Reports of 63384
Safety (General safety)
mir - 17:53 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69242) Print this report
Instrumented baffle works in the input north tower finished for today
Today's work concluded:

==> Baffle commissioning
==> Measurements of mechanical transfer factor with Maria and Piernicola

Leaving site.
AdV-DAQ (Calibration)
nocera - 17:26 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69241) Print this report
Noisy fan = upcoming failure?

R. Cavalieri, F. Nocera

while inspecting the NE Ring Heater Power Supply (entry 69238)  we noticed that the PCal Laser Power Supply (?) unit (see picture) has an ominously noisy fan.

I would suggest to have it checked/swapped with a spare.

Images attached to this report
Injection system (General activities)
gosselin, derossi, lagabbe - 17:17 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69239) Print this report
Comment to BPL calibration (69231)

The calibration is done for the displacement at the stabilized point : the entrance of the EOM.
For the shift, the vertical one was quite clean and gave a calibration of -1900 (V/V)/m, which means 526 um/(V/V) (plot 1)
For the horizontal shift, it was not as clean as the vertical one (plot 2), we might need to redo it. For now we decided to use the same calibration than the vertical one since they are not supposed to be different. 

Then we did the calibration of the tilt by using the PZT on EIB (plot 3 and 4) 
We know that the PZT has a dynamic of 3.5 mrad for 140 V, we did a scan of 3 V and found extreme values of 0.39 V/V and -0.73 V/V on Vnorm
We found 3.5e-3/140 *3/(0.39+0.73) = 67 urad / (V/V)
Similarly we found 68 urad / (V/V) for the horizontal. 

We added the calibrated channels to ACL. 
The results with the loop closed is showed in plot 5 and are quite in agreement with what we were expecting : few nrad and few nm of residual noise. 
We keep the loop closed to monitor is long term behavior

Images attached to this comment
Detector Operation (Operations Report)
gherardini - 17:02 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69235) Print this report
Operator Report - Daily shift
The morning was dedicated to weekly maintenance started at 6:00UTC, here a list of the activity reported to the control room:

- standard vacuum refill from 6:00UTC to 10:00UTC (VAC Team);
- cleaning of central building (Ciardelli and Menzione with external firm: from 6:00UTC to 10:00UTC);
- CAL: north end NCal installation rearrangement (#69230);
- TCS: north end ring heater switch off/on (#69238);
- SLC: NI instrumented baffle installation and commissioning;
AdV-TCS (Ring Heater)
nocera - 16:47 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69240) Print this report
Comment to NE RH accidentally switched off and restored (69238)

R. Cavalieri, F.Nocera

we went to the NE and inspected the Ring Heater Power Supply and its cabling.

There is nothing special to say: it is a commercial device with a regular, *non-locking* power input connector and it uses a commercial 3-wire AC power supply cord (CEE 7/7 Plug to IEC 60320 C13 Power Cord, if you are interested in this sort of details).

If left alone, it does its job nicely.

AdV-TCS (Ring Heater)
nardecchia, gherardini, nocera - 16:33 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69238) Print this report
NE RH accidentally switched off and restored

During the NCal activities yesterday, the NE RH was accidentally switched off (see Fig. 1).

Benoit reported the presence of a loose cable in the RH electronics chain. Therefore, today Flavio inspected the system to investigate the issue and verify the cable connections.
Following the inspection, the RH was switched back on at 14:23 UTC with the voltage set to 16.6 V.

Images attached to this report
Comments to this report:
nocera - 16:47 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69240) Print this report

R. Cavalieri, F.Nocera

we went to the NE and inspected the Ring Heater Power Supply and its cabling.

There is nothing special to say: it is a commercial device with a regular, *non-locking* power input connector and it uses a commercial 3-wire AC power supply cord (CEE 7/7 Plug to IEC 60320 C13 Power Cord, if you are interested in this sort of details).

If left alone, it does its job nicely.

