(All time in UTC)

15:15 Christina opening the roll-up door, OSB receiving area

15:30 Christina done

16:36 Kiwamu to electronics area by PSL and HAM6

16:59 Sudarshan has been doing Pcal swept sine. Now done.

           Kiwamu done

17:00 Observing intent bit set. SDF hasn't been cleared at this point. See attachment.

17:34 Bubba to Mid station

18:03 Intent bit switched to Commissioning. Flipped DHARD 20-30 Hz BP filters.

18:05 Intent but switched back on

18:33 Kyle to beam tube near EY to make measurement. 300 m away from EY.

18:36 Wind picking up. Reaching 30 mph.

           Intent bit swited to Commissioning. Daneil to CER.

18:53 Daniel back. Intent bit Observing.

19:00 Calibration group taking over. Bring interferometer to down. Intent bit set to Commissioning

19:11 Kiwamu to LVEA doing OMCDCPD measurement

19:23 Fire protection Specialists back on site. Fire suppression in Network Room.

19:30 Sheila to LVEA looking for Kiwamu.

19:38 Kyle back

20:47 Sheila locking MICH

           Something water on site. Couldn't hear the guy. Let a white pick-up truck in.

21:09 Bubba done

21:42 Travis, Sudarshan, Darkhan to EY (Pcal calibration)

19:02 Hand the ifo over to Patrick

Installation began yesterday on the fire suppression system for the new DCS room by a 2 man crew from Fire Protection Specialist. They started working on conduit runs for the warning lights, pull handles and abort switches.

This portion of the install is expected to be completed by EOB tomorrow.

Long lead items such as the tank and agent are expected to arrive next week and will be installed along with the piping and spray nozzle.

Evan, Sheila

While the IFO was down for some calibration measurements, we made another attempt at phasing AS36. 

We first redid the dark offsets, this was an important step.  Then we locked the bright michelson with 22 Watts of input power. 

We steered the beam onto each quadrant of AS_A by maximizing the DC counts, then phased 36 to minimize Q.  There were several things that made this seem much more promising than any of our previous attempts to phase these WFS:

• The amplitudes of the signals in all quadrants were similar to within 5%
• The phases are all within 20 degrees of each other, as you would expect since the cable lengths are supposed to be matched.
• The phase that minimized Q also maximized I.
• The phasing was not very sensitive to the pointing onto the diode, as it is with DRMI locked.  
• When we turned on the centering, the phase required to minimize Q changed by 40 degrees, but the change was the same for all quadrants, and the signal levels were still similar on all 4 quadrants.  

Both of these things are firsts for these WFS as far as I'm aware, so this seemed like real progress.  

We started to do the same procedure for AS_B 36, but after we phased the first quadrant the phase jumped.  Kiwamu was in the rack working on the calibration measurements of the DC PDs at this time and reported that he had plugged a signal into the patch panel.  After this I looked at the A signals again, and they did not make sense any more. I tried repeating the procedure above for A, and found that the phases needed to minimize Q with the light maximized on each quadrant had changed by -15, -10, 0, and -20 degrees for quadrants 1,2,3,4.  

It seems like we need to make a thorough check of the HAM6 racks before we continue trying to make sense of AS WFS.  

Just for the record the momentarily sane phasings were:

J. Kissel, K. Kawabe, S. Karki

We've broken observation mode such that we can enable the DAC DuoTone timing readbacks on the front ends that are responsible for DARM control, i.e. h1lsc0, h1susex, and h1susey. We needed to take the IFO down for this because the last channel on the first DAC cards for the end station SUS are used for top-mass OSEMs for damping the suspensions. If the damping loops get a two sign waves at 960 and 961 [Hz] instead of the requested control signal for one of the OSEMs, then we get bad news.

Here are the times when the DAC DuoTone switches were ON for the following front ends:

h1susex and h1susey --- 19:04 to 20:04 UTC (12:04 to 13:04 PDT)
h1lsc0 --- 19:16 to 20:06 UTC (12:16 to 13:04 PDT)

Though all relevant channels (ADC_0_30,  ADC_0_31, DAC_0_15) are free on the h1lsc0 front end, we elected to turn the DAC DuoTone off, so that we aren't in danger of an oscillitory analog voltage being sent around the IO chassis that's used to measure the OMC DCPDs.

Data and analysis to come. 

The IFO will be staying down for a few hours, while we finish up some electronics chain characterization of the OMC DCPD analog electronics (along with some other parasitic commissioning measurements).

Posted below are the plots for the PSL chiller for the past 60 days. The regeneration of the crystal chiller DI-Filter is good news. We went from used 70% of capacity to 50% capacity. Jason is looking into calibration questions with flow sensors on both chiller units.    

