Weekly Report for Week Ending August 23, 2001

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  August 27, 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:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration

The following were discussed during the site teleconference on Thursday, August 23, 2001.

• The Financial Reports for the end of July show expenses in July totaled $2.3 million.  August will be larger because there are three pay periods.  The projected carry forward into FY 2002 remains at $3.5 million.  However, it was noted that the Detector Group has a lien against this carry forward of approximately $600K per the change request that was approved last summer, and this is not accounted for in the current budget model for FY 2002 or the projected carry forward.  It addition, funds will be required for seismic remediation in Livingston.
• It was also noted that $75K must be set aside in Advanced R&D for a laser for testing optics in high power beams.  This represents a hit against the Advanced R&D reserve.
• Joy Fans remain an issue in Livingston.  The grease won't stay in the bearings.
• The laser safety system is being installed in Livingston.
• LIGO continues to be dissatisfied with building construction progress in Lvingston.  More converstaions with Brunt are planned.
• Caltech Administration is on the verge of introducing a new PCard application that will automate the reconciliation of travel expenses and generate a trip report.  Bonnie and Jill will be invited to Caltech for training.

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

• The past two weeks have been consumed by the LSC.  Attending the LSC helped get participant's presentation turned in and processed in a timely way.  About 110 presentations were made at the LSC meetings.  As of today, one week following the meetings, 94 presentations are available and posted on the web with about 20 presentations yet to be turned in.  This represents approximately 82% completion.  Thanks to Cleveland and Barbara who were supportive and helped make this possible!
• Our financial records for January through April 1995 have been converted to electronic files and will soon be archived on CD.  Completion of this full project will eliminate about 22 storage boxes of paper.
• NOTE:  I will have surgery next week and be out on disability for about a month.  I'll be checking in with Cleveland periodically as well as keeping up with email during this period.

ACTIVITY

• main focus was on processing/organizing LSC documents
• electronic submittals of non-LSC documents continue at a fairly steady pace

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>

• Completed change order #5 to George Grant.  Working on change order #3 to High Precision Devices.
• Set up the new PO for Triad, which is 1037509 (replaces PO 1020814 and includes the monies from PO 1020814 and funds for C/O's 77 through 90).
• Attended the audit exit meeting along with Ed Jasnow and Norman Gordon held with Ms. Virginia Brown of Washington State, Tax Revenue, on the audit of

LHO.
• Transferred funds from construction accounts to operations accounts as requested.

• Met with Donna regarding Visitors Program. Updated report for new visitors.  Identified another misclassification of stipend as salary and referred it to Donna so she could request a correction.
• Submitted various cost transfers - the main one was to move the Crystal systems costs from Operations to R&D, various others required because costs were classified to the roll up task instead of to the correct sub-task, others due to misclassifcations of expenditures.
• Completed and posted Operations report for July.
• Prepared chart showing available balances after encumbrances for the remaining Construction Activities - Data, Detector, Livingston Building, Hanford Building and contingency.

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

• HPD: NSF approved the full-up Advanced LIGO SEI pre-prototype award. CO No. 03 was released to Purchasing.
• Heraeus: CO No. 05, substituting the order for Suprasil 300 26mm x 1000mm rods with Suprasil 300 26mm x 1400mm rods was released to Purchasing.
• LIGO VME ADC RFP: The solicitation was released to a number of qualified sources. The due date for proposals is September 14th.

• The new travel implementation package for the P-card will be available for the pilot participants in the last two weeks of September.  Training sessions for this implementation will be scheduled in the period before that time.  Notifications of the training schedule will be sent to the participants.

SUPPORT (Wood)

• Processed the paper work for seven (7) new trips (including Advance Checks written and hotel/car rental authorizations filled out and FAXed to appropriate vendors in various locations).  I have eight (8) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done.  Worked on several trips that were changed or modified and assisted several more travelers with questions regarding their existing or potential travel.
• Jim Covington returned thirteen (13) expense reports this week and has four (4) he is working on.  I worked on three (3) that were particularly difficult and clarified a few more that Travel Audit or the traveler were having trouble with.  I completed thirty-nine (39) reports and there are thirty-eight (38) reports to be done.  I'm holding three (3) reports that need a check and one (1) that needs a Passport/Visa from the traveler before submitting.
• Reconciled thirty-two (32) items on my P-Card which required telephone calls to vendors who do not enter the traveler's name on their charges.  Assisted a few travelers with their reconciling and/or data entry.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for August 20, 2001.  Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement.  Also performed miscellaneous duties as requested by various members of  the LIGO Project here at Caltech as well as from members of the staffs of each of the two (2) sites.  I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.

