Weekly Report for Week Ending November 29, 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

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LSC Issues (Reitze)

• The Executive Committee approved the CBC paper "Search of S3 LIGO data for gravitational wave signals from spinning black hole and neutron star binary inspirals" for submission to Phys. Rev. D.
• Alan Weinstein was elected as a co-chair of the CBC group.  Alan replaces Gabriela Gonzalez, one of the original co-chairs of the group.
• Peter Saulson will replace Norna Robertson as the head of the LSC Elections and Membership Committee.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

• The table below shows 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
  Carleton College	DAT, OPS, OUT, 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

• This reporting period Carleton College (shown in table above), was approved and signed off. It will be posted and submitted to the DCC.
• ACIGA is still under review.
• Northwestern, Sannio and Washington State are pending, requiring changes requested by the review panel.

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

• Requested a one year extension of the Temporary Import Bond for the Fused Silica Blanks that came from Germany (Shipment No. 2).
• Created and submitted an Asset Retirement Form for a computer.
• Assisted K. Mason at MIT in making shipping arrangements for two crates from MIT to AstroPak in Downey, CA
• Continued working with Property services in the annual Federal Real Property Profile for the NSF.
• Assisted B. O'Reilly at LLO in making shipping arrangements for one crate from High Precision Devices in Boulder, CO to LHO.
• Assisted L. Wallace with packing and shipping a Raid system to MIT.
• Assisted R. De Salvo with packing and shipping a Network Analyzer for repairs at Stanford Research.
• Assisted B. O'Reilly at LLO in making shipping arrangements for one crate and one box from High Precision Devices in Boulder, CO to LLO.
• Assisted B. O'Reilly at LLO in making shipping arrangements for one box from High Precision Devices in Boulder, CO to Stanford University.
• Assisted B. O'Reilly at LLO in making shipping arrangements for one box from High Precision Devices in Boulder, CO to Caltech.

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 #13 to Benton County and routed for approval.
• Completed no cost extension for Gennaro and submitted to vendor.
• Completed the no cost extension for Heraeus and submitted to vendor.
• Completed the change order to Support Services and routed for approval.
• Closed the Great Impressions subcontract.

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

• Started expenditure analysis, invoice review, budget review and data entry for November 2007 (FY2008) and November 2007 (FY2007) monthly operations report.
• Completed and posted FY 2007 monthly operations report as of the end of October 2007 on the network.
• Sent out reports for three discretionary accounts, I2U2, U.Wisconsin awards.
• Met with project accounting/IMSS personnel to discuss possible enhancements to operations report (on-going).
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

• The Optics Pathfinder Committee has agreed to award a third polishing contract.   Funding options for this contract are still being explored.
• We are trying to resolve a tax issue with a vacuum pump vendor. This is holding up delivery of vacuum pumps to Hanford.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Revised budgets have been prepared for FY 2008 and distributed to task managers, who in turn have provided useful feedback.

It is time to prepare the report for the NSF regarding status as of the end of November.  I will prepare a reminder for distribution.  I would like to have contributions by December 12.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, December 10, 2007.
• The minutes and action items from the last Staffing Committee meeting have been posted on the SC web page.
• All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu

• 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)

Remaining post-S5 measurements were mostly closed. H1 was hit by a series of serious troubles, and we need some time to figure things out and to bring H1 back to a reasonably good condition before we're ready for the vent. We're expecting to receive the septum for H1 by the end of this week.

H1 troubles

• On Nov. 16 night/ 17 morning, the DC output of 4k WFS3 head was broken. The head was pulled out and was "fixed".
• Just before the holidays, there was a huge temperature swing in the LVEA because of a bad heater setting. This seemed to have triggered many serious troubles, including the breakdown of PZT-mounted periscope mirror on the H1 PSL table, the DC offset problem of H1 WFS3 (again) and WFS4, and large alignment drift of everything.
• After swapping out the H1 PZT-mounted mirror and then compensating the WFS DC offset by the software, we were able to bring H1 to full power, but the lock stretches were short and the inspiral range was much lower (12-13 Mpc) than it used to.
• Later WFS heads were pulled out again and were fixed. We'll have to wait to see if this fix will make things better.
• An attempt to bring the alignment of H1 and H1 MC back to the original is still ongoing.

Post-S5 measurements

• The analysis of H1 ETM absorption.
• The first test of the seismic feed-forward using GS-13 in Hanford was successful.
• OMC frontend code is in.

Outreach (D. Ingram)

• LHO staff members continue to fit outreach activities into their busy interferometer-driven schedules. M. Landry spoke to the Spokane Astronomical Society on the evening of 11/2. J. Myers is serving as the coach of the Lego Mindstorms team (robotics) at Christ the King school in Richland.

