Weekly Report for Week Ending April 12, 2001

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  April 16, 2001 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:

Special Announcements:  The new Newsletter is on the LIGO home page.

Weekly Report Highlights

 This week, the LLO 4K interferometer was locked in a recombined state for the first time.

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, April 12, 2001.  Discussion included:

1) The current status of the plans for the building at Hanford, potential contingency needs, and possible sources of contingency.  Ed Jasnow has an action to check with the Office of Sponsored Research concerning the "brick wall" for spending Construction funds.  We need to get a better handle on our contingency to facilitate project level decisions.
2) The DCAA audit of our Proposal for Continuing Operations.  A meeting is scheduled Friday, April 13 at 9:00 am.
3) Some (possibly many) employees at the sites are being harassed by the Franchise Tax Board of California as a result of mistakes made at Caltech identifying them as California residents.  In some cases this harassment involves collection agencies and credit bureaus.  Ed Jasnow has accepted two actions: a) notify Anita Yanes of the problem and seek immediate relif for those affected, and b) prepare a memo to Al Horvath documenting the problem(s).  Remediation actions should include a letter sent by Caltech to the Franchise Tax Board with copies to the various credit agencies.
4) Schedule for Site Inventories: Livingston--April 29, Hanford--May 13.
5) Meetings with the Caltech Immigration and Visas folks continue.  Of interest during the most recent meeting is the information that those with certain visas should be very careful about foreign travel.  All LIGO foreign travelors in LIGO holding US Visas should check with Elizabeth Wood prior to making the trip.

The next site telecon is scheduled for Thursday, April  19, 2001.  The list of current actions revised to reflect open actions assigned through April 12, 2001 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• Nothing significant to report.

>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

• Received many orders for LIGO polo shirts both from LIGO staff and LSC members.
• Redesigned and updated the Travel Authorization Request form.
• Upgraded the DCC to Acrobat 5.0.

• steady flow of electronic documents continues.
• packaged and shipped to Gerry Stapfer those two sets of Livingston Construction Drawings I had prepared last week.

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

No report this week.

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

• Finished Employment Services, Sydney Meshkov, Triad, Barbara Ryniker Evans, and Delta Testing.  Currently working on Syracuse.
• Placed and reconciled credit card orders.
• Continued to empty filing cabinets to prepare for the move to take place on Monday.
• The RFQ for LN2 for the LLO site closed on Monday, and the bids were opened on Tuesday morning.  The spreadsheet with the bid details have been provided to LLO.  A decision will be made soon as who the new contractor will be for LN2 for LLO to begin June 2001.

• Prepared a summary of construction accounts as of March 2001.
• Prepared and sent out Integrated report for Data Analysis Group as of March 31, 2001.
• Prepared and submitted Cost Transfer Request for travel costs charged by P-card to incorrect POETA.

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

• SIOM: CO No. 3, allotting the first increment of Phase II funds, was released by the Advanced LIGO Optics R&D group. SIOM's proposal for full-up Phase II program is in preparation.
• Allied: CO No. 8, for chemical cleaning and baking of additional 40 M prototype components, was released by the Cognizant Engineer.
• CSI: CO No. 4, adding funds for purchase of additional sapphire crystal samples, was released by the Advanced LIGO Optics R&D group.
• B.F. Goodrich: LIGO staff visited the company (formerly HDOS of other things), to negotiate their possible participation in the Advanced LIGO core optics polishing and metrology pathfinder program.  B.F. Goodrich's response was affirmative. CO, adding funds for a expeditious project start up, is in preparation.
• EGO: Draft MOU and Attachment No.1 for investigation of coating effects on mechanical losses for fused silica, in support of Advanced LIGO Core Optics R&D program.
• TAMA: A grant, for receipt of payment (by TAMA) for two TAMA-SAS prototypes, was set up by the Sponsored Research Office.
• Univ. of Syracuse: CO Nos. 1 and 2, deleting residual funds and extending the contract through Nov. 30, 01, were released to CIT Purchasing.

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

• Four proposals were received in response to a request for proposal to provide LN2 to Livingston for the next three years.  These proposals are currently being evaluated, and a selection is expected by next week.

