There will be no meeting of the LIGO Executive Committee on Monday, December 8, 2008. Instead the Staffing Committee will meet.

Calendar of future Executive Commitee Meetings

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights:

From LHO

The H1 interferometer has been operated stably at 21W for hours at a time, with RF readout.
H2 was up 72.6% and in science mode 36.4% of the time last week, which is one of the best weeks we've had during the astrowatch run, with an inspiral range consistently between 7 and 7.5 Mpc.

LSC Issues (Reitze)

No report.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

For status of MOUs press here.

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

Assisted L. Wallace with shipping IT equipment to the University of Maryland to support the LSC meeting.
Assisted G. Billingsley in making shipping arrangements for a fused silica blanks from Canton, NY to CIT.
Assisted R. DeSalvo with shipping two seismic attenuation filters to EGO Cascina, Italy.
Assisted R. DeSalvo with shipping ten granite tiles and a granite plate to DUSEL South Dakota.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

Met with the DocDB team to discuss migration and other issues as well.
Working on a QA Checklist for DocDB documents.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Oracion)

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

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY Press Here.

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

Sent a request to p-card services to change the assigned PTAs on all LIGO p-cards to reflect the new PTAs for FY2009.
Currently working on financial reports for FY2008 and FY2009.
Link to new FY2009 LIGO Operations poetas: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/docuserv/
FY2009_LIGO_OPs_PTAs_v3.pdf.
Link to Advanced LIGO PTAs: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/docuserv/FY2009_Advanced_LIGO_
PTAs_v1.pdf.
Financial reports may be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl).

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Arvizu, Jasnow, Salone)

>From: Rudy Arvizu <arvizu_r@ligo.caltech.edu>

See Advanced LIGO report.

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

See Advanced LIGO report.
Contracts for LN₂ delivery with Praxair and Air Liquide, for LHO and LLO respectively, have been awarded.

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

Two new subcontracts managers have accepted offers of employment from LIGO, and will be reporting shortly to work on Advanced LIGO. Jacqueline Champagnie, formerly from UCLA, will be reporting on Monday, December 8, and Steve Marroquin will be transferring from JPL and will report on Monday, December 22.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

I have issued a request for contributions for the end-of-December monthly report to the usual suspects. The report is due to the NSF by Monday, December 15th. I have requested inputs by Wednesday, December 10th.
We have started the process of scrubbing the LIGO Operations budgets for FY 2009. The objective is to ensure that we have everything covered, and also to identify items that can be potentially deferred in the event that we receive less than expected for the second half of FY2009.

CHANGE REQUESTS (Lindquist)

There are no open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, December 8th.
A Staffing Committee meeting was held on Monday, November 10th. The minutes and action items 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

LIGO safety web-page is on-line at the LIGO Internal Bulletin Board location. After a few additional changes have been completed, the plan is to provide access directly from the LIGO home page.
Fixing the bugs in the LIGO "on-line" Incident Report form is in progress. There is still a need to achieve agreement on the incident classifications. Incident reports also have significant "lessons-learned" benefit in LIGO operations safety training.

ADVANCED LIGO SAFETY IS BEING REPORTED UNDER ADVANCED LIGO, BELOW

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

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

The H1 interferometer has been operated stably at 21W for hours at a time, with RF readout. On the order of 1W of TCS power was required on each arm to nearly maintain moderate SPOB values of about 350. The WFS/ASC magic that keeps the IFO stable at such high power is summarized in an elog here. A WFS demod phase tuning script was written, link available here.
Prior to Thanksgiving, the best-yet DC readout spectrum was obtained, in which the shot-noise-limited performance above 200Hz is better than the S5 reference trace. Here the input power is 12W.
TCS commissioning was ongoing, here's a snapshot.
We've set our vent dates for endstation baffle installation; EY (Dec 16), and EX (Dec 18).
h1ioo0 has been highly unstable; a way to minimize connections to this IOC is to put it behind an epics gateway. This will certainly expedite commissioning by minimizing reboots.

Astrowatch (A. Mullavey)

H2 was up 72.6% and in science mode 36.4% of the time last week, which is one of the best weeks we've had during the astrowatch run
The inspiral range was consistently between 7 and 7.5 Mpc, except for last thursday night, when h2awg0 died and injected a comb into the bucket. However, Dave Barker worked on making the AWG computers more stable over the weekend and since then they have been more robust
Jericho Cain arrived this week from the University of Mississippi to participate in Astrowatch and has begun learning how to operate the 2k interferometer

Outreach (D. Ingram)

Astrowatch outreach -- Matt West hosted ~15 physics undergrads from the University of Washington for a tour of LHO on Saturday 11/15.

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

General Operations (Rusyl Wooley):

Jay, David K. and Carl have been working this week on the build up and testing of the new aLIGO SUS test stand. They also made the field upgrades to the Tip/Tilt coil driver. Jeremy and Doug are working on a complete check out of the PEM electronics. This includes re-characterizing all channels using actual units instead of counts and getting all the documentation up to date. We are continuing with 16hr/day of control room shift coverage. Janeen, Mike M. and I interviewed another candidate for the aLIGO SolidWorks drafter. We have found who we want and he has accepted the position. Hopefully, this one won't fall through at the last minute like the last one. Cangelosi-Ward is now on site and is has started the warehouse modifications for aLIGO.

Enhanced LIGO Commissioning (Valera Frolov):

The investigation of the interferometer noise and stability at high power continued. The highest input power that was used for DC readout is 14 W. The thermal effects and angular stability limit our ability to operate at higher power levels.
The OMC tip-tilt mirror coil driver was upgraded to reduce the effect of the digital noise on the OMC beam jitter. As a result the OMC dither alignment can now be engaged without introducing an excess noise in the OMC input beam angular motion and the DC readout.
The eLIGO Faraday isolator isolation ratio was measured in situ with 20 W double pass beam. The isolation ratio was found to be 25 dB and independent of power within 1 dB consistent with measurement uncertainty.
The PSL intensity stabilization servo has been going in and out of saturation for several days at a time. It has been in operational state for last 10 days. In the failed state it was found that the AOM diffraction efficiency goes down by a factor of ten. A spare AOM unit was ordered and received but not swapped awaiting the next failure. During the last examination one of the SMA connector in the AOM RF path was found to be only finger tight. It was tightened but no other changes have been made since the last spontaneous failed to operating state transition.