AdV-DAQ (Calibration)
vanhove, mours, weber - 12:07 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69230) Print this report
NCal NEB instalation rearangment for IR1

Schedule: finalise installation of NEN and NWN, rearange all cablings

15 June 2026 : Start installation around 15:00 utc

  • Position adjustements for NEN setup:
    • Adjust zero positions with jig for North East setup in /virgoData/VirgoOnline/SNEB_dbox_rack.cfg:
        NEF lateral NEF Vertical NEM Axial NEM Vertical NEN Lateral NEN Vertical
      Old values -7.661 -7.03 7.435 8.225 7.954 7.306
      New values -7.1195 -6.7015 7.1135 6.607 6.651 7.06
    • Mean of sensors values now 0 within 1 micron precision.
    • Remove jigs and align setup to better than 0.05 mm (see NEB_EastSetupAlignment histograms)
  • Position adjustements for NWN setup:
    • Adjust zero with jigs in /virgoData/VirgoOnline/SNEB_dbox_rack.cfg :
        NWF lateral NWF Vertical NWM Axial NWM Vertical NWN Lateral NWN Vertical
      Old values 7.05 -7.12 -7.753 6.7530 -8.035 7.063
      New values 6.777 -6.9343 -6.9823 6.7602 -6.9060 6.7322

      Means of sensors values below 1 micron now

    • Remove jigs and align setup to better than 0.05 mm (see NEB_WestSetupAlignment histogram)

  • Position adjustements for NSN setup:
    • Adjust zero with jigs in /virgoData/VirgoOnline/SNEB_dbox_rack.cfg:
        NSF Lateral NSF Vertical NSM Axial NSM Vertical NSN Lateral NSN Vertical
      Old values -7.444 7.619 -7.361 -7.691 7.004 -7.764
      New values -7.0234 7.2171 -7.0236 -7.3403 6.4019 -7.3625

      Mean sensor values below 3 micron now

    • Night pause...Continue on June 16th (7:00 utc)
    • Remove jigs and align setup to better than 0.05 mm (see NEB_SouthSetupAlignment histogram)

At the end of the intervention we have :

Box 2021-08 (R4-32) on NSN with LED "away" from mirror

Box 2024-12 (R4-12) on NEN with LED "away" from mirror (and generating loop attached)

Box 2021-04 (R4-30) on NNN with LED "close" to mirror

Box 2024-10 (R4-10) on NWN with LED "away" fro mirror. It produces more accoustic noise than the others

The rotor cables for NWN have been installed

All rotors have been tested during few minutes at 50Hz.The difference in acoustic noise between the NNN and the others was less noticeable than at the nominal frequency.

All microphones gain have been set to 40dB (East and West setup were at 60dB. South was at 40 dB... We don't remember for North).

All temperature sensor gains have been adjusted to follow the new cabling on the DAQ boxes.

NB: During the NCal  power supply reshuffling, we touched the ring heater power supply connector and the power supply switched off for a short time (on 15 June 15:30 UTC). Ring heater experts will come to check.

 

 

Images attached to this report
Safety (General safety)
mir - 9:24 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69236) Print this report
Comment to Access to the NI tower (69224)
The baffle is being hoisted up to the tower
Images attached to this comment
Safety (General safety)
mir - 9:07 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69233) Print this report
Access to NI tower
Today we will commission the instrumented baffle installed yesterday in NI tower.
We will install the internal cables and test the readout.
If needed Noel, Jose, Otger or Alex can go in.
Injection system (General activities)
gosselin, derossi, spinicelli, lagabbe - 19:20 Monday 15 June 2026 (69231) Print this report
BPL calibration

This afternoon we started to work on the calibration of the BPL. 
We used a substrate in fused silica which thickness is 10 mm and placed it after EIB_M1c at around the same distance than the EOM entrance (the point to be stabilized). This corresponds to about 12.5 cm from PZT2.
Then we rotated it both around the X and Y axis in order to induced a known shift towards the QPD. 
The plots are attached to this entry. We will analyze it in details tomorrow. 