Support (Wood)

Advanced LIGO (Frey, Petrac)

Progress Period from 04.06 to 04.12

Accomplishments:

• Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting not held due to schedules.
• Prepared transmittal to DCAA regarding the meeting held with them on April 6, 2001.  Transmitted copies of presentation material that was discussed with them.  All documents have been submitted to the DCC along with a hard copy of the signed and dated transmittal.
• Proposal plan development for Advanced LIGO MRE.
• On Hold.
• Development of the TNI work plan and schedule.
• Integration effort has started.  Will include in next update cycle.
• Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.
• Processing update data  for progress data as of 04.13.01.
• Planning process for the LASTI project at MIT is in progress.
• Processing update data  for progress data as of 04.13.01.
• Finished re-baseline of the LASTI plan.
• Continue to test the Cost Book Tool. (Highest Priority)
• Continue mapping and formatting of OPS cost data for input.
• Provided activity sheet list for BK to import to start COC estimating.
• Development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guidebook continues.
• Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.
• See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

• Next weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting will be scheduled on a date TBD.
• Focus of the meeting will be the implementation of the MRE cost estimate and the MRE Cost Book.
• Meeting scheduled with the DCAA for Friday the 13th at 9am.
• Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal
• Highest priority is the development of the Cost Estimate.
• Will continue to pursue all other sub system schedules.
• Will initiate the updating of the COC and AOS schedules.
• COC estimate data input to start.
• Will Continue to develop the TNI Schedule.
• Will finish integration into the P3 Database.
• Will Continue to update the LASTI Schedule with progress.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 04.13.01 and  Post to site.
• Will issue data requests for progress data as of 04.27.01 that are due Friday the 27th.
• Will continue to incorporate changes to the baseline plan.
• Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 04.13.01 and  Post to site.
• Will issue data requests for progress data as of 04.27.01 that are due Friday the 27th.
• Cost Book Tool development continues.  (Highest Priority Task)
• Will finish ops cost data input.
• Will initiate the input of the PSL and or IO cost data.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Web Site.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.

WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)

I am assembling and editing the contributions submitted for the end-of-February Quarterly Progess Report.

Also working with David Shoemaker to set up assignments for Advanced R&D Annual Report.  We should be sumbitting this report (necessary to get FY 2001 funding) over the next month or so.

The following Change Requests have been submitted:
 

We should schedule a Change Control Board soon.

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

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

• Completed first draft of the March 2001 CSSR.  Advanced calendars, rebuilt indexes and completed calculations of earned value to date.
• Continued reconciliation of actual costs and commitments between LIGO and CIT finance.
• Continued with construction contract/work package close out.

• I completed gathering the details for the monthly reports on the Construction and Advanced R&D accounts for March 2001 and E-mailed pointers to the Task managers
• I 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 (Remember, I can only get these errors corrected if the Task Managers point them out to me).

 

 
 
 

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>

• We reached a decision concerning the location of the new OSB East Building at Hanford.  After lengthy discussion, it was decided to locate the building 775 feet southwest of the LVEA.   Additionally, it was decided to re-locate high-activity offices currently in the OSB to the new offices, and use the existing OSB for quiet laboratories.  It is felt that this will mitigate ambient noise during science runs and operations.  This will, however, increase the size of the building from 10,000 square feet to 12,000 square feet becuase some infrastructure must be duplicated.
• Revised copies of the proposed contract for NTD Architects were submitted to the NSF on Monday, April 9.  We are awaiting approval so we can award this contract.
• Initial discussions are being held regarding increasing the existing staging building at Hanford by 2000 square feet and adding a crane.  This will involve design and construction, and will be funded by existing construction funds.

• No report; see Operations Report above.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

• No report this week.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

General Items:
--------------
(F. Raab)
 

The focus here continues to be on getting both interferometers on line as
soon as possible. We are continuing to experience problems. The short story
is that the ITMy-2k mass slipped in its suspension during alignment, causing
damage to the optic. In examining potential causes for the slippage, we
uncovered some problems with suspension-wire terminations that we will
address during the recovery from this incident. Doug Cook's report (below)
provides the details.
 

A new (and distracting) activity here is the study of potential seismic
disturbances at LHO from the new gravel mining operation in N. Richland,
approximately 10 miles from the y arm. Digging, rock crushing and grading
activities began April 2 and will continue through April 20, or so. The
stockpiled gravel will then be trucked out during the year as the market
demands it. The intention is to repeat this cycle annually until the mine
site reaches a particular level, expected to take ten years or so, depending
on market demand. Hugh Radkins, Alan Rohay and I are assessing the potential
impacts for LIGO and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). We will be
reporting results at upcoming hearings involving the Richland City Council
for permitting of the gravel mine. The Council's Board of Adjustment is
requiring that the operation not be disruptive to the scientific missions of
LIGO or PNNL.
 

Interferometer Installation/Repair/Retrofit
-------------------------------------------
(D. Cook)
 

LHO suffered another hard hit in the 2k installation updates and
earthquake recovery. After re-installing the ITMy-2k optic I began releasing
the safety stops to complete the alignment. I backed off the two right bottom
stops and before I could start the left side the optic rotated and dropped,
shearing the face magnets inside the OSEMS. It appears the wire pulled loose
from the clamps. It is not conclusive, but it seems that through repeated uses
of the same suspension top block and clamps, grooves form from the hard wire
being compressed into the softer block material. These grooves measured out
to be .009" of the .012 diameter of the wire.  We do not disassemble the
clamps from the block so this problem was not evident. If the wire was not
relocated back into the existing groove to start with and/or we did not
have a  uniform squeeze on the clamps, the wire may have migrated to the
groove giving the clearance needed to slip. We may not have had enough
compression left to clamp the wire tight enough.
 