LLO CDS Software (Keith Thorne):

System Administration:
- Rsync of llo1 backup server.
- Repair of x4600 underway - needs power distrib board.
- Cleaned up MEDM screen directories - ready for Subversion.
- Completing CDS setup on new frame-builders.
Commissioning Support:
- Created, installed new TCS EPICS (Phil Willems, Rupal Amin).
- Updated conlog to ignore OMC suspension output monitors.
Upgrades
- Installed new x4600s for DMT.
- DMT machines being upgraded to Solaris 10 (John Zweizig).
- New Linux workstations received.
- Ordered DVI Extenders for new workstations.
- Ordered new fiber cables for LDAS gateway.

Safety & Security (Rich Riesen):

Qualified Jeremy Birch for NHZ access. Scheduled him for CPR and a base line eye exam.
Updated two LLO procedures, awaiting approval from management before distribution.
Continuing LLO procedures updates. Drafting an LLO site specific laser users training guide.

Livingston Outreach

(Kathy Holt):

Conducted 3 school visits for a total of 137 students.
Spoke with Lori and Paul from the Exploratorium about the workshop in Feb.
Developed a flyer to advertise the workshop and will send out to schools next week.
Updated stats for the current year.
Downloaded pics for teachers to take back to the school.
We have dealt with wasps this week and there will not be a public tour on Fri. due to the exterminator spraying inside and out of the Science Edu. building.
Spoke with Luria from SUBR, we will schedule the Docent Cohort 2 Ceremony for Jan.
Had a discussion with the Principal from Copper Mill, Mr. Davis. He is interested in developing materials for next years 5th grade classes that will attend LIGO. I will keep you informed.

(Amber Stuver):

Gave a Westinghouse Science Honors Institute lecture in Pittsburgh, PA to ~350 high school juniors.
Presented a presentation and continued with a school visit to Hempfield Area High School in Greensburg, PA. The presentation was attended by ~25 high school juniors and seniors and the school visit reached ~35 more students.
Gave control room tours to ~150 5th grade students

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)

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Adhikari)

This week the MC was re-aligned after doing the MZ work and the RFAM minimization. This somehow reduced the noise around 28 kHz, allowing the MC drumhead modes to become visible in the MC_F channel with only a 10 second integration. This will make the drumhead mode tracking and absorption measurement easier.
The MC Wiener filter based noise subtraction was enhanced by introduction of another seismometer. Now using 6 Wilcoxon accelerometers, one Ranger SS-1 seismometer, and a Guralp CMG-40T, we are able to get more than a factor of 10 reduction in the MC_L feedback channel from 1-25 Hz. Noise enhancement out of band is fairly minimal. We are starting to write a noise subtraction paper. Next is to resurrect the adaptive, online noise subtraction system to see how well we do over very long time scales with this setup.
The coherence among separated seismometers agrees well with the well known Bessel 2-point correlation function.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Akira is still working on the optimized-coating paper, and Greg is getting lasers repaired.

LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

Fabrice has started to commission the HEPI actuators. He has designed 6 slightly conservative control loops, the UUG frequencies are 6-9Hz down from 9-12Hz that could be achieved with an aggressive controller. There are some results posted on the Lasti ilog at: http://www.ligo.mit.edu/ilog/ on the Lasti Group Log page.
We are gearing up for a modal identification of the Quad structure/ISI platform next week. Fabrice has developed a nice method for doing modal identification. We will be venting next week (maybe Monday) and trying to track down why there are modes much lower then expected (~45Hz) and to try and indentify the modes that have larger frequency drifts.

Quad Prototype

Brett is planning to take advantage of next weeks vent to install the eddy current dampers on one chain of the pendulum.
Alastair has returned to Caltech. In the last couple of weeks he and Gregg have been working on using polarimetry to characterize the welds and fibers. They have also been investigating the affects of polishing on the ultimate strength. There are a number of entries in the Lasti ilog at http://www.ligo.mit.edu/ilog/ on the AdvancedLigoOPtcis Group Log page, including a link to a video of a fiber strength test that broke at 73Kg.

SEI

Both the new support beams have been installed. The Support tube clamps show some rotational slippage; Andy thinks that this can be fixed with strong bolts and higher torques, followed by a minor redesign for the production models.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

_______________

Antony Searle:

WNB localization.
Inspiral localization with Chad Hanna, testing and bugfixes.
AAS poster.
S6 online planning activities.
New output from Bayesian code for glitch robustness.
New figures of merit for PRC.

_______________

Diego Fazi:

Found and solved the bank-simulation issue.
Analyzed results from a spinning bank simulation with SPA templates.
Ran a spinning bank simulation with PTF templates.
Kept working on the Chi-square veto for PTF.

_______________

Kipp Cannon:

Preparing talk for Texas Symposium 2008.
Helping people with metaio upgrade.
A little work on the S4 cosmic string cusp review.
Telecons: inspiral, inspiral code, daswg.

_______________

Amber L. Stuver:

Assembled references for the BlockNormal publication literature review and gave critical feedback on the current draft.

_______________

Chad Hanna:

High mass search.
Getting ready for the upcoming LV meeting.
Running dags, tuning stats, the usual.

_______________

Drew Keppel:

Helping implement the IFAR calculation for the LIGO/Virgo CBC search.
Addressing issues in the S5 1st Year Low Mass CBC paper leading up to its redistribution to the LSC.

_______________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid Computing R&D Team:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Einstein@Home on the OSG ...
- Since beginning to track uniquely Einstein@Home credits for jobs running on the OSG one month ago, the OSG now accounts for over 3,055,436 credits and is ranked 182 in the world in all-time credits reported and is adding about 100,000 new credits per day. Recognizing that the distribution has a very long tail, the OSG has accumulated more credits than 99.92% of other users of Einstein@Home. On a per day bases, the OSG is now ranked number 6 in the world for credits produced per day.
- The above statistics are based on a submission code base that only supported running Einstein@Home on a few OSG sites that supported Web-Services GRAM, outbound communications from the worker nodes and LIGO VO. New code is almost completed that will expand the OSG sites that Einstein@Home can run on to include the pre-Web-Services GRAM, which the bulk of the OSG sites support. The first test job using the pre-Web-Services was successfully submitted this week to the OSG.
- Effort is underway to upgrade the job submission management software to support both WS-GRAM and pre-WS-GRAM, with the added new functionality to automatically fall back on the alternate GRAM interface when a problem is detected. This code is being tuned this week and currently the team has achieved:
  - deployment of code on 8 OSG sites
  - identified 20 OSG sites to test the new code at
  - proofed the code base on the German DGRID
  - used the monitoring infrastructure in the test runs
  - having to do manual cleanup of failures at sites
  - working with Purdue and CIT-CMS-T2 sites on problems
Binary Inspiral Workflows:
- Evaluate RSV pages at http://rsv.grid.iu.edu/ for usability with Pegasus work-flow planner.
- Install 32 bit binaries (after libmetaio issues were resolved), same error at lalapps configure step, no error without "--enable-condor" option specified.