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

VE work (Rusyl Wooley)

• The main focus this week was to continue removing large covers from the chambers in the LVEA.  We removed both 84" doors from HAM1 and the north 84" door on HAM2.  This allowed IO work to begin.  This was the first time that we ever removed one of the large doors over HEPI.  It was a very difficult task but nothing like what I'm expecting when we try to put them back on.  There was no visible damage to any of the flanges or o-rings.
• We also removed a witness plate from HAM2 for analysis.  The plate was put into the chamber ~5 years ago.  It is currently in the optics lab.  After visual examination of the plate, I feel that it is remarkably clean with no sign of particle accumulation.
• Due to some modifications that were made to the earthquake stops this week, we will not be installing them until next week.
• The septum plate for Hanford was shipped on Tuesday and should arrive at the site today (11.30.07).

Other work (J. Giaime)

• Rolf was on site this week working with Lisa to install the enhanced LIGO CDS front ends.
• Some considerable effort by Radar, Rusyl, Lisa, Rolf and Brian went into troubleshooting the recent problems with the RM damping.
• A test of a rented air conditioning unit was carried out.  This will allow us to cool part of the OSB next week while our air handler is serviced.
• IO Install work summarized here by David Reitze: http://ilog.ligo-la.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi? group=detector&date_to_view=11/29/2007&anchor_to_scroll_to=2007:11:29:20 :19:22-reitze

Safety & Security (Rich Riesen)

• Completed monthly operational tests on all site emergency lighting. All lights are functional.
• Inspected and tagged all site fire extinguishers for proper pressure and condition. All units meet spec.
• Checked all BTE doors (front and back) for proper operation and properly secured.  All doors are locked.
• Continuing careful screening of all work permits to ensure proper safety hazard analysis, procedures, and safety protocol.
• All work permits to date have met all safety requirements prior to my authorization.
• Updated Laser Operator, Equipment Operator, and Machine Shop User signage.
• Processed 6 site access cards due to being worn out or lost.

LIGO computing and network security (Roddy)

Reported under General Computing, see below

General computing and LDAS admin (Giardina)

Reported under General Computing, see below

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis & computing (Yakushin)

Storage/Condor/LDAS admin:

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis:

Reported under Data Analysis activities, see below

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

See Advanced LIGO

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Rob and John are back to working on locking the full DRFPMI configuration. Better frequency stabilization is required, so there's been a lot of attention paid to the PSL servos.
• Rob, Rana and Tobin have been working on the PSL frequency stability servo (FSS), which is performing much worse than in the past. They have found and fixed many small problems. After this work, they got the UGF up from 100 kHz to ~250 kHz. Work continues.
• Tobin has been working on the PSL ISS servo to reduce the noise and increase the gain; he got the UGF up to 40 kHz.
• John measured the PSL pre mode cleaner pole frequency to be 380kHz +/- 59kHz. This corresponds to a finesse of ~936. The nominal design pole is at 488kHz and the finesse is 732.
• Andrey is working on modeling the transfer function from floor, through stacks and pendulums, to the test masses.
• Rob is developing the looptickle model of the current 40m, to add in oscillator noise couplings.
• Tobin installed "labca", which allows direct access to EPICS channels from within Matlab.
• Andrey continues to develop his model of the seismic noise at the test masses, including the transfer function from floor, through stacks and pendulums, to the test masses. He gave a talk at our 40m meeting, and created a page in the 40m Wiki.
• The vacuum system RGA controller is broken.
• Mohana brought a group of Boy scouts and their parents to see the 40m on Friday Nov 16.
• The system disk for our main nfs server (linux1) started dying, so Tobin and Steve got a replacement. Alex put the new hard disk into linux1 along with a fresh install of linux (CentOS).

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Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• This week we identified the source of our mode cleaner oscillations and corrected it. We had rotated the polarization to improve the performance of our in-vacuum Pockels cell, but we had done so before the mode cleaner. As many of you may know, and as we were chagrined to realize we had forgotten, the finesse of a triangular cavity is often polarization dependent. In rotating the polarization from horizontal (s) to vertical (p), we increased the finesse of the mode cleaner enough to bring the cavity pole down below the unity-gain frequency of the servo, destroying our phase margin and causing the servo to go unstable. In the near future, we plan on moving the polarization transition point from before the mode cleaner to after it, but for now we are just going to restore the original polarization configuration to get data on the optimized coatings.
• We are also exploring alternatives to our safety procedures when working inside the vacuum chamber. Our standard procedure now is to raise the bell jar by four feet and than brace it in place with three aluminum I-beams.This is not an optimal situation, and the time has probably come to improve it.