Just prior to transporting the optic we rechecked the wire clamps and
pulled the top winches and verified the balance angle. Transporting and
installation went smoothly (no bumps). We made one small structure yaw
rotation and upon clamping the structure to the table we had an immediate
signal return to the total station showing < 200 mrads in both pitch and yaw
with the optic still clamped. If the optic had been bounced we probably
would have lost this alignment. The wire was still located in the wire
standoff grooves. After moving the optic back to the optics lab we pulled
the height adaptor and when we loosened the wire clamps there was a
distinct "snap" to most of the 8 screws. It is not likely that the wire
stretched as we are about 3 times under the wire yield point. We will be
changing some features on the top block to help to improve the accuracy of
the assembly and to avoid potential losses from poor wire clamping.
This is a significantly hard hit again. Sorry for the let down.
 

The lower right magnet pulled glass from the optic face (ITMy-2k). It is a
'D' shape of about two thirds the diameter of the standoff footprint and
~.005-.010" deep. As this could affect the Q of the optic we will replace it
with a spare ITM. This will cause some additional delays as the scattering
mapping will need to be performed before it gets shipped to LHO.
 

We will begin a realignment on the ETMx-4k in the meantime. We will also
add the new safety stops etc. The ETMx-2k will follow on shortly afterwards
to change out the OSEMs, safety stops and align. If further delays occur we
will move onto the ETMy-4k and do a complete installation. This is the last
of the 4K core optics.
 

We will be pumping the X vertex section until the 2k alignment resumes.
 
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

Detector: This week, the LLO 4K interferometer was locked in a recombined state for the first time. The final factors which led to the locking were chiefly insights by Rana Adhakari to properly adjust the signs of the LSC matrix control signals and to find a "sweet spot" for some of the relative gain values and other lock acquisition parameters. Locking is not yet very robust, and lock acquisition takes a long time, but this is still an important milestone that has been achieved. Detailed investigations to improve performance are now underway. Guido Mueller is also here this week working on improvement of the MC mode matching.

PEM: (Doug Lormand) I have finished the PEM handbook for the voltage monitors. I have the skeleton handbooks for the magnetometers, accelerometers, and tiltmeters. I
have also created the DTT routines for the voltage monitors and
accelerometers. I am planning to finish the DTT routines and handbooks for
the magnetometers, accelerometers, and tiltmeters this week. I have a longer
cable and three mounting stands for our fluxgate magnetometers on order from
Bartington. I used my DTT seismometer routine to save a sample of the
seismic activity that is caused by our local train.

Control room operations: Operators not on Control Room duty (50%) have been busy with cleaning and
vac baking for LHO and the 40 meter, working in the Electronics Lab,
assisting the commissioning team, preparing for the E4 run, and starting
the gathering, cleaning and staging items needed for the tear down
up-coming. There is on-going training with RGA , IFO locking, DTT, DMT,
and other Data Tools.
 

MIT (Shoemaker)

David Ottaway is going to transfer from LIGO Hanford to LIGO MIT, with a cross-country trek starting at the end of April. He will join the team working on LASTI. While Hanford will certainly miss him, we are very much looking forward his presence and contribution at MIT, and it is great that he is staying in the 'LIGO Family'.

Caltech (Sanders)

no report

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 Earthquake repairs

• ETMY Osem replacement and realignment completed
• ITMY was resuspended and reinstalled in the vacuum system.  Unfrtunately as this was taking place the suspension wire appeared to slip allowing th optic to drop enough to break off the face magnet/standoffs.  One of the standoffs removed a small piece of glass from the ITM, so we will replace that optic with one of our spares.  This will delay its reinstallation until sometime the week of April 23.  We are looking into the design of the wire clamp to be sure that this does not happen again...

2-k IOO repairs

4-k IOO installation

Rich Abbott

LHO-TriNet seismic station (LTH)

1.2LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

Commissioning

The analysis of the displacement noise in the single cavity operation during the E3 run has progressed showing a spectrum dominated by seismic noise (strongly correlated with the seismometers) at frequencies below 10 Hz and dependent on frequency noise above 10 Hz.

Work is on-going to establish the mode matching to and loss in the x and y arm cavities.

Plans are being made to organize the tasks to be done when we open the interferometer to the atmosphere shortly after the E4 run.