• Placed more Pcard orders this week, had to complete a credit form for one of them.  Finally placed the LDAS order after a quote discrepancy got straightened out.  Continue to check status on long-lead items.
• Assembled copies for the 8/17 design review, filed the presentation material in a binder.  Did site trip updates.  Did minor adjustments to the AT&T standing reservation for Adv Sys Requirements Review meeting; next one on 8/24.
• Spent some time comparing the current roster to Caltech's directory.  Starting P53 forms for LIGO people not listed in the directory, made a big dent in this project on Wednesday.

• Processed the usual 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.
• Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of August 13.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify  task managers when supplements are needed.
• Worked with Ruth by either "receiving" or "returning" on POs to be closed or on POs in which funds were being transferred  to a new line.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database and supports Irene (travel) in the mornings and Linda and Cleveland (DCC) in the afternoons.

• Things are in a state of flux over in the Immigration Office due to the departure of one employee and a huge backlog of pending H visas awaiting processing.  However, if the sponsor is willing to pay an extra $1000 for “premium processing,” H visas can be obtained in less than half the time they were a year ago.  We’re talking weeks here, not months.  In addition, in the coming months, J visas will be good for 5 years, rather than the current limit of 3 years.  There is also the possibility that the “12 month bar,” the requirement that a J visa holder cannot re-enter the U.S. for 12 months on a new J visa, will be lifted.  Details to come.
• After calling Physical Plant for nearly a week, including calling a supervisor, the air conditioning in Wilson House is finally working again.  Note to everybody:  If you see maintenance people working on some device that hasn’t been working, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to them about what they are doing, what restrictions, if any, there may be (like starting up the machine when you really shouldn’t), and an estimated time of completion.
• The ongoing air conditioner leak in 058 WB, the optics lab, seems to have been repaired after innumerable phone calls to the service office.  It took three air conditioner repairmen and a plumber to fix the problem.  The floor and ceiling panels are still drying out, but the leak has been repaired.
• Made arrangements with Ed Chargois and Phil Lindquist to get some very large posters made for a display at the OSA meeting in Long Beach in October.  LIGO is going to have its own session and we have been invited to have our own display.
• With Albert’s instruction, I have set up the ExComm telecon for September 10 and 17 using ESnet.  Those involved with the telecon have been notified by email and will be notified again before the telecon.  We’ll see how this new arrangement works out;  it could become permanent.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 08.17 to 08.23

Accomplishments:

Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting held Monday, August 20th at 1pm at Large SCR.  Focus of the meeting was the AOS Second MRE Cost and Schedule Review.

Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)

• Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.
• Continue to pursue all other sub system schedules.
• Updated web site with latest data.
• The following is a summary of status by sub system:

• COC - Work on action items per second review continues.
• PSL - Work on action items per second review continues.  Next step is for Peter King to complete BOE and for management to scrub / determine funding sources.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• AOS - Second review was held on August 20th at 1pm at LSCR.  Issued revised meeting minutes with new action items.  Work on action items has started.
• IO - Finished meeting arrangements with Rita for remote conference call.  Finished  work on cost sheet and cost item changes.  Issued reports to reviewers.  Second Review is scheduled for Friday August 24th at 9:35am at SSCR.
• SUS - Continuation of second review is scheduled for Friday September 7th at 9am.  Work on action items per second review continues.
• SEI - Efforts continue on action items.  Corresponded with Marcel Hammond several times this week answering questions for him.  Next review date has yet to be scheduled.
• All other subsystems have yet to be scheduled for their first review.  These dates are pending per direction from Gary Sanders and Dennis Coyne.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 08.17.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 08.31.01.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 08.17.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 08.31.01.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 08.17.01 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 08.31.01.

• Continue to work with BK executing current action items.
• Continue to run tests on reports using other sub-system data.
• Mapping and formatting of OPS cost data for input on hold pending additional changes to budget data per NSF re-submit.

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 scheduled for Friday, August 24th at 9:30am at Small SCR.  Focus of the meeting will be the IO Second MRE Cost and Schedule Review.

Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority Task)

• Highest priority is the development of the Cost Estimate.
• Will continue to pursue all other sub system schedules.
• PSL - Continue to input data per comments from Dennis Coyne in preparation for next meeting TBD.
• AOS - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• IO - Issue revised meeting minutes and begin executing new action items.
• SUS - Continue inputting changes to SUS and prepare for next meeting scheduled for September 7th.
• SEI - Continue inputting changes and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• COC - Work in action items by Garilynn continues.  Anticipate schedule changes prior to next meeting TBD.
• Will import cost data and complete schedule integration.

• Will update the plan with progress as of 08.31.01 and  post to site by the 5th.

• Will update the plan with progress as of 08.31.01 and  post to site by the 5th.

• Will update the plan with progress as of 08.31.01 and  post to site by the 5th.

• Will continue ops cost data input.
• Will continue to work with BK importing data and executing action items.

Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.

WBS 1.4.1.2   Project Controls (LIGO Construction)

Currently revising the FY 2002 budget to reflect information provided.  Final version pending receipt of MIT proposal numbers.

The following Change Requests have been submitted.
 

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

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

• Completed first draft of the July 2001 CSSR.  I'm continuing to evaluate the earned value reported by the schedules provided from task managers.  Reconciled the actual costs and commitments reported by CIT finance and LIGO.
• Continued with construction contract/work package close out.

• I received the MIT invoice and the TWONK for the month of July, 2001.  I am waiting for some money to be moved so I can submit the data for payment.
• I attended a class on the WEB application for ASI and found it to be very informative.
• Florence Kaufman and I have decided to put all the reports into one place (for your convenience)...so they can be found at:

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

• 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).

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

• The Invitation for Bid for the Hanford OSB East Building will be released on schedule on Friday, August 24.  The job walk will be held on Wednesday, September 12, and the bid opening will be held on Wednesday, September 26.  At a teleconference held with Barry Barish, Otto Matherny, and Ed Jasnow on Tuesday, August 21, it was agreed to remove the parking lot paving from the specifications to lower the estimated cost.  Additionally, it has been agreed that five (5) copies of the IFB will be sent in advance to the NSF to try to secure an early approval.  Otto Matherny and Ed Jasnow plan to travel to the NSF around the first week in October to present the final contract..

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

After many delays due to missing or incorrect hardware and electrician scheduling, the "overhead mount" projector installations are essentially completed in three LIGO conference rooms. The projectors are now functional, but some "fine tuning" remains to be completed (cabling lengths and connector types).

A draft agenda for the September 19 Hanford Safety Audit was submitted to LHO for comments and proposed revisions.

Arrangements were made with Pasadena Occupational Health Center (POHC) to perform LIGO laser baseline and exit eye exams.  Seems that POHC has a "blanket" contract with Caltech to provide health support services as requested and has done some exams for LIGO in the past (?), but has always just billed to one Caltech "account" (mainly the Safety Office?).  The LIGO exam paperwork will be "labeled" with LIGO and the Task number so the billing can be directed to LIGO for payment.
 

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

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

Following E5 run and LSC meeting, we are getting back to business of commissioning.
A problem revealed by the E5 run was that the temperature control/readout system
for the PSL reference cavity was not adequate for supporting tidal feedforward
compensation, so Rick, Hugh and Paul Schwinberg are making changes (below) that will
hopefully lead to mK precision. (For WA2K, 1 mK at the reference cavity is
equivalent to 1 micron mirror displacements in the arms.) Corey, Josh, Richard and
others are charging ahead on WA4K. Rolf, Dave and Richard are fixing up numerous items
in controls. Nergis Peter and Daniel have been pushing the Common-Mode servo
installation. Dennis is working with numerous people to bring the WA4K beams down the
arms for the first time and to quickly shut the gate valves again.
 

LSC/PSL TIDAL
-----------------------------
(Radkins, Savage, Schwinberg)
 

  We received a new version of the PSL Temperature Box which we
installed in the LHO 4k on Friday.  It increased the gains of the RCTEMP
and RMTEMP channel by a factor of thirty and revealed a steady
oscillation of about a degree with a period of about 10 minutes on the
reference cavity can.  On Monday we found the MINCO PID controller in an
underflow condition and the temperature of the cavity at about 65
degrees C.  We replaced the new box with the old and confirmed the 65
degree estimate.  Examining the board revealed the source of the
problem: 1 missing resistor which allowed one component at a summing
junction to float up and an incorrect resistor which increased the
contribution of the float up.  As the sum floated up it drove the summed
current down and the MINCO up increasing the temp.  Eventually the MINCO
was getting no current (<6counts worth) and heat was full on.  Looks
like 65ish degrees C is max the reference cavity can achieve with the
current insulation.  The 2k should go higher with its greater
insulation.
  With the correct components installed we were under nice control
revealing our bit level was down to 0.0009 degrees C per bit from nearly
a tenth degree C/bit.  Now we see a steady oscillation of about 10
mdegrees peak with a period of 5 to ten minutes; this envelope also
drifts up and down with about the same magnitude and 2 to 3 times the
period.  This is equivalent to 10s of microns drift in the arms but at
the period of the tides it may be only a minor problem.  These estimates
are rough because we haven't had trend data and have been monitoring
with StripTool.  This could be from the PID itself or the limited
resolution on the in-loop sensors.  We have again put the old box back
in the loop and have made changes to the new box to the in-loop
temperature sensors to achieve similar gains in the control.  We will
undoubtedly need to retune the PID after that modification.
 

4k IOO/ISC Work
------------------------------
(C.Gray, R. McCarthy, J. Meyers....)
 