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LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

• We had a lab safety inspection. This and Myron’s travel to HPD from HAM-ISI disassembly work has slowed progress this week. We are continuing to reinstall the actuators, we now have the actuators in corners 1 and 3 installed and are working on corner number 2. We received the repaired GS13 from LLO and reinstalled it, I’m hoping to unlock and test it soon.

Noise Prototype Quad

• Brett has been working with Doug Cook, Mike Meyers and Danny Sellers to align the Quad-pendulum.
• Doug has written a summary of this weeks work.
• This week we modified, cleaned and vacuum baked a couple counter weights. This was needed to fix a bug in the design. There are some additional clearances, if made, to mating parts that would also add a little “forgiveness” when aligning and positioning the OSEMs. We mechanically balanced the RO chain and the MO chain (no OSEMs) setting the 5mm gap needed between the test mass and the reaction mass.We re-established the upper test masses of both chains to the correct height level and set their pitch and yaw angles during the above alignment. We aligned the HR on the MO chain with the “total station” retro reflecting from the dummy test mass readjusting the counter weights to align pitch and rotating the structure to adjust yaw to 500µrads without any damping. Next we installed the OSEMs into the RO and MO chains centered about the ‘flag’, setting the near “zero” distance (<100 cnts) working one OSEM at a time. This allows you to better determine whether an OSEM is “dragging” on a mating component. We ran a few transfer functions to make sure that we were not "rubbing or "binding" . We will give a further update at the SUS meeting Tuesday. (Brett to write a build/align procedure ?). Some additional tooling and fixturing would be helpful also. The remaining work until the BSC installation likely requires about 2 weeks with 2 fully dedicated people.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

__________________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid Computing Research and Development Group:

GRID APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT

• Attended weekly DASWG, OSG-Users and Inspiral Coding telecons.
• Einstein at Home activity:
  • Running E@H data download only on OSG site NERSC_PDSF via condor_submit
  • Running E@H binary without data download on OSG site NERSC_PDSF via condor_submit
• OSG-PROD  activity:
  • New OSG site for LIGO: Purdue_RCAC
  • Open GOC tickets: Purdue_Lear--only supports CMS members,  Purdue_Caesar--attempt to run fails, Purdue_Physics--trouble shooting with sysadmin
  • Troubleshooting FIU_PG, CIT_CMS_T2: Patch on gatekeeper (Gridmanager) implemented, CIT_CMS_T2, FIU_PG runs successful
  • UFlorida_HPC--Karan(ISI) working on secondary staging
  • Testing WS-GRAM workflow submissions at UWMilwaukee
• LDG (LIGO Data Grid)-OSG activity:
  • Attempt to submit workflows remotely to LDG using Pegasus; CIT, LHO successful
  • Troubleshooting NEMO workflows with help from Scott Koranda
  • Troubleshooting LLO with help from  Karan Vahi
• Write OSG newsletter article summarizing Inspiral workshop at UW Milwaukee for this month's publication.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT

• Presented USC-ISI MOU to the LIGO Directorate for review. LSC found the MOU acceptable. Still awaiting feedback from the ISI management.

__________________

Gregory Mendell:

• This past week's data analysis work has been to respond to the referee reports for the Generalized PowerFlux Amaldi proceedings paper with Karl Wette, and check the proofs for the LSC S4 PowerFlux, StackSlide, and Hough paper.

__________________

Amber L. Stuver:

• I continued work on IFO diagnostic scripting, currently fleshing out run/acquire and dewhitening switches are working for the coils. I plan on moving to checking filter behavior next week.
• Work with SEC:
  • I did classroom activities with about 45 students, guided an exhibit for about 25 students and gave control room tours for about about 70 students.

__________________

Diego Fazi:

• More testing on the speed of the PTF filter to find the optimal filtering algorithm.
• Submitting the first PTF inspiral job on one week of S5 LIGO data to Condor, using lalapps_inspiral_hipe.

__________________

Kipp Cannon:

• Continued tuning excess power.

__________________

Pinkesh Patel:

• Working on GWDAW talk/poster.
• Some work related to integration of Resampling into CFS_v2.
• Working on a Gig-E camera at the 40 m.

__________________

Drew Keppel:

• Monitoring injection runs for the S5 1yr low mass CBC analysis.
• Investigating a time-slide background estimation for H1H2L1 triggers where H1 and H2 are slid together against L1 [http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/enote.pl?nb=iags5bns&action=view&page=31].
• Investigating new condor options to optimize the running of the inspiral dags.
• Preparing for December LSC meeting and GWDAW.

