Weekly Report for Week Ending November 1, 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)

• Planning is underway for the next L-V meeting to be held at MIT on Dec 11-12.  This will be followed by the GWDAW meeting on Dec 13-16.  A web site for the L-V meeting will be available shortly.
• In addition, the S4 stochastic map observational paper has been published in PRD: Phys. Rev. D 76 , 082003 (2007)

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
  Eotvos University	DAT, OPS, OUT, 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
  IUCAA	DAT, 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
  Stanford University	ACF, DAT, LAS, OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z
  Texas-Austin, University of	DAT, OPS, Z
  Texas-Brownsville, University of	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z

• Eotvos University, IUCAA and Stanford University (shown in table above) were approved and signed off this reporting period. They will be posted and submitted to the DCC.
• ACIGA and Carleton College are still under review.

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

• Provided assistance to R. Adhikari with shipping and the preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US Customs Clearance of one LED optical sensor to the Australian National University. Account Number LIGO.ELOMC-5.6.3-NSFLIGO.FY02CA.
• Tagged and created records for one Sun Server for LDAS @ CIT.
• Requested change to the expenditure type from "Equipment - Government" to "Supplies- Allocable" on PO# S034960.  This purchase is for four Sun Computers each below 5K @ LHO $16,656.40.
• Requested to change the expenditure type from "Equipment - Government" to "Supplies- Allocable" to on Invoice # CP556274.  This purchase is for four Digital Meters each below 5K @ LHO $4,253.63.
• Requested to change the expenditure type from "Equipment - Caltech" to "Supplies- Allocable" to on PO# S037254.  This purchase is for five Sun Computers and Accessories each below 5K @ CIT $19,296.86.
• Worked with the Customs Broker in providing supporting documents to clear the export of the aluminum oxide substrate shipped to Japan (loan to TAMA/LCGT).
• Continued working with Property Services on year end reports for Government-Owned vehicles and leased GSA vehicles

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

• Processing talks from last week's LSC/Virgo Collaborations Meeting.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Oracion)

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

• No cost extensions completed for Corning, Butler, Benton PUD.
• Added funds to Creath to cover the past invoice.  Submitted to vendor.
• Received the Debar Cert from HPD and completed the file on the new subcontract.
• Placed orders for goods and services for Caltech and the sites.
• Working on getting a check cancelled and re-cut.  The vendor is calling inquiring about payment, which is past due.
• Responded to inquiries on deliveries, payments, orders, and assistance with Techmart.

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

• Started expenditure analysis, invoice review, budget review and data entry for October 2007 monthly operations report.
• Requested travel expenditure type reclassification and labor distribution adjustments.
• Met with project accounting/IMSS personnel to discuss possible enhancements to operations 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>

• We continue to struggle with the new Accounts Payable system for paying invoices.  The electronic system is putting delays in payments as personnel adjust to the new system.  Accounts Payable management has been very cooperative in working out problems for us.

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

• A series of questions requesting additional information concerning their proposal for Pathfinder optics polishing was sent to the proposer.  Responses to these questions are due on November 7.  A decision regarding the viability of the proposer as an additional polishing contractor will be made upon review of these responses.
• A meeting between LIGO administration and the Project Accounting group is being held to discuss increased access to Oracle data for LIGO financial personnel.  The purpose for this increased access is to re-design the LIGO financial reports to increase the account visibility for the task managers.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

• Providing support and material for the NSF Operations Renewal Proposal Review scheduled November 6 through 8.
• We have received the funding from the NSF for the first half of FY 2008 for LIGO Operations.  Karl is preparing the budgets for submittal to the Office of Sponsored Research.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, November 12.