Detailed report: https://wiki.ligo.org/DetChar/DataQuality/DQShiftLHO20150824


There were 4 science locks between 24-26th August with ~20% total duty cycle.
Calibration has started since Monday, 24th August.
Tuesday was a heavy maintenance day at LHO. Two small locks on 24th and 25th had less than 5 minutes span. But mostly focussed on the long locks.
The locks had EY 60Hz magnetic glitches which might have caused the big dips in the inspiral range. (PEM-EY_MAG_EBAY_SUSRACK)


1st day Lock:

Steady lock with inspiral range around 62 MPC.
Interferometer lock was broken to start Calibration at 16:05 UTC. (alog)
Other than few loud glitches (which caused some dip in the inspiral range) lock looks pretty clean.
High SNR glitch rate was very low throughout the lock.
60Hz magnetic glitches can be seen at End Y 
Hveto was not that much effective for the triggers above ~100Hz. A few angular channels came up as the most significant in hveto.
The first dip in the inspiral range seems to be related to some magnetometer in seismic (as well as in suspension) rack at End Y.
There was no major seismic activity during this ~2.5 long lock.


2nd day Lock:

Steady lock with a inspiral range of 65 MPC. Possible lock loss reason : delivery truck was passing by (alog) and ASC-POP glitch - " ~16s before and ASC-PRC2 starts to oscillating at about the same time ( and the oscillation became really huge about ~ 6s before lockloss). They were both high frequency (>128 Hz)". (Lock loss plot) 
Some non-stationarity at the low freqquency (below 20Hz) between 12:00 to 13:00 UTC and nearly end of the lock
Small variation in the spectrum below 40Hz 
Loud Glitch rate was low except the time between 12:00 to 13:00 UTC, where we had a loud glitch causing a dip in inspiral range (came down to ~10MPC) 
Most of the loud glitches visible in glitchgram were vetoed out by hveto, might be related to PEM accelerometer or seismic channel. 
There was an earth quake at Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge with magnitude 4.9 at 13:23 UTC which might be the reason of the last huge dip in the inspiral range.
Few loud events (New SNR >7.5) were seen in BBH search and low-mass CBC search.


3rd day lock:

The pattern is same as previous two days with inspiral range ~60MPC which eventually ends up at ~68MPC
After Tuesday's maintenance few new features can be seen in the spectrum (alog) 
ETMY saturation occurred several times during this lock.
1 Hz comb (offset by 0.5 Hz) was found at below 70Hz which was believed to be related to PEM channels, also some excess noise in PRCL. This issue has been fixed (alog).
This lock also had some very loud glitches few of them are EY magnetic glitches.
ASC-X_TR_A_PIT_OUT_DQ and ASC-REFL_B_RF9_Q_YAW_OUT_DQ had significant contribution on Hveto. PEM-EY_MAG_EBAY_SUSRACK_X_DQ came up as the most significant channel in iDQ as well as the winner of 3rd round Hveto.


Note: UPV and STAMP PEM were not up for any of these days. The loud glitches need be followed up more thoroughly.

ER8 Day 10. No restarts reported.

New OBSERVATION_OVERVIEW overview screen

I have added a new screen that sumarizes the overall OBSERVATION status of the detector:

$USERAPPS/sys/common/medm/OBSERVATION_OVERVIEW.adl

It is meant to be informative and (hopefully) self explanatory for the operators.  It includes all things going into determining OBSERVATION status:

• ODC "Interferometer status" (aka OBSERVATION) status, which is AND of:
  • ODC "Observation ready" (aka READY) bit, which is AND of:
    • ODC Guardian top node status (GRD-IFO_OK == True)
    • ODC EXCITATION monitor (no excitations active)
  • ODC "Observation intent" (aka INTENT) bit, which is set by operator

When the system is not ready the screen looks like this:

The EXCITATION monitor will turn red if there are any excitations present.  Once GRD-IFO_OK is ready, and there are no excitations, the READY box will turn green.  Once the operator then sets the INTENT bit to "UNDISTURBED", the whole box will turn green to indicate that we are in OBSERVATION MODE:

Hopefully it is self explanatory, but please let me know if there are any questions.

I have embeded this screen into to the GUARDIAN_OVERVIEW screen as well.

ALL TIMES IN UTC

Arrival: IFO is unlocked. Sheila and Evan in and out of the LVEA taking ASC measurements. Wind calm. Seismic calm. Patrick on Evening duty.