__________________

Kari Hodge:

• Implemented multivariate classification of inspiral triggers with StatPatternRecognition software package.
• Getting very promising results!
• Preparing to present results to CBC group.
• Exploring ways to implement the procedure as part of the standard inspiral pipeline, with help from Kipp.

__________________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Preparing talk for December LSC meeting along with materials for the F2F meeting.
• Worked on understanding the noise floor differences between the Time Domain and Frequency Domain.  Matt had sent me his Bk's and I was trying to understand the exact numerical differences, and also comparing with PulsarMon data that Keith Riles has made available.

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Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• The request to stage frame files has been moved from the diskcacheAPI to the frameAPI. Within the frameAPI, the staging request using the SAMFS API and is restricted to samfs file systems.
• The latest version of Tcl/Tk (8.4.16) is being evaluated on a tandem system.
• System testing was done using version 1.9.115 of LDAS. All of the system tests passed. Over the Thanksgiving Day holidays, LDAS on ldas-dev ran with only two errors.
• RDSVerify.tcl and fr2ilwd.tcl are now part of the system tests which are installed.
• The development of LDAS are focusing on the next standard OS platforms to be supported by the lab. To this end, all of the linux tandem systems have been upgraded to CentOS 5. As configuration issues have manifested, they have been addressed.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Phil Ehrens)

• The usual certificate related tasks and user support.
• Ongoing support of MOU review process and data management.
• Node254 - Replaced drive in port 0. This was a recertified drive manufactured 3 months ago, so only recently placed in service.
• Gave Duncan Brown access to the SysAdmin wiki and the ldas-kickstart cluster configuration machine.
• Assisted John Zweizig with some minor dmt cert related issues.
• Figured out how to make yum.cron do yum updates and not the yum update daemon. Yum.cron enabled on Deimos, and the procedure added to the CentOS docs in the wiki.
• BIOS update automation - Developed method and collected all necessary tools. Began building toolchain and testing.  Also looked into the biosflash utility from the Linux BIOS project, but it requires writing support for the north and south bridge chipsets.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Making change to lams account update procedure to ***semi***-automate -- email forwarded | script , parse, step by step confirmation of updates (check existing, etc).

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• The segment replication between sites is still down. Several attempts to restart it failed.
• On Keith's request inserted several DQ segments into CIT database.
• John is having trouble publishing DMT segments into LHO's database, but it works at LLO. Possible globus or certificate problem.
• Working on renewing our SUN hardware support contract.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• The failed compressor on one of the LHO LDAS HVAC units has been replaced, and the LHO cluster is back to normal operations.  I have verified that all the S5 raw, trend, and RDS LLO data was successfully transferred to CIT (and Level 3 and 4 RDS data was successfully transferred to LHO). I am working to get the trend and RDS LHO data, as well as C03 hoft from LLO and LHO, up-to-date at CIT.

(Ben Johnson)

• The AC has had its compressor replaced. Condor running on all nodes again.
• Discovered that pyGlobus-based servers (at least) will look to /etc/grid-security/ as a source of certificates, even if not explicitly told to do so.
• Put together SENDS code and detailed comments and sent to John Zweizig.
• Moved state fetcher code into Glue from LIGOTOOLS.
• NCQ /etc/system modifications have been made on the x4500, and the box has been rebooted.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Some more work on gwdaw12 conference (web, etc).
• A couple of new XP installs.
• Quite a bit of troubleshooting (mail, X11, licenses, dead machine, scavenged power supply for michele's salmerino ..).
• rc'd pc raid from Larry.
• Misc. work on ldap(solaris w\ openldap works (sol. 10)).
• Some ilog (web interface -- javascript input validation).
• Added 750GB tintagel for more backups.
• Started work wireless bridge for area outside Erik's office (no 18.161 net hardwire available).

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• With Shannon, installed Solaris 10U4 on a machine, made machine LDAP client, resident on new subnet.
• Rebuilt old operator PC with Ubuntu, installed mailman.
• Worked on kantech issues at the X-end with Chuck.
• Setup auditorium for LEDC presentation - troubleshooting lighting issues revealed sticky switch.
• A few misc. software installs.
• Patched kantech security server.
• Helped user with WINE install on ubuntu.
• Setup remote access to the SEC building AC controls PC.
• Other usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap.Hanford

(Christine)

• Most of the email spam and virus filter software is installed and running on the new mail server.  However, the software that controls the scanning is not working.  Still trying to figure out what the problem is.
• User support for the Advanced LIGO group.  Somehow the user accounts for the Primavera software had become corrupted.  Mike Pedraza finally had to reset all the accounts.  Mary's computer had some configuration problems with the mail server and DNS.
• The matlab license server keeps stopping without any errors or logs. I had to re-start it twice.