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

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

• Post-run measurements continue, including calibrations, test-mass imaging, test mass absorption studies, burst and binary pulsar astrophysical injections, and cooling experiments (H1 only).
• Summaries:  Tuesday maintenance summary
• Highlights from the LHO elog:
  • coherent burst injections went into LHO and LLO, and will be time shifted in analysis to correlate with those in the Virgo machine
  • the DARM feedback path was modified in order to study H1 cooling
  • the DMT went into a minimal configuration (prep for JZ visit next week)
  • with astrowatch looming on the horizon, archiving code was tested
  • additional transfer functions were made on the H1 high-frequency channel (followup here)
  • the run/acquire path of the H1 ETMs was tested in single-arm mode

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

Commissioning manager report (Rusyl Wooley):

• This week the following work was completed.
• Built a support system for under the mode cleaner tube.
• Drilled holes for SEI test stand.
• Removed septum plate #002 from air bake oven.
• Put septum plate #001 into air bake oven; bake is complete and plate is cooling.
• Took FTIR swipe samples and sent to JPL.
• Assembled clean room for packaging parts that are removed from air bake oven.
• Built supports to stage large ion pumps while we change out 14" valves.
• Ordered research grade CO2 for optics lab work.
• Filled all nitrogen dewars.
• Staged soft wall clean room over HAM1, HAM2,  HAM3 & HAM6.
• Verified that we have the viton o-rings for septum plate.
• Verified copper gaskets for conflat flanges.
• Verified certs for torque wrenches.
• Verified clean room garb is available.
• Verified covers for 84” & 60” nozzles are clean.  Complete 10/29/07.
• Verified UHV foil is available.
• Completed steps 11 through 23 of the ELI Vent and Septum Installation Procedure.
• Vent completion is pending; will be complete by the time the posting of this.
• Installed A frame and support for mode cleaner tube.
• This work was completed by  the LLO staff.

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)

• Final papers from 2007 SURF students:
  • Sonia Buckley, U Dublin, LIGO-T070168-00-I, Automated Optimization of the Local Damping and Control for the Suspended Optics at the 40 m.
  • Joshua Weiner, Caltech, LIGO-T070266-00-I, Automated Analysis of the Transverse Modes of a Laser Beam Using a Non-Degenerate Fabry-Perot Cavity.
  • Alice Z. Wang, Georgia Tech, LIGO-T070193-00-I, Next-generation Radio Frequency Photodiodes for Gravitational-Wave Interferometers.
• In preparation for drag-wiping the mode cleaner optics at the sites, Rana wanted to test the procedures at the 40m. In preparation for that, Rana measured the MC transmission and took ringdown measurements, he and Tobin measured the MC optic resonances in the 28 kHz region, and Rob measured the cavity pole. Attempts to quantitatively measure the scattered light proved to be difficult. All measurements pointed to a finesse of 1460 and a total round trip loss of about 300ppm. We will see if this changes after drag wiping.
• Tobin and Steve perfected a drag-wiping method by practicing on the spare suspended small optic. Using a 50 microliter Hamilton syringe to deliver 16 microliters of methanol seems perfect for drag-wiping the small optics.
• Steve, David and Andrey began the vent on Wednesday morning. It went smoothly. The chambers housing the MC optics were opened. Rana, marked MC1's location with dogs and then slid the suspension horizontally to the table edge for easy drag-wiping access. The optic was thoroughly hosed-down with the dionizer. Drag-wiping commenced with Rob squirting (using the 50 microliter syringe) and Tobin dragging (using half-sheets of Kodak lens tissue). We drag-wiped the optic many (~10) times, concentrating on the center but also chasing around various particles and a smudge on the periphery. There remains one tiny speck at about the 7:30 position, outside of the resonant spot area, that we could not dislodge with three wipes. We drag-wiped MC3 only three times, all downward drags through the optic center, with Steve squirting and Tobin dragging. Some particles are still visible around the periphery, and there appears to be a small fiber lodged near the optic center on the reverse face. Andrey and Steve have opened up MC2 in preparation for drag-wiping that optic.
• We expect to pump back down on Friday.
• Sam and Pinkesh made great progress on the eLIGO output mode cleaner (OMC). They hung the OMC on its suspension, discovering many problems and potential solutions along the way. They mounted the four QPDs, got them into the digital system, and measured their response with and without light. After some effort, they were able to lock the OMC to the laser using the new digital controls.
• Our Nikon D40 camera has been missing, and some mysterious stranger is asking for a ransom of a plate of goulash.
• The SoCal fires have increased particle counts in the lab. All the HEPA filters are turned up to 100%.
• A largish (M5.6) earthquake in San Francisco on Tuesday sent our optics swinging.

---

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• Not much to report after returning from Europe. We are back to trying to debug the mode cleaner servo and are currently checking each component against its spec.