On Site: Kissel, Balmer, Driggers, Hall, Dwyer, Hoak, Cahillane and Darkhan

ACTIVITY LOG:

• 10:24 ETMY saturation

• 11:25 SRM Saturations (4)

• 11:26 SRM Saturations (8)

• 14:26  Pepsi on site

• 14:30 Fire Protection on site

LOCK LOG:

• 8:10  Locked at N_L_N - 68Mpc

• • added OMC whitening - 72Mpc

    • after adding whitening, OMC guardian state didn’t return to ‘READY_FOR_HANDOFF’. This left the ‘Guardian top level state OK’ RED on the ODC MASTER screen. The remedy was to re-select ‘READY_FOR_HANDOFF’.

• 10:18 OIB/OOM set to Undisturbed/Observing

  • Evan cleaned up SDF diffs with the exceptions of: ODCMASTER, CALCS and ASC

• 13:19 Setting OIB/OOM to Commissioning for Richard to do some PEM noise investigation

  • 1Hz comb in PRCL

• 13:29  LockLoss - Richard in LSC RF racks fooling with 45Mhz cable

• 13:31 Begin sequence

  • DRMI - Having some difficulty

  • after PRMI align, SRM watchdog tripped. Untripped and damped to settle it.

• 14:42 DRMI locked

• 14:48  Locked at DC readout for Richard to plug the 9Mhz back in

  • 45Mhz still connected and no sign of 1Mhz comb

• 15:04 Locked at N_L_N - 68Mpc

  • engaged OMC whitening - ~70Mpc

Summary:

• Environmentally calm tonight.

• From 7:00 to 10:18 commissioners had the IFO

• IFO locked once and remained locked for 5+ hours @ ~72Mpc

• ETMY glitched twice: 10:24, 12:08

• SRM glitched as well. 12 Verbal Alarms: 11:25, 11:26

• NUC1 Seismic FOM crashed. In an attempt to restart the computer was very slow to non-responsive. (as bad as the mini-Mac that used to be where NUC0 is now). I got the DMT running but it’s not configured correctly and I don’t know how to.

• After the lockloss at 13:29 I’m having difficulty getting DRMI locked. PRMI was optimized but some strangeness was going on after I got the power maximized BEFORE I re-aligned SRM. it almost looked as if another optic was “swinging” in to join them and then it would break the PRMI lock.

• Richard put baluns on the 9Mhz and the 45Mhz PEM lines which seems to have removed the 1Mhz comb problem.

IN a follow up to the work done Tuesday and Wednesday that introduced the 1Hz comb in the PRCL, SRCL path and removed it the following morning by disconnecting the 9 and 45MHz LO signals to the PEM interface chassis for the room antenna.   

With the IFO locked I reconnected the 9MHz cable and the 1Hz comb was present.  I then disconnected it and tried to work with the 45MHz.  The IFO is far more sensitive to work with the RF distribution chassis and we ended up losing lock.
Once Ed M. re aligned and  got the system locked again we did not see the 1Hz with the 45MHz connected to the PEM.  I then installed a Baluns on both the 9MHz and 45MHz lines and the signal did not show up in the spectrum.  
We will leave it connected as is until Tuesday when we can move the baluns to a less intrusive location probably at the PEM rack.   They are now on the distribution chassis somewhat blocking the connections next to them. Hopefully this has not introduced any other problems.

• 10:18 OIB/OOM set to Undisturbed/Observing - 72Mpc

  • Evan cleaned up SDF diffs with the exceptions of: ODCMASTER, CALCS and ASC

C. Cahillane

I have managed to use ER7 data produce preliminary carpet plots of frequency vs. strain magnitude and phase based on the Uncertainty Estimation paper T1400586.
The code that generates these plots may be found here: /ligo/svncommon/CalSVN/aligocalibration/trunk/Runs/S7/Common/MatlabTools/strainUncertainty.m

Darkhan recently did a similar study to this looking at error in magnitude and phase of Delta_L_ext when kappa_C, kappa_A, and f_c changed.  
My study currently looks at the error in magnitude and phase of strain when the magnitude and phase of kappa_tst and kappa_pu vary, as well as kappa_C and f_c.  (Recall that in general kappa_tst and kappa_pu can be complex.)

Right now I believe there is a serious error in the code, because the plot of the optical gain (plot 5) and the plot of the cavity pole (plot 6) show there is absolutely no error in strain even if these values differ greatly from the expected value.  The cavity pole varies by up to +- 100 Hz and does not vary by more than 1%.  The result is robust: I have calculated the strain using two independent methods and still I get these odd results.  These are my results right now, and this is why I call these plots preliminary.