OSG INTEGRATION & VALIDATION TESTBED ACTIVITIES

Attended weekly Integration Testbed Telecon.
Applied for and received DOE Grids Host and Service certificates for ITB cluster. These have now been successfully deployed and tested.

GRID COMPUTING MANAGEMENT

Worked with Stu Martin of the Globus Team at ANL on an article he is writing on "Globus Success Stories: Einstein at Home on the OSG". Corrected a few statistics and typos in the article.
Attended the monthly MAGIC (Middleware And Grid Infrastructure Coordination) Team meeting. This is a new group representing the national labs, universities and corporate entities that are becoming involved in distributed computing. This was only the second of these meetings and the focus was on Earth Systems Grid, partnerships, MOUs and architectures. The next meeting will discuss grid and cloud computing. The meetings are chaired by Susan Turnbull of DOE and Jennifer Schopf of NSF. Leadership is also being provided by the National Coordination Office.
Worked with administrative support at Fermilab and LLO to stand up the webpages for the OSG All Hands Meeting in March of 2009. Most of the effort went into finishing up the form for registration so that the meeting announcement could be sent out.
Worked on content for the OSG All-Hands Meeting announcement which was sent out this morning. The announcement can be found at http://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=2012
Wrote a recommendation to the Computer Committee on the best methods for secure communications between web browsers and web services maintained by the LSC. The document was presented to the CompComm and discussed at this week's telecon. The CompComm adopted the recommendation.
Held a meeting with the OSG Project Manager to discuss issues and plans for increasing the number of Einstein@Home jobs running on the OSG. Also, noted that Clemson's Campus Grid is dedicating some of its resources to E@H as backfile but not through the OSG interface. It was also reported that Univ of Wisc Madison is planning to do a similar E@H backfill, again not using the OSG gatekeepers there.
Worked with Julie to get the paperwork for the OSG Year 3 funding to the Caltech Office of Sponsored Research for their approval.
Reviewed a draft OSG Annual Report to the Department of Energy which is due at the end of this month.
Worked with OSG security team on a new privacy policy that is being drafted. Made several suggestions for modifications and discussed these with the principle author.
Supported users with the typical 10 to 12 issues associated with getting new grid certificates and new accounts on the clusters.
Supported the planning and process for advancing the new Einstein@Home codes based on GT2 Gram onto the OSG for increasing scientific value to LIGO from OSG resources.

_______________

Joseph Betzwieser:

Reviewed and tested Reinhard's patches to production line CW code.
Worked on CW poster for the AAS meeting in January.

_______________

Igor Yakushin:

Working on scripts to automatically generate web pages for S6 low-latency online coherent waveburst jobs.

_______________

Gregory Mendell:

I have prepared a draft of my poster for the Pulsar Timing session of the 24th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, in Vancouver BC next week. It is in this password protected location: https://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/pcvs/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/pulgroup/presentations/
Texas08/UseOfPulsarTimingDataToSearchForContinuousGWs.ppt?rev=1.1&cvsroot=lscdocs&content-type=application/vnd.ms-powerpoint
I am working on regenerating a set of SFTs for the CW group, for the last part of S5.

_______________

Anand Sengupta:

Phenomenological injections on nemo cluster (many failures and baby sitting involved).
Spinning and phenom injections on the atlas cluster.
incorporate --fast option for banksim jobs in lalapps_inspiral program.

_______________

Cristina Valeria Torres:

Plan/Begin writing of presentation for LVC in Maryland on my contribution to S6 on-line detector characterization and data quality efforts.
Continue working on the major pieces of infrastructure to bring a tracksearch multidimensional glitch classification hybrid pipeline on-line for S6 which will rely on Onanaysis.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

Worked with Xavier Amador to resolve some build issues related to building RPM of version 1.10.0 on 32-bit Fedora Core 4 systems. This resulted in requesting the RPM builds be based on version 1.10.1 instead.
After modifying the diskcacheAPI to be robust in the statvfs calls, mount points on file systems experiencing NFS issues were removed from query requests. This work is not yet complete since when the system comes back online, the hash is not being updated.
Worked with Benoit to finish version 8 of the Frame Specification. I am currently reading the latest draft proposal for technical issues.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

Weekly check of frame files in CIT cluster found no new bad frames.
Generated lists of tapes for shelf storage at LHO/LLO.
Am cleaning up tapes marked in error at LHO.
Fixed trend Disk2Disk config at LLO.
Set up NFS problem simulation for Ed Maros.
Closed out Sun case 66067546, an old morbo crash. Turned out this wasn't because of bad pointers in inodes, it was because of 6140 flapping. The bug that caused a panic when storage "disappeared" has been fixed in 4.6.65.
Fixed broken archiver.cmd at LLO.
Replaced broken 6140 controller at CIT.
Put loop controller from LLO back in 3510 at CIT.
Much work on rearchiving data to T10KB format tapes.

(Phil Ehrens)

Various certificate management tasks.
Various user support tasks - Cluster account creation, svn repository creation and access control, desktop configuration help.
Added JavaScript pre-validation to the TAR application using the google wforms library of JS routines. Wforms was the clear winner among the various frameworks available for form validation, and the developer is very responsive. Wrote additional ssi code for caching and restoring radiobutton states.
Built new desktop for Britta Daudert and installed sufficient tools to support use of the machine as a submit host. All required steps are documented at: https://vcs.ligo.caltech.edu:447/wiki/wiki?Bosco_As_Submit_Host (accessible only by LIGO sys-admins).
Investigated conversion of frames-based web documents to more portable and efficient css styles.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

All quiet; new disk in thumper; looking at ldr data replication.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

Metaio library was upgraded at LLO.