Images attached to this report
Comments to this report:
gosselin, derossi, lagabbe - 17:17 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69239) Print this report

The calibration is done for the displacement at the stabilized point : the entrance of the EOM.
For the shift, the vertical one was quite clean and gave a calibration of -1900 (V/V)/m, which means 526 um/(V/V) (plot 1)
For the horizontal shift, it was not as clean as the vertical one (plot 2), we might need to redo it. For now we decided to use the same calibration than the vertical one since they are not supposed to be different. 

Then we did the calibration of the tilt by using the PZT on EIB (plot 3 and 4) 
We know that the PZT has a dynamic of 3.5 mrad for 140 V, we did a scan of 3 V and found extreme values of 0.39 V/V and -0.73 V/V on Vnorm
We found 3.5e-3/140 *3/(0.39+0.73) = 67 urad / (V/V)
Similarly we found 68 urad / (V/V) for the horizontal. 

We added the calibrated channels to ACL. 
The results with the loop closed is showed in plot 5 and are quite in agreement with what we were expecting : few nrad and few nm of residual noise. 
We keep the loop closed to monitor is long term behavior

Images attached to this comment
Vacuum (West input)
Vacuum, Menzione - 17:23 Monday 15 June 2026 (69228) Print this report
support operations in WI tower
Today we entered the WI tower to remove the glass baffle placed at the entrance of the arm (tower baffle, picture) following the plan for the instrumented baffle upgrade. It will be reinstalled at a later stage.
Images attached to this report
Safety (General safety)
Vacuum - 16:31 Monday 15 June 2026 (69225) Print this report
Access to WI tower
Today we enter the WI tower to remove the tower baffle .
People entering: Erbanni, Francescon, Menzione, Pasqualetti, Zaza
Detector Operation (Operations Report)
berni - 16:30 Monday 15 June 2026 (69227) Print this report
Operator Report - Daily shift
Safety (General safety)
mir - 9:15 Monday 15 June 2026 (69224) Print this report
Access to the NI tower
Today we will proceed to install the instrumented baffle in the NI tower.

Noel Delgado, Jose Ferrer, Otger Ballester and Alex Carmona will go in.
Comments to this report:
mir - 9:24 Tuesday 16 June 2026 (69236) Print this report
The baffle is being hoisted up to the tower
Images attached to this comment
Environmental Monitoring (Environmental Monitoring)
tringali, fiori, spinicelli, paoletti, zaza, IFAE team - 15:51 Saturday 13 June 2026 (69222) Print this report
Instrumented baffle modes measurement

Preliminary measurements

On June 10 and 11 we installed the setup and performed preliminary measurements in order to check the instrumentation and optimize the measurering setup.

We installed two shakers on the exterior of the NI chamber: the large shaker is placed om the NI tower base, NW corner, and the small shaker clamped to the North big flange (thank you Antonio for helping in this installation). The shakers (in turn, manually) are connected to the amplifier which is driven from a DAC ch in the TCS room.
After a careful cleaning of all the tools, we moved inside the NI.

As a test we performed measurement of mechanical modes of the the frame shown in Figure 1. We used the monoaxial accelerometer PCB352C68 on the vacuum chamber (attached with double tape, which Antonio aknowledged, asking for a careful cleaning with Acetone) and the triaxial accelerometer PCB356B18 ("golden cube") attached to the frame in different positions, aslo with double tape. For the data acquisition we used the CoCo80X.

We tested (the full set of measurements is detailed in the attached .txt file):

  • injecting different levels of colored noise 10-1200 Hz to the shaker (0.02,0.03,0.04 V). For reference, inside ENVnoise.cfg:
    ACL_NOISE_CH                noise_white            "V"     5    SAMP_FREQ    1.0
    ACL_FILTER_CH                noise_colored        "V"    5    SAMP_FREQ    noise_white    0.03    "flt3"
    and inside ENVnoise_Filters.cfg:
    ACL_FILTER_SET         "flt3"             1 1 600 20          # -->  sets gain 1 @ f0 Hz (must be the same f0)
    ACL_FILTER_BUTTERWORTH "flt3" "bandpass"  4 3 600 590
  • use of the small or the big shaker
  • two configurations for the monoaxial acc: vertical or horizontal (see pictures)
  • two positions of the cube acc. on the frame: (1) inner ring, (2) outer ring close to holding point

For each configuration we measured the TF of the monoaxial acc versus each axis (X,Y,Z) of the gold cube acc, and compared.