It was discovered that the Lower (LR&LL) Coil Drivers on MMT2 were bad.
After getting these guys fixed, a little bit of tweaking was required to
regain alignment.  Currently, the Mode Cleaner is attaining lock fast and
easily; we also have everything aligned to get spots out of the IFO REFL
and AS PORT viewports.
 

ISCT1 & ISCT4 were positioned and leveled to receive the beams mentioned
above.  I have also begun stringing cable onto the tables for the
electrical equipment (ie. detectors, shutters, etc.) .  Presently, we are
using the cameras on the table to help out w/ 4k IFO alignment (so far so
good!).
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

Today - August 16, the X and Y arm gate valves were opened for the first time since the last vent period and the laser beam was directed down the arms. In each arm, the incident beam was nearly on the end test mass and was easily steered into alignment. This was the culmination of a superb installation and alignment effort associated with the OSEM replacement. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this effort.

Detector: Optics and Installation: Most of the cabling for the Laser Safety Interlock system has been pulled under the vacuum equipment in the LVEA, and the perimeter cabling in the VEAs is underway. Two vents have been installed in the roof of the PSL enclosure and the powered ventilators are now shut down. This allows convective cooling of the enclosure, and disabling the fan motors has measurably reduced the acoustic pickup we see on the table. Jonathan Kern

CDS: Replaced the Pentek on the ASC Crate last week. Modified the ASC WFS and the ISCT EO Shutter MEDM Screens and databases to be consistent with Hanford. Checked on the disk to disk backup of CDS disks and had to change backup script to accomodate increase in memory occupied by files. Created a writeup for the backup status at LLO. This is now publically available at: http://london.ligo-la.caltech.edu/cronjobs/backupwriteup.html

The current disk to disk backup status can be accessed on the web at: http://london.ligo-la.caltech.edu/cronjobs

Created a checklist to be included in the operator checklist for the above backups. Processing order for procurement of Frame Builder spare disks. Checked adminstration messages on CDS workstations to identify any erratic behavior of the work stations. Installing gv (an addition to ghostscript) on CDS machines. Planning to provide web interface for the Ligo Livingston medm screens.(Chethan Parameswariah)

PEM: Did some troubleshooting of the microphone power supplies in preparation for installing microphones in the LVEA next week. Began working on the template for the magnetometer reference web page. Found and corrected the configuration problem with the accelerometers. So all of LLO's accelerometers are operational as of 8/17/01. Found the cause of the noise that was aliased into our 256 Hz channels in rack 1X5, please see ilog entry on 8/17/01 for details. Doug Lormand
 

GC: We have upgraded our mail server to a faster machine. We have had some network difficulties, which have been
traced to a problem with the Bell South T1 line, and which have been repaired. We are expecting to have our second T1 line working tomorrow, and we hope that, in addition to the increased bandwidth, a second line will also give us improved
reliability. (Tom Evans)

LDAS: Controlmon and linuxbox1 were updated to RH 7.1 using the new scripts. They are both running OpenSSH now. Beowulf and Datacon were changed to OpenSSH also. Gregg's temperature monitoring script alarmed yesterday when the AC was cut off to the mass storage room for maintenance. The AC was cut off for approximately 30 minutes. Continuing work on Big Brother and the APC software. (Shannon Roddy)

Control room issues: All operators have been busy with commissioning tasks this reporting period. I've been working with the RGA software (from the control room) for most of the week. Met with James Finney (LSU) concerning the weather
stations. Work now in progress include changing the dual 10 watt solar panels with a single 30 watt regulated panel on all 3 towers, replacing the small internal battery with an external gel-cell battery (all 3 towers), and general tuning-up/cleaning-up of the towers. All efforts are aimed at making our weather stations more robust with high reliability. Rich Riesen

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

WFS with the full interferometer. WFS 1 (antisymmetric port) has been used for some time to control the differential alignment of the ETMs. After setting up WFS 2 on the PRM, we tried it on the full interferometer. The differential ITM control seems to work well, but the common mode feedback pulls it away from the right point. Probably need to get the rest of the sensors (WFS 3 & 4) working as well.

Mode cleaner servo. Fixed several problems in the mode cleaner servo electronics having to do with slew-rate limiting distortion, and accompanying broadband noise generation, in several of the op-amps on the board. Also fixed an offset problem in the mc length path, and a gain peaking in the psl path. The mode cleaner now appears to work well, at least according to in-the-loop measurements: the unity gain frequency is ~100 kHz; the error point noise goes down with increasing loop gain. We were able to open up the EO shutter so that when the mc is locked, the shutter transmission is 100%, as intended.