---

LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC ISI

• The shims that were not in the right position have been re-positioned. The two stages have been released and balanced. The mass repartition is now much more symmetric. So the shim re-positioning has had a significant influence.

• We still have two things that are not going as well as we would like: gaps in the lockers and relative positions of the stages. The measurement we have made show that is due to the misalignment of the lockers. We are going to discuss the locker positioning process. These lockers will be re-positioned next week. This means we’ll also need to reposition the actuators after the new locker positions are set.

Quadruple Pendulum

• Both the main chain and reaction chain are completely suspended and aligned to the 12 local control OSEMs on the top masses. Various forms of interference were debugged during this process including interference with the structure due to mishaped parts and interference between the chains.

• The blade springs continue to be too soft and interfere inside their respective masses. It was decided that Joe, from RAL, will return to MIT in a couple weeks with new blade spring clamps to compensate for the lack of stiffness. At this time, we will remove the masses from the structure, take them apart, and reassemble them with the new blade clamps. The alignment procedure will then be repeated.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

_________________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid Development Team:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• OSG-PROD activities:
  • Finished Mass Range and Segment testing
  • Ran successfully on 3 new sites: Grase_CCR_U2, GLOW, GLOW_CMS
  • Repeated tmpltbank (job 8) failures at new site ORNL_NSTG and UFlorida_HPC (after $DATA location changed), .out, .err emp
  • Trouble shooting FIU_PG: condor people involved
• OSG-ITB activities:
  • Trouble shooting UC_ITB: 3 IM sessions with Suchandra
  • Successful WS-GRAM submission to BNL_ITB_Test1, still testing FNAL_FERMIGRID_ITB, GRAM error 47 at CIT_ITB_1
• Einstein at Home activities:
  • Site information table almost complete, still looking for any site admin contact information
  • Sent message to GOC for missing information
• Open GOC ticket: LIGO can't run at Purdue_Physics, Purdue_Caesar, Purdue_LEAR, Purdue_RCAC.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT

• Wrote trip report on presentation at the Educause Workshop and  sent to the OSG Executive Team.
• Reviewed and made suggestions for improvements to the Fermilab and University of Chicago Statements of Work. After changes were made, these two SoWs were signed off as the OSG Resource Manager.
• Worked on logistics for OSG Finance Board Meeting at Fermilab later this week. Worked with OSG Project Associate on presentation slides. Held teleconference meeting to discuss issues for meeting.
• Notified Fermilab and University of Wisconsin Madison that the Caltech Statement of Work has now been signed off by the Caltech Office of Sponsored research, freeing the way for funds to flow in the second year.
• Reviewed the five resumes that have been filed for the grid admin position that has opened up here at Caltech. No candidates in the current set.
• Worked with Albert and Stuart to identify effort that LIGO is providing to grid activities for the NSF review.
• Touched up slides from the Educause Conference in case there are OSG related questions in next week's NSF review.

_________________

Drew Keppel:

• Over the past week I have been working on:
  • S5 1yr low mass cbc pipeline runs for producing an upper limit
  • Writing the S5 1yr low mass cbc paper
  • Updating code in order to do spinning injection runs

_________________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Crab Frequency Domain Search: Modified the Monte Carlo injection code to produce upper limits assuming the known inclination and polarizations. The code is currently running on Caltech cluster and is expected to improve the upper limit by a factor of 1.4. Also in the process of revising the Crab search paper with these new results.

_________________

Anand Sengupta:

• Read literature on source location reconstruction using a network of GW IFOs. Cavalier et al and Jaranowski & Krolak (Optimal solution to the inverse problem).
• Extensive discussion with Craig (who was abent at the f2f meeting) to take stock and identify the most urgent things required to be done in the high mass search in the immediate future.
• Looked at histograms of e-thinca values in TaylorT3, PadeT1, EOB and SpinTaylorT3 waveform injections in s5 data (high mass search). This is to 'justify' the use of previous ethinca code used in the high mass search tuning.

_________________

Kipp Cannon:

• Continued excess power pipeline development work.
• Telecons:  bursts, daswg.