(Doug Lormand)

Two nodes, 111 and 192, went down sometime Tuesday evening. Node 111's power supply failed and node 192 had a memory stick failure. I replaced node 111's ps with node 213's since it is one of the unused nodes, and I replaced the faulty memory in node 192.
Both nodes are up as of the afternoon of 12-3-08.
So the only nodes still down are 27 and 37 and both are disk errors.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

Installed a QLogic Fiber Channel switch in the Mass Storage Room, to prepare for the move of the LDAS tape library system. The cost of the move has been set, and should happen next month.
The archiving and transfer of second and minute trend data are up-to-date at LHO, LLO, and CIT. Astrowatch data is nearly up-to-date, and I should have it caught up by the end of today.
I am working on a problem with one of the cluster head nodes that keeps crashing.
I am working on routine sys admin tasks, for example making sure we have enough tapes to archive astrowatch data in the library before I go on travel for 2 weeks.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

ilog demo up, Chris W testing, some more debugging.
Cleaning up unused ip addresses (about 1/2 dozen).
Worked on backup log web page (w\nagios).
Some reconfiguring xp backup profiles.
Added cpu/heatsink to cds frontend pde machine.
Got autburt online (with much help from Chris W).
Adding solaris patch check to nagios (using pca/patch check advanced) for sun machine.
Sorting out what solidworks licenses we have.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

Continued development of parts management UI and testing.
Assisted a couple users with EVO setup.
Tracking down a bug in the AdL Conf room EVO setup. New ViEVO won't launch.
Received a couple new laptops for users, various software installs, patches, etc.
Created email accounts for new users.
Created new mailing list for operator usage
Ordered and received printer toner cartridges.
Booked travel for LSC meeting support.
Various OS updates and software installs.
Ordered external HDs for PC backups
Tracked down a Matlab/COMSOL integration error.
Assisted a user with HTML.
Helping a user track down ssh problems.
Installed VMWare tools on a couple of VMs.
Assisted Jay and Carl with BSC test stand network connection.
With Shannon, added memory to a couple of VMHosts.
Numerous usual/unusual user support requests.
Cleared spam trap daily

Hanford

(Larry)

Set up a couple of new accounts. Modified a few mail aliases and locked an account.
Did a backup of the user home accounts.
Debugged a couple of issues on one of the web servers. Just a couple of processes that went rogue.
Some minor work on logistics in preparation for the new sysadmin for the Observatory.
Purchased a new notebook and other minor equipment for people at the Observatory.
Some logistical work with Mike on the new Primavera setup for the AdvLIGO group.

(Mike)

Set up a new user account.
CIT account setup for Mary & Dwight.
Continued work managing their DHCP server, freeing up expired IP numbers.
Flushing out trapped spam on the mail server.

Caltech

(Melody)

Worked on enhancement requests and bug fixes for DocDB.
Populated the Lab_Business and Lab_Management user groups in DocDB.
Met with the DCC team regarding the migration of documents to the new system.
Helped Hiro with debugging an E2E problem.

(Mike)

Continued work on Primavera for ADVLIGO. I'm mostly working on the client side connection to SQL Server. I have made much progress on this and am now ready for testing.
Trouble shot an issue on the old DCC server. This turned out to be a corrupted database.
Fixed a hardware issue on ECR conference room PC.
Ordered hardware and peripherals for users.
Ran all critical NTSRV end of month backups.
Other misc. user support and sysadmin tasks.

(Christian)

Rudy Arvizu - laptop won't post and boot. I did a diagnose of laptop and found memory errors. Called dell support to replace memory.
Updated the laptops that are traveling to Maryland with the latest security patches and virus definitions.
Toner cartridge replacement - 2nd and 3 floor W/Bridge.
Surplus old monitors and cpus this week.
Re-imaged laptop that was returned to the loaner pull this week.
Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Veronica)

Troublehooting of the html of the new safety, DCC webpages. Other user support on web topics.
Ongoing updates of LIGO website.
Updates of the LSC-related frontend and backend applications.
Web updates/user support for CaJAGWR.

(Larry)

Worked a number of license issues. Purchase a upgrade solidworks license and getting quotes for two more licenses for the new people being hired. Purchased a number of laptops for the new financial people that will be starting in a few weeks. Purchased a number of misc. items for different groups. Working on the Foundry upgrade. Working on the equipment configuration for the core switch.
Worked on a couple of notebook computers. One was a configuration issue and the other a h/w problem that Christian fixed.
Reworked the monthly backups on the home accounts. The first set did not backup correctly. They have been redone and tested and will be moved to the tape system once they are compressed.
Still doing some cleanup and testing from the last meetings held here at CIT. Helped with some of the logistics for the December LSC meeting. A number of items have been collected and shipped for the meeting.
Regular end-user support and modifications to accounts.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

From Carol Wilkinson

Project Controls

Advanced LIGO Change Requests (ACR) in process:
- The ACR for delay in PSL delivery schedule of 200 W lasers by 6 months will be processed and implemented in December. Uses schedule float and does not impact project schedule for installed units. Spares will be delivered after the install date.
- An ACR to add HEPI units to the output readout HAMs per request by the ISC subsystem is in preparation, pending a RODA that HEPI is the isolation of choice. Budget in ISC for seismic isolation of these chambers will be transferred from ISC to SEI HEPI. No significant change in budget or schedule milestones anticipated.
- ACR to consolidate the clean and bake activities in the assembly staging activity in Facility Mods. and Prep is in preparation, with expected implementation in November. Labor in the individual subsystems will be collected and moved to FMP. Expectation that more labor hours will be needed.
- ACR to increase staff at the various sites to help technical leads with procurement and documentation preparation is being prepared. The intention is to bring some site assembly folks on early and to hire temporary drafters at each of the four sites. Project contingency will be used where appropriate. Some of the drafters will also help with development activities paid from operations accounts.
- An ACR to add optical tables to the SUS assembly tooling has been approved and is circulating for signatures. Tables at an estimated cost of $60K were left out of both FMP and SUS budgets.
- Level II ACR #080012 was approved in November to adjust the time phasing of budgets in SEI, SUS, IO, COC, and AOS to correct errors introduced by previous change requests and to match budget profiles to selected large procurement payment schedules. This matching to expected payouts corrects misleading schedule variances created by the default linear budget profile.
- Level II ACR 080013 was approved in November to adjust schedules to actual or most likely dates for HEPI in the seismic isolation system. The changes reflect the fact that the HEPI procurements started later than the earliest possible dates, but are still earlier than needed. The shift in dates uses ~135 days of float, leaving ~107 days of float remaining for HEPI. This adjustment is in response to a request from NSF following the November 2008 NSF Annual Review of LIGO to correct schedules to most likely dates to make variance reporting more meaningful. No major milestones were impacted and no schedule contingency was used.