Noise investigations. Studies of the full interferometer noise showed that the differential mode noise was coherent with the common mode noise over a few hundred Hz region around ~300 Hz; in this region there is a broad peak in the spectra of both channels, caused by gain peaking in one or both loops. We were able to reduce the differential mode noise in this region by about a factor of 2 by tuning the balancing of the ETMX-ETMY common mode drive.

Around 100 Hz, where there is little coherence between the common and differential modes, the differential mode noise appears to be close to the noise level of the Pentek DACs, which provide the ETM control signals.

Interferometer common mode servo. Given the coherence between the common and differential modes, we have begun to implement the common mode servo, with feedback to the laser frequency. This will greatly reduce feedback to the ETMs in the frequency of interest, and hopefully gain additional frequency stability as well. Transfer functions of each of the three paths in this servo have been measured using a single arm cavity. The implementation of the servo on an arm cavity has had mixed results: the MC additive offset path is seen to be effective, but we haven't yet achieved stability when also using the MC length path.

1.2LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

4 km Commissioning

• Diagnosed and fixed problems with both ETM suspension controllers.  Perhaps the most interesting problem was apparently one of the OSEMs being wired backward so that it pushed when it should have pulled.
• Diagonalized position drive on all LOS controllers in preparation for locking the interferometer

• Installed EO shutter on ISCT1 and got it operating properly.
• The EO shutter controller for ISCT4 had some problems.  The spare controller was installed and appears to be working normally.  Final alignment of the EO crystal is still pending..

• The beam tubes were opened and the initial pointing of the optics on both arms was extremely good.  Very minor alignment biases brought the interferometer into alignment.
• The X arm was locked and the transmission monitor aligned, ETMX spool camera aligned, etc.
• We had more trouble with the Yarm.  We only got one significant locked period, and could not find the transmitted beam through the ETMY.

LIGO-TriNet stations:

2.0 OtherEngineering and Scientific Activities

2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

Optics Lab

Testing and manufacturing of silicate bonds is "on hold" until the work is finished.

Core Optics

Optical modeling

Here is my idea. I suggest that an investigation of optical stability of a resonator having one mirror of flat top kind is a good start. The other mirror will be truly flat so that the corresponding cavity is the equivalent of half a full resonator. There are indeed several advantages that I am listing if such a cavity will give the answers we would like.

For the whole interferometer:

•  Fewer problems in coupling;
•  Fewer problems in evaluating carefully the wavefront propagated outward the  Fabry-Perot toward the beamplitter;
•  As a consequence fewer problems in designing the recycling mirrors since it will be much easier;
•  The flat top beam is such flat that its shape will not be much different on the two end mirrors;
•  As a consequence all the thermal noises should be the same although this is to be checked carefully;
•  Fewer problems in matching the phase of the incoming beam with the phase of the flat top beam;
•  Fewer problems in degeneracy.

What about the bump?

Investigations are going on to check on the impact of removing the bump in the middle of the mirror.

Since the flat top beam has been constructed as a superposition, the associated phase profile is a sort of superposition too, and watched from a side there are two spherical surfaces overlapped.

The convexity has a physical meaning and there are many ways to interpret that.

I dare say that the photons hitting the central area and the anular region are in interaction. This interference guarantees the flatness of the power and that can be easily corrupted.

The bump is around lambda/10 and a mismatch of this order of magnitude is very important. What is the impact of this change in amplitude over the termoelastic noise must be evaluated.

IOO PERISCOPE

We recommend that we stop testing of the prototype periscope at CIT and ship it to LLO for an actual frequency noise test mounted to their PSL table, before we produce any more periscopes. In the meantime, we can evaluate the Ultima mount resonance without needing the periscope.

PSL

The pre-modecleaner servo down in the PSL Lab is also being checked out, prior to some modifications that will hopefully allow the bandwidth to be increased.  Now that the high voltage power supplies have been returned from the 40m Lab, we are now able to run the pre-modecleaner.

Rick Karwoski
PSL Custom Boards:  Site Spares

We will be delivering the following spare modules to LHO this week:

80 MHz VCO
FS Servo
FS Reference (21.5 MHz)
PMC Servo
PMC Reference (35.5 MHz)
Two RF photo detectors to follow mid next week.

Sander Liu
Repaired and retested the PMC servo card. The unit is ready for delivery.  Designed a 31.5KHz notch filter for use in the future.

LSC

• Flavio has discovered two issues with the timing system boards and is preparing for a revised board to be released next week.  This will require all of the timing board currently used at LIGO to be replaced.
•  Working with data from the site to keep up with developments in the MC servo.  It is our hope to have a current design in CAD that tracks the latest developments at the sites.  When it seems as though the rate of changes are minimal, we can order a redesigned board quickly.  Mohana is keeping this effort alive and producing spares of the current design.
• Initiated the production of spares according to information received from the sites.

