Weekly Report for Week Ending November 9, 2000

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  November 13, 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)
• Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
• Administration (Lindquist)
• Sites (Raab, Coles, Shoemaker, Sanders)
• Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
• Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
• Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)

Special Items: Operating Costs through the end of October

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

The list of current actions revised to reflect open actions assigned through November 9, 2000 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• Assisted the Optic Engineer (H. Armandula) with the shipping of two (2) End Test Mass and Folding Mirrors SN# SPETM04, valued at $61,262, and SN# FM04, valued at $75,517, to Stanford University (S. Rowan) via  Fed-X.  Account Number P158138.
• Assisted the Systems Administrator (L. Bogue)  with the packing and shipping of a Defective 3Com Hub Part # 3C421600-US  to TWG Solutions at  Windham, NH. Account Number P158166.
• Assisted the Systems Administrator (S .Singh) with the Packing and Shipping of a Rack Filler to the  LIGO Hanford Observatory (G. Mendel) via Fed-X . Account Number  P158166.
• Responded to a letter from General Services Administration (J. Creel), Haraham LA, stating zero available of pick-up trucks for the LLO at this  time, and that an additional request should be sent to The General Services Administration  Headquarters (Ms. Susan Johnson) at  Arlington, VA.  This request was accomplished on November 8,  2000, DCC # L0002259-00-P.

>From: Linda Turner - turner@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. . .

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Great progress continues on the auditing and sorting of drawings for Livingston.
• Christmas party posters were designed and emails sent to cit-all and about 50 Caltech staff outside of LIGO who are associated or working with LIGO personnel.  The response has been immediate and positive from these outside guests.
• Worked through a tremendous number of electronic documents.  There continues to be a need for me to fix file names and imbed LIGO numbers in several of these submitted documents.
• Prepared several sheets of labels for past revisions of Livingston drawings needing to be filed.
• Work continued on the large pile of process travelers.

Considerable progress is being made on Livingston drawings.  The pile is definitely shrinking!  Many more drawings were either tossed because of duplication or placed into files.  Most of the drawings being filed were mainly originals replacing copy versions or filing of a particular 'size' of a revision of a drawing that we did not already have.

Processed large number of electronic documents as well.
 

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

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

• Working on Brian Loucks, Hereaus Amersil, Corning.  Looks like Butler may be audited by DCAA. The DCAA has requested certain information to be provided which I will be working on obtaining today.
• There were a large number of requisitions recently submitted for one time purchase orders. I am working with Gina in helping her get them all processed.
• We just received word that the expenditure type of "Equipment-Not Capitalized" was created in Oracle specifically for equipment priced from $500 through $4,999 which will not be capitalized beginning Oct 1, 2001. I understand that overhead will not be charged on this expenditure type until the beginning of the next fiscal year. We expect to begin using this new expenditure type now that it has been specifically designated for such equipment. I will check with Ed before we proceed with the use of this new expenditure type.

• Completed and issued monthly report for Operations for October 2000.
• Provided information for and reviewed Annual Property Report to NSF.
• Completed and issued Integrated Report for MIT for October.
• Completed and issued Integrated Report for Data Analysis Group for October.
• Prepared draft of Classification Guidelines for Equipment for review by Ed Jasnow and Phil Lindquist.

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

• Univ. of Michigan: CO No. 03, adding funds for D. Gustafson's participation on the 2K interferometer commissioning at LHO, was released to CIT Purchasing.
• Univ. of Florida: CO No. 10, re-allocating charges to appropriated LIGO accounts, is being coordinated with the Univ. of Florida.
• RFQ/Advanced LIGO/Optics Coating: Issuance of the RFQ is pending final updates by the Detector/Optics group.
• RFQ/Advanced LIGO/Seismic Isolation Hardware: Project review and approval (of the RFQ package) for release is pending final updates of technical and contractual content.
• Crystal Systems: CO No. 2 is in re-write to incorporate additional scope planned for FY'01.
• TAMA: A draft contract for the purchase, by the National Astronomical Observatory-Japan (NAO) from Caltech, of one TAMA-SAS prototype was reviewed by the Sponsored Research and found acceptable to Caltech. The draft text was forwarded to TAMA for finalization and processing.