DMT

Input Optics

PSL

2.0 OtherEngineering and Scientific Activities

2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

Input Optics Spares

PSL

• New Ref. Cavity chamber and the parts have been cleaned and baked here at the PSL Lab. The sum of hydrocarbon masses of [41,43,53,55 & 57 AMU are = 9.3E-12 torrs, water level 7.6E-11 torrs.
• Chamber and parts are clean!!.
• All parts have been packed according procedure and labeled.
• New chamber preparation in progress as well as parts to be baked.
• 10 watt Laser S/N 110 sent to lightwave for repair (replacement of diodes).
• New 10 watt Laser S/N 118 is in place and plumbing in progress.
• Misc.... ordering parts, paperwork taken care etc.....

• PSL custom boards -- Last week we had a request from Hanford to replace the existing 2K photodetectors with detectors which were modified and installed in the 4K interferometer. We shipped units to Hanford which were part of the LASTI/40m. We have been in process of constructing and testing addition detectors to replace those delivered.
• Intensity stabilization. -- Some time was spent this week at Lauritsen testing electronics for the Intensity Stabilization system.  I also completed the full end-to-end intensity stabilization simulation for both single and dual-loop configurations. The simulations show the theoretical relative intensity noise performance of the proposed implementations when subjected to a representational noise model of the Laser. I have had some unusually prohibitive difficulties integrating Matlab output into a main document.  I hope to resolve the difficulties in short order so that the report can be made available to all.

Sander Liu
In the process of help testing both 21.5 MHz and 35.5 MHz photodiode boards.

New OSEM Heads

AC OSEMs

ASC/LSC/Digital Suspensions

• New Universal Dewhitening boards with second order butterworth sections are being stuffed and should be in test by the end of next week.
• All hardware for the LHO 4K suspension systems (SOS and LOS) is either complete or in test and will be shipped to LHO next week. The current plan calls for Rolf and Jay to travel to LHO the week of 4/23 to complete the installation and test of the SOS controls.