CDS/DAQ/ASC/LSC/Digital Suspensions

2) Finished building 4kASC VME crate and loaded new code (compatible with digital suspensions) and ran some preliminary tests.

3) Upgraded digital suspension (DSC) code to version which supports GDS TP/EX in both LVEA  and end stations.

4) Split digital suspension supervisor to two MIPS processors, as one was overloaded.

5) Connected all of the above together and began integrated testing.

• ASC front end now passing end station DSC data to DAQ.
• Began check out of test points.  LVEA test points operate properly, except LOS coil outputs.  Have not gotten to end stations as yet.  Since they are opening 4k today, probably will not complete these tests this week.
• Verified LSC/ASC control signals to the DSC.

6) Replaced 2K LSC CPU with 1GHz Pentium; bus analyzer is installed to verify timing during noise studies.

7) Went back to standard Clock Driver Modules in 2k LVEA data acquisition crates.

DMT

Diagnostics

Added the capability to read the names of data sets and their description (consisting of time intervals and channel lists) to the lidax program. This allows to query and download frame data from the archive. This feature is built on top of the data flow manager and lars.
 

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• 40m Technical Advisory Committee meeting: AJW presented the status of the 40m upgrade to the 40m TAC (chair: Ken Strain), on August 15, 2001. We plan to have a conceptual design review on October 18, 2001, 8:30AM.
• ISC: Jay Heefner warned us that WFS segmented photodiodes would not operate acceptably with 180 MHz demodulation. Ken Strain suggested "geometrically splitting" the beam and sending the split beams to separate photodiodes. We will explore this. Has anyone done anything like this before?
• PSL (Abbott, Ugolini, Vass, Smith, DeMichele, Piatenko):
• Following Rick Savage's suggestion, our PSL has been operating continuously, in-lock, for the past week. The beam was blocked for a few hours while the cleaning lady was in the lab; she had complained about not feeling comfortable working around the lab when the laser is on. After she left, the beam was un-blocked, and the servo locks were promptly restored.
• A pair of quad PD's was designed and calibrated by Mike Smith, and set up by Ben Abbott and Dennis Ugolini, to monitor the output beam position and angle.
• SURF Andrea DeMichele has used fast PSL data logged by the DAQS, along with preliminary calibrations, to evaluate the in-loop frequency servo noise, the in-loop PMC servo noise, the beam position and angle jitter, and long-term (61 hours of unattended weekend running) drift of all those signals. He presented these results at SURF Seminar Day (Tuesday).
• SURF Tim Piatenko has made some final measurements of the beam profile at various places on the PSL table, for inclusion in his SURF final report. He used a BeamScan borrowed from the optics lab - thanks, Jordan!
• Tim and Mike Smith have a set of new mode-matching lens values and positions aimed at improving the mode matching of all beams on the PSL table. He hope to implement these mods in the coming weeks.
• AJW talked with Rick Savage at LHO last week. He suggested that we have, on hand, a variety of useful optical components for diagnosing the beam, including a BeamView ccd camera system. AJW studied the H2K PSL layout, and is considering re-doing the 40m PSL layout to approximately match it.
• Vacuum Envelope (Vass, Ugolini): Steve installed a new SRS RGA in parallel with our old Dycor, and is in the process of intercalibrating them. The support ring for the o-ring for the output optic chamber door is now in hand. Larry is drawing up the in-vacuum cable runs.
• Optical Layout (Mike Smith): As mentioned above, Mike calibrated the two QPDs on the PSL table for position and angle measurements.
• Suspension Controllers (B. Abbott, Jay Heefner): Ben has completed a first draft of the rack layouts for the 10 suspension controllers needed for the 40m. We went over these, and a new draft is in progress, including detailed wiring diagrams, parts list, etc. Jay ordered 10 VME crates, for the suspension controllers, LSC, and ASC systems (5 with split backplane, 5 with one backplane).
• PEM (Ugolini, Tsai): The weather station and two GPS antennae were installed on the roof. Everything reads out fine except for the outside humidity; this is under investigation. SURF Victor Tsai presented some results from looking at environmental data (accelerometers, weather, etc) at SURF seminar day. Dennis plans to "reverse engineer" the STACIS communications in order to figure out how to communicate with STACIS via our VME processor (the manufacturer supplies a Labview program to do the job, but no longer supports it).
• Computing (Ugolini, Bogue, Bork): We await network and reflective memory cards for our Frame Broadcaster. We need to re-build all 3 Sun Blade 100's (2 are currently used on general computing by students), for online use in our martian network (disk server for all VxWorks, EPICS, etc code; DMT monitor machine, and operator console).
• Facilities (Vass, Jones): We will purchase one last (5'x12') optical table, and support feet for 3 more tables. The supports will either be purchased from the manufacturer, or custom designed by Larry. We will also purchase a projector and mount it in the control room. Also a digital camera.
• SURF: All six students made final presentations at SURF Seminar Day (Tuesday), and by all accounts, did a great job. Most of them finish up by the end of this week, and will have impressive and useful final papers (advertised here and on the 40m web site when available). We thank them immensely for their contributions, and wish them well!