Galli&Morelli: A Purchase Order for components and associated electronics needed for construction of one TAMA-SAS prototype is pending receipt of NAO's purchase order as indicated in the above item.

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

• No report this week (See section addressing Construction below.)

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)

Annual Report:  There will be an Annual Report due as of the end of November.  I will be requesting inputs from the usual bunch mid-December after the dust from the proposal has a chance to settle a bit.  I propose to keep this report moderate in size, about the size and complexity of a Quarterly Report, to minimize the burden.

The following Change Requests have been submitted:
 

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

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

• Continued with the October 2000 monthly CSSR. Continued to calculate earned value from input from task managers.
• Received the actual cost to date and commitment data for October 2000 and began a reconciliation between LIGO and CIT financial data.
• Continued with construction contract/work package close out.
• Began preparations for a comprehensive Estimate at Completion for the Annual NSF Report (November 2000).

• The monthly reports (Allocation of Actual Costs for Construction and Advanced R&D) for period ending October 2000 has been put on the network. E-mail has been sent to the Task Managers noting the location of the files.
• I am working on gathering the details for the monthly actuals and the open encumbrances for the above accounts. I will email them to the Task managers as soon as I have completed them.
• Continue to review the open encumbrances on the Construction and Advanced R&D accounts to see if the requested removals have been made. I will continue to review these accounts weekly until all encumbrances have been removed.

The financial reports on the web provide supporting detail.

http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport
http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~finance

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

• Work is ongoing to revise the specifications and drawings for the Livingston Staging Building. The schedule calls for the revised package to be in the hands of the original four bidders by Wednesday, November 15, with the resultant bids due on Thursday, November 30.
• We have received credentials and expressions of interest from two architectural firms concerning performing the design of the new Hanford Staging Building. We have sent out requests for interest to seven firms.

• No report this week; see Operations Section above.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab).

General Items (F. Raab)

E2 is underway.

PreStabilized Lasers

2k/4k PSL (R. Savage, M. Guenther and T. Mahood)

The new Al block optical table legs have arrived and are out for final machining.  They will be initally tested on the 4k table, then possibly moved to the 2k table if they prove to reduce table resonances.

The new rigid mirror mounts and PBS cube holders are out for fabrication, and should be received in a few days.  A new semi-rigid periscope for the 4k reference cavity has been designed and is under construction.  This periscope is based upon the Livingston design (and uses on of those mirror holders), but the top periscope mirror is held by a steerable Newport U100A mirror mount.

A problem has been discovered with the existing Livingston rigid mounts, in that a transmitted beam is interferred with by the spring that holds the mirror in place.  In most cases it's simply an issue of improperly dumping the transmitted beam, but we'll need a clean transmitted beam to feed the frequency shifter and reference cavity in the 4k build-up.  A simple add-in fix has been designed and is being constructed to allow use of these mounts.

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles).

OPTICS/COC/SEI INSTALLATION (Jonathan Kern)

Allen discovered that the bellows we replaced at the X-end last week is still leaking; now it seems that the leak was at the support tube copper gasket. We've just completed replacement of the 2nd bellows and are pumping down again. Opt-lev showed a 0.25v (32u-rad) misalignment after replacing the bellows. We've staged everything at the Y-end, and resurveyed all of the IAM monuments. We're waiting on the completion of leak checking before we vent for realignment and installation of the Arm Cavity Baffle. In the meantime, we're working with the commissioners to damp the core optics in the vertex and align the Michelson.

ISC (Anthony Rizzi)

Sany and I have aligned Steering and Mode Matching mirrors such that the beam coming out of the Faraday port into ISCT1 is within 20% of it's expected power. We have also seen the first (though briefest of) flashing at the dark port. However, the dark port beams are swinging due to problem with beam-splitter suspension control.  The numbers are as follows.