I do believe the magnitude kappa_tst (plot 1), phase kappa_tst (plot 2), magnitude kappa_pu (plot 3), and phase kappa_pu (plot 4) plots look sensible.  Any phase in kappa_tst is generally intolerable for high frequency phase information, while phase in kappa_pu yields high error in low frequency phase information.  Since we do not expect any phase component at all in kappa_tst and kappa_pu, this makes sense.
Also, the magnitude of kappa_tst and kappa_pu must be tracked carefully at high and low frequency respectively.  10% errors in these magnitudes are enough to give more than 9% errors in strain magnitude.

Note that these results use ER7 data (GPS_start = 1116990382).  I'll soon be able to get ER8 data when it is all available (go calibration week!)

While trying to phase AS_B 90MHz signals (hooked up to AS_B_FR45), we noticed that the phase to the signal changes dramatically with the amopunt of power on the quadrant.

Attached is a time series of the DC power (Blue. 0 is on top, more power goes negative), as well as I and Q phase.

On this plot we first maximized the light on Seg1, then phased all signal into I, then noticed that the phasing changes with power on the segment, then reduced the power into the DRMI in 4 steps. As you can see the phasing dramatically changes with the power on the diode...

I have created a DTT template that makes it easier to decide when it's okay to turn on more OMC DCPD whitening.

Evan wrote an alog some time ago about the new OMC DCPD whitening on/off guardian states (alog 20578), and Cheryl and Evan made some notes on when it's okay to go to these new states (alog 20787).

As of right now, the guardian will automatically turn on one stage of whitening, but we get better high frequency noise performance if we add a second stage.  However, if some mode (eg. a violin mode) is rung up, then we can't add the second stage of whitening without being in danger of saturating the ADC.  So.  The new DTT template should help decide when it's okay to add the second stage.

The template is /ligo/home/ops/Templates/dtt/DCPD_saturation_check.xml (screenshot below). The template should be run after we have arrived at NOMINAL_LOW_NOISE for the main lock sequence.  If the dashed RMS lines are below the green horizontal line, it's okay to add the second stage of whitening.  

To engage the second stage of DCPD whitening:

Open the full list of guardian states for the OMC_LOCK guardian, and select "ADD_WHITENING". It will take a minute or two, and automatically return to the nominal "READY_FOR_HANDOFF" state.

Evan Stefan Daniel

The second EOM driver was installed in the CER using the 9MHz control and readback channels. The first attached plot shows the DAQ readback signals. Both drivers show the similar noise levels for the in-loop and out-of-loop sensors. They are also coherent with each other as well as ASC-AS_C! The in-loop noise is clearly below which would indicate that the signal is suppressed to the sensor noise. The measured out-of-loop noise level is also a factor of 4 higher than the setup in the shop.

The second plot shows the same traces but this time the ifr is feeding the EOM driver in the CER. As expected its out-of-loop noise level is now consistent with measurements in the shop and no longer coherent with the unit in the PSL.

We were starting to suspect that we are looking at down-converted out-of-band noise...

Patrick, Sheila, Jenne, Eric

For the first part of the test, we injected our fiducial CBC waveform (same one used in ER7) and tried raising the LIMIT value on the hardware injection block in order to address saturation problems observed in ER7. During ER7, the LIMIT was 200. We raised it to 400. The first injection did not go through:

1124601535 1 1.000000 cbctest_1117582888_		intent bit off, injection canceled

Patrick, Sheila, and Jenne tried to turn on the intent bit, but there was some sort of problem, which will be alog'ged separately. As a temporary work-around, we turned off the tinj intent-bit check and injected again:

1124602724 1 1.000000 cbctest_1117582888_		successful

Patrick determined that the injection produced a maximum |amplitude| of 15 counts coming out of the injection block, which seemed to indicate that the original LIMIT value of 200 was sufficient. However, an alarm went off to indicate that there was saturation at ETMY. Thus, the saturation problem cannot be solved by tinkering with the INJ block in MEDM. Rather, the problem is occurring downstream on the ETM actuators. We request that Jeff K, Adam M, et al. look into options for avoiding saturation at the ETMs.

Next we tried a blind injection using the new blind injection code. The blind injection code does not log injections in EPICS so they are not automatically picked up in the segment database.

1124603111 1 1.000000 cbctest_1117582888_		successful

The blind injection was clearly visible. The ETM saturation warning went off again. The injection was logged correctly in the blind injection blindinj_H1.log:

current time = 1124603049...
Attempting: awgstream H1:CAL-INJ_BLIND_EXC 16384 /ligo/home/eric.thrane/O1/Hardw
areInjection/Details/Inspiral/H1/cbctest_1117582888_H1.out 1 1124603111
Injection successful.

All of these injections were carried out with scale factor = 1; (that's the 1.000000). The injection file, described in a comment below, is a 1.4 on 1.4 BNS, optimal orientation, at D=45 Mpc. It is the same waveform used in previous ER tests.