Weekly Report for Week Ending October 25, 2007

LSC	Administration	Hanford Observatory	Livingston Observatory
Optical & Mechanical	Controls and Data Systems	40 Meter Facility	TNI
LASTI	CIT Science Group	Laboratory Computing	Adv. LIGO Development

Past Weekly Reports

---

LSC Issues (Reitze)

The LSC held a joint meeting with the Virgo Collaboration in Hannover, Germany this week.  A total of 224 people attended the meeting, the largest meeting the collaboration has ever had.  Plenary presentations covered a wide range of topics ranging from impending detector upgrades (E-LIGO, Virgo+) to longer range detector plans (Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo) as well as the status of S5 and VSR1 searches.  Detailed presentations on all aspects of instrument science and data analysis.  The Gravitational Wave International Committee (GWIC), represented by GWIC chair Jim Hough, gave a presentation on the development of the GWIC roadmap.From my perspective, this was one of the most exciting meetings that the LSC has had.In addition, two LSC papers have appeared in print:

Pulsar S2 Fstat paper: Phys. Rev. D 76, 082001 (2007)

http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v76/e082001

Burst S4 all-sky paper: Class. Quantum Grav. 24 (2007) 5343-5369.

http://stacks.iop.org/0264-9381/24/5343

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

• 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

• This reporting period, Eotvos University 2007 MOU was received and posted for review
• Carleton College and IUCCA are still pending re-review.
  

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

• Provided pictures and procurement back up documentation to the NSF for thirteen assets as part of the NSF review at LHO.
• Assisted R. Abbott in requesting Logic Plus Inc. to return a Dynamic Signal Analyzer on loan to them.
• Assisted J. Ayala (Tax Compliance Officer) in reviewing 28 LIGO invoices to determine if tax should be paid or not.
• Tagged and created property records for 4 File Servers, and one Modular clean room at CIT.
• Continued working with Property Services on year end reports for Government-Owned vehicles and leased GSA vehicles.
• Assisted K. Mason at MIT in making shipping arrangements for one crate from High Precision Devices in Boulder, CO to CIT. 

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

• One individual submitedt approximately 40 documents into the DCC for processing.
• Continued to process papers for review for the Amaldi Proceedings.
• Packaged & shipped 6 MC/MMT mirrors to LHO.
• Processing presentations from the LSC/Virgo Meeting this week at Hannover, Germany.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Oracion)

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

• For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY Press Here.

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

• Completed change order #39 to Support Services.
• Working on the large order for the replacement parts for LLO.
• Submitted the no cost extensions to Taylor, Arland, and Southbridge.
• Waiting for a response on the material findings on the UF cert.

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

• Submitted cost transfers to project accounting for processing.
• Started expenditure analysis, invoice review, budget review and data entry for October 2007 monthly operations report.
• Reconciled MIT 10/07 invoice to MIT twonk report for payment.
• 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>

• The actuators for the Advanced LIGO seismic isolation system at LASTI delivered by Planning Systems, Inc. (PSI), have been declared unacceptable.  PSI has been notified in writing, and all their invoices are being held up for payment.

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

• The draft cover letter for Advanced LIGO imports and a draft of procedures to be used for Advanced LIGO imports have both been sent by the Office of Sponsored Research to Adilia Koch, the new export-import specialist, for review.  When approved, the letter will be sent to the Department of Commerce, and the procedures will be distributed to the LIGO staff.
• NSF General Counsel is still reviewing the issue of Caltech using funds from the U.K. to purchase test masses, which would be installed at LIGO as Caltech property.  A teleconference is tentatively scheduled for October 26 to resolve this issue.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

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

Have provided first iteration budgets for the first half of FY 2008 to Karl for incorporating into the LIGO Operations FY 2008 financial reports.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

• There are no open change requests.

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

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

Post-S5 measurements continued. Partial list of activities is shown below.