Staffing

Two new procurement subcontracts managers have accepted offers of employment and will be reporting shortly to work on Advanced LIGO. Jacqueline Champagnie, formerly from UCLA, will be reporting on Monday, December 8, and Steve Marroquin will be transferring from JPL, and will report on Monday, December 22.
Ads/Statements of work are out for draftspersons at LLO, CIT, and MIT to help with AOS, SUS, and SEI drawings. These are temporary contractor workers. CIT has identified two candidates and will proceed with negotiations. LLO and MIT are still interviewing.
Ads are also out for an optical scientist and a technician. Both contract and term CIT employee options are being explored.
The first assembly tech has been hired and started work at Hanford to help with HEPI assembly, assembly space prep, and inventory control.

Procurements (includes activities from previous week)

For Bert:
- Working on procurement tracking system.
For Gina:
- The RFQ for more of the HEPI parts was released on November 13. Three bids were received for the HEPI machined parts procurement. These bids are now being evaluated.
For Rudy:
- The Request for Proposal for the core optics polishing is being prepared and scheduled for release early next week. The RFP will be sent to the polishers that participated in the Pathfinder polishing effort.

NSF Acquisition Approvals

No new requests.

Progress Updates

The Monthly Status report for November was sent to NSF on November 14.
Time verification reports for the current pay period are due by Friday, December 5.
Progress reports for November were due on Monday December 24.
Variance reports for the month of November are due by Friday, December 5.

Meetings & Reviews

The next Monthly Progress Reporting Meeting will be on Thursday, December 11 at 8:30 AM PT. Subsystem leaders or their delegates need to attend.
Advanced LIGO reported project and development status in the NSF Annual Review of LIGO held at CIT Nov. 18-20. The Advanced LIGO project was congratulated for having design and planning in excellent shape, construction under way and on schedule so far. It was noted at the review that the practice of using earliest possible dates on activities leads to large schedule variances that can obscure the actual project status along the critical path. NSF recommended that the schedule be adjusted to ‘most likely’ dates rather than earliest possible dates. The project will adjust schedule over a 3 month time frame to reflect this scheduling philosophy. No critical path milestones or NSF reporting milestones will be affected by the changes. The majority of changes will be on activities that were scheduled far in advanced of their need dates and that have significant float that can be used without impact to major milestones.
A ‘many-hands’ meeting for Advanced LIGO staff was held at CIT on November 20. Topics included updates on project and development status, a tutorial on procurement processes, and updates on technical issues such as the final optical layout for the stable recycling cavity geometry, and an introduction to the new document control system.

Advanced LIGO Systems

Dennis Coyne <coyne@ligo.caltech.edu> , Peter Fritschel <pf@ligo.mit.edu>, Calum Torrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>, Matt Evans <mevans@ligo.mit.edu>

AdL Project-Funded Activities

Hiring:

Two CAD/draftspersons have accepted offers (one for systems layout work and the other for AOS work).
Helping with interviews for an Optics Scientist (COC), Optics Technican (COC) and a Mechanical Engineer (AOS)..

Design Reviews: For a list of reviews, see the main AdL wiki page

HAM Triple Suspensions PDR is undereway. The committee has provided questions to the design team.
The design team has developed questions for the COC team on the metrology specification. A final meeting to review metrology and coatings will be scheduled soon.

Procurement Reviews:

COC polishing RFP has been reviewed and approved.

Technical Review Board (TRB): see the TRB log

Vacuum Review Board (VRB): see the VRB log

Materials exposure, high irradiance optical cavities: Liyuan and Bob have two cavities back up and running in the new lab. A new web page will be established to show test results and testing status including the queue. Our queue for testing in these optical contamination cavities in order of priority is given below. This list, and the priorities, will change in time as new materials are identified and schedules change.
- Dupont PI-2525 polyimide (replacement for Cycom 3001 polyimide which is no longer available); used for potting the SEI actuator coils (we have a sample).
- The Tra-Con epoxy replacement for vacseal (we have samples).
- Krytox low vapor pressure lubricant (we have samples).
- Carbon loaded PEEK; proposed as spool for the new value engineered OSEM (nickel plated PEEK might be a fallback) (waiting for sample).
- Barrierta-IS (a German Company low vapor pressure lubricant alternative to krytox, that New Focus thought may be cleaner) (we have samples).
- Retest ADE position sensor materials (3 Tra-Con epoxies) due to the anomalous test results (no samples in hand).
- Copper & kapton clad fiber optic. Brian Lantz wants to test this material for use with an optics table, optical lever system. Could be used for ALS etc. Likely "inherently" vacuum compatible, but worth checking since it has a polymer.
- Vacseal -- although approved for Initial LIGO use, Vacseal was never tested in the optical contamination cavity (no samples in hand, but material is on LIGO shelves).
- New Focus picomotor: the unit that passed testing was cleaned to remove lubricant (krytox or Barrierta-IS), but then seized up. Either buy the ultra-clean unit or test a unit with low vapor pressure lubricant (no sample on hand).
- Nedox solid lubricant (for potential BSC-ISI tooling use (class b) but perhaps useful in vacuum as well) (had small sample -- likely inadequate in size).
- Tungsten carbide/carbon (WC/C) sample (for potential BSC-ISI tooling use (class b) but perhaps useful in vacuum as well) (had small sample -- likely inadequate in size probably inherently vacuum compatible).
- Cesic sample (composite ceramic of SiC, Si and C) possibly inherently vacuum compatible application is not clear (high stiffness to weight structure) (sample size adequate?).

Configuration Control & Documentation:

DCN process: Calum and Dennis have developed a DCN process for the new DCC (DocDB). The wiki help pages will be modified to better explain the process and give examples.
DCC: This week at the systems meeting Calum gave a talk on the new Doc DB system. It included sections on:
Getting Help    https://dcc.ligo.org/wiki/index.php/Getting_DocDB_Help
What to do    https://dcc.ligo.org/wiki/index.php/Quick_Start_Guide_-_What_to_do%3F
Engineering Workflow    https://dcc.ligo.org/wiki/index.php/Engineering_Workflow
Several follow up sessions are planned including a repeat introdcution to doc DB a second session on the Engineering Workflow and a session by Rich Abbot on Electrical engineering.
PDMWorks: We have started work on cleaning up an re-organising the PDMWork vault. This has started with the AOS team and will then move to others groups including seismic and suspensions.