Data Acquisition

GDS

• Completed the solaris/gcc port of DTT.
• Implemented save/restore for lidax.
• Started with the LARS interface for lidax/fantom.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• STACIS active seismic isolation system (Ugolini, AJW, Vass): Rick Savage found that the STACIS isolators he installed on the H4K PSL table generate excess noise above 100 Hz; he is sending them back. We just measured the STACIS transfer function up to 10 kHz with our new Wilcoxon accelerometers, and see 30 dB of excess noise above 100 Hz. Goddam!!! Next step is to see whether our passive stacks provide sufficient filtering above 100 Hz to allow us to live with this. It's not so easy for us to de-install and return our systems! On another front: 50 MHz walkie talkies, operated within a few meters of the isolators, cause them to go crazy (as if there was an earthquake) and fault. Goddam!!!
• Vacuum control system (Ugolini, Ben Abbott, Vass): The 40m vacuum system is nearing readiness. All of the remote vacuum control boxes tested so far have worked well. It was discovered that some cables for supplying power to the ion pump gate valves were not in place; these are now being made. The N2 supply monitoring has been implemented after overcoming several "features" of the device readout. Many small problems are being found and fixed; one or 2 problems of unknown origin are being investigated. The accumulated dirty gas in the vacuum lines will be safely vented, and the system prepared for pumpdown, in the coming week or 2.
• PEM system (AJW, Abbott, Ganezer, Ugolini): AJW and Ken Ganezer had a telecon with Schofield, McCarthy, and Lubinski at Hanford, who provided advice on PEM devices (weather station, magnetometers, power line monitors, tiltmeters, etc), and EPICS drivers for digital readout devices (weather station, dust monitor). As soon as our DAQS system is ready, Caltech undergrad Victor Tsai will implement EPICS readout of the digital devices (just purchased weather station, existing dust monitor, existing STACIS controllers, and existing SRS RGA), and we'll add several analog devices (accelerometers, microphone, magnetometer).
• Computing and networking (Rolf, Jay, AJW, Ugolini, Abbott): We discussed the ultimate computing and networking needs with special guest Lisa Bogue, and need to go over all this with Rolf. Needs: VxWorks and EPICS code server (currently, our gateway Ultra 30); DAQS/Framebuilder Ultra 60 (currently, we'll name it FB40m), operator consoles for running DMT and dataviewer (envisioned: Sun Blade 100's); EPICS "server" (some new machine?), NDSR and FrameBroadcaster (envisioned: run on gateway Ultra 30). We worried about security.
• DAQS/EPICS system (Rolf, Ben Abbott): All major parts are now installed in the Data Aquisition Rack. Rolf and Lisa have installed Solaris 8 on the Ultra 60, but have some glitches to work out that should be fixed soon. An annotated, as-built drawing will be prepared for the system next week. Rolf and Lisa continue work on setting up the Ultra 60 DAQS machine with Solaris 8, needed at the sites for LDAS links.
• PSL electronics (Karwoski): Last week we had a request from Hanford to replace the existing 2K photodetectors with detectors which were modified and installed in the 4K interferometer. We shipped units to Hanford which were part of the LASTI/40m. We have been in process of constructing and testing additional detectors to replace those delivered.
• PSL (Peter King): We look forward to the beginning of the installation of the PSL laser and optics in the coming weeks!
• Optical tables (Vass, AJW): We need to buy 7 or so optical tables, big and small, for ISC and optical levers. We have been evaluating the different manufacturers and table specs. We took a spectrum on our PSL table (Newport, 6x10x1), and find it to be at the low end of available quality, so we're considering buying a better table for the PSL and using that table for ISC. Larry Jones will design the support stands for the smaller tables that have to fit around the STACIS isolators, and any other custom supports we may require.
• Dual recycling (AJW): One of the main purposes for dual recycling at Advanced LIGO is to manipulate the shot noise response of the interferometer, placing the peak of the sensitivity at lower (signal recycling, SR) or higher (RSE) frequency than the arm pole frequency. Initial LIGO has the arm pole frequency at 91 Hz, and the plan for Advanced LIGO is to place it at 15 Hz, then use RSE to move the peak frequency out to some hundreds of Hz (depending on the level of thermal noise). For the 40m prototype, the arm pole frequency would be 100 times larger (1500 Hz), and the plan was to use SR to bring the peak sensitivity to lower frequencies. From the controls perspective, it doesn't matter whether one is in the SR or RSE regime. However, for higher fidelity, it may be desireable to also operate in the RSE regime. We are thus considering changing the plan in that way, and operating with a peak sensitivity at around 4000 Hz. This requires only that we rearrange the power recycling mirror and signal recycling mirror positions in the BS chamber. We welcome opinions on this subject!
• FFT simulation (Ganezer): Ken and his group continue to make progress in running the dual-recycled version of FFT on the Caltech Exemplar MPI machines, with realistically deformed optics. He will present results in the near future.
• E2E simulation (Michel, AJW): We met with Matt Evans and outlined a plan for developing the control scheme for dual recycled Advanced LIGO (and 40m), first for in-lock control, and then for lock acquisition.
• In-vacuum cabling (Larry Jones): Larry is working on how to get cables (suspensions and misc electronic devices) from the optical tables of the input and output optic chamber to vacuum feedthroughs. In these small chambers, it is difficult to get the cables down the stack to the (one and only) feedthrough port. Our baseline is to bring the input optic chamber cables (for 2 suspensions, and a MMT and steering mirrors) across to the BS stack and down through one of the many BS feedthrough ports. For the output optic chamber (for an MMT, steering mirrors, and yet-to-be-designed output mode cleaner), we'll run two 25-conductor cables down the stack and out the feedthrough port. An alternative, suggested by Mike Smith, is to mount brackets onto the stack masses, rising up above the top table, to take the cables out the top of the chamber. It's more complex and raises many questions...
• Vacuum hardware clean and bake (Jones, Vass): Larry has been inventoring the cleaned/baked vacuum parts for the 12m mode cleaner that were shipped to us from LLO. There are some parts missing, but we're confident that they'll turn up! Steve has shipped all the remaining big pieces to Allied for cleaning. The last big piece, the 29.5" adjustable bellows, will be leak-tested at Hyspan with Larry in attendance, then shipped to Allied for clean/bake.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

        We continued repairing our remaining OSEM controllers this week, and now
have all of them debugged.  Three are in place on the mode cleaner, and
four are ready for the test cavities.  Three of the four test cavity
controllers had previously been debugged, diagonalized, and tested on
suspended optics, but the forth continued to be problematic.  Despite very
similar electrical properties to the working ones (at least for the
longitudinal, pitch, and yaw modes), the last controller produced a much
higher resonance Q.  A close look at the OSEM's side control showed that 1)
its gain was 10x less than the working ones, and 2) a few op-amp stages
were not connected as shown in the schematics.  By cutting a track, adding
a few bypasses and replacing a resistor, this OSEM controller is now in
line with the others and can damp the resonant Q to 10-15.
 

        We also made considerable progress with our arm-cavity alignment scheme,
and we have observed transmission through the North arm cavity in the
TEM-00 mode with the mode cleaner locked in air.  The difficulties we
experienced last week appear to have been the result of low transmission
through the mode cleaner and the arm cavities.  Careful alignment of both
cavities, and optimization of the mode-cleaner servo for maximum
transmission, seem to have corrected the problem, and we can now reliably
observe the arm cavity flashing through resonance in the TEM-00 mode with
the arm cavity mirrors locally damped and the mode cleaner locked.  We
intend to wait until we have the chamber pumped out before attempting to
lock the arm cavities.
 