_________________

Alan Weinstein:

• Finalizing talk on data analysis for NSF Review.
• Review of GRB070201 paper.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• All of LDAS has been compiled for the patched version of Solaris and CentOS 5 operating systems. Some of the jobs submitted to the system ran to normal completion, while others that required the use of the dbaccess library failed. The failure is being investigated.
• The integration of system tests continues. The datacondMDC tests were modified to better handle email verification. Work has started on modifying the createRDSTest.tcl. It currently uses S3 frames, but will be modified to use S5 data as part of the conversion.
• System testing of LDAS was done with version 1.9.95 of the software. There were no new error conditions.
• The diskcacheAPI and frameAPI have been moved off of morbo to opterondata-cit for the CIT instance of LDAS. Also, some host key issues were resolved on tandem-ii which allowed more of the system tests to pass on this Solaris patched and CentOS 5 tandem system.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

• Got patch from Sun for morbo's NFS server hanging, will install soon.
• All the h(t) stuff is good on disk (cluster and /archive/frames match).  All but ~15K L1 Level 1 files are published...
• Informed user of transition to h(t) Version 3.
• Did some tests with ssum under SAM-QFS 4.6.25, still doesn't work right all of the time.
• Fixed broke staging on LHO gateway.
• Got new personal grid cert.
• Tracked down cause of missing md5sums in .md5 file (LLO) and filled in the gap.
• Helped with T3 problems at LLO (and fall out from resetting FC switch).
• Installed new 6140 at CIT.
• Dealt with fallout from power outage in Booth.
• Remembered that we want to copy 1% of the raw frames during astrowatch.

(Phil Ehrens)

• The usual certificate related tasks and user support.
• Ongoing support of MOU review process and data management.
• Kickstarted node500 after intentionally overwriting boot sector.  This node had formerly been node174, and the IP addresses of the ipmi interfaces are currently mapped to the wrong box in each case, so that the command 'ipmi 500' attaches to 174, and vice versa.
• Replaced 15 of 51 failed fans in the cluster. All but one fan reported failed by ipmi sensors had at least one rotor that had ceased spinning.
• Determined that irregular failures of the desktop machine Bosco were due to a memory leak in the screen saver mode "apple2".  I removed that mode from the filesystem, requested that the user of the box use only the "blank" mode, and rebooted the box.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Condor upgrade/patch fix on cluster.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• Finished debugging extended version of LSCsegFind that can return all the segments for a run, segment version, etc. This is needed for the modified DQ segment insertion list.
• Condor and gsl were upgraded.
• Powercycled the fiberchannel switch to solve a problem with /archive.  It looks like it worked: so far there were no more error messages.

(Dwayne Giardina)

• Rack-mounted the new fiber patch panel in the LDAS room.
• After gateway was rebooted, disabled ipfilters and added two DNS servers to resolv.conf to fix several problems.
• Doug handled this weeks tape shipment and we are going to do the storage eject together.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• After the post-S5 measurements end and the vacuums open up at LLO and LHO, LDAS is going to switch into "astrowatch" mode.  This will happen soon at LLO, and by about Nov. 26 at LHO.  During "astrowatch mode" LDAS will:
  • Continue to archive all the second and minute trend data 24/7
  • Backup DMT trend data
  • LDAS will only archive the raw data at LHO or LLO for GPS segments from 3 sources:
    • A daily cron job that runs conlog in the control room, which returns GPS segments for times when the State Vector in the "Up" state for each IFO.
    • GPS segments entered by hand via a GUI in the control room.  (The current alias is to run "astrowatch" from the control room command line to start the GUI.)
    • LDAS is going to save 1000 seconds of data every 100000 seconds, regardless, via another cron job.  Thus, we will have snapshots of the raw data, and this will make sure the gears keep working.
  • Level 1 and Level 3 RDS data will be generated at LHO containing H0 and H2 channels for transfer downstream to CIT and Tier II centers, during the times raw data is archived.

(Ben Johnson)

• Upgraded Condor, LAL, and GSL on LHO cluster.
• Helped Scott Koranda refine the LDRreplicaStatus tool.
• Finished and released SENDS document.
• Tested AstroWatch and one percent scripts. They should be in operation at LLO now, and in place at LHO.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Converted tintagle to linux raid1.
• Added more nagios services.
• Bit more gwdaw12 web work.
• 2 computer set-up LASTI (FC5).
• Misc. purchasing and paperwork backups.
• XP desktop, linux desktop (gnome) issues, setting up redundant services (e.g. file share).

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• Inventory control system development.
• A few misc. software installs.
• Rebooted kantech security server, reset a controller, other various attempts to fix a buggy front gate.
• Ordered a couple PCs for employees.
• Replaced tapes in the GC tape library.
• Other usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap.

(Shannon)

• Still working on LDAP installation.
• Tuesday was spent troubleshooting due to our network outage & fiber cut on the Bell South line.
• Ordered various bits and pieces of hardware (fiber, etc.).

Hanford

(Christine)

• Trying to track down problems with off-site DNS servers not being able to do reverse lookup on the new mail server.  Can't find any local reason for the problem.  Talking to CIT IMSS for help.
• Found that several local servers are requesting dynamic updates from the DNS server, which are not allowed.  Turned off the requests on two of the servers.  Still researching how to turn it off on the Windows server.
• Trying to figure out why can't map network drives to the Primavera server from off-site.  Suspect it has to do with the DNS reverse lookup problem, but can't pin this down.
• Slave DNS server is working after fixing a typo in the config file.

Caltech

(Mike)

• Updated webserver for Melody. Plus installed additional patches and look into some PHP security issues that are now resolved as well.
• Trouble shot an issue with our management webserver. For some reason the SSL part of the web services shutdown when updating the webpage. Still don't know what the deal is on this issue. For now were just restarting the SSL service. There is a webserver replacement in the works.
• Worked on a printer that had a major paper jam that took awhile to fix. I also had to re-program this printer.
• More work looking into a procurement issue to complete a change request.
• Loaded an X2200 with Solaris 10 ver.4.
• Ran end of month Ghost backups on all critical NTSRV's.
• DCC's nightly backup computer had a hardware issue that was making loud noises. It turned out to be a faulty cdrom. I swapped this out and ran a ghost backup of this "critical" workstation.
• Did some additional research for this Friday's scheduled update on SolidWorks 2007 from SP3.1 to SP4.0. We are ready to run this update for users at CIT.
• Worked with Larry and Christian on logistics for the NSF review.
• Other misc. user support and daily sysadmin tasks.

(Veronica)

• LIGO:  Ongoing web support of the NSF review.  PAC meeting website. High-resolution images for a publisher.  LIGO website updates.
• LSC:  Updates of the database of technical papers.  Working on a website for the Dec L-V meeting.  LSC web updates.

(Christian)

• Riccardo Desalvo - Created backup of Riccardo¹s files to external drive.
• Guy Fish - Replaced bad network card on Guy¹s workstation.
• Melody Araya - Hardware failure on laptop. Replaced dead hard drive on Powerbook.
• Re-imaged two laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
• Testing new Leopard OS on different systems this week.
• Getting ready to upgrade Solidworks users to SP4.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Melody)

• Continuing work on the LAAC wiki. Tested several MediaWiki extensions for possible use in the website. I have a simple data entry facility working in the wiki. My plan for next week is to find out if my approach to the Thesis Topics page meets the requirements of the project.

(Larry)

• Wrapped up a few items at LHO. Still some work to do there. Started working out some of the logistics to send up a couple of people to assist in some of the update/cleanup work to be done at LHO during a down period.
• Working on a number of procurement issues. The SUN maint. contract is now in the system and should be finished up soon. The issues with the Ansys licensing have been resolved and the renewal of the licensing has started. Purchased a number of pocket drives to be used with the notebook computers. Working on the purchase of more workstations.
• Worked with a number of people on the logistics for the NSF review.
• Working with Veronica on a number of web items. There has been a number of new requests and changes all come in at the same time.
• Still working with PMA and the electricians on the lab renovations.
• Worked on the repair of a couple of machines. All are presently working. Waiting for the repair of a Dell notebook, which should happen today.
• Setup a couple more accounts for new hires.
• Worked on a couple of CDS items and account setups for some of the Wilson House people.
• Working on the documentation of a couple of different items.
• Started the user account backups. They should be wrapped up today.
• The usual 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

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

• Assembling HAM at HPD in Boulder; going pretty smoothly.

Suspensions

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

• Attending LSC/Virgo meeting.

 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 http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/advligo/UHVWeldingPlan

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 proposer 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.
• inished 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