Design:

Coating FEA: Liam Cunningham and Calum are running a series of 2 layer coating FEA thermal noise analyses for Peter F. Peter has also compared our numbers with the analytical calculation. We are currently tiding up one or two discripencies between our FEA models and will then run cases for different beam diameters.
Mass properties and optics table layouts: Calum is working with Go Engineer to develop a "tool" for calculating the mass balance, c.m. and moments of inertia
SolidWorks & PDMWorks training: Calum is working with Go Engineer on arranging LIGO-wide training on both PDMWorks and SolidWorks. This is planned for January 21 and 22 2009 at Woodlandhills in California
Acoustic Mode Damper (AMD): If needed for suppression of parametric instability (PI), AMDs would be attached to the barrel of the test masses. Due to the low stiffness of most adhesives, we need a thin (~1-3 microns?) adhesive layer. We are beginning to explore techniques to measure the cylindricity over the small ~1cm x 1cm patches on the barrel, as well as means to perform the bonding.
Test Mass Interfaces: Calum sent a updated draft of available locations for AMDs on the barrel of the test masses to both Matt and Peter. Calum has a meeting with Phil Willems on Monday to discuss our latest gold sleeve barrel concept.

Interfaces:

See the RODA status pag e and the Interface Control page.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro)

Code is modified to handle the field propagation in a substrate in a more accurate way. This makes it possible to compare more point to point with the modal model calculation by Muzammil.
Comparison of different COC designs with different beam sizes on ITM, 6.0, 5.55 and 5.3cm, are underway to finalize the COC ROC design. This calculation includes all 4 cavities - PRM - X ARM, PRM- - Y ARM, SRM - X ARM and SRM - Y ARM, and CR field and signal sideband fields generated by ETM oscillation.

eLIGO Commissioning Support (Hiro)

The method used to prepare a reference field for the OMC tuning was analyzed. It was shown (T0810007-v2) that the field reflected by ITM is very dependent on the thermal state of ITM (and input beam mode), and the curvature can be different by factor 2 when the thermal state is changed from cold to hot.
TDB: This mode change needs to be propagated to OMC, and the transmission of the true mode needs to be calculated when OMC and telescopes in front were setup to match this incorrect mode.

Safety

From: David Nolting dnolting@ligo-la.caltech.edu

Participated in the Triple Suspension PDR on 12/3/08
Visited MIT and toured the lab areas and met personnel
Discussed safety concerns with Ken Mason regarding the HAM-ISI review
Worked with Bill Tyler on adding/updating contractor safety requirements for the RFQ/RFP
Met with MIT safety representative to discuss LIGO lab safety issues.
Met with David Shoemaker and Mick Flanigan to discuss FMEA process

Quality Assurance

From: Mick Flanigan flanigan_m@ligo-wa.caltech.edu

Parts Database:

Dwayne has continued to work on the implementation of the Inventory Database for Advanced LIGO. Currently much of the parts creating and management functionality is in place, however there is quite a bit of work to be done around search functions, sorting, importing tools, and summary reports.
We also had the chance to talk with the VIRGO team that developed the parts database for their purposes, driven primarily by the DAQ team needs, and it looks very nice. What is interesting is that our system has been driven by the operations team in trying to manage parts through the clean, bake, assembly process, while the VIRGO system is more in tune with what our electronics teams are looking for, a system that manages connections of components and installation locations. I see a potential opportunity to collaborate with the VIRGO team, have a single platform merging both functions. Dwayne and I will have the opportunity to review their implementation, and share ours with them in a couple weeks as well, and hopefully develop a good opportunity to merge the two systems.

Defect Tracking System:

JIRA Training is scheduled for administrators for Dec 10th at 11am pacific time, and will be a 3 hour webinar. All those interested in this training please contact me by Dec 9th. Training will be focused on project, component, user and defect management. It is not required for those who wish to only enter and review issues, but is required for those who wish to provide team support in managing the system and customizing the application.

Calibration:

During the Triple PDR calibration was brought up during the discussion about test plans. It will be important for the teams to think about critical measurements and test steps as part of the test plan writing process, and have a plan in place for ensuring that these critical measurements are performed using the necessary calibration protocols. Whether this means a step that calls for ensuring a self calibration is performed on an instrument prior to measuring or testing, to ensuring the instrument has a certificate of calibration on file, it is up to the test plan writing team to identify the necessary level of a calibration program to meet their needs.

FMEA:

Continuing to research the FMEA issue with David S, David N and formulate an approach to performing one on an early candidate. We will be meeting this week to propose a plan to do FMEA on the HAM Triple that is quick and easy, and will allow the team to see some benefit of their time.

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

From: John Worden <worden_j@ligo-wa.caltech.edu>

LLO - Contractor is on site working on the warehouse mods. Steel framework has been installed for the new rollup door, electrical demolition and installation of a new transformer was done this week.
LHO - Contractor is on site to begin the staging building mods - minor routing of HVAC piping has been done in preparation for framing and drywall which should take place before the holidays.
A bid package is almost ready for the LHO warehouse mods and is in review this week at LHO. We hope to get this to CIT prior to the vacation.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

SEI Project Activities

SEI Activities and Progress at LLO:

Commissioning for L1 HAM 6 ISI has been going unfortunately slower than expected. Had installed sensor correction (first ever at the sites!) during the first week of November, and began moving onto the last stage of commissioning: displacement sensor alignment (or tilt-decoupling). Managed to get X DOF aligned but during an over-night transfer function, isolation loops went unstable, exposing a failure in the ISI watchdog. All commissioning work was set aside while the watchdog was diagnosed, and completely revamped. As of early this week, the watchdog rework has finished, and commissioning can resume. However, due to a vent to free the ISI's payload and perhaps due changes to electronics hardware near the ISI, the isolation loop plant has changed enough such the previously design loops are no longer stable. Isolation loops must be redesigned, before resuming commissioning displacement sensor alignment. Since Jeff (primary commissioner on LLO HAM ISI) will be on vacation from Dec 10th through early January, progress will continue to be slow. ~Jeff K.

SEI Activities and Progress at LHO:

The HAM6 ISI active damping has been OFF for the last few weeks while changes have been made to the ISI Watchdog system (Jeff & Brian have just finished improving the Watchdog logic, and we will implement this soon).
With the Watchdog disabled, have not been able to conduct performance measurements on the ISI to close the Isolation Loops--this is next on our list.
Medm/model changes have been made to make LHO's ISI similar to LLO's (i.e. DC Actuation). ~Corey G.

BSC ISI Design:

A design summit was held at Caltech to review the overall design and performance to date. An overall design change list has been created. The changes have been kept to a "minor" level; value engineering intended to greatly improve the assembly of the ISI. This list will now be detailed and a work plan made before the PDR. These changes will culminate into a first article build of the BSC ISI to fit check the changes and detail an assembly procedure. ~Stephany F.

