling is now under control and we plan to ship the machine to LASTI in the next few weeks.
  • Birmingham/Strathclyde: the OSEMs for the noise prototype were delivered just-in-time; the electronics are due at the end of November. Thanks to Jay’s efforts in providing a drive system, the OSEMs were wired up at LASTI off-suspension and all tested for performance.
  • Overall: The STFC (formerly PPARC) Oversight Committee were pleased with progress.

From: Norna Robertson <nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • Attended monthly Advanced LIGO UK project management meeting.
  • MATLAB files of input modecleaner design provided to Virginio for AOS work.
  • Further modelling of beamsplitter design.
  • Prepared web page on SWG for the LSC home page.
  • Worked on SWG talk for Hannover

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

Recycling Mirror Suspension

  • We had an internal review of the structure with Dennis Coyne yesterday. Calum provided a thorough history of the structure design and analysis to support this review. The structure resonance in Ansys and Cosmos is about 155 Hz. Dennis gave us the go-ahead for detailing the structure. Greer will meet with Mike Gerfen on the weld prep for the parts. He will also provide plots and dimensioned sketches of the weld areas to Bob Taylor for a welding meeting with Chris Echols and others at the welding company on Friday.

Output Mode Cleaner

  • We had a welding meeting about the structure on Tuesday. There will be another one at the weld shop on Friday. It will focus on what design and weld preparation changes can we make in the short term to make the welds better for the next 2 structures. Chris will incorporate any changes and we will start fabrication of the 2 new structures. We will farm out the piece parts to expedite the work. Currently, the structure is being used by the ISC folks to hang & test their silica bench. We are scheduling to bring it to JPL for a clean & vacuum bake the first week of November.

Earthquake Stop Retrofit

  • The BeCu and silver plated stainless screws should be here on Friday. I will perform an assembly fit check for both configurations then send the parts to Bob Taylor and Tom Evans for cleaning and baking. I talked to Tom this week to coordinate the loads, as he will get all parts but the viton o-rings. Valera reported that the flow bench for the EQ assembly in the optics lab is ready. He confirms that we need to have the screws assembled and ready by Nov 13th. Tom has a number of Univ. of Florida bake loads which we may piggy-back on to, if required.

Input Mode Cleaner

  • Norna and I are researching the documentation required for an input mode cleaner preliminary design review.

HAM Auxiliary Suspensions

  • Mike Meyer, the new mechanical engineer here at LLO, is working to convert/recreate the LOS and SOS drawings in Solidworks in preparation for the HAM auxiliary suspension designs.

From: ken mailand <kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • I have finished a new preliminary design for the zero expansion pick off telescope/hartman sensor constructed of  Zerodur and Invar material. The telescope is mounted it with a 3 wire suspension, and a separately suspended thermal cover around it.
  • Testing the faraday 4 wire style damper is in Phil Willems lab, is in progress.
  • The preliminary assembly of the installation arm tool is complete, load testing is in progress at CES.

Core Optics

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

LHO imaging - Bill/Cheryl

From Cheryl:

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

  • The scatter scans have been done for the 5 spare MC mirrors for the eLIGO. They show quiet different scatter properties with averages of 4.6, 13, 30, 31 and 64 ppm respectively.  In addition, it's interesting to note that, in the histogram of all points,  the two best ones show a sub ppm low scatter edge which is comparable with the predication from the surface microroughness measurement. Underway is tracking the manufacture data to further understand this variation.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

HARTMANN/PO TELESCOPE CONCEPT

  • Mike made a ZEMAX layout of a long focal length ITMXPO/Hartmann Telescope with the primary mirror on HAM5, and the secondary on HAM6. The telescope fits within the chambers. This looks attractive, because the spacing between the HAM optical tables is expected to be controlled to within a few microns, which is smaller than the tolerance on the Hartmann telescope defocus. In addition, the telescope mirrors may be hard mounted to the HAM table. However, the mirror mount design must not allow significant thermal expansion, and the mirrors must be held in a relatively stress-free manner.
  • Ken completed the concept layout of the thermally stabilized off-axis PO telescope by adding a suspended thermal shield to enclose the suspended telescope.

BRDF MEASUREMENT

  • Mike presented the results of back-scattering BRDF and reflectivity measurements made this summer with surf student Dan Riley. The un-corrected scattering measurements agreed with the expected value of a Lambertian Standard to within approximately 25%. The following materials were measured: black glass; Laser Black 3188 coating; oxidized, polished stainless steel; superpolished, uncoated window.

From: Phil Willems willems@ligo.caltech.edu

  • No report.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Volker:

  • Magnetic field and force calculations on FI magnet segments with COMSOL.
  • Mount 15x4x4 mm RTP crystal for LZH AdvLIGO tests.
  • Work on coating damage test vacuum system.
  • Prepare two LSC talks.

Luke:

  • Finished designs of calcite mounts, hard apertures, and clean room magnet boxes.
  • Collaborated with the IAP guys on new assembly procedure for FR magnets.
  • Editing final layout for eligo FI

Muzammil and Rodica:

  • Finished rotation measurements for all TGG crystals to verify suitability for the 7-disk eligo rotator.
  • Measured the thermal lensing in z-cut DKDP crystals. It seems that a 3mm 'z-cut' DKDP crystal will provide adequate thermal compensation for NG TGG crystals.
  • Also Muzammil measured thermal depolarization for 'z-cut' DKDP and found that this is much less sensitive to alignment. The thermal depolarization loss was found to be -28 dB. Therefore we will use a 'z-cut' DKDP in e-LIGO FI thermal compensation.

Kate and Antonio at LLO:

  • Carried out two experiments in an attempt to locate the source of the Faraday Isolator thermal drift. First, when the rotator is absent, we observe the same reflected drift as before; 150 - 200 urad in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Second, for one CWP, the transmitted drift is 30 - 50 urad in each direction.
  • Rupal and Dan cleaned the optics lab for us. We have moved everything out of the HPLF, cleaned it, and started to set up on the new table in preparation for putting together LLO's eLIGO FI.
  • Awaiting safety approval before we can turn on the laser.

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