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

This week we concentrated on recovering the sensitivity that was lost last
week when we installed new mode cleaner servo electronics to boost the
servo gain.  We had little difficulty in recovering our former 3e-17m/rHz
level after we identified a cross coupling between the north and south arm
cavities.   We are currently eliminating this coupling by de-tuning the
south cavity so that it does not resonate with the north cavity locked.
This is obviously a temporary solution, but it has allowed us to identify
one prominent noise source and to start thinking about strategies for
reducing it.
 

Further shaping of the feedback filters has produced an improvement of
about a factor of 2 in displacement sensitivity at 3kHz.  Our sensitivity
is now 1.7e-17m/rHz at that frequency, compared with a little over
3e-17m/rHz before.  Sensitivity at 1kHz is also improved, albeit not quite
as much.  We are now measuring the individual noise contributions from
various sources, mostly electronic, to try and find out which one is dominant.
 

We also have good news on the sapphire front, in that Crystal Systems
reports the successful production of our fourth and final boule.  This
transmissive optic meets our original, rather stringent specs including a
hemex core.  The sapphire blanks are now having their o.d.'s and bevels
ground and polished at Insaco.

Seiji Kawamura has returned to Tokyo.  Many thanks to him for all his help
and patient teaching!
 

LASTI (Zucker)

no report

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
This week:

Weekly Physics Meeting
----------------------
Hiro summarized the pros and cons of the computation of power spectral density
by E2E's 'psd_out' module and proper way of using the module.
Bill Butler presented his progress in generating noise curves from the darkport
outputs of E2E's Han2k model. A long discussion followed on how to include BSC/HAM
model inside the Han2k model and pass seismic noise (with correlations among
various stations properly taken into account) through it and the suspension system,
how to include realistic angular fluctuations, etc.

Sensitivity curve and psd
-------------------------
Hiro worked with Bill Butler during the LSC meeting last week. Bill could
simulate to calculate a proper sensitivity curve based on the existing
Han2k model plus the thermal noise module developed by Biplab. Bill is
improving the noise model.
After Hiro came back to Caltech, he did some modification to improve the
performance of psd, and updated the e2e primitive module document to
describe the psd module, and caviats when using the psd module.

Photo detector simulation
-------------------------
(Hiro) Responses of finite non-uniform photo detectors is calculated by an
application "detmap", and the data file created by it is used by the
simulation program during simulation runs. The intergration method used
was not appropriate, and it introduced a large error for a detector with
a large radius. It is fixed.
(Biplab) ran several cases for PSL's FSS model using RFPD to estimate the
frequency noise levels.

Alfi
----
(Bruce)
- Continuing implementation of Alfi box and primitive file parser for Alfi5.
  Completing initial implementation of main ALFINode code for bookkeeping.
- Discussing with other Alfi5 programmer a schedule of code completion of
  Alfi5 system.

(Melody)
- Continued on setting up the unit testing framework for the project.
  Looking into using JUnit and the java.awt.Robot classes.
- Figuring out how to extend the JGo classes.
 

Last Week (LSC Week):
 

Mode Mismatch
-------------
(Biplab)
 (i) Checked that the effects of mode-mismatch simulated in full LIGO model
     including recycling summation cavity match well with analytical derivation.
 (ii) MIT's FFT: With help from Bill Kells sorted out several issues about FFT runs.
     Started running FFT code and comparing results with full LIGO e2e runs.
     Results of comparison at this initial stage are encouraging but I see need
     of more detailed understanding of how FFT code runs corresponding to a
     same-parameter run in e2e or vice versa in order to sort out differences.
 

CVS Archive
------------
(Ed Maros) Moved the CVS archive for the e2e work onto ldas-sw.
    Gave presentation on how to use the CVS archive in its new location.
 

Alfi
----
(Bruce) Continuing implementation of Alfi box and primitive file parser for Alfi5.
 

(Melody)
- Discussed Java coding conventions with Bruce. Currently modifying the
  existing code to comply with the conventions.
- Reorganizing the Java code packages. The code should be checked back in by
  COB Thursday.
 

Mechanical simulation work (from July upto last week)
-----------------------------------------------------
(Virginio) This is my report with just the main activities about the mechanical
 simulation. I apologize for including in a single weekly report the activity
 of the entire month of July (almost).
 