HAM ISI Procurement:

A procurement plan is just about complete-- it will provide both a checklist of items for the HAM ISI and a work flow schedule for the procurement paperwork. ~Stephany F.

HEPI Procurement:

A purchase requisition was sent to procurement for the HEPI position sensors.
Many of the small parts for the hydraulic actuator has been received at KineOptics, such as the following: O-Rings, Springs, Snap Rings, SwageLoc fittings, Resistor Shims. The bellows manufacturer, Ameriflex says they plan to ship on December 22nd.
We have received the maraging steel springs for IFO 1 on Tuesday and the first 500 custom nozzles for the HEPI servo valves.
All existing purchase orders have been amended to add the additional HEPI systems needed for the ISC tables.
Pump Station--All motors have been run and all 'feel' well balanced. Still waiting on Manifold weldment; will likely be early January before completed. Should have all other needed fabrications by mid-month. Controller Bids are out; should be able to make selection and issue PO within one week. Control panel fabrication should only require a couple weeks. Have received first drum of HEPI 'fluid'. Mezzanine for LVEA Pump Stations job has been award and approval drawings have been signed--Expect delivery/installation NLT mid-January.
~Hugh R.

HAM Crossbeam Redesign:

The new crossbeams have been assembled onto the LASTI X-end HAM. We had problems tightening the spherical bearing and ordered larger bolts. Testing should begin next week.

SEI Electronics:

The schematics for the new HEPI Pump Servo are being worked on. An old Pump Servo has been refurbished for Michael Meyer and Joe Hanson in LLO for their pump testing station.
I've been working with Rich on the in-vacuum protection circuitry for the GS-13 in-vac electronics. I've done some simulation, and am almost ready to cut a test board.
Ken, Brian L. and I met with some people from Trillium regarding their T240 seismometers. We discussed electrical interfaces and minimizing their package size to fit into a smaller enclosure. More will be discussed in the near future. ~Ben

Suspensions

From Janeen Romie and Norna Robertson
(romie_j@ligo-la.caltech.edu, nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu)

Operations Work

HAM Suspensions for Advanced & Enhanced LIGO:

The DCN for the HLTS drawings that are done has been sent around for signature. We will have these parts fabricated as soon as it is signed off.
Work has begun on providing responses to the reviewers triple suspensions PDR questions. We participated in a meeting Wednesday with the reviewers and will work towards finalizing the responses for a meeting in two weeks time.
This Friday will be the kickoff triple suspension weekly meeting at 10am PT (involving US team only). We will also use this forum to address OMC work. This meeting is in addition to our SUS weekly telecon on Tuesdays which nominally covers all suspensions but is dominantly focused on joint US/UK work.

BSC Quad Suspensions for Advanced LIGO:

Amanda provided the final drawings for the quad top stage tooling. Our baseline is to use the LASTI tooling for the LLO quad training session, but if we can get this fixture fabricated and cleaned prior to Jan 26th, then we'll use the new one.
We are finalizing the proposed list of personnel for the LASTI quad optic wire hang 12-23 Jan and the LLO quad training 26 Jan - 6 Feb. Working out the details of equipment requirements and movements.
SUS folks are coordinating with LLO facilities people to make sure that the training session, provisionally scheduled for the end of January, will not interfere with the facilities modifications that will happen from December through March.

Project-Funded activities

Before Thanksgiving, Norna and Janeen met with Dwight & Mary to discuss initial LIGO osem funding in preparation for an ACR to group all of the initial LIGO osem production, including first articles, under one WBS/PTA.
Janeen and Norna worked with Dwight this week on the optical table ACR as he hopes to have that available for signature very soon.

Core Optics

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

Development

Muzammil has put together some slides describing analytical solution of the coupled cavity Eigen-vectors. based upon this, There are some results for low power Advanced LIGO operation without engaging TCS. http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/advligo/Recycling_Cavity_Geometry?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=CCavity.pdf

Measurement (Liyuan):

Two TIS scans have been carried out at RTS bench for the HR coating of the 2ITM02 witness mirror, as linked below. Obviously, the 2nd cleaning is more successful. By comparing the two scans, one can get idea which points are more or less permanent. The mirror has no orientation indicator, so I marked a red point at -Y direction on the side with HR coating upward. http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~lzhang/2itm02/
2itm02w_tis_sum_1.pdf

Project

Ergo Arm Test:

The Ergo arm (a vacuum chuck used to lift the core optics) has undergone a successful test.
In the vertical position (imagine a clock) the vacuum held to ~200 pounds, with the failure mode being a slow slip.
The vacuum held in the horizontal position even with a hair crossing the o-ring. It only failed when the vacuum was lowered from ~28"Hg to ~5"Hg. It held for about 5 minutes at 5"Hg, then dropped.
The Polishing RFP *should* go out Friday the 5th of December. It has been thoroughly reviewed by Stan and Dennis.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>

Work Under Project Budget

OPTICAL LAYOUT:

Luke is working on the optical layout for the folded IFO.

TCS:

Phil is at LHO working on the TCS system.

ETM and RM WEDGE ANGLES:

The design of the ETM Hartmann sensing system requires that the ETM AR reflection be used as a reference beam. In order to pass this beam through the ETM telescope, the ETM and RM wedge angles and their tolerances had to be specified. Using the ZEMAX model of the ETM telescope and ETM transmon optical system, Mike determined that the ETM wedge angle and tolerance can be the same as for the ITM and the RM wedge angle and tolerance can be the same as for the CP. The ETM AR surface reflectivity is specified to be 1% - 4% at both 532 nm and 1064 nm. The RM AR reflectivity is specified to be < 0.05% at 532 nm and 1064 nm wavelength.

Work Under Operations Budget

ETM TELESCOPE and SUS:

All the parts have been fabricated for the suspension test. Ken will begin assembly and testing next week as soon as the testing of the elliptical baffle suspension is completed.
Mike completed the preliminary design of a compact off-axis parabolic mirror reflective telescope design similar to the initial LIGO PO telescope. He worked with Dwight to add the cost of the new ETM telescope into the cost book. The design provides for the transmission of the main IFO beam, the Arm Length Stabilization beam, and the Hartmann input and output beams, which include the front surface reflection and the first internal reflection from the AR surface of the ETM.
Mike designed and evaluated the performance of a pupil relay, which images the output aperture of the ETM telescope onto the ISC QPD with a 1mm diameter spot. The pupil relay reduces the tit sensitivity of the ETM telescope optical train and enables the transmon QPD to measure only the displacement of the IFO main beam on the surface of the ETM HR.
Mike showed a conceptual design for the telescope and the Transmon optical table layout with the table hanging in the vertical plane. He will look into folding the beam onto a horizontal optical table layout.