Caltech

(Mike)

• Rack mounted some equipment in B/A server room 18.
• Loaded Dennis Coyne & Ken Mailand's workstation with the new Ansys 11 software.
• Finished up the Management replacement webserver. Larry gave me a hand with this.
• Moved old equipment to our surplus room.
• Finished up working on a problematic Sun server that was having a hardware issue. It turned out to be a rear fan problem. This is on an AMD 64bit Opteron.
• Moved a server out of my office into the B/A server room 18. Did some cable clean up work while connecting the KVM/Network cables to get this server up and running.
• Loaded a Sun server (X4200) to replace sadal.
• Worked on Barry Barish's laptop due to hardware issues. I called this in to get the Motherboard and keyboard replaced.
• Work with LHO troubleshot and resolve an issue with Primavera.
• Testing software on the windows side of the house to enable users to create a mountable encrypted virtual hard disks to store confidential documents.
• Upgraded the OS on the ghost backup server.
• Other misc. user support, plus daily sysadmin tasks.

(Melody)

• Continuing with the changes for the LAAC website.   After trying to use a third-party (mediawiki) extension which didn't work, I am now trying implementing my own extension (php code) to provide a simplified edit form for the user.

(Christian)

• Workstation backups- Linda Turner, Riccardo Desalvo.
• Stocked printer cartridges that were delivered to LIGO this week.
• Testing time machine backup on new Leopard OS.
• Mike and I tested the latest Microsoft security patches.
• Working on transferring all of Riccardo’s data and files to new laptop.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Veronica)

• LIGO: Videotaped the magnetic stack assembly for ELIGO at 40m.  This generated over 4 hrs of footage. Post-production and compression of the footage for streaming and DVD authoring. Attended a presentation by Caltech Digital Media Services about webcasting options.  MediaSite offers a labour-efficient webcast setup to incorporate video/audio/stills feeds for live or on-demand production of content-rich presentations. Looks like a tool worthy of further evaluation. Web updates:  LIGO website, PAC meeting.
• LSC: Updates of the database of technical papers, other web updates. Work on restructuring the existing website. Web support of the December L-V meeting.
• CaJAGWR:  Taping/postproduction of the last seminar.  Website updates/user support.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

From: Dennis Coyne <coyne@ligo.caltech.edu>

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• Participated in the bid evaluation review for the 2nd polishing pathfinder effort with COC; The review report has been issued. Participated in a follow-up strategy discussion on COC polishing for AdL.
• Discussed hiring plans to replace Helena Armandula, who has announced her retirement planned for Feb 2008. Job descriptions have been drafted.
• Continued to work on resolving issues with the FY08 budget elements for AdL development (e.g., remaining commitments) and the estimate to complete (ETC) the development. In the process of discussions with the subsystems leads to set priorities on work and identifying tasks which can be deferred to FY09 or (due to the nature of the work) into the project (if appropriate).
• To date charge mitigation has been an LSC research effort only. At Gregg Harry's suggestion, discussed adding charge mitigation implementation under AOS scope with Phil Willems. Need to identify personnel to assign task of keeping abreast of the research and later (if needed) to estimate costs, develop plans and lead the implementation.
• Developed an excel spreadsheet with all Lab staff and their assignments to in-line, Lab supervisors as well as their matrixed AdL supervisors; Currently under review and to be released soon.

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

• Based on Zemax optical layout work by Mike Smith, we have concluded the same small amplitude horizontal wedge angle (.075 deg = 1.3 mrad) can be used for ITMs and ETMs for both the H1/L1 and H2 interferometers with stable power and signal recycling cavity designs. The BS wedge is 0.9 deg. Wedge angles for the marginally stable recycling cavity are TBD.
• RODA M070120-02, BS Geometry, Size and Orientation was signed. See

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~coyne/AL/project_management/RODA/RODA_status.htm

• Working with COC to prepare for PDR scheduled for Dec/Jan. Attempting to tie down a workable specification/requirement on the scattered light loss per test mass (current goal value may not be achieved, but this does not seem to have much consequence).