        Finally, we began installation of the vacuum-pump safety interlock
hardware.  Many thanks to Steve Vass for his continuing advice on that
project!
 

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (MacInnis, Mason, Shoemaker, Rollins, Harry, Mittleman, Zucker)
 

Interferometer layout: feedback so far from the advanced LIGO SUS team
on the "packing density" of advanced suspensions is encouraging,
although the word is still not definitive that we can live within our
present 30" beam tube.
 

Lab infrastructure: The second HAM cleanroom has been extended in
height and fitted with new electricals to improve access and
efficiency.  Bob Laliberte (tech specialist on loan from Center for
Space Research) is assisting Myron with the steelwork.  Lab
floor cleaning has been scheduled for this week.  The control room
has been reorganized to accommodate cleanroom garb as well as
EPICS control room functions.
 

BSC SEI installation: The roller-V-block structure for installing
the BSC support tubes has been mounted and rough-aligned.  Some
small modifications were required to get around the roof support
column.
 

PSL: Components continue to roll in.  We relocated some cabinets
to make room for work on the PSL around the designated table
area.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

E2E MODELLING:

e2eLIGO package

(Hiro) The Han2k package is now underway of big changes.
[a] It will use the same latest code of the control matrix as the one
used at the site.
[b] One set of box files will be used for Hanford 2k, 4k and
Livingston 4k IFO, for one FP, recombined and power recycled
configuration.
[c] All difference will be taken care by using revised macro files.
[d] psd measuring tools will be installed in the standard distribution
[e] Speed up will be done using macros more extensively.
[f] Thermal noises will be included.
[g] This one is ready for modal mode fields
[h] 3D mirror and WFS will be implemented

All except [h] will be ready in a week, and will be released as the
next package together with a new version of modeler which is necessary
for this e2eLIGO package.

Lock acquisition Studies

(Biplab) Generated probability densities for the lock-acquisition time
in certain cases of misalignments.

Code Development

(Hiro) Random number generator: Random number generator is taking non
negligible amount of time. Tavio (he left LIGO at the end of March)
looked around for fast generator and identified one based on Mersenne
Twister algorithm. This sped up flat randum number generator by factor
of 3. The normal random number generator is updated to avoid using
sinusoidal functions and two numbers are generated together. This
sped up normal distribution by factor of 2.

Macro enhancements: In order to make it easy to create and maintain
complex configuration, implementation of macro has been enhanced to
include paths. Now a macro can be defined like
LIGO.IFO.name = val
Also expression like
LIGO.IFO.ITM.T = 0.03
can be used to specify directly settings of primitives. The treatment
of primitive settings can be dramatically changed, but for now, to
save time, the code structure will not be changed.

Code Maintenance & Validation

(Hiro) Some functions were too complicated and had trouble when
compiling. Code was cleaned up by changing the data strcuture and
by other ways. Now the object code side is reduce by 1/3, and
compilation is much smoother.

Cavity summation bug identified: Some bugs of Fabry-Perot cavity
summation code were found and fixed. Coupled cavity configuration was
used to test the code by comparing the summation cavity calculation
and the simulation using primitive optics. For scalar case, those two
matched nicely, but they showed discrepancy for modal fields.

(Biplab) working on comparison of results in a coupled cavity using
either primitives or Fabry-Perot summation cavity.

E2E at CACR

(Ed) Finished modifications to compile on CACR V2500 class computer.
Stated work on jobber (a program to submit jobs remotely to the V2500
systems).

(Hiro) C++ compiler on skinner computer: The simulation code could not
reproduce proper answers. After debugging, a bug of g++ running on
HP-UX was idenfied. complex /= double generates NaN if double < 1.
Two versions of HP compiler, CC and aCC, were tested as a substitute
to g++ to compile the simulation engine, but both were not quite C++
standard compliant. CACR programmer is trying to find if there is a
newer version of g++ for HP without this bug.

Alfi

(Bruce) Completed work on showing box/primitive comments correctly
in the parameters dialog. Working on input port settings in the
parameters dialog.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

The LDAS release 0.0.17 was finalized on Monday of this week. The
time between code freeze and actual release was reduced down to a
record 4 days. This version of LDAS has been pushed to all the LDAS
system (including the sites) as of Monday afternoon.

We were not able to get the full support for multiple frames and
arbitrary time intervals in each frame into the frameAPI for this
release of LDAS. However, the C++ components are all in place and
the remaining TCL components are expected to be finished by weeks
end.

The problem with the cpu usage in the eventMonitorAPI was determined
to be from a TCL "after" statement. This has now been resolved so
that the eventMonitorAPI doesn't use a tremendous amount of CPU even
when idle. However, there may be a remaining timing problem which is
causing requests to the metaDataAPI to drop jobs. It is being further
investigated.