OPT LEV:

Eric B. extended his analysis to consider sensing the test mass motion with the optical lever instead of the penultimate mass. His preliminary results indicate that the additional servo gain required to actuate on the penultimate mass with this test mass signal would inject considerably more voltage noise from the optical lever signal into the alignment servo.

MEZZANINE LAB:

The Mezzanine materials marked for room 17 have been moved, and the mill and belt sander shop machines have been moved to West Bridge room 48. The accelerometers for the SUS mezzanine Lab have arrived, tools have been ordered. The elliptical baffle suspension testing has been partially completed, 4 other configurations will be tested. Signing, lighting, moving materials, to prepare and setup the mezzanine Lab are in progress.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

e-LIGO Commissioning

Rotated WFS 3&4 by 45 deg so qpd is in "+" rather than "x" configuration.
Measured Faraday isolation ratio to be 25 dB for up to 20W input power. See: http://ilog.ligo-la.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=12/02/2008&anchor_to_scroll_to=2008:12:02:19:23:13-kate
Working on high power ifo operations. (Kate)

Advanced LIGO Research

Work on parallel modulation MZ experiment.
Continued investigation of absorption in Advanced LIGO modulator RTP crystals.
Work on AdvLIGO MC pre/initial alignment requirements. This will include the placement of video cameras and quadrant cameras to ease the initial alignment until the MC resonates and provide beam position diagnostics for the MC thereafter. (Volker)
Working on in-vac optical layout. (Luke)
Put together some slides describing analytical solution of the coupled cavity eigenvectors. The proposed method solves the eigenvalues of LIGO-like cavities taking into account the reflectivities/gains of the two cavities involved. The proposed method seems to work fine for various limiting factors that I have tested. Based upon this, I have some results for low power Advanced LIGO operation without engaging TCS. It looks like that we can design the recycling cavities for 10 W state and still be able to operate the recycling cavities without TCS till 25 W without sacrificing too much efficiency. The slides are in the wiki at http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/advligo/Recycling_Cavity_Geometry?action=AttachFile&do=
get&target=CCavity.pdf (Muzammil)
Returned to the coating damage testing experiment and started reoptimizing the old alignment with the dummy test mirror. An LMA 3" coated mirror will soon be long time tested at high power intensity. (Rodica)
Participated in triple pendulum suspensions PDR. (Luke and David)

Advanced LIGO Acquisition

Finished first batch of IO suspended optic substrate drawings. (Luke)
Monitoring glass blanks purchasing process by contacting the vendor regarding delivery and payment schedules. (Rodica)
Final verification of the polishing specifications and calculations of the radii of curvature for the mode cleaner curved mirrors before starting the bid polishing process.
Finished documentation for polishing bid for the first batch of optics. The bid package is now at UF Purchasing for fine-tuning the language for public release. (Rodica)

Prestabilized Laser

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

Operations

The 10-W laser in the PSL Lab has been fired up. There is either a problem with the laser power supply or the chiller, since the power supply does not recognise that a chiller is attached. The connecting cables have been checked and were found to be okay. If need be, I'll have to resort to the software trick to fool the laser power supply. Otherwise the laser power supply shuts off the laser after approximately 15 minutes.

Project

After some minor discussion about the acousto-optic modulator at LLO, it was decided not to replace the unit for the time being. Its performance is being monitored. The problems encountered with the intensity servo may simply have been that the cable connection from the driver to the acousto-optic modulator was loose.
My PSPice simulation for a photodetector circuit gives different results when I run it on two different computers, for the same circuit values. Not sure why, the difference is not small.
Some measurements were done to incorporate the JFET characteristics into my PSpice circuit model. I am still working on the parameter extraction.
A nice little write-up by Harmut Grote about the intensity servo electronics was posted on the LLO e-log.

Interferometer Sensing and Control

From: Peter Fritschel <pf@ligo.mit.edu>

Lisa B has started on the alignment controls modeling for AdLIGO, using Pickle, the angular version of Optickle. The main challenge is to limit the infiltration of angle sensing noise into the GW channel. The angular degree-of-freedom that presents the biggest problem is the unstable Sidles-Sigg mode, common between the two arms. For this DOF, the best sensor, in modeling anyway, appears to be the ETM transmission quadrant photodetectors (not a WFS). Using these sensors and the WFS, a fully controlled, stable configuration can be achieved. The noise on the test masses is dominated by that of the ETM transmission quad detectors; at full power, the estimated angle controls noise is above the technical noise target at frequencies below about 25 Hz.
Sam W has been interacting with Mike Smith on the design of the ETM transmission monitor. This monitor contains the above-mentioned quad detector, and optics for injecting the green beam used for the arm length stabilization system.
The Advanced LIGO I&Q Demodulator cell that will be used for demodulating LSC and ASC photo-detectors is now working nicely from 9 MHz to well beyond 100 MHz. We have begun the process of accurately measuring the specifications of this prototype unit, and we are planning on repeating the set of linearity measurements that were performed on the initial LIGO converters. (Rich A)
A SPICE model of the Advanced LIGO LSC photodetector has been completed after iterating the design against the modeled RF parameters in the ISC conceptual design document. A broad-band ASI input has been included in the design to serve a second function of enabling relatively easy tuning of all the rejection notches. (Rich A)

Control and Data Systems

From: Vern Sandberg <sandberg@ligo-wa.caltech.edu>

Observatories

LHO

Sys Admin:

Installed an EPICS gateway to relieve the traffic on h1IOOL0. Reallocated web server and ilog onto new machines to relieve loading on older machines.

TCS Commissioning:

Installed new temperature switch on auxiliary TCS windows. This will shut down the laser should the temperature of the window increase to 29 DegC.
Moved the EPICS controllable outlets that were used by TCS fish tank chillers to be closer to the TCS laser to allow for shutdown of the AOM in the event of a chiller failure (as has occur twice on Y arm). This is in lieu of a proper system like a flow switch.

DCS Tape Robot Move:

Fibers for LDAS robot were installed under the floor between the MSR and Computer users room. Installed new Gig switch and checked connection between switch in MSR and LDAS in LSB. After some missteps (ie, not getting fiber seated well) system seems to communicate.

AdvLIGO ICS:

Assisted getting 1064 laser light down fiber to MidX and back to optics lab. Further work will require SOP.

LLO