Figures 1-3 are pictures of the frame with accelerometers in different positions.

Figure 4 compares spectra during quiet and during shaking. The shakers were able to excite above the quiet noise in the whole expected range.
Figures 5-9  refer to the setup with monoaxial acc. horizontally placed on the vessel and the cube acc on the inner ring of the frame. They show: spectra, coherence, TF between monoaxial acc and each of the three direction of the cube acc.
Figures 10-end is the same set, but when the cube acc. was positioned on the outer ring of the frame, near to the frame's holding point.

Measurements were satisfactory, the setup works. 
A number of peaks were excited especially in the range 50Hz to a few hundred Hz. Good coherence is measured in this range.
TFs look satisfactory: we observe phase rotation in correspondence of the main excited modes. The red points in the TF plots correspond to coherence > 0.4.

Moving the cube accelerometer from the inner to the outer ring of the frame, some peaks are no longer excited (for example the 130Hz peak is no more observed). As expected, this position is more rigid and low frequencies modes are not easily detectable from here.

Additional observations:
Tests indicate a slightly better preference for using the small shaker, with level 0.03V. The placing of the accelerometer on the vacuum chamber, horizontal or vertical, does not make significant difference in the measured TF. 

Images attached to this report
Non-image files attached to this report
Environmental Monitoring (Environmental Monitoring)
fiori, quéméner, tringali, lunghini, vacuum team - 18:20 Friday 12 June 2026 (69221) Print this report
Ion pump magnetic measurements

Between May 29 and June 3rd we performed at 1500W noise characterization measurements of two ion pumps, which here we call simply small and big (info on the exact model will be added later on). These pumps consist of a large permanent magnet and the concern is the magnetic noise produced when this pump vibrates withing the static Earth field. A question concerning this noise and the consequent safe distance from the O5 test masses was asked by VAC reviewers. Answering it is the aim of this activities. Two activities have been performed.

1) Mapping. 
This activity was lead by Gilles who measured the ion pump static field on 3D grid of positions around each pump. For the small pump he used a 2D paper grid, for the big pump he used the plastic perforated frame that INGN-Genova made for the payload magnetic characterization and which the vacuum team moved from the CEB clean rooms to 1500W and reassambled in position. Gilles used his 3-axial magnetic probe, moved along the grid.

Attachments 1 and 2 show pictures of the setup of the big pump.

2) Shaking.
The big pump was excited using a little hammer tapping on the top flange of the ion pump, while one accelerometer (meggit) positioned vertically on top of the pump, and one 3-axial magnetic probe (Bartington MAG03_MC_100) were recording respectively the vibration of the pump body and the magnetic field. The magnetic probe was moved at a number of distances from the pump edge (approx 20cm to 120cm). Figure 3 is a sketch with coordinates of the measuring grid.
The attached txt file lists all measuring times and associated position of the magnetic probe. Attached are also spectrograms of the full measurement set. A magnetic field noise excess was measured in all locations. The last two show the probes spectrum when at approximately 30cm from the pump edge (mag probe position J13). The excess magnetic noise is evident and is also coherent with the vibration. 

Data frames have been saved in /data/procdata/envmon/MagneticNoise/ion_pump/shaking/saved_gwf/ion_pump_shaking_20260603_1464522918_8500.gwf

Analysis will follow.

 

Images attached to this report
Non-image files attached to this report
Detector Operation (Operations Report)
zaza - 16:26 Friday 12 June 2026 (69220) Print this report
Operator Report - Daily shift

ITF found DOWN in UPGRADING mode
No activities communicated to the control room

AdV-TCS (Point Absorbers Mitigation)
corubolo, lumaca, minenkov, nardecchia - 18:53 Thursday 11 June 2026 (69218) Print this report
WI PAM repositioning

Today around 14:00 UTC, the WI PAM was moved back to its original reference position marked on the alignment plate (see 69208), since it was temporarily moved to allow the replacement of the damaged ZnSe viewport (see 69219).

Images attached to this report
Vacuum (West input)
Vacuum - 18:43 Thursday 11 June 2026 (69219) Print this report
WI tower - ZnSe viewport substitution
Today we replaced the ZnSe viewport recently found with the defective coating. we used the spare ZnSe disk #4.
Images attached to this report
AdV-TCS (Point Absorbers Mitigation)
Vacuum, Nardecchia - 18:18 Thursday 11 June 2026 (69217) Print this report
Comment to WI PAM actuator position reference and movement, plus viewport external inspection (69208)
here is a picture of the smaller ZnSe viewport taken from the interior: it seems in good condition, with no visible coating delamination.
Images attached to this comment
Detector Operation (Operations Report)
lunghini - 18:06 Thursday 11 June 2026 (69216) Print this report
Operator Report - Daily shift

ITF found DOWN in UPGRADING mode.
All times are UTC.
Below the list of activity comunicated to the control room:
09:03 - 09:56 Gouaty went in CEB Storage Room at 2nd floor, no access to any experimental areas required.
10:10 - 10:39 ZnSe WI viewport inspection (Pasqualetti, Nardecchia, Lumaca, Corubolo).
14:16 Zaza reported that NI payload has been cleaned and the ZnSe viewport has been replaced.

AdV-PAY (NI and WI Payloads)
majorana, Naticchioni - 19:52 Wednesday 10 June 2026 (69215) Print this report
WI CP mount
In Fig 1 you see the new CPmount hosting the spare CP and the old CPmount hosting the old CP.
Notice that the safety stops are touching the CP in this case. At the time of the installation of this CP into its mount it was decided to keep them touching for safety reasons given the limited quality of the HCB on one side. We will realize if this measure was actually needed once the CP will be dismounted. Fig. 2, notice that in case of NI, the CP was very firmly fized into its mount and teh HCB strongly acted also in between the metal and the glass, the on both sides in order to detach the mount the fused silica ears underwent to break.
Images attached to this report
AdV-PAY (NI and WI Payloads)
majorana, naticchioni - 19:30 Wednesday 10 June 2026 (69214) Print this report
Comment to NI mirror suspended, NI Payload partially assembled, CP structure assembled. (69171)
Bad news concerning NI payload hosting the spare mirror. The assembly was almost complete and meant to be finalized this week.
On Tuesday 9/6 morning I was engaged in WI payload works. In the morning with the PAM alignment and in the afternoon with the WI payload extraction.
At 18.30, after the work I visited the status of NI payload, as planned, to have a look and complete the assembly work today.

Unfortunately I saw that two fibers were broken. Luca came and took a look on the system. We do not know when the breaking happened.
The ear appears damaged, rather severely.

Today, with Luca, the payload cage was partially dismounted to allow a better access for inspection.
Helios and Flavio in the afternoon of today inspected. Further entries will follow.

Critical points:
- breaking during the assembly or just after are extremely rare
- availability of spare units for anchors
- clean detachment of 3 anchors without damaging the ears

Further entries will follow
Images attached to this comment
AdV-PAY (Assembly Structure for Monolithic Payloads (NI,WI,NE,WE))
L. Naticchioni, E. Majorana - 19:28 Wednesday 10 June 2026 (69213) Print this report
Comment to WI CP mount removal (69206)
The WI payload was moved into the CB clean room to allow the CP removal. The old WI CP (and its mount structure) have been dismounted from the payload and positioned in the hood, on the same cradle hosting the new NI CP.

The WI payload was then re-wrapped and is currently stored into the CB clean room.
Images attached to this comment
AdV-DAQ (Data Acquisition and Global Control)
pacaud - 18:21 Wednesday 10 June 2026 (69211) Print this report
VirgoProcessMonitoring upgrade

I have released a new version v10r3p4 of VirgoProcessMonitoring, that improves the browsing of the configuration file history. All instances have been restarted to use this new version.

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