UHV Materials & Part Processing

• Advised SUS on application of appropriate weld quality specifications (e.g. Mil-Std-2219). In the process of evaluating some weld samples by RGA to see if we can relax the quality classification of the welds.
• Riccardo Desalvo and student have found a time/temperature cure cycle for a new polyimide (to replace the Cycom 3001 or 3002 no longer in production) which precludes foaming. A report will be written soon. This is similar, but superior to, the polyimide used to pot the coils in the electromagnetic actuators of the SEI ISI system.
• Consulted on weldment cleaning process for the OMC. Have found Brite dipping likely acceptable. Testing via RGA and FTIR before committing to this cleaning approach for the OMC weldment.
• Advised IO against bead blasting for a diffuse surface in vacuum; can use caustic etch.
• Advised ISC to replace bronze part with aluminum or PEEK. Will revise documentation to preclude bronze (including phosphor-bronze) unless a waiver, based on compelling justification is provided.
• Bob Taylor has arranged to pick up a Freon sampling kit for FTIR measurements each week from JPL. These kits will be shipped to LLO to support FTIR testing associated with the large air bake of parts for ELI.
• Processed and approved:
  • Traveler E070242-00 parts (quartz mono bumpers, small and large)
  • Traveler E070243-00 parts (quake stop axial screws, BeCu)
  • No Traveler (HAM4 parts for Sam Waldman).
  • FTIR report e070305-00 (samples from the LLO HAM6 vacuum septum plate)

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

____________________________________________________________________

Static IFO simulation (Hiro, John, Melody)

• John reran his ring heater SIS simulation with the new substrate absorption rate of 0.4 ppm for the low OH material, with both ITM and ETM ring heaters present, and looked at the hot cavity power attained. One can reach  99+% of the cold cavity 00 mode power with a ring heater induced ITM decrease of ROC to 1935 (from 1971) and an
  ETM ROC decrease to 2163 from 2191. Thus, roughly the ring heaters need to decrease the ROC on ITM and ETM by ~ 30 meters to accommodate the optics heating if 00 mode power is to be maximized. The interesting aspect of the data is that the peak power is achieved over a broad range of ITM and ETM ring heater settings, allowing further tweaking of the ring heater settings to optimize other aspects of the optics such as beam spot size on ITM and ETM, without sacrificing 00 mode power. 
• Hiro did similar simulations of a fully heated advLIGO arm for two cases, 1) using two ring heaters at ITM and ETM and 2) using one ring heater at ETM. The results are summarized in 1) IEScan1D.pdf  and IEScan2D.pdf  and 2) EScan.pdf.
• This analysis put an emphasis on the beam shape at ITM and ETM. Agreeing with the result of John's run, by adjusting the mirror curvatures, beam shapes could be controlled well without compromising the power in the cavity.
  • two Ring Heater case, 30m meter smaller for both ITM and ETM (1971m -> 1961m for ITM and 2191m -> 2161m for ETM): the beam resonating in the hot cavity was very close to that in the cold cavity.
  • one ring heater case : 50m smaller ETM (2191m -> 2141m for ETM) : the beam size on ITM can be set to the value of the cold state, while the curvature of the field was ~30m off from the cold state case. This can be corrected by the CP of TCS.
• John spent time on the resampling algorithm to convert the phasemap data with fine spacing to the format used in the simulation with coarse grid spacing, including expanding a draft document outlining issues applicable to the SIS implementation. (T070290-E, Two Dimensional Distribution Data Resampling Note)
• Hiro studied the loss due to the aberration in the cold cavity and in the hot cavity. ( diffLossScatterPlot.pdf, diffLossHist.pdf ). It was found that the loss in the hot cavity is ~50% larger than the loss in the cold cavity. One RH case is slighter worse (more loss) than the single RH case. The case of this dependence needs to be investigated.
• SIS cvs was updated to the latest.
• Melody fixed a Makefile problem where changes in the code were not properly detected in the build process.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

• Last week we ran our AdvLIGO MC e2e model with DAQ ground motion recorded at LLO as input to the HAM seismic isolation model, and compared the computed MC output light's frequency noise with our previous run in which we used the e2e's standard ground motion based on ground motion spectrum of LHO. The comparison in 1<f<10 Hz indicated slight tendency that the frequency noise with the LLO ground motion is higher towards the 1 Hz end and lower towards the 10 Hz end. This week we used a longer time series of DAQ ground motion recorded at LLO to cover 0.1<f<10 Hz. It is observed that the MC frequency noise is higher with the LLO ground motion is higher  in 0.1<f<2 Hz.