The need for linear algebra support within the dataConditionAPI has
been a source of tremendous debate and frustration for LDAS and LSC
team members. The problem has been with the none thread-safe nature
of all stable libraries in the public domain. This week at a brain-
storming session, an idea was proposed by Ed, Alex and Kent which
turned out to work and allows us to use community standard libraries
such as LAPACK and its variants. Alex has demonstrated the workability
of this approach and C++ classes to wrap linear algebra into the
dataConditionAPI are being designed and implemented.

The MPI MDC datasets and the wrapperAPI have been changed to use
the Frame Specification standards for GPS time. This will also
require a change to LAL which has already been made to the LAL
CVS repository. Now UINT4 will be used instead of UINT8. The
wrapperAPI also had its history format enhanced to use an ILWD
container. The new LALwrapper was also installed on the LDAS
software server this week.

The new release of LAM-6.5.1 was tested at UWM and here at CIT
this week. The developers of LAM are highly dependent on KAI's
C++ compiler and as a result have taken out support for shared
object libraries. This is being evaluated to determine if a
quick fix can be made to the LAM code and shared with the LAM
development team to make this release of LAM more useful to
groups that use GCC compilers and shared object libraries in
their projects (like us).

The LDAS staff met on Wednesday to discuss plans for the next LDAS
release (0.0.17) which will support the May 15th Inspiral Mock-Data-
Challenge. A rework of the dataPipeline was the focus of the meeting.
It looks like better than 95% of the infrastructure for this next
release and the dataPipeline are already in place and the effort
will be on cleaning up primitives used by the user command and adding
tuning parameters.

Ran the datasocket and frame tests at Hanford and Livingston. The
frame-to-ilwd test passed within reasonable limits (<5%) at both
sites. All the datasocket tests completed at both sites. This is
somewhat news since we have had difficulty completing all the tests
in one shot in the past (specifically concerning controlmon and
linuxbox1). The overall comparison with previous test results passed.
Although, some of the individual tests had significant different
times/rates, specifically those involving controlmon and linuxbox1.

The DC-MDC API tests were also rerun at ldas-dev. This time the
intermediates show up in the ILWDs. The results matched with a set
of results I collected previously. For the psd and stat tests there
were some extra data in the ILWDs than in the previous results but
it is most likely due to the default output which may now be in
'wrapper' format.

There was also worked on LDAS test documentation. It will be placed in
CVS and then installed with every build.  We haven't yet finalized on
a permanent place in CVS. Ed and Isaac are working the remaining issues.

The wrapperAPI, and dataConditionAPI are now using a new library called
dbaccess which properly formats ILWD data for insertion into the LDAS
database. With this release of LDAS, the table information is hard-
coded into the C++ classes. Work began on making this dynamic, using
the SQL source that generates the tables.

This week Peter modified guild to be able to abort LDAS jobs that it
submits, using the "abortJob" user command.  [Aside: it turns out that
abortJob does not actually interrupt any given API's processing, it
just takes effect at the transitions between APIs.  So if you
accidentally start a job that is going to spend 3 minutes in the first
API, and then you immediately send an abortJob, it will still take 3
minutes for the abort to take effect.]

Peter also spent some time trying to track down the "late packet"
problem which has been causing LDAS jobs to fail on the test system.
Stuart identified some tcp parameters to tweak, but that didn't help.
It seems likely that we will need to modify LDAS to be smarter about
waiting until it has the complete input message, rather than assuming
that it all arrives within a given amount of time.

The framebuilder code is bing upgraded at the request of Rolf and
Benoit. The next release of the framebuilder will use the same frameCPP
source code to be distributed in LDAS release 0.0.17 in May.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

LDAS activity at LHO:

1) The move of LDAS hardware from the mass storage room to the staging
building was completed on Mar 29 & 30.  The network connection has been
tested and working since then.

2) 72 boxes of equipment for the 15.5 TB Sun T3 disk farm have arrived.
A separate order of hubs,  and fiber channel switches and cards also
arrived.  The boxes have been moved to the mezzanine of the staging
building in preparation for installation.  A few more items need to
arrive before the installation can occur.

3) A Sun Blade 100 computer for administration of the disk farm arrived,
and was installed onto the ldas network.

Comparable Sun equipment has arrived at Caltech, LLO, and MIT, and is
awaiting installation by Sun at all 4 sites. It is anticipated that
installation order will be: LHO, CIT, LLO, and MIT starting April 18th
at LHO. The goal being to not have more than 1 LDAS system down at any
given time.

The 6000-slot tape library for the central LIGO data archive has
been successfully assembled to the point that the robot arm moves
and the LED's turn on. A more complete integration and acceptance
testing schedule is being developed with the vendor.