• Tuesday maintenance summary.
• ITM autocal instead of ETM to check calibration. See also here.
• Various measurements to check high frequency channels continued (here, here, here).
• In addition to the check of high frequency ASQ itself, a fast magnetometer was temporarily installed in H1 LSC rack and was connected to one of H2 fast channels for PEM check. See also here.
• Temperature sensors were installed and calibrated on BSC1 and BSC7 for better monitoring the test mass temperature for absorption measurement.
• New measurement to evaluate the power recycling gain using scatterometer.
• Updated analysis of lines in H1 and H2. See also here and here.
• PEM analysis of event at 874465554 was posted.
• Dust injection.
• Imaging of core optics. See also here.
• Summary of PEM injection tests.
• Some glitch in Access System caused H1 PSL to shut down, but eventually it was fixed.
• Computer trouble prevented H1 from going into full power.

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

Post-S5 activities (Brian O'Reilly):

• We continue to divide our time between staging activities for the upgrade and post-S5 measurements.
• We did more scattering and absorption studies, results are in the elog. Ditto for mode-matching measurements.
• On Saturday we had more calibration measurements in the asymmetric Michelson configuration.
• Pulsar injections were restarted on Saturday by Peter Shawhan. We had some problems with extra noise, possibly related to a bias module. We've seen this before with ETMY. The problem went away, and hopefully will stay away for the remainder of the post-S5 measurements.
• One of our framebuilders (fb0) has a bad controller. Until it is replaced DMT frame data are not being written to frames.
• LVEA cleaning is in progress and will continue next week. The holes for the piers under HAM6 have been drilled, we still have to drill holes for the final assembly stand (a.k.a. test stand) for the HAM-ISI.
• Rick Savage and Evan Goetz are visiting from LHO and have been working on photon calibrator measurements. They will also do a calibration using the VCO.

Safety & Security (Rich Riesen):

• Acquired all necessary material for LVEA cleaning starting next Monday.
• Completed the optics lab SOP and submitted to DCC.
• Conducted an optics lab laser safety audit and gave the go ahead for the U of F people.
• Took all site torque wrenchs to the calibration lab (Baton Rouge).
• Continuing in aiding other staff for the up-coming vent.
• Ran through a SOW for chamber cleaning with the Excel crew's supervisor.  All duties understood.

Livingston Outreach (John Thacker):

• Prepared and mailed all Pre-visit packets through Dec.
• Prepared and delivered programs for 3 elementary school groups.
• Prepared and delivered 1 program for teacher Professional Development (Project MISE).
• Worked with our learning research partner, Tulane, to update questionnaires.
• Purchased supplies for outreach.
• Worked on GLEs and Benchmarks for activites and exhibits.
• Prepared budget materials in support of Continuing Ops Budget Model.
• Developed one new elementary activity.
• Prepared for upcoming workshop at Louisiana Science Teachers Assoc Annual Conference.
• Revised Docent training schedule.
• Updated visitor data base with demographic information IT activities reported through other channels.

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)

• Andrey continues his work on optimizing the suspension damping gains for ITMX and ETMX to minimize the rms error on the XARM locking. He is focusing on conditions during the evening, when ground motion is lower.
• Rana continues the work on adaptive filtering of accelerometer signals to reduce the rms motion of the suspended optics, begun by Keenan Pepper and Elena Gaspari. He plans to purchase more Wilcoxon accelerometers and find permanent locations for them near the 40m chambers.
• Rana has installed Martin Hewitson's GEO dataviewer software (MATLAB-based) at the 40m. It now works with the LIGO NDS system with some NDS advice from Rolf (who's over in Germany this week); so now, GEODV is LIGODV. It's very cool.
• Rana proposes that we vent next week to drag-wipe the mode cleaner optics, as a test of the procedure being planned for H1 and L1. The MC's at the sites currently lose ~30% of the power and so if we can get it all back that's ~5 Mpc. The procedure will be to mark the suspension tower positions, remove the towers, drag wipe the suspended optics and then return to the stacks. We will see whether the MC transmission, finesse, losses, scattered light, etc, change after drag-wiping.
• The c1iscex computer, which controls the ETMX suspension, has lost timing synch, requiring reboot, very often. Rob found and replaced a ragged timing cable last week, and there hasn't been a problem with the timing synch since then.
• Sam, Pinkesh and company locked the eLIGO OMC using the PZT length actuator, and measured the PZT response. There are many resonances in the 4.5 - 10 kHz region. Pinkesh measured and calibrated the PZT transfer function. The two DCPDs were mounted to the glass breadboard, as well as the QPDs. The DC gain between the two DCPDs is, at first glance, different by 15%. They then integrated the cabling harness with the OMC. The OMC is now back at Bridge lab and will soon be mounted on the OMC suspension for further tests.
• Steve is monitoring the particle count and environmental conditions in the lab, while Southern California is on fire.
• Bob's bake oven lab will be quite busy throughout November vacuum-prepping eLIGO SEI HAM parts. Bob's new 16" oven is almost ready to go into operation.
• Steve noticed that the PSL chiller temperature went up by ~ 1.5deg C; he traced the problem to a piece of paper patially blocking the chiller's air intake.
• We have moved to a new ELOG which seems to work ok.
• Grad students Pinkesh Patel and David Yeaton-Massey got 40m lab safety training from Steve.