 - Three-dimensional LIGO I Suspension simulation is ready to be plugged into
 e2e. The simulation includes a realistic topology of the actuators and sensors
 also. Geometrical suspension asymmetries can be easily introduced. The cross
 check with an experimental spectrum using a set of OSEMs suspension has been
 successfully done with an agreement of about 2%. To obtain a better
 characterization of the suspension local controls, a set of new measurements
 needs to be done.
 

 - A simple way to introduce the Hytec models of the BSC stack is under study.
 At first look it seems necessary to introduce some new functionalities to MSE
 to allow the possibility to merge two separate state space representations.
 

 - Some tests have been done to introduce the suspension violin modes also.
 

Boston week:  (Assembly/Installation)
 

 Worked mainly with Calum Torrie, Norna Robertson and Rich Mittleman to assemble
 the second quadruple pendulum chain. Thanks the work I made during the weekend
 I was able to run some measurements to characterize one chain of the suspension.
 I worked essentially on the reacting chain because we didn't have any OSEM really
 aligned yet.
 

 - Mounted three LVDTs which allowed to measure the longitudinal transfer
 functions from the "new" mass to the "upper" mass and to the "middle" mass,
 using the upper most stage as mechanical compliance. The sensor parts were
 attached to the suspension masses by using a pretty good double sided scotch tape.
 

 - Mounted also another coil actuator (an old and bigger OSEM) between the two
 upper masses acting against the reacting chain but I was not able to make it
 work using the control box inputs (pin out incompatibilities).
 

Measurements:
 

 I took several sensors spectral densities hoping to be able to make some
 frequency mode characterization. I did not have time to do a more accurate
 system identification.
 

 I measure the t.f. which seems to be reasonably good.
 Those measurements are affected by a large cross coupling with all the DOF
 because the chain was not properly aligned yet and because of the
 orientation of the sensors and the actuators. The actuation was done using
 the control box longitudinal input.
 

Observations:
 

 The LVDTs seem to work fine and particularly good for t.f. measurement
 (good sensitivity and large dynamic range)
 

 It is clear that it is not easy to measure the t.f. using the OSEMs
 because of the small dynamic range of the sensor and because of the small
 clearance between the magnets and the coils. All the coils need to be
 quite well aligned to be able to shake enough the mass. This alignment
 doesn't seem to be critical for the damping of the suspension.
 

 I didn't have time to measure any t.f useful for the study of the performance
 of the active damping. The LVDT can probably be used to verify the efficiency
 of the damping for the lower stages.
 

 The most important result is that the results obtained show the possibility
 to measure the transfer function of the entire chain (4 stages) using the
 LVDTs as sensors.
 

Last week
 

 Worked with Giancarlo Cella to fix some library bugs. The following ones
 seem to be solved:
 

 - The phase lag going through the mechanical resonances is now properly
 computed when a viscous damping is plugged into the simulation.
 

 - The simulation bug on the violin modes of a wire under tension (without
 the flexural contribution) seems to be solved. The Library now works
 properly to compute the right frequency spectrum of a simple suspension made
 of a wire and a bob. This approximation works reasonably well (applicable)
 when the wire tension is high compared the flexural restoring force.
 Comparison with a real experimental data gives a good result less than 10%
 of discrepancy in the frequency spectrum. Next step which is under progress
 also is to check the violin mode simulation inside a more complex system.
 

 - Wrote a simple program to check the class which implements the flat Blade
 (a la Virgo) to finally have the description of all the main internal modes
 of the advance LIGO suspension.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
This week:
 

LDAS is readying itself for the next MDC to take place at
MIT the week after Labor Day Weekend. This MDC will exercise
LDAS, two stochastic background search codes, an excess power
search code, the so called TF Cluster search code, and the
so called slope detection search code. Participation will
include CIT, MIT, UWM, PSU, LSU, UTB and Loyola - a really
big turn out.
 

Getting the dataConditionAPI ready for this MDC has proven
rather difficult. A new library was added to LDAS, the "MIME"
type library to support the inserted BLOB data objects into
the database by the search codes preparing for the next MDC.
This library has introduced a very difficult and rare in-
stability into the API which is proving hard to track down.
In addition, this large a group of search classes have place
a lot of new functional demands on the dataConditionAPI which
are rapidly being added in the true spirit of "just-in-time"
interpretation.
 

Several of the new search codes, including the stochastic
codes being developed for this MDC have requested the ability
to produce output data products in the form of frames. In
keeping with the frame specification, the eventMonitorAPI is
formulating ILWD data object which are a representation of
the FrProc (processed data structure). However, it was soon
discovered that the frameAPI did not have a true implementation
to support the frame specification. And these previously
unused data structures were all being treated as FrADC data
structures in several unfortunate ways. The frameCPP and the
frameAPI.so are being re-worked to correctly handle FrProc
data structures, though it is not yet clear if this will be
available in time for the MDC.
 

The frameAPI.tcl code has been