Prestabilized Laser

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

• The paperwork for ordering the spare ThermoFlex 1400 chillers has been submitted.
• I have been chasing up where to buy various items for the Enhanced LIGO Laser.
• Wrote a small TwinCAT program to read a text file that holds the channel name conversion between TwinCAT variable names and an EPICS record.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

Suspensions - Jay

• Visited the University of Birmingham group the week of 11/10. They have made good progress on the noise prototype electronics and they plan to deliver the units in early December. The present LASTI schedule calls for installation in February.
• A draft of the electronics test plan for the noise prototype electronics has been written and will be available for comments by the end of next week.
• Modeling of the triple suspensions continues in an effort to develop the requirements for the RM and the IMC suspension electronics. A draft of the IMC requirements should be available by mid December.

Seismic - Ben

• Cables - All the cables for one installation are in-hand.  I have ordered the long field cables for the LLO Installation.  They will be here next week.
• Capacitive Position Sensor Satellite Box - I have put two of these boxes together.  They need a little bit of final tweaking, but they will be done soon.  They are only needed for the Hanford install.
• GS-13 Boards - 14 GS-13 Preamp boards were shipped to Brian O'reilly to help his efforts in "podding" the GS-13s for ELigo.  Paul is making up some of the internal GS-13 board and cables also for this effort, and they will be shipped shortly.
• I am going to Boulder on Monday to disassemble and ship all of the electronics to LLO.

CDS Infrastructure

• Jay and I will be visiting an ADC/DAC manufacturer in Simi next week. They have some PCI-X and PCI Express based units which look interesting.
• Ordered some Infiniband network equipment for testing as part of CDS infrastructure, as recommended during one of the NSF reviews.
• Found a vendor that offers an 8 slot, PCI Express (PCIe) I/O expansion chassis with a fiber optic uplink. This manufacturer also advertises a PCIe fiber optic switching unit. According to the literature, we could connect a combination of I/O chassis and computers to the switch and map any I/O card to any computer. Realtime computer to computer comms are also available on the same links. It seems that, in general, more PCIe products for control and data acq. are starting to show up. One of the ADC/DAC units we will see on our visit next week is PCIe based. We also found 128 channel, optically isolated digital I/O modules for PCIe to handle our binary switching needs. (As a note, our present PCI-X ADC/DAC modules would still be compatible with a PCIe bus. These units are built as PMC cards on a PMC to PCI-X carrier to fit in the PCIX slots. To move to PCIe, the ADC/DAC PMC cards are simply moved to PMC to PCIe carrier cards and plugged into the PCIe bus.)

ELIGO

• Installed OMC computers, I/O chassis at LLO this week. Initial testing looks good. We still need a power supply for the master timing unit from LHO, but will not arrive until mid/late January. We will put in some temporary power supplies for this in the next few days to allow further testing.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

• The re-assembly of the actuators and position sensors is just about complete. The SUS group is also finishing up modifications to the quad suspension. In-air testing is scheduled to begin on Monday.

HAM Single Stage Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

• Myron, Corey, Lee, and Ken are at HPD disassembling the single stage HAM. The parts are being crated and sent out for cleaning.
• The actuators, position sensors, and seismometers have been removed from the structure. Today we removed the optics table, released the springs, and removed them. We have decided to remove all helicoil inserts as we remove the parts to ensure they are all removed prior to cleaning. The disassembly is going well and should be completed by next Tuesday.
• An installation schedule and manpower needs were made for the single stage HAM for Livingston.
• DHS: slips from the earlier schedule are indicated, due principally to cleaning (extra cleaning needed to remove stains, etc.)

Suspensions

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

OMC-SUS work

• We have disassembled the suspension. Firstly the optics bench was removed, weighed and then left (covered) on the optics table in the clean area in room 56 lying on its the "dark" side with the attached optics upwards, the preamp boxes mounted on the dark side having been removed. The metal parts have also been disassembled and will shortly go for cleaning and baking. The support structure is currently in workshop having some rework done before it will also get cleaned and baked. We are currently aiming for a reassembly (all -metal version) in its clean state in early January, prior to shipment to LLO. The optics bench will go to LLO separately and full reassembly will take place there. With knowledge of the as-built mass and some minor additions required to the bench we are currently working on design/mass of counterweights for levelling the bench. This will be followed by reevaluation of wire lengths and blade clamp angles to arrive at the correct height for the suspension.

Beamsplitter work

• The parameter set was updated and thermal noise from currently planned eddy current damping units checked - longitudinal and vertical are within the technical noise requirements. The long-awaited updated conceptual design document was released to the DCC. A further revision with some updating and editing of figures will follow shortly. The RODA defining the BS size, geometry and orientation is en route round signatories.
  

OSEM work

• The numbers and delivery schedule for the noise-prototype Birmingham OSEMS (now called BOSEMs) were clarified with all concerned. 16 BOSEMs for the OMC and tip-tilt mirrors for LLO are due for delivery early December to Caltech for cleaning and baking.