---

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Week ending October 18

• We met with the LMA people and toured their facility, and I gave a talk on the TNI

---

LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC ISI

• The two stages are floating but with quite high asymmetries in the mass repartitions: some corners require 130lbs more trim weight than some others. We have been investigating this week to understand what was going wrong (stiffness asymmetries, problem of assembly…). We have found yesterday a shim that is not in its countersink (stage 2, small blade, bottom end of the rods). This could reasonably explain our unbalance problems. We have started to fix it on Friday morning.

• We have finished installing the actuator connectors and cables and started driving the system. We have tested the coarse actuators. They are working properly. We have now to solve the shim problem and to rebalance the stages before to go further on the sensors and actuators commissioning.

Quadruple Pendulum

• The majority of the week has been spent debugging interferences in the quad and working on alignment. In the beginning of the week we set up a theodolight to align the main chain test mass. However, an interference between the top mass and tablecloth was discovered. The problem was temporarily solved by unbolting and removing a part of the top mass, however the permament fix will likely involve either reworking this part or filing something down. The same problem will be investigated on the reaction chain.

• The blade springs came in slightly softer than anticipated and as a result half the springs inside the top and UI masses are interfering with other parts below them. Thus, only some of the springs are completely free. There are multiple solutions to this problem, but all require a significant amount work, so the best course of action is still being investigated.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

___________________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid R&D Group:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• Wrote agenda and minutes for LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
• Attended LIGO-Pegasus and OSG-USERS telecon.
• Einstein at Home activities:
  • Attend second Einstein at Home telecon
  • Familiarization myself with use of VO-centric test kit
  • Read literature: BDII, ReSS, LDAP
  • Obtain site specific information to be used by E@H on the OSG from the following sites:
    • AGLT2, BNL_ATLAS_1, BNL_ATLAS_2, STAR_BNL, OSG_LIGO_PSU, OSG_LIGO_MIT, UFlorida_PG, UFlorida_IHEPA, UFlorida_HPC, SPRACE, NERSC_PDSF, NERSC_Davinci, GROW_PROD
• Continued OSG-PROD testing.
• Ran workflows on FNAL_Fermigrid, OSG_LIGO_MIT, UFlorida_HPC.
• Attempted to populate MySQL data base set up by ISI for kickstart logging purposes. Experienced problems and passed them along to Pegasus developers.
• OSG-ITB Activities:
  • Troubleshooting UC_ITB with Suchandra
  • Attempted WS-GRAM  submission with Pegasus on FNAL_FERMIGRID_ITB and BNL_ITB_Test1

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT

• Continued to work through details and requirements of the Caltech year two statement of work and budget sheet. Heard just today that it has been sent over to the Office of Sponsored Research for review and signature.
• Worked with OSG Integration and Testbed and OSG Users group to report issues LIGO is having with planned version of OSG software stack. I have asked that the issues running at University of Chicago be understood before signing off on the software version as ready from LIGO's usability perspective.
• Presented an overview talk on the OSG to the Cyber-Infrastructure Workshop at the Educause Conference in Seattle this week. The talk was well received and generated plenty of interest among participants.
• Continued to review Statements of Work for sign-off as the OSG Resources co-Manager.
• Worked with several levels of OSG staffing and management, along with the Pegasus Development team to evaluate the historical issues of LIGO workflows running on OSG sites that have implemented NFS-Lite as a file system. More research is needed to understand this problem which was last studied roughly a year ago. There are not too many sites using NFS-Lite at this time so it is not expected to be a high priority at this time.
• Reviewed several documents for OSG and made recommendations to change content to better reflect the current architecture.

___________________

Gregory Mendell:

• As per P & P approval, I have submitted LIGO-P070110-00-Z, "Using generalized PowerFlux methods to estimate the parameters of periodic gravitational waves" (presented at Amalid7, with Karl Wette), to gr-qc and CQG.

___________________

Anand Sengupta:

• I prepared a presentation and discussion of the high mass search at the face 2 face meeting in Hannover. I led the discussion on this topic. I have started following up on some of the suggestions brought up in the discussion.

___________________

Alan Weinstein:

• Working on talk for NSF review.
• Presented report of Inspiral Review Committee on the GRB070201 and S3 SBBH papers to the LSC by telecon to Hannover, and at the LSC ExComm meeting.
• Did follow-up study of trend data around a candidate with help from a small group of Caltech LIGOns.

___________________

Drew Keppel:

• Drew is at the LSC meeting in Hannover.
• Drew opened the box on the S5 first-year low-mass CBC search, which included between 0 and 2 self-blinded inspiral HW injections. He's got an interesting candidate event!

___________________

Joe Betzweiser:

• Joe is at the LSC meeting in Hannover. He gave a talk on his broad-parameter search for CW signals from the Crab.

___________________

Stefan Ballmer:

• Stefan is at the LSC meeting in Hannover. He gave a talk on the status and plans of Stochastic analyses.
• Also a talk on AdLIGO ISC.

[NOTE: All talks are available (for LSC members) from the ligo.org link to the most recent collaboration meeting]

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• Porting efforts continue with CentOS 5 and the latest patched version of Solaris. All of the code builds, but running of jobs through the system has not yet been achieved.
• The RDSVerify script has been modified to support querying of the frame cache to minimize the delays. This significantly reduces the amount of time required to run the test.
• All user commands now support the -subject option.
• The datacond MDC system tests are 90% incorporated into the testing harness. This effort should be completed by the end of today and used with the Friday system testing.
• System testing of LDAS was done using version 1.9.88 of the software. The dbperformance test continues to fail when run from SystemTest.tcl, but does complete successfully when run by itself.
• On ldas-test, the diskcacheAPI became unresponsive twice last week. Careful examination of the process at the time it became unresponsive showed that it was doing a fork/exec of the SAM-QFS staging command. This issue will be resolved by removing this call from the diskcacheAPI and having the frameAPI use the SAM-QFS API to stage data that comes from a SAM-QFS file system.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

• Porting efforts continue with CentOS 5 and the latest patched version of Solaris. All of the code builds, but running of jobs through the system has not yet been achieved.
• The RDSVerify script has been modified to support querying of the frame cache to minimize the delays. This significantly reduces the amount of time required to run the test.
• All user commands now support the -subject option.
• The datacond MDC system tests are 90% incorporated into the testing harness. This effort should be completed by the end of today and used with the Friday system testing.
• System testing of LDAS was done using version 1.9.88 of the software. The dbperformance test continues to fail when run from SystemTest.tcl, but does complete successfully when run by itself.
• On ldas-test, the diskcache API became unresponsive twice last week. Careful examination of the process at the time it became unresponsive showed that it was doing a fork/exec of the SAM-QFS staging command. This issue will be resolved by removing this call from the diskcache API and having the frameAPI use the SAM-QFS API to stage data that comes from a SAM-QFS file system.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• More work on gwdaw12 web site; Nessus scans, continuing ilog scripts.
• Couple fc installs lasti.
• Resolved a number of xp issues, installs, purchases-paperwork, xconfig issues, wireless issues.

Livingston

(Shannon)

• Most of my time this week has been spent getting the LDAP directory & server going.  Still shaking out quite a few bugs.

(Dwayne)

• Inventory control system development.
• A few misc. software installs.
• Patched and rebooted kantech security server.
• Other usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap.

Hanford

(Christine)

• Larry's been here this week setting up a new secure mail server and helping out with user support.
• The new LHO DNS server is up and running.  Caltech has transferred DNS authority to LHO.  ESnet, who owns the IP addresses, have also changed their DNS files to make LHO the authority for the IP addresses.  There were a few computers and aliases that had to be added to the LHO DNS files, but otherwise the transfer went very smoothly.
• I am setting up a slave DNS server which should be up by the end of the week.
• Setting up a new web server for the www.ligo-wa home page. This should be done early next week.
• Ran out of network connections on the main LAN switch. I have 12 more ports that I can program and put online.
• Lots of user support for; moving to new DNS server, mail problems, slow computer problems, bad hard drive problems and off site connection problems.
• Worked with an Engineer from Amerion to test the backup network.  He claims he didn't do anything, but since yesterday the backup network is again working.  We were getting BGP timeouts every 3 minutes and when trying to use the backup network the best we could get was almost 1 Mbs. As of yesterday afternoon we ran on the backup network for over an hour with no BGP timeouts and almost 10 Mbs bandwidth.  The Amerion Engineer thinks there is still a 10 Mb half-duplex media converter somewhere in the path which he will try to hunt down.

Caltech

(Veronica)

• LIGO:  Continued web support of the upcoming NSF review and its dry runs; set up a registration application.  Addressed an issue of updates of the LIGO newsletter.  A blog may be something to try.  Researched/did comparisons of various engines.  Per a request from campus safety, looking into an online laser safety tool that needs to be customised for LIGO purposes.  GC support (antares).  Various web updates and user support.
• LSC:  Installed a page for presentations from the current meeting. Posting the talks as they get processed by the DCC.  Updates of the database of technical papers.  Misc. web updates.

(Mike)

• Rack mounted and loaded server 2003 on a new Sun X2200. This build went pretty good the hardware worked out and seems to be fully compatible with windows 2003 server.
• Trouble shot a problem with DCC on the public search link located on our homepage. There was a problem with the database, and this server needed a reboot. This seems to be working ok for now. I'm keeping a close eye on this.
• Looked in to some problems with the mail servers. Acrux & Becrux were having some problems sending mail.
• Worked on some purchase issues. Ruth gave me a hand with this.
• Other misc. user support and sysadmin tasks.

(Christian)

• Configured three new laptops with LIGO images and are ready to be deployed.
• Re-imaged two laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
• Toner cartridge replacements- 2flr W/B and Irene¹s local printer.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Melody)

• Worked on the LAAC wiki.   Able to retrieve database elements and display them in the page using MediaWiki extensions. Currently working on getting a simple type of form (for user entry) to work using MediaWiki extensions.   Also this week, I investigated  using LDAP as an option for the wiki login (since MediaWiki has an LDAP   extension). The idea is using the LSC directory services for user accounts.   I'm assessing the requirements and the difficulty of implementing this.

(Larry)

• Worked a couple of procurement issues. Worked with Mike P. on some procurement items he is dealing with. Still waiting for info. on license updates for Ansys. There was a bump up in the costs so the whole pkg. is being looked at again to see if we can get away with fewer seats.
• Setup a few more accounts and assisted the users on their setups.
• The regular user assistance although for a couple of days the number of requests were higher than usual.
• Working at LHO in setting up a new mail server. This is just to get things kicked off in getting things migrated over to another mail system. Presently, the new server is up and running. A few people have moved over to it, which is helping on getting it tested out. There are some mail changes that will take place later on but nothing major on this machine.
• Assisted Christine on a couple of different projects that popped up. Mostly end-user support. Just as a note the DNS switchover went well, there were a couple of minor hiccups but they were resolved without any problem.
• Working with Dave and Christine on a list of future work items that CIT people will assist with.

---

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

LSC-Virgo meeting at Hannover

• Hiro gave a talk about  the optics scattering loss (G070657).
• He also gave talks about e2e and SIS in the GEO simulation meeting. (G070658, G070659)

Static IFO simulation (Hiro)

• Jogn Cortese investigated the time evolution of beam profiles in the AdvLIGO arm to find the cause of anomalous power drop in the midst of getting thermal equilibrium. He studied the lock algorithm by reading an article by E.Black.
• John is preparing to write a routine to map a data file to arbitrary shape grid data samples to use measured phasemap !~0.2 mm) in the FFT simulation code.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

• Analyzed the peak appearing at 1.35 Hz in the AdvLIGO MC residual length fluctuation spectrum. Found that this peak appears when the AdvLIGO MC optics are placed on the single stage HAM isolation model or the passive HAM (HAM-SAS) isolation model, but does not appear in the Initial LIGO model in which the MC optics are the Initial LIGO single suspension. Also noticed that this peak does not appear when the previous pseudo-frequency control is used instead of the real PSL’s frequency control fed back to the PSL. In the pseudo frequency control, the MC2 optic is instantaneously moved to compensate the MC cavity length change due to seismic disturbance. These indicate that this 1.3 Hz peak is definitely caused by the triple suspension, although 1.35 Hz is not any of the eigen frequency of the AdvLIGO triple suspension. One possibility is that this is the double frequency of the triple suspension mode 1 eigen frequency (0.67 Hz), and it appears in the spectrum because two of the MC mirrors coherently move at 0.67 Hz. Investigation will be continued. 

CDS Prestabilized Laser

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

• A revised signal count has been completed to figure out the number of PCI-X expansion chassis, analog input/output cards ... etc.
• I'm still writing little test programs in TwinCAT that mimick various bits of channel access.  These produce the channel access message headers and test out some functions in TwinCAT that are, in my opinion, poorly documented.  One suspected problem uncovered is that there is a memory limit of something like 6 kb for some particular arrays or arrays of structured types which may not be enough for some channel access message payloads.  I still have to sort that out.
• New PZTs have been ordered for the high power stage.  These have a resonant frequency of 144 kHz and have a much lower capacitance than the existing one.  An improvement to the injection locking electronics servo bandwidth should follow.  The output power of the laser is now 180.5 W with less than 10% in higher order modes.  The increase in output power was achieved by replacement of a damaged output coupler.

Seismic Isolation

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

• We have located what we believe to be the cause of the trouble balancing stage 1. One of the shims on the bottom of the flexure had rotated out of the pocket in the blade causing the blade tip to be out of position by 4mm. We will be resetting this shim today.

HAM Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

• Rich, Andy, Joe, Hugh, Brian L. and Ben were all at HPD this week resulting in many accomplishments.The computer system has been installed and tested. The springs, GS-13's, optics table and locators have been installed. Dummy payload masses have been added to the table top. Next week we will add the actuators and position sensors and start troubleshooting the system.

Update on Enhanced LIGO components

• LLO mechanical structure - large plates scheduled to arrive at AstroPak on 10/24 for cleaning. Scheduled to arrive at LLO on 11/19 for air bake. Aluminum parts shipped to Caltech and Stainless parts shipped to LHO and expected to arrive at LLO on 11/15. LHO oven is down and may be a concern.
• LHO mechanical structure - Assembly and test to be completed by 11/19. Scheduled to ship for cleaning on 11/30 and arriving at LHO on 12/30. Large parts will require air bake at LLO.
• GS-13 seismometers - Slipped two weeks, scheduled to ship to LLO on 11/3. Requires assembly at LLO.
• Actuators - Remaining  14 actuators scheduled to be shipped to LHO for cleaning on 11/7. 7 actuators at HPD will be returned to PSI for rework.
• Bellows - Bellows scheduled to be shipped on 11/19. Bellows will come from supplier precision cleaned and will require bake at Caltech.
• Cabling - GS-13 and Actuator cables at MIT, 25 pin cables scheduled to be delivered week of 10/22. These need to be cleaned and baked.
• Crossbeams - Scheduled to be delivered on 11/1. No cleaning is required.
• Support Tubes  -  Four tubes were delivered to AstroPak for cleaning on 10/17 and are scheduled to be delivered to LLO on 11/15 for air bake.
• HAM Risers - Scheduled to be shipped to AstroPak on 10/26 and arrive at LLO on 11/23 for air bake.
• Feedthroughs - Shipped to LHO on 10/22 for clean and bake, scheduled to arrive at LLO on 11/15.
  

Suspensions

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

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

Recycling Mirror Suspension

• Greer accompanied Chris Echols, Mike Gerfen and others to Raybon welding company on Friday to discuss the RM structure. Mike and Ray from Raybon agree that changing the legs and horizontals to 1/8" thick wall will make welding much, much easier. Greer is pursuing this now. Bob has been tasked to take a look at his interface parts and brackets and to determine if 8-32 screws are sufficient.

Output Mode Cleaner

• We had a welding meeting on Friday at Raybon. Information may be found at the welding wiki

Earthquake Stop Retrofit

• The BeCu and silver plated stainless screws should be here tomorrow. Gary and I will do a fit check. Working with Stephany on where to send the parts for cleaning and baking.

From: k mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO

• The preliminary design for the zero expansion is complete and on hold.
• I'm working on Sam Waldman's septum plate beam dumps.
• Testing the faraday 4 wire style damper is in Phil Willems lab, is in progress.
• The assembly of the installation arm tool is complete, load testing has been completed at CES the results are good.

Core Optics

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

• We have received the beamsplitter blanks from Corning, these are to be used in a demonstration to maintain flatness of the high aspect optic, under the stress of IBS coating.
• A meeting is scheduled at Tinsley for the 26th of October, to discuss polishing questions outlined in LIGO-C070198-00-D.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

ADLIGO

Mike completed a new ZEMAX layout of the stable recycling cavity IFO. The horizontal BS wedge is 0.9 deg. The ITM and CP horizontal wedges are 0.08 deg in the same direction (this is necessary to ensure that the ghost beams separate from the main beam). There are no vertical wedges. Three elliptical baffles are suspended near the BS, one on the RC side, and one each along the X-arm and Y-arm sides--the elliptical baffle surfaces reflect part of the intercepted beam to beam dumps near the ITMs. With this configuration, the BS ghost beams are caught on beam dumps placed near the ITMs; some of the ghost beams are caught on HAM2 and HAM5; most of the ghost beams from the CP and ITM pass through the input and output telescopes and separate sufficiently so they can be caught with baffles on HAM2 and HAM5. 

OUTREACH

• Mike presented a technical talk about the LIGO program to a group of retired physicists from TRW

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Luke:

• Finished eLIGO layout with Calcite wedge polarizers.
• Shipped aluminum bake load.
• Designed and shipped clean and safe magnet boxes with magnets,
• Finished FR magnet assembly doc in collaboration with IAP guys

Muzammil and Rodica:

• We have set-up the Faraday Isolator at low power using the parts that will be used in e-LIGO. This includes magnetic assembly, NG TGG crystals, CWP, and TFP. With the CWP/TFP/DKDP/HWP/FR/CWP, we have obtained 35 dB isolation ratio with about 94.5 % transmission. If we remove the TFP, the isolation ratio improves to 40 dB and the transmission to 96.5%. The new 'z-cut' DKDP has performed very well and does not depolarizes the light at all at low power.
• We have analyzed the beam scan measurement data from LLO. It appears that the beam width measurement at low power level are being clipped somewhere. New plans for another set of meassurements are being formed.

LLO Team - Kate and Antonio:

• Our focus has been on setting up the optics lab for FI assembly. All safety, cleanliness, and practical arrangements are finalized and in place. Kate aligned all optics to replicate the HPLF setup.
• Also, we performed another refl beam profile measurement on ISCT1 during commissioning time.
• The vacuum bake oven at LLO is broken. Kate re-routed all FI bake loads to CIT and LHO.
• Antonio is setting up a new closed-loop rotary stage for remote halfwave plate rotation control.

---

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