New model Sun computers come with USB only keyboard and mouse
connectors. A successful search for a cheap converter has been
completed (Belkin USB to PS/2 adapter) that has allowed these
computers (e.g., Blade100) to be connected to existing KVM switches.

An initial configuration of tripwire has been developed to monitor
LDAS computers against un-authorized modifications.

Other Data Analysis Activities

(Charlton) Worked on bringing the FCT code up to specification. Several
bug fixes were made to the code. Also worked on FCT documentation.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:
- Wrapped printer ports
- Interfaced with MIT networking for LDAS IP addresses
- Investigated tripwire ASE and AIDE GNU tools
- Installed AIDE (tripwire like) GNU tool on several machines
- Migrated some email users to secure APOP
- NFS server disk space issues

Livingston:
  See Livingston Report.

Hanford:
  See Hanford Report.

CIT:
(Sam)
- Worked on rebuilding a computer
- Worked on a laptop
- Trying to finish last term

(Lisa)
- Installed Sol 8 on fb40m, an ultra60 in the 40m.  The ultra60's have
  a bug when booting from an external cd drive. This and the work
  around are now documented in the FAQ. This box also had a problem
  attaching the driver for a non-Sun fiber ethernet card. Alex Ivanov
  recompiled for both a 32 and a 64 bit driver and it is now working.
  This testing was important because some of the servers at the sites
  can now upgrade to sol8.  Also, there is a new flash prom update for
  the ultra workstations that changes the timing on the network
  communications and quite a few other things.  Workstations with
  heavy network traffic should probably get flashed.
- Worked out the kinks with installing p-card under win2k.  This is
  also documented in the FAQ.
- I'm still having the odd few people who are having trouble with the
  new modem pool. Most of this has been problems in the client
  configurations.
- Got a demo version of Forte (new name for Sun Visual Workshop) 6 up
  and running. This is for the benefit of the 40m/CDS.
- Continued the installation of wireless access points. I also switched
  all of the access points to static IP's. We have three types:
  Addtron, SMC and Linksys. So far, I like the linksys best.  Addtron
  and SMC have web interfaces but the web interface doesn't always work
  well. The Linksys requires a serial connection, but the configuration
  is very straight forward.
- Had a meeting with the 40m to discuss what the present plan is for
  their network.  Dennis Ugolini has some security concerns that we
  have not been fully addressed.
- Put up a new DHCP server on the 114 subnet.  There has only been one
  problem with it so far -- the linux laptops need to have local hosts
  entries.
- Larry went out of town and for the first time the servers didn't pine
  for him. This was a relief.

(Barbara)
- Installed web form to search for reserved but unused document
  numbers. The url is
  http://antares.ligo.caltech.edu/dcc/logdefault.htf and a link
  is on the Internal Bulletin Board.  Remember to assign a discreet
  title if you are reserving a number for a confidential document.
- Installed revised web forms for reserving a document number. The
  author pull-down has been removed because it took so long to load
  and wasn't usable on unix boxes.
- Installed updated web forms for document search that meet standards.
- Continued to work on LDAS equipment web reports.
- Installed March newsletter.  Located and posted transparencies from
  February NSF review.
- I am working with Sam Finn to replicate the LDAS home page at PSU.
- The weekly DCC compact/repair job failed again this week.  I think
  it is because the .ldb file is not released after the web server is
  shut down and then the database can't be renamed and compacted. I am
  pondering yet another fix.
- Researched a problem with the PowerPoint templates on the internal
  bulletin board. You have to use IE to download them; they get
  clobbered if you use Netscape.
- Made updates to theses, publications, MOU, and LSC pages.  Posted
  the new travel authorization request form.
- Loaded secure-shell at home.

(Suresh)
- Disabled snmpXdmid processes to a list of Sun systems because of
  potential security vulnerabilities. Also, enabled sudo (superuser)
  privileges in some of the remaining machines.
- Did some printers maintenance in 6th floor Millikan.
- Resolved Larry Jones's printing problem.
- Worked with Omar to set up two new Sun Blade 100 systems.
- Doing some necessary preparation for transition to HEP.

(Larry)
- The highlight of the week other than taking some vacation time was
  helping Lisa with the SUN boxes in the 40M and fixing a few PC and
  network issues.
- Placed a number of SUN orders for both LDAS and the 40M.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

from Peter King:
 

40m & LASTI PSL
        The reference cavity vacuum chamber for the LASTI PSL and the
vibration isolation stack plates for the LASTI PSL and 40m Lab PSL have
been baked by Lee.  Said items have been packed in preparation for
shipping.
 

From Jay Heefner:
 

LASTI
==========================
- Cross connect wiring and cable harnesses for the suspension rack should be
shipped to MIT next week. Rus will travel to MIT the week of May 13 to install
the suspension racks and any other control or DAQ equipment that is ready by
then.
 
 

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