Quad work

• Brett has written up and sent to the DCC a document summarizing the final results on the quad controls prototype, T070272. He has included a section on lessons learnt which have been incorporated into the design of the noise prototype.
• The monthly SWG telecon was held on 16th Nov and minutes posted on the SWG elog.
• NAR participated in the monthly Adv LIGO UK telecon on 16th Nov.

From: k mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

• I'm designing an assembly frame and shipping container for the mode cleaner optical bench, for carry on transportation to the site for Sam Waldman.
• I received an aluminum etch cleaning process sample and a Brite Dip process sample for Calum /Janeen re. welded aluminum structure cleaning.
• I have contacted a second local water jet cutter for the baffle and beam dump black glass cutting, they will do a sample part this week.
• Testing the faraday 4 wire style damper is in Phil Willems lab, is in progress.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

• I have been preparing two documents:
  • A new revision of the COC DRD (the existent go around is three years old!). This is in anticipation of a COC PRD by ~ mid Jan 08.
  • My write up of the theory of the light scatter we see from the TM HR beam spots. That is, a "speckle" sort of description but with significant alterations. This reveals some important [expected] features of the data (scatterometer measurements and photographs). This is now well under way.... week or two.
• Also, Ive been analyzing the observations Valera made of the very small angle scatter at LLO. That is the scatter [from the ETM] that hits the ITM cage. I have been working on some more detailed understanding of this (some with Hiro) so that it can be used more quantitatively.
• A number of other COC issues (essentially in conjunction with preparing for the PRD) are being considered: the compensatability of the arm cavity modes (under thermal and tolerance deformation) by the TCS elements; scatter loss budgeting with an eye on polishing specifications; evaluation of pathfinder polish proposals (most notably the recent tendering).

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

IFO LAYOUT

• Mike added a representation of the beam tubes and spool pieces for the IO beam tube and the OUT beam tube. PRT2 and PRT3 mirrors were moved slightly so that the beams clear the IO beam tube. The BS wedge was reduced to 0.8 deg so that the ITMXPO beams and the darkport output beams clear the OUT beam tube.
• Conical manifold baffles were placed at both ends of the IO and OUT beam tubes to hide the right-angled corner where the beam tube reduces to the smaller diameter of the spool pieces connecting to the HAM chambers. These baffles avoid retroreflection of any stray light that hits the corner, and also serve as beam dumps for some of the ghost beams from the PRT3 and SRT3 mirrors.
• He is waiting for definitive numbers for the power and signal recycling cavity lengths to complete the layout.

ITMX PO TELESCOPE

Virginio completed a preliminary design of the ITMX PO Telescope, which consists of two spherical mirrors--the primary mirrors is placed on HAM5, and the secondary mirror is placed on HAM4. The telescope produces a 2mm beam waist in the vicinity of HAM6. The lateral displacement and the angular pointing requirements were analyzed to meet the goal of maintaining the position of the output beam on HAM6 to within 1% of the output beam spot size--this reuires the displacement of the secondary mirror to be <0.53 E-6 m, and the angular displacement of the primary mirror to be <0.03 E-6 rad. According to Peter Fritschel, we can expect a DC displacement noise of the HAM platform approx. 1 E-6 m, and an angular noise of approx. 0.1 E-6 rad. Therefore, the mirrors can be hard-mounted to the HAM platform, and the resulting displacement at HAM6 would be < 3% of the spot size, which is acceptable to ISC.

E-LIGO

INVAC SCATTEROMETER

• Riccardo and Mike are investigating concepts for incorporating a scatterometer that will be mounted in the vicinity of an ITM and will intercept scattered light coming through the beam tube originating from the far end of the beam tube. An ADLIGO prototype might be tested in E-LIGO.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Guido:

• working out how the losses in the recycling cavities affect the sensitivity and what this means for the requirements.

Muzammil:

• We are determining the recycling cavity mode in the slightly mismatched test mass ROC. And the program is to use this mode for determining the mode losses. 

Luke:

• Assembled FR magnet for LHO in collaboration with Victor and Dmitriy of IAP
• Various eligo minutiae.

Rodica:

• Inspection of the thin film polarizers damaged by cleaning and baking at LHO.

LLO Team (Dave, Kate, Antonio):

• We completed the LLO Faraday Isolator assembly. The isolation ratio is 34.8dB and transmission is 93%. The isolation hardly changes as power is ramped from less than 1 Watt to over 20 Watts.  The north and south HAM1 doors are off and we've staged the area in preparation for MC mirror drag wipes and Faraday installation.

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