• PSL output power: 94mW
• MC transmitted power: 2.8mW
• power out of Faraday (reflection off of RM) port: 47.5mW
• approx. power in each of the two beams at Dark port 130-150uW

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne).

See also the daily electronic logs for the installation and commissioning activities:
Hanford Detector Log
Livingston Detector Log

1.1 LHO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

2km Commissioning

Daniel Sigg
Since Wednesday Nov. 8 the second engineering run (E2) is in progress. Non-invasive operations started at around 16:00 in the recombined Michelson configuration. Lock stretches of typically 40-60 minutes are observed; most likely limited by tidal effects which exceed the suspension controller ranges. The instrument is running smoothly up to now.

The E2 web page is at: http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/engrun/

Nergis Mavavala, Rai Weiss, Matt Evans, Gaby Gonzalez
The end of last week was spent writing up and testing operating instructions for locking and running the interferometer configurations to be used in the E2 run. This ended with a little training session for interested persons.

We then turned our attention back to WFS1 and now with DAQ/GDS/ASC in better health, we were able to confirm our earlier observation that all four quadrants of WFS1 saw mostly common-mode signals, even when we drove the mirror angles on both the ETMs and/or the ITMs. We tried some simple things (though we wouldn't expect those to make a big difference) such as focussing the beam more on the WFS, but saw no change in this puzzling behavior. More on this after the E2.

Bill Kells
running e2e for understanding of the full ifo locking.
Prep for E2 (eg understanding DMT tools, etc.)

Szabi Marka, Akiteru Takamori, Daniel Sigg
We had our first run for the E2E timing measurement yesterday. We injected sine wawes at various frequencies to I/ETMX/Y and recorded the relevant channels. The GPS timing monitor is running on STONE for the duration of the E2 run.

DAQ

RF Distribution

PSL

Lee Cardenas is still working on the block for mounting the pre-modecleaner.  Some details concerning mounting holes and position stops are being figured out.

Input Optics

Suspensions

4K Initial Alignment

LIGO-TriNet

1.2 LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

Commissioning

Frequency noise of PSL was measured during Peter King's visit, using the MC as an analyzer cavity. Above 1 kHz, the noise is white at a level about a factor of 2 above the spec. Also, there are several surprising spectral lines in the frequency spectrum above 13 kHz. The reasons for these are not yet known.

We are still following up Mark Barton's discovery that quality factors of some of the rigid body modes of SOS mirrors are surprisingly small. Pitch modes in particular show Q values as low as 300 to 500. Equally troubling is evidence for non-linear behavior in some ringdowns, and in especially small Q values that one infers from how the mirrors ring up after damping is disabled.

Ed Daw's band-limited rms monitor has revealed that times when we typically lose lock on the mode cleaner (around 1:30 a.m. and around 6 a.m.) are times of large seismic noise in the 1 to 3 Hz band. These times are when trains pass through Livingston.

PSL

Input Optics

Continued aligning optics after Mode cleaner. Observed a beam coming out of Faraday isolator to ISCT1 table. The beam height looked right (i.e., going to ICST1 periscope top mirror). The power is lower than expected - under investigation.

LSC and ASC

2.0 Other Engineering and Scientific Activities

2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

Optical Metrology

PSL

The paper on intensity stabilization using a current shunt, submitted to Review of Scientific Instruments was accepted for publication.  Currently the paper is scheduled to appear in the February 2001 edition.

Rick Karwoski, Paul Russell
Working on getting the essential elements of the Hanford 4 km PSL ready to ship to the site.

ISC

Modulated OSEM Design

New OSEM Heads

Peter Fritschel
OSEM head plating: we have decided to do a test plating run of a handful of the new alumina heads with Rapid Prototyping Corp, in Longmont, CO. The plating material will be zirconium nitride, which offers good wear, sliding coefficient of friction, emissivity (~0.3) and resistivity (>200 ohms/square) characteristics. This test run should take place early next week.

Digital Suspensions

Data Monitoring Tool

Data Acquisitions System

Global Diagnostics

2.2 Issues Concerns

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein).

• STACIS active seismic isolators: We expected the remaining 3 of four STACIS isolator systems last week; they still haven't arrived, and we are talking with the manufacturers.
• Larry Jones has received the grouting plates and cradles that transfer the load of the stacks to the STACIS isolators; preparation for grouting has already started, and should be done by sometime next week.
• Steve Vass and Larry Jones are assembling everything they need to manufacture the pieces of the 12 m mode cleaner that were not built way back in 1995. Larry is waiting on quotes from Hyspan for adjustable bellows. CES is making some of the parts. Steve will order Vacuum T joints, etc, and will clean and bake everything.
• Steve Vass measured the height of the mode cleaner seismic stack built in 1995. On it's table, it totals 36", which is exaclty how high it should be; BUT, Steve and Larry feel it should be a bit lower, to allow for some adjustment when all the parts are in place. So Steve will cut off some of the table leg length.
• The newly manufactured output optic chamber seismic stack and associated in-vacuum hardware has been sent to Allied for cleaning and baking. Allied noticed damage to two of the vacuum bellows. Fortunately, we have spares.
• Dennis Ugolini is at Hanford this week. He finished up most of the EPICS code for the vacuum control system, including interlocks, before he left.
• Ben Abbott: The wiring for the vacuum valve control boxes is completed, but not tested as yet. Cables from these boxes to the valves, and to the control crate, should be coming in tomorrow and the wiring can be begun soon.
• AJW, Ben, Rick, Jay, and Rolf have begun to lay out the computer network and 40m control room layout. Configurations for consoles and monitors are being fleshed out. Ben will draw these up in Protel.
• Ben and Rolf are also working on the DAQ rack layout.
• Jay Heefner, with Ben and Rick, are ordering racks, crates, and VME boards, representing some significant fraction (maybe 15%) of CDS for the 40m.
• Rick Karwoski has been working on the PSL. He and Peter will hopefully firm up a plan for installing a PSL at the 40m lab in stages during winter 2001.
• Rick and friends will keep an eye on what the contract electricians are actually installing at the 40m, and then determine what remains to be done to ensure clean and isolated power to the CDS racks, free of ground loops, EMF, and other electronic noise sources.
• AJW continues to work on the budget for FY01, FY02 for the 40m, with help from Phil Lindquist and Florence Kaufman.
• AJW has been asking all people who have made purchaes against the 40 meter accounts to please inform him of which items on the list of all expenditures originated from them. Florence has been helping with this.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht).

Electronics for locking the test cavities is mostly complete, with only minor finishing touches to be made.  There are still lots of cables to be made and installed.

We balanced and aligned the second test cavity, and spot glued the wire standoffs to preserve this alignment.  Sensor/actuator heads are installed, but not plugged in.

LASTI (Zucker).

LASTI (MacInnis, Mason, Smith, Kruzel, Shoemaker, Zucker)

Seismic installation: Installation of seismic supports in HAM20 (left end) is now physically complete and bellows have all passed leak check (after re-torquing; we discovered a broken torque wrench with our leak detector!).  Backfilled and removed door for final leveling/shimming tomorrow (Thursday) morning.  Some parts for the cleanroom on the last HAM, HAM21 (right end) are still stuck at the manufacturer so we are going to finish installing the BSC support piers before finishing off the last of the HAM's.

Vacuum equipment: We now have a second QDP80 roughing pump courtesy of Allen Sibley at LLO; this is being installed to allow us to rough to turbopump range within a single shift. We tweaked up our interlock setpoints and tested the gate valve closure system, so the system is now qualified to run unattended.  Letting it go for approximately 100 hours we reached 2e-6 torr.  A rate-of-rise test indicates the outgas rate (presumed mostly water) is not unreasonable for this time under vacuum, of order 2e-10 tl/s/cm^2 (note there is a stack in one HAM), but taken with the above base pressure this indicates a mysteriously low turbopump speed (~100 l/s vs. nominal 1000 l/s expected).  No impact on the program, but a head scratcher.

Instrumentation: Rolf and Jay released PO's for major parts of the DAQ and GDS systems (Racks, VME processors, reflective memory modules and VME crates have been ordered for the initial DAQ systems for LASTI. --Jay)

Cleanrooms: started brainstorming in earnest on the BSC cleanroom concept for LASTI. Our latest idea is to tie into our accursed roof support columns to hold up the cleanroom fan/roof assembly without any legs to the floor. This allows the roof to support higher loads without deep trusses (e.g., to accommodate the "doghouse" suggested for the cartridge SEI installation technique) and removes all floor-level obstructions except for curtains.

LASTI (Janeen Romie)

Updated the SOS drawings to the LIGO I as-built configuration.  Submitted the drawings for the machined mechanical parts to CES for LASTI's two SOSs. Continuing procurement of osems for suspensions.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling

(Week of Nov 9)

<2e2>

This week, Hiro worked at Hanford, participating in E2 run shifts. First night, he studied the correlation of the darkport DC output and the break of locks.

With the help of Matt, Hiro has set up three directories each of which simulates one of the 3 configurations of LHO 2K IFO, one for one arm, one for recombined and the last the full power recycling configuration. This needs a newer version of modeler/modeler_freq so that the simulation code uses the latest LSC servo code. Hiro built one including the latest code changes done by Tavio for speed improvements.

Hiro also worked with Rick about the issue of the PSL table motion and doppler effect size estimation. The vertical motion was mistakenly used to estimate the effect, and the prediction came out 10 times larger. Details will be covered by Rick.

<Adlib>

Hiro (hopefully) fixed the problem of the primitive mirror with curvature mismatch. There still is discrepancy between the simulation with primitive optics and summation cavities. Biplab is working on this. He modified and cleaned some parts of the code.

In order to generate proper noise curves from Han2k model, Biplab is testing matlab codes for calculation of power spectral density and the time-series data generated by E2E's digital filters especially when those deal with very steep transfer functions (e.g. seismic noise).

Tavio worked with Matt to define the strategy to implement threads in the e2e simulation code. Matt is writing a code of modeler to make it easy for Tavio to implement threads in e2e. Tavio is cleaning and finalizing the idea before he start the coding.

<Alfi>

Ed Maros focussed on closing several problem reports for alfi. Bruce Sears is working on moving some infrastructure code from Alfi to ALParser in order to make it more generally available. This is necessary for the solution of the cyclic include problem. This will increase the utility of the transferred methods in general as well.

(Week of Nov 2)

LHO

Biplab stayed last week at LHO and worked with Rick on PSL noise study. I investigated, with Rick Savage, the effect of Doppler shift of laser due to table motion wrt the suspended mode cleaner and reference cavity. We tried to counter the effect by reversing the entry of light into the reference cavity of Han2k. It could not improve the frequency noise (especially the peak at 50Hz which has a strong coherence with the table motion) much. Rick and others also added metal plates to the table legs, which helped in eliminating the 50Hz peak at the cost of a broad 80Hz peak. [Details: see LHO part of weekly].  More investigation going on.

Matt Evans is working this week for the improved lock acquisition.

Simulation code

in-lock state noise
Biplab is trying to generate Han2k In-lock state noise curve. He is facing some problem in FFT calculation when the amplitude of noise varies much over frequency range (e.g., seismic noise) and is expected to generate a steep spectral density.

3D mirror
Hiro discussed with Mark Barton discussing about the modeling of suspended mirrors. Based on this discussion, 3d mirror will be implemented following the design document by Jay (T980043). This will be integrated into a modified version of Han2k simulation code. The calibration process will be skipped, but in stead for now, expected variation of inbalances of the sensor and actuator after calibration will be artificially included in the simulation model parameter.

Speed improvement
Tavio Dangelis has started to work on the implementation of thread in the simulation engine. He wrote a simple program to understand the implementation of thread on SUN.  After that research is over, he will look into the details of the simulation code and design the implementation of thread.

alfi

Ed and Bruce are working to improve the stability of alfi. Almost all the major issues are addressed, except for the timing issue (proper updating of drawing and saving files). Code cleaning is also going which will also improve the stability.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

Week of Nov 9: In middle of E2 run; will be provided next week.

Week of Nov 2:

This week focused on testing of the LDAS software to be used in the engineering run. The testing identified two classes of bugs, those that had to be fixed for the E2 run and those that could be left for after the CVS tagging. It required roughly two days of testing after necessary bug fixes were implemented to be sure that the fixes didn't introduce new bugs. The remaining open bugs are in the problem tracking system and a text version of these will be made part of the LDAS distribution.

The documentation for the wrapperAPI and mpiAPI were enhanced this week to include information needed to support the event- MonitorAPI's functional requirement to correctly insert event data into the LDAS database. In addition the code modules for the wrapperAPI needed to handle the process and processparam tables was started.

A couple of master-slave flow control problems were identified in the current version of the wrapperAPI. Masha and Kent worked on a solution to this problem which results from the current model of the slave running with individual decoupled while loops. The work around was discussed in the weekly mpiGroup meeting and will be implemented and tested in the next week. Work on a DSO that is compatible with the new wrapperAPI continues at UWM a problem with the dataConditon() interface was identified by Masha and reported to UWM. They will have a new version with a fix soon.

The new Unified Data Type class for the dataConditionAPI has been integrated into a yet to be released version of the dcAPI. New test code based on this UDT was also started this week.

In an effort to better understand the test failures associated with the dataConditionAPI, swap space was added to the dcAPI and the full test suite issued. This resulted in all but 3 out of roughly 550 tests passing. The remaining three failures are a bit of a mystery, associated with out of memory errors that were not seen just a week earlier in resample() actions. It is hoped that a better understanding will develop when the group gets together next Monday.

An effort was made to produce a user command that would take data from frames, pass the data through the dataConditionAPI where some algorithmic processing would occur and then send the results to the database. This command could only perform two of the three steps in time for the software release. This sub-command is part of the release and may be useful to the E2 run but the completed command was not possible in the time available.

Test code was developed to verify a statement found on the net that GCC was not thread safe in its throwing of exceptions. The code was developed and tested by Alex. It required running of code for long periods of time on SMP linux boxes to reproduce the stated bug. Until GCC and Linux come up with a fix to this problem we run a slim risk of having threaded exceptions kill an API (primarily the dataConditionAPI).

Finished implementation of tape control gui as per discussion with Greg last Wed. Tested with Greg at Hanford regarding start up and stop monitoring of his tape controller scripts. Made gui changes per his request. All working as of Wednesday afternoon.

Peter Shawhan

My LDAS activities this week have been to do some testing of the system, and to re-commission the mechanism by which the DMT sends data to the database (by anonymous ftp).  The test data I used to check out this pathway happened to also reveal the bug regarding the handling of lstrings, though they are not actually used by the DMT at present, so this is not a critical issue for the E2 run.

I also researched the "HSI" interface to the hpss system at CACR. In the near term, access to E2 data will make use of a simple server based on this interface.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

(Week of Nov 9)

The electrical work for the LDAS Development system has been completed at Caltech and now allows for twice the power consumption.

A direct connection from the LDAS networks at LHO and LLO has been reestablished to the GDS DMT machines over Fast Ethernet now that the LDAS ATM networks has been replaced with 100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet.

The ATM OC-12 (622 Mbit/s) link between the Caltech LIGO and CACR networks has been reestablished.

The single LDAS Alpha based computer (sadan) has been upgraded to RedHat 6.2.

The first price quotes for LHO and LLO few-hundred-slot tape libraries have been obtained.

General Computing

(Week of Nov 9)

MIT

Setting things up for an ILOG system to be installed.

Livingston

Setting up tape backup unit.

Hanford

Setup a few new accounts. Working issues related to the E2 run.

Albert and Larry met with PNNL concerning the increase in bandwidth for the Hanford site. Presently, the investigation will go in the direction of getting onto PNNL's OC3 network. It appears to be the most cost affective solution but there are a number of logistical items that need to be checked out first.

CIT

(Lisa)

• Started to set up the new modem pool.  We are using 3com Superstack II RAS 1500 equipment.  The base unit needed to be returned because the vendor shipped us a model that was out of date.  It seems that this is a very popular item and it might take us a while to get a new one in.
• I've been working on the Sunpci setup.  I'm currently trying to resolve problems with the networking aspect of it.  I am hoping that once I get past this, I will be able to get p-card running on it.
• Backed up and installed algol with solaris 8.
• Fixed Irene's e-mail
• Installed a CDR for Linda
• updated some of the applications in pcapps on sirius.
• got a price quote for Quick Restore.  I still need to get them the device information for our tape robot so that they can write a driver for it.
• Ed Chargois got our latest round of surplus equipment taken away.  I have started creating a new sun workstation staging area in its wake.

I have been catching up with web site changes since being away last week. Most of the time has been spent on the REU pages and the conference page.

(Sam)

The ethernet card from Dell arrived. Answered various users questions. Continued the quest to remain a student.

(Suresh)

• -Worked with Stuart to create a Permanent Virtual Circuit (PVC) in ATM switch between two OC-12 (622 Mb/s) ports. This PVC enabled his workstation (jelly) to have dedicated channel with CACR.
• -Transferred all the data from one of the external hard drive (4 GB) from Janeen's workstation (minkar) to RAID5 at sargas after noticing that the drive was completely filled up. It will be replaced with a new one that is on order.
• -Fixed Duncan Brown's account access problem by renewing it for one more year. Also set up a new user account for a new grad student.
• -Increased the total Idle time out value of sshd1 config file in acrux.

• -Resolved a number of PC issues. Worked with Lisa on getting one of the DCC scanners back on-line. It is no longer supported by HP so it will have to be replaced.
• -Working a number of procurement issues.
• -Tested out a number of scripts for printing out calendar information.
• -Assisting Christine P. during the E2 run.
• -Dealing with a couple of budget planning issues. Mainly just getting information communicated to a number of people.
• -Setup a new disk partition for LIGO written applications it is /ligoapps on sirius. It has been propagated to the others servers and should be put on the client boxes in the near future.

MIT

Replacing a broken disk drive to prepare a machine to serve as web server and ilog home.

Hanford

Larry has contacted PNNL to start communications again on getting more bandwidth to the Observatory. Lazzarini and Wallace met with PNNL IT staff to discuss near term and long term solutions. In immediate near term we will move off T1 and connect the GC ATM switch directly tothe PNNL switch. We will be limited to 10% of the ATM bandwidth, which is 10x more than we presently have off the site. Annual cost will be ~$50k, comparable to the presently negotiated price for the 4xT1 bandwidth. This excursion from the previous baseline is possible becuase PNNL has installed an OC3 link to Seattle from Richland.

Livingston

Nothing to report

CIT

(Lisa)

• Upgraded muscida to Solaris 8.
• Did monthly backups on all the servers and a few workstations.
• Installed a PC card in my workstation.
• Rebuilt jabbah with solaris 8.
• Put together a list of equipment that needs to be surplused and gave that to Ed Chargois.  That equipment should be picked up on Friday.  Once that equipment is out of the way, I am going to build a staging area for the Unix workstations in the area outside the server room.
• I found a sbus ethernet card to use in Luna, but I haven't got it installed yet.
• Installed Quick Restore so that I could start my evaluation of it.
• Spent some hours working with Larry to try and get the HP Scanner in the DCC to work. The SCSI card it ran off of is bad.
• I am testing out the CDRW software package that shipped with the 10/00 media of Solaris 8.  It seems straight forward but is all command line driven.

Worked on midterms, homework and became a year older.

(Suresh)

• -Configured Sun StorEdge D1000 disk array that is attached to system sargas as RAID5 storage system. Out of 8 disk drives, 7 are used for the RAID5 and 1 for the hot spare pool in case of emergency replacement.
• -Made an attempt to upgrade firmware for the FORE workgroup switches on the second and third floors in west bridge. However, due to the old switch hardware the newer firmware was not supported and had to restore the old firmware. Larry did replace the processor board of third floor switch with upgraded firmware.
• -Installed Windows 98 in Irena's PC. Fixed network connection problem of her PC.
• -Set up a new user account for Donald Aram Webber in CDS.
• -Working with Rita about new version of lsc-all mailing list. She is now testing from her PC by creating this list.

On Travel

(Larry)

• Worked with Jordan C. getting some of his data converted from an old HP format to a regular ASCII file. Jordan found a conversion program for a PC (written in basic) and after some hacking around we were able to get the data transferred and converted.
• Worked a number of procurement issues. The new plotter should be on order as well as one of the new SUN workstations. The plan is to let different users try out the new workstation for a few weeks before we put it in production replacing one of the old servers.
• Worked with DCC on a variety of problems. Presently, plan to order another printer for them and finish the upgrades of one of their PC's. We will have to order another HP SCSI interface card since the old one no longer functions.
• Spent a great deal of time with Suresh getting the 2nd and 3rd floor networks back on-line. Still waiting for replacement parts for our test unit that we removed parts from to get things going again.
• General computer builds and fixes.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

(Janeen Romie)

LIGO II - Working on updating the schedule and the fabrication portion of the costs.

(Bill Kells)

• Melody/FFT comparison work (with Ray B. and Erika A.)
• Considering the effect of Sapphire OPD distortion on LIGO II performance: will be commenting on this shortly !

LIGO Coatings

The Advanced LIGO Coating Development and Preliminary Production Specifications are finalized.  Dennis, Jordan and Gari actively participated with their inputs.  The document has a DCC number and has been placed in DCC OUT.  With this document Irena is completing the RFQ package.

Silicate Bonding

We are in the process of developing a stress test for the silicate bonds that would allow observing and measuring stress under load. Sheila Rowan visited last Thursday; we formulated some of the research plans and collaborations to take place in the future.  We (Phil, Sheila and I) are going to meet with Mr. Ken Bower from Stanford to discuss the low tensile strength in our hydroxy-catalysis bonds. Glasgow encountered similar problems.

Seismic Attenuation (Riccardo DeSalvo) (10-30 and 11-4)

(Frederick)

Ansys fully operational, starting long simulation program that will include mirror suspensions and electrostatic actuators. Cabling DAQ for creep oven, restarted thermostabilization of big oven, ordered 32 channel differential DAQ card, the old one with 16 single
ended was not adequate.  Designing test cuts for Sapphire including Q measurement diving boards.  Measured mini GAS blades,  despite better thickness uniformity of the blades there is still about 10% scatter of the load carried.  We will still need to make many more blades than necessary and pick the ones that satisfy the load.  We should measure the individual blade's hardness to see if the lift power scatter correlate with the hardness.  Also the better uniformity in thickness yielded a higher than expected lift power.

Send to Kenji the blades selected if suitable otherwise make a set of thinner blades.

(ChenYang)

Calculated e.s. actuator electrode,  Design sent to Alex for carving.  Designing setup for mirror suspensions.

(Akiteru)

Finished TAMA IP transfer function measurements,  reached 80 dB with and without hanging chain.  Disassembled tower to reassemble in active inertial damping location.  Cooked small blades for Kenji.  Testing for shipment.  40 MHz DSP chips arrived from Texas.    And for free!!!   60 MHz version not available but 40 is OK.  Made paperwork for TAMA order.

(Szabi)

Measuring frequency vs. load dependence of TAMA IP.  Souping up oil bearings.

(Virginio)

Finalizing GASF paper for editorial board next week.  Started data analysis of LIGO IP control runs.  Assemblying TAMA prototype actuators.   Made order  for Tama electronics et al.  4 DSP,  ADC,  DAC, 2 VME crates.

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