Weekly Report for Week Ending June 22, 2000


 Exec. Comm. Agenda
Highlights
LSC
Administration
Hanford Observatory
Livingston Observatory
MIT
Caltech
Detector
40 Meter
TNI
LASTI
Data Analysis
LIGO II/Adv. R&D
Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  June 26, 2000 will be:
 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

  1. Announcements
  2. LSC Issues (Weiss)
  3. Comments on Weekly Report
  4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)
  5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
  6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)
Executive Committee only 11:30 - noon
 

Special Items:  Cost/schedule performance and contingency


Special Announcements:


Weekly Report Highlights

First fringes were seen from a recycled Michelson in the LHO corner station
 


LSC Issues (Weiss)


No report this week.


LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration


LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Jasnow)

A site telecon was held on June 22, 2000. This meeting was abbrieviated to allow time for the Final Design Review for the Livingston Staging Building.  The list of current actions revised to reflect open actions assigned through June 22, 2000 may be found at ACTION LIST.


PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>


DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

From: the DCC <dcc@ligo.caltech.edu>

Web pages for the DCC give simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database. Take a look. . .

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

 ACTIVITY HIGHLIGHTS

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.


COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Akutagawa, Kaufman)

From: Esther Cunningham <esther@ligo.caltech.edu>

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

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

From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)

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

  • Insurance issues for long-term visitors and students working on the sites during the summer have essentially been resolved.  Caltech worker's compensation will be the default solution for those long-term visitors who are not covered by their home institution for some reason.  This will not apply to minors, however, who will have to be covered by either their parents insurance, or special insurance furnished by the organization that sponsored them.


  • Support (Wood)

    Rita Torres

    For I. Petrac continued to investigate why some Attachments and reports did not appear on the MOU/LSC page. Worked with B. Kratochwill and C. Mak to correct this. Scanned more documents for posting on the web page. Did FedEx to VIRGO to transmit Attachment No. 3 for signature. Letters to TRW and Laser Zentrum/Hanover Re: upcoming visit by LIGO team.

    Arranged for an eye exam, did site trip updates, did some travel documents. The usual Pcard activity -- chased errant invoices, reconciled 29 this period. Started update to D. Lloyd log of LIGO accounts, will continue to do over the next few days.

    Irene Baldon

    Worked on preparing the paper work for six new trips taken recently or upcoming (seven Payment Requests and five Advance Requests). There are approximately an additional 10 new trips in various stages pending completion of travel arrangements before the paper work can be completed.

    Our SURF Students have all arrived safe and sound and have started to submit expenses for reimbursement. Riccardo DeSalvo had his students come in a week early to start working with him. These students were housed off Campus using his account number.

    Completed 26 Expense Reports, some of which were extensive, involving 2-3 or more pages each. There are 14 Expense Reports still to be done. There are no Expense Reports presently being held for a check from the Traveler before sending to Travel Audit to be cleared at the present time.

    Rita continues to try to fit into her schedule some time for travel. She has no Expense Reports to be done at this time but has completed six previously taken reports for final review.

    I haven't heard anything on the progress of LIGO obtaining Travel P-Cards.

    Prepared the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for the Week of June 19, 2000 and a Revised Edition on June 20, 2000. Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement. Worked on several problem issues with Travel Audit.

    Dorothy Lloyd

    Processed requisitions, invoices and receiving on-line. For more detail see "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems.

    Monitored contract and blanket order funding levels and notified task managers when supplements were needed.

    Continue to review "old" open purchase orders. Submitted an additional 22 to Acquisitions (Ruth) to "close out" and remove the encumbrance. This has amounted to approximately $127K to date. LIGO database was adjusted accordingly.

    Jim returned from Jury Duty this week and has been catching up on data entry. In Linda's absence, he also helped Cleveland out in the DCC.

    Elizabeth K. Wood

    Continued the process of hiring people for the two sites and working on visa issues.

    I have placed just about everybody I can into slots and offices. NB: Please let me know when your people are coming and where you plan to put them. There have been instances of new people being placed in offices without my knowledge. We're short on space, but I really don't want to start double-decking until it's absolutely necessary.

    Worked with Cindy Akutagawa to make a list of what accounts everyone in LIGO is paid out of. As a result of this exercise, I did some retroactive account distribution changes. It turns out that it’s entirely possible for errors to creep into account distributions that are not the fault of anyone at LIGO. I spent some time fixing errors made on the "approval" end of the ORACLE/LDA system..


    LIGO II (Frey)

    From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>

    Progress Period from from 6.16 to 6.22

    Accomplishments:

    Schedule: 6.23 to 6.29 Anticipated Challenges: Corrective Action:

    WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)

    Reports (Lindquist)

    The end-of-May Quarterly Progress Report is in progress.  Material for the Quarterly Report is requested by Friday, June 23.  "Strawman" budgets for LIGO I Operations and LIGO II Operations have been distributed.  Inputs are requested by Friday, June 30.  We have scheduled June 20, 2000 for the task managers to present and defend any increases to their proposed budgets over the current plan.

    Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)

    The following change requests have been submitted:
     

    CR-990028 WBS 1.1.3 Beam Tube Enclosure Closeout F. Asiri
    CR-000005 WBS 1.2.1 Upgrade Pre-stabilized Laser S. Whitcomb
    CR-000006 WBS 1.2.1 Re-polish Core Optics Components S. Whitcomb
    CR-000007 WBS 1.2.2 Replacement of Optical Lever Lasers S. Whitcomb
    CR-000008 WBS 1.1.4 Cameras and Projection System at LIGO Livingston Observatory F. Asiri
    CR-000009 WBS 1.1.4 Cameras and Projection System at LIGO Hanford Observatory F Asiri
    CR-000010 WBS 1.2.2 Redesign Suspension Controllers S. Whitcomb
    CR-000011 WBS 1.2.2 VME Development System and Spares S. Whitcomb
    CR-000012 WBS 1.2.2 ASC/LSC Rework S. Whitcomb

    Copies of these change requests have been distributed to memebers of the LIGO Change Control Board (See LIGO-M000176-00-P).

    Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.


    COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Duncan, Akutagawa)

    From: Kris Duncan <kris@ligo.caltech.edu>

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

    SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

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


    Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

    No report this week.
     


    LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)


    Announcements:
    --------------
    (F. Raab)
     

    The first fringes were seen from a recycled Michelson in the corner station. Fringes looked quite nice and uncannily stable, considering the only feedback was OSEM damping.

    Gregory Mendell has arrived and is putting our LDAS affairs in order (see below).

    Electronics for the 2K Michelson are being installed.

    Comments were submitted to the Port of Benton, concerning a proposal to mine gravel approximately 10 miles from the Y arm.

    The Washington Department of Revenue has informed us that LIGO Hanford Observatory is not subject to the business and occupation tax. They state that less than 1/2% of the project spending may be subject to sales taxes and will refer to another unit of the Department to sort this out.

    Bake Oven:
    ----------
    (K. Ryan)

    LHO Vacuum Bake Oven A Load #94, consisting of LHO Elliptical Baffle parts, LHO Tanner Mount Components and misc. hardware, was released on 6/6/00.  The turbo pump failed midway through this load necessitating pump replacement and a prolonged bake cycle.

    VBO A load #95, consisting of Arm Cavity Baffle Glass, Elliptical Baffle Components and Tanner Optical Tower Mount Components, was released on 6/13/00.

    VBO A load #96, consisting of ETM PO Telescope Alignment Fixture and Elliptical Baffle fasteners + misc. SS fasteners was released on 6/19/00.

    VBO A load #97, consisting of Elliptical Baffle Components, Table Clamps and OSEM Cables, is vacuum making now and should be released on 6/26/00.

    Oven A will be out of commission during the week of 6/26/00 for upgrades and routine maintanance.  Vacuum Bake Oven B components are arriving daily.

    Seismic Systems:
    ----------------------
    H Radkins, M Guenther, C Gray

    CAS
    All BSC1 motor, limit switch, emergency stop, air bearing switch and
    encoder cables have been installed with the exception of those on motor V1.
    Motor V1 has not been installed yet; this is expected by the end of this
    week. Thanks to Hytec for their prompt fabrication and shipment of a W
    motor limit switch cable.
    A bad connection was found on the 2-channel rack computer keyboard; it was
    swapped with the mobile rack keyboard for now.
    CAS software database work continues. We are seeking a change to allow
    control over which BSC (and its motors) are first accessed by the software
    upon powerup.
    The bulk of the pneumatic components have been received, the remainder are
    expected within a week.

    STACK TRANSFER FUNCTION
    Testing for nominal parameters for the BSC in vacuum transfer function measurement continue.  We are insuring the shakers are working in unison and the sweep will provide good S/N.

    SEISMIC NOISE
    Seismic time series are being collected at various wind levels to determine correlations.
    The Hanford site sprayed for weed control last weekend using a helicopter.  We monitored its position and will correlate to seismometers and microphones.
    Szaby Marka was here last week and we collected spectra for Trinet site location determination.

    TILTMETER/TEMPERATURE
    No work has been done on this issue this week.  It still stands that temperatures affect the tiltmeter more than just at the tilt sensor.

    LIGO-Trinet
    -----------
    S. Marka, C. Gray and H. Radkins

    We have the candidate location for the LHO station: ~200m perpendicular
    to the beampipe at the 1Km mark of the X arm. Hugh and Corey will take
    some additional measurements at this location to make sure that the
    noise is always low.
     

    LHO LDAS
    ----------
    G. Mendell

    The current activity is:

    1)  Checking on the shelving for the beowulf cluster.   The pieces that
    are here at LHO have the manufacture's part numbers, while the PO has
    the supplier's stock code numbers.  I am checking with LDAS at Caltech
    and the supplier to make sure the right parts are here.

    2)  Coordinating with Dave Barker to move the CDS racks and LDAS rack
    across the mass storage room to make room for the beowulf cluster.  This
    must also be coordinated with Otto and the fire department to turn of
    the fire sensors below the floor.  Power and air conditioning
    requirements are also being worked out for the room.

    Near-term future activities will include:

    1)  Shelving needs to be moved out of the staging building, e.g., to the
    warehouse (or the mass storage room if room has been made).

    2)  Installing more fiber between the mass storage room and the computer
    users room for more LDAS computers.

    3)  Installing a Sun D1000 288 GB disk unit to the LDAS dataserver.

    4)  Operating system upgrades of the LDAS Linux boxes.

    The long-term plan is to install (or order?) the beowulf cluster around
    December of this year.
     


    LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)



     

    OPTICS/COC INSTALLATION: IO Baffle installed in HAM-2. Various COS aluminum components recleaned and rebaked successfully. Last COS bakeload is in the oven now. Beamsplitter was installed in BSC-2, but we were unable to align it. We learned that there are some inconsistencies in E990083 regarding the direction of the surface normal. Mike Smith verified the correct global tilt of the HR side of the Beamsplitter, and Mark Barton converted to the local tilt. They confirmed that the BS had the sign reversed on the E000028 doc, and the BS was hung wrong. The solution requires removal and replacement of the standoffs, guide rods and magnets. We began this task yesterday. We need to re-bake the BS; at best it will be ready for re-balancing next Wednesday. (Jonathan Kern)

    SOS Installation: We continued preparing MC1, MC2 and MMT1 that will be installed in HAM replacing the current ones that have PAM magnets. All three optics have been balanced and are ready to be baked. New alignment centering fixtures with irises have been cleaned and are ready to be used for realignment of in-HAM optics. (Sany Yoshida)

    Note: In circulating draft contributions to the weekly, several additional comments were generated in response to Sany's initial report, and these comments are appended here because they provide some additional information that might be of broader interest:

    Additional remarks from Hai Sheng Rong:

    1) In the process of preparing the SOS we noticed that the spring tips of
    the safety stops are magnetic. The balance angle changes slightly but
    noticeably when we move these screws in and out.

    2) We observed slow drifts of the mirror balance angle after the mirror is
    balanced and before the second (balancing) wire standoff is glued. The
    drift rate for that particular mirror was 0.3 mrad/12h. This observation
    disputes the presumption that the drift happens during the glue curing
    process

    Comment from David Reitze:

    These are steel springs. They probably are not permanently magnetized but
    do gain a moment in the field of the magnets on the mirrors. We'll try to
    find either stainless or phosphor-bronze springs.

    Response from Sany:

    But I have also observed (a couple of times) much larger and faster drift
    after putting glue to the second wire standoff.
    When I put glue to the second wire standoff yesterday, I observed the
    following. The balancing angle was 0.25 mrad. I put glue at 5 pm. For 10
    min or so, the mirror did not drift (i.e., the optical lever signal on the
    scope did not change) so I left optics lab. About 8 pm I went back to
    optics lab to check the status. I found the optic drifted upward by 0.6
    mrad. I adjusted the position of the wire at the bottom of mirror ( so that
    the mirror would go downward) and this worsened the problem. The mirror
    shifted by another 0.5 mrad or so. I was desperate and decided to rework on
    the mirror. So, I took off the bracket holding the top safety screws (so
    that I could take the mirror off the wire). Then, as soon as I took the
    bracket off the tower, the mirror came back to the initial balancing angle
    (~0.25 mrad). The mirror swung when I took the bracket off. After the
    mirror became quiet (by the way, the OSEM control was always on during the
    cure), I put the bracket back. This did not change the angle. Then I went
    home. When I went back to optics lab this morning, the balancing angle was
    0.15 mrad. I do not understand this.
    Sany

    PSL: We are continuing to change mounts and realign the optics in the PSL.

    General computing: We have received an order of Gateway PCs, and are configuring them and installing software. We are also re-distributing some of the PCs for the use of the summer students and visitors.We are taking a survey of our network cables and hubs to determine if we need to increase our capacity. We have a summer student, Sarah Newman, assisting us for the next several months.

    GDS LLO: We are installing a temporary chasis for the excitation engine (1X5) until we get the final chasis (~09/2000?). (Szabi, Keisha Williams (SURF))
     


    MIT (Shoemaker)


    All MIT activity reported in other categories


    Caltech (Sanders)


    All CIT activity reported in other categories


    Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)


     
    Installation & Commissioning:
    Hanford
    Livingston
    Other Science/Engineering Activities:
    Design/Analysis/Fab
    Issues/Concerns
    See also the Installation web page

    1.1 LHO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

    Mode Cleaner/IO

    Nergis Mavalvala, Peter Fritschel, David Ottaway
    We measured the mode cleaner length control spectrum, especially at the 14.75 Hz vertical resonances and found the rms to be reduced by a factor of ~3.

    Interferometer Alignment

    Rai Weiss, Mike Zucker, Rana Adhikari, Richard McCarthy
    Checked the alignment of the Core Optics for the 2 km interferometer.  Checked the initial pointing of the beam down the Y arm.  Aligned the ITM and ETM to bring the cavity into alignment, observing fringes through the ETM transmission monitor.  Ensured that the arm cavity was aligned to the power rcycled Michelson.  Repeated this process with the X arm.   This process doesn't check the location of the resonnce on the optics in the corner station, but does demonstarte that the interferometer CAN be properly aligned.  One or two of the optics required fairly high biases, but still within range, so the 2 km optics alignment can be considered a success!

    The flooring in the LVEA has started, so commisssioning activities will be a little slower for the next couple of weeks while we are in laser safe mode during the days.

    ASC/LSC/SUS Electronics

    Jay Heefner, Rich Abbott Dale Ouimette, Mohana Mageswaram, Flavio Nocera, Josh Myers
    Rack 2X1 at Hanford has been tested for wiring, cables, VME modules, data base records and screens. Most LSC boards are at Hanford and will be installed today. The Whitening Filters, Anti-alias Filters, Anti-Imaging Filters and Dewhitening Filters will arrive in the next few days.Some front panel wiring needs to be completed. The mid stations need to be wired for the Anti-Image and Dewhitening Filters.  Testing the LSC differential Driver/Receiver boards, and  the Whitening Filter board.

    LIGO-Trinet Seismic Stations

    Szabi Marka, Hugh Radkins, Corey Gray
    We have the candidate location for the HLO station: ~200m perpendicular to the beampipe at the 1Km mark of the X arm. Hugh and Corey will take some additional measurements at this location to make sure that the noise is always low.

    4 km Interferometer installation

    Larry Jones, Betsy Weaver, R. McCarthy, et. al.
    Bench assembly for the following 4K IFO components was completed :
    3 elliptical baffles
    3 pickoff mirrors
    1 ETM telescope.
    Cabling for the 4K IFO cameras and illuminators has been completed.

    1.2 LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

    Commissioning

    Peter Saulson, Joe Kavolik
    Joe Kovalik has replaced 2 of the 3 periscopes in the PSL with the new custom stiff mounts. It was simple to realign the PSL after the installation. He is gearing up to check the performance.

    We are working on a plan to commission the PEM subsystem.

    Core Optics Installation

    Ken Mason, Jonathan Kern, Gary Traylor, Joe Hanson, Harry Overmeyer, Rich Riesen
    While attempting to align the beamsplitter in Livingston, we found we did not have the adjustment range with the magnets to align the return beam on the autocollimator. The beamsplitter was found to be hung incorrectly and will have to be removed from the chamber and rehung. This will result in a 7 - 10 day delay to the alignment.

    Core Optics Support (COS) Assembly

    Lee Cardenas, Ken Mailand, Joe Hansen, Mike Smith, et. al. Due to a delay in the COC installation and alignment, the final COS system alignment has been delayed until the weeks of 7/17 - 7/24

    Global Diagnostics System

    Szabi, Keisha Williams (SURF)
    We are installing a temporary chasis for the excitation engine (1X5) until we get the final chasis (~09/2000?). Keisha is learning to use of the Diagnostic Test Tool and electronic shop.

    2.0 Other Engineering and Scientific Activities

    2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

    PSL

    Peter King
    A BIOS upgrade, from 2.14 to 2.19, for the SR785 dynamic signal analyzer was performed.  There are no apparent differences other than the viewer and translating software on Stanford Research Systems' website actually supports 2.19.

    The current shunt for SN #107 was modified to include the high wattage 10 ohm resistor.  The transfer function of the shunt was measured and found to be 15 dB higher than the one installed on the LHO 2k PSL.

    A trial intensity servo was modeled in Matlab.  The servo modeled was patched together on the old intensity servo card and tested.  It was found that the servo gain could not be raised beyond 80 dB.  A check of the gain stages in the servo showed that things seemed to be behaving properly.  The actuator transfer function was re-measured out to 2 MHz, this time, to reveal a peak in its response (previous measurements were limited to frequencies below 100 kHz) at just over 1 MHz.  The peak might be related to the relaxation oscillation.  A check will be made to see if the "noise eater" circuitry of the NPRO oscillator was operational.

    COC Metrology

    GariLynn Billingsley, Michael Hrynevych
    Slow progress in Metrology since the last report. ETM01 is up and ready to be measured.

    Suspensions/OSEM Head Re-Design

    Jay Heefner
    Jay is producing a document that describes a digital control system for rhe SOS. A rough draft should be available for review by 6/30.

    6 SOS controllers are being assembled and tested to support the LHO 4K installation schedule. It is the current plan to use these controllers as portable controllers during the installation and install the permanent suspension controls as time permits.

    Mark Barton
    I tidied up the PAM model I had been working on and released it for use by interested people. I made preparations to go to LHO 6/25 to 6/30) to work on suspension controller tuning. I calculated the surface vectors of the optics in local coordinates for use in suspension balancing as a crosscheck for an earlier tabulation which was suspected of having errors.

    Janeen Romie
    Working procurement of new osem parts.

    Seismic Fine Actuator Control Electronics

    Sander Liu
    Received the filter modules from Frequency Devices and five (5) sets of boards (D000108 and D000109) were fabricated and tested. Paul is the the process of sending three (3) sets to LHO and two (2) sets to LLO. This complete the task of designing antialiasing filters for the seismic system.

    2.2 Issues Concerns

    no new issues

    40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)




    Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)



     

    Last week one of the things we reported was that we had locked our mode
    cleaner in the p-polarization state, and then dialed it over to
    s-polarization while maintaining lock.  Stan has since pointed out to us
    that the s and p-polarization modes are separated by half a free spectral
    range, and we now suspect that we were locking in the s-polarization mode
    (finesse of 5,000) all along.  Rotating the polarization may have simply
    reduced the intensity of the s-mode (because the alignment is not exact),
    which reduced the overall gain to make lock acquisition easier.  One of the
    things we noted as we turned the polarization over to the s-state was that
    the transmitted intensity increased dramatically from what we took to be
    the p-state, and this is consistent with simply changing the intensity of
    the resonant state.
     

    We remain confident that really did lock to the 5,000 finesse mode
    directly, as we reported last week.
     

    This week we broke vacuum and have mainly been preparing for installation
    and lock acquisition of the complete instrument.  In the background, we
    will be measuring transfer functions and noise levels in the mode cleaner,
    but the main focus will be on assembling and installing the hardware for
    the complete interferometer.
     

    Congratulations to Luca and Christina Matone on the birth of their new baby
    boy, Leonardo!
     


    LASTI (Zucker)


    Nothing significant to report.


    Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini/Blackburn)


    Simulation and Modeling:

    Mechanics SImulation

    Giancarlo Cella is visiting LIGO since June 16. The AIP of
    MSE for e2e has been finalized, and Cella wrote a new class
    for this API. Cella wrote two systems wrapped by this class,
    one a simple suspended mass and other other the reference
    cavity of PSL.  Cella and Ed Maros worked together to install
    MSE code to e2e CVS.

    Cella and Hiro discussed about the collaboration between VIRGO
    and LIGO in the simulation work. VIRGO now appreciates the
    value of MSE, and the collaborative effort will benefit beth
    of us. A memo suggesing this was sent to Barry, Gary and Albert.

    e2e at LHO

    Biplab visit LHO this week.
    Biplab, Rick and Brad Zampft (summer student) discussed about
    the simulation work of the PSL system. The simulation of the
    reference cavity was one of the issues to be done. Cella will
    send the time series data after he goes back to Italy.
    Also, the reference cavity primitive will also be available soon.

    Biplab and Ed tried to update the entire e2e stuff at LHO, but
    it turned out that the unix softwares are too old and softwares
    could not be built. The unix softwares will be updated in one way
    or another. Ed is leading this.

    adlib

    Hiro worked on implementing the macro and expression parser.

    GUI (alfi)

    More alfi bugs were fixed, and getting better condition.
    Version 3 of alfi can no more be maintained even if bugs are
    found, and alfi on LHO and LLO will be updated to version 4
    asap.
     

    LDAS Software:

    Blackburn:

    A new database was added to the LDAS GNATS problem
    tracking system in support of the LDAS hardware
    procurement. The system is in prerelease form but
    looks just like what we will need to track hardware
    procurement at each of the LDAS locations.

    The wrapperAPI has now been ported over and tested
    on the LDAS beowulf hardware. Several Unix configuration
    problems showed up in our early tests. The Beowulf
    had not been used for anything as complex as our LDAS
    system prior to this port. Other minor issues included
    having a buggy version of MPI and very old compilers.
    The current activity for the wrapperAPI project is to
    develop test data sets using the LDAS ilwd format. We
    are also waiting for the dynamically loaded shared
    object being provided by UWM to be completed and ready
    for testing. The mpiAPI which the wrapperAPI must
    communicate instructional information with in the LDAS
    system is also still under development.

    The LDAS system is finally in stellar condition again
    after several months of bug fixing and enhancing in a
    effort to prepare a version to support the types of
    data collection activities associated with the first
    engineering run. We are hoping to have a release in a
    day or two. This release would have stable APIs and
    reliable communications as well as support for trigger
    data insertion into the DB2 tables. This has all been
    made possible by tracking down a bug in the ldas thread
    code that allowed uncontrolled modification of a state
    variable. All critical problem reports for the software
    either have been or will soon be closed out.

    The dataConditionAPI received significant attention
    this week with efforts now underway to implement the
    TCL layers which will be responsible for starting up
    and managing analysis chains, communicating with other
    LDAS APIs and directing conditioned data results to
    users and the parallel computing components of LDAS.

    Shawhan:

    This week I have spent some time prototyping the communication
    pathways to be used with the "Local Data Manager". The LDM
    uses sockets to communicate both with user clients and with LDAS,
    and is event-driven so it can do multiple things at once. The user
    clients themselves, on the other hand, will communicate synchronously
    with the LDM (e.g. if asking for some data, they will block until the
    LDM tells them it's available), which makes the client interface
    simple. After some initial playing with Tcl clients (easy), I spent a
    while coming up with a working C client. It also seems that Matlab
    can be easily supported using the unix('cmd') function, which execs
    the cmd and returns the result.

    I haven't made the LDM actually do anything yet--i.e. I haven't put
    in the connection to LDAS, or defined the syntax for commands and
    queries--but I'll work on that next week.

    Lazzarini (reporting from GEO):

    Attended a GEO Data Analysis internal meeting as a
    LIGO Observer. Provided a brief overview of LIGO
    plans/designs for data formats, databases and
    storage systems. The GEO design is much less well
    defined than ours and there was discussion of
    whether GEO should/could adopt wholesale the
    relational databse design we have developed. I
    indicated that we would be willing to share it
    with them.

    They are starting to have issues associated with
    how experimentalists and theorists will interact
    once data starts to flow. Part of this seems to be
    related to the fact they do not have a "detector
    characterization working group". They are in the
    process of forming one with 3 members each from
    Cardiff/AEI and GLasgow/Hannover

    They are seriously pursuing a "geo@home" plan to
    implement distributed opportunistic computing on
    workstations across the geo collaboration not
    directly owned by GEO. machiens at
    Golm/Berlin/Hannover/Glascow/Munich/Cardiff are
    their targets. Their figure of merit is:

    available GFLOPS = 100*(efficiency_of_usage/0.5)
                       *(N_machines/100)*(N_institutes/5)
                       *(CPU_MHZ/400).

    i.e., if all 5 institutes have each 100 machines
    that can be used 1/2 of the time and they have
    400MHz processors, then they claim they can get an
    additional "free" 100GLOPS for CW searches. They
    are modeling this after the seti@home software
    (screen savers, background unix jobs). However
    they are reinventing everything rather than
    talking to the seti people.

    GEO has pruchased a small DEC alpha beowulf
    cluster forthe Hannover site. They arrived at this
    in a $/GFLOPS trade study (got a very good deal
    from Compaq/Europe). Bernie will put us in touch
    with the US counterpart of the alhpa academic
    technical representative. AEI has close ties to
    DEC/Compaq because the European manager is a
    relativist.

    Triana has been augmented to allow distributed
    computign to be performed within the
    environment. It looks as though the changes
    introduced are a java-based equivalent of the LDAS
    wrapperAPI (although they do not use MPI). they
    use "OCL" protocol for socket based communications
    in Java (object communications language(?))

    LDAS Hardware:

    Continued planning and testing of installation for
    LDAS uninterruptable power supply shutdown system.

    Debugged configuration problems preventing tcl
    programmers from testing on certain linux machines.

    Corrected environment for mpi programmers to test
    software on LDAS beowulf nodes.

    Transferred LDAS passwords and other system information
    to Gregory Mendell.

    General Computing:
     

    MIT:

    Nothing to report.

    Livingston:

    Received an order of Gateway PCs, and are configuring
    them and installing software. We are also re-distributing some
    of the PCs for the use of the summer students and visitors. We
    have also purchased some NEC PCs.

    We are in the process of checking our network cabling to verify
    its condition and status, and to determine if we need additional
    capacity.

    We have a summer student, Sarah Newman, assisting us for the next
    several months.

    Hanford:

    Working on expanding the local area network connections.

    Gregory M. is working on setting up racks and other items for LDAS.

    CIT:

    Barbara reworked the MOU page to archive pre-1999 information onto history
    pages. This will be installed on Friday.

    Began work on web forms for LSC Research Plans.

    Installed another iteration of CostBook web forms.

    Lisa B. who is now working with the Sys. Admin group has been assigned to work
    mainly on getting the Wilson House setup cleaned up.

    Lisa tested all of the ports in Wilson house. Along with this is gathering
    network performance information.

    Installed the extended the Cadence licenses.

    Researching a replacement for the PortMaster II modem access. Has
    contacted sales reps from Cisco and 3com and Lucent.

    Did Samba testing on the connection to Luna. Jay in particular is having a
    problem with his Samba connections. Updated his NIC driver to see if that
    helps give him more stability.

    Downloaded the StarOffice 5.2 binaries. The compiler requires a shared
    library patch. Should have that patch number today.

    Made a floor plan of the network ports in Wilson House to be used for further
    testing.

    Downloaded and started demo-ing OpenSSH clients for the PC: putty, pscp
    (secure copy) and TTSSH. These are all SSH1 clients so might not be appropriate
    for our environment. The pscp is handy, but not pretty, little utility.

    Suresh Attended Usenix 2000 conference.

    Helped SURF students in 40m with their system/appilcation problem. Larry has
    also been resolving a few of the problems with the system setup and will be
    doing more work on it over the next week.

    Fixed minor glitches with mail system.

    Set up Sun workstation in third floor bridge for SURF student to work on.

    Installed ssh version 2 in albireo (cdssol9) in 40m.

    A number of procurement issues have been worked on. The one that has taken up a
    great deal of time is the SUN order with the special discount offer. The new
    accounting system at Caltech has a number of problems one being that it can't
    handle a line item of a refund or discount, this has been worked around along
    with a number of related issues dealing with the implimentation of Oracle at

    Caltech and SUN. Gina should have everything finished and approved by tomorrow
    unless something else pops up.

    A number of new PC's have been ordered, received and installed for various areas
    of the project.

    We had another virus attack and a number of people received it. However, only a
    few were affected by it. Just remember to not open the attachment and
    immediately delete the e-mail and empty the trash bin. In some cases , depending
    on how your e-mail is set up, you may have to go to the attachment directory and
    delete the file from there also. Be sure a virusscan software pkg. (Norton or
    McAfee) is loaded on your PC.
     


    LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)


    From: bill kells <kells@ligo.caltech.edu>

    For this week mostly having to do with LIGO II optics, and
    associated systems considerations (~thermal and thermo-elastic noise).
    Completed first tests of m-axis sapphire mirror evaluation with Jordan.
    Also involved with Kips sub group on how to "relax" ifo beam profiles
    to ameliorate Braginsky noise.  Back to heavy analysis on the 40m
    recycling puzzles.
     

    From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>

    Fused silica fiber/ribbon research:
    -----------------------------------

    We are currently refining our ribbon pulling apparatus with an eye to improving
    diameter uniformity, reproducibility, and strength.  The strength of our ribbons
    in bending tests averages about 3 GPa, which is adequate, but the more stringent
    tensile tests average only about 400 MPa, which is clearly inadequate.  We are
    investigating the source of this difference and looking for remedies.
     

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

    The first 15 cm Sapphire piece was examined under a bright light.  No inclusions were found, there were some small scratches on the OD.  The polish on one of the sides was noticeably grey, the polish called out was an "inspection polish" so the part is delivered as specified.  This piece was shipped to CSIRO for homogeneity measurement.  The second piece which will eventually go through the same process, is due soon.

    From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>
     

    We welcome  Susha that just joined SAS

    Hareem
    Changed diameter of frequency tuning disk on GASF F1, finally reached
    instability, machining disk for intermediate diameters to drive F1 below
    200 mHz and measure Q factors.

    Lisa
    Started the creep oven and measured first termal transients on blades
    and structures.
    Measured air to blade temperature delays of the order of 40 minutes.
    Temperature stability 0.1, 0.2 degrees p.p..

    Brett
    Mounted stepper motor driver circuit.  Wait for VME board for
    integration.

    Soy
    Assembly of LVDT circuits for creep.

    Chenyang
    Coiling IP actuators.

    Giancarlo
    Delivered program to determine blade’s shape analitically. It will
    further reduce filter stress levels.

    Tatsuo, Akiteru
    Measured Dh/DT on monolithic filters.
    Measured <0.5 mm/degree at 370 mHz and 1.1 to 3.7 mm/centigrade at 230
    mHz.  This last measurement not repetitive,  the two values are
    incompatible.  Likely the measurement (1 hour total) was too fast,  see
    Lisa’s results on delays, need to repeat this measurement.

    Kenji, Akiteru, Tatsuo.
    Tuned the 1.5 mm MGASF filter at 250 mHz, internal modes of blades are
    obviously lower than the 2 mm one (49 Hz, 206 Hz, 440 Hz) and a peak at
    126 Hz is still to be explained (probably from the test structure) but
    attenuation plateau over 10 Hz at better than 50 dB, likely as good as
    70 dB (limited by the accelerometer sensor noise) was recorded (to be
    confirmed).
    Obviously the 49 and 220 Hz resonances now stick higher from the lower
    plateau and have become visible again.
     

    From: Sam Richman <srichman@ligo.mit.edu>
    Stiff isolation system (Sam Richman, Jamie Rollins)
     

    Jamie has completed a rig for testing blade springs used in the two-stage prototype.  It involves ~200 kg of lead bricks, so now it really feels like we are doing a true gravitational physics experiment.  Measurements of the spring rate and parasitic modes are now starting.  Sam has been tuning the low-frequency parameters of the position sensor + broadband seismometer loops.
     

    From: Eric Gustafson <gustaf@fastloki.Stanford.EDU>
    Subject: Modulators, Isolators, Mode Cleaners and Telescopes Telecon
     Minutes

    Modulators, Isolators, Mode Cleaners and Telescopes

    Telecon Minutes

    Thursday June 15, 2000

    9:00 AM (California Time) - Phone in Number (650) 723-2393
     

    Chair Persons David Tanner and David Reitze

    Attendees:UF: Reitze, Tanner, Stanford: Gustafson, CIT: Camp, Sanders, LHO: Ottaway, Fritschel

    1.  Review of Modulator Work (10 min.) - Reitze
    Nothing to report; still waiting on delivery of Leysop large aperture EOM.
     

    2.  Review of Isolator Work (5 Min.) - Reitze
    Isolation - Dual crystal birefringent compensating isolator tested at 100 W powers.  We were able to achieve 45 dB isolation.  Typically, commercial isolators give 30-35 dB at low powers.  Eric raised the question of isolation requirements for LIGO II.  The consensus is that it's difficult to assign a requirement.

    Thermal lensing - The 60 W laser is working now.  The UF group has tested three different bare TGG crystals (Litton, Electro-optics Technology, and IAP homegrown) by measuring the effective focal lengths at high powers.  All have comparable absorbances and lensing.  Scaling the measurements to > 150W, ~ 50% of the light remains in TEM00 mode, ~45% in TEM20,02 which can be compensated by focus.  The remaining light is higher order junk light.  These measurements will be verified/refined using the Shack-Hartmann. Peter suggested the possibility of looking at shorter crystals; this may push up the B-field strength beyond reasonable values.  Dennis pointed out that heat dissipation may be different in vacuum.  Our data from LIGO I tests suggests that it's not too different, but we'll look into it.

    3.  Review of Mode Cleaner Work (5 Min.)  - Tanner
    Two baseline designs (12 m and 100 m lengths) are being looked at for LIGO II.  Issues being examined are displacement noise from various sources (thermal, shot noise, radiation pressure from PSL intensity fluctuations, jitter-misalignment coupling in the MC), thermal distortions from high circulating powers, suspension requirements, and physical footprint.  Radiation pressure is the scary noise source at low frequencies (< 100 Hz); we'll definitely need big mirrors.  It may place stringent requirements on the PSL intensity stabilization.  Other system trade-offs include suspension design (do we really need a 3 stage pendulum?) and physical implementation (a short MC which fits in current HAMs is much cheaper than a major rework of the LVEA vacuum system).  Ray Beausoleil is updating MELODY to handle triangular cavities.  Also of some concern is the high peak intensities on the mirror coatings.  A working IO Reference Design Study document by the UF group will be ready for prime time late next week.

    4.  Review of Telescope Work - Tanner
    Nothing significant to worry about or report.

    5.  Upcoming Deadlines (5 Min.) - Gary Sanders
    Gary charged us to come up with the best, cheapest, and most easily integrated design (with $ costing) in the two months.

    6.  Open discussions
    Meeting adjourned at 12:35 pm EDT before we had time for an open discussion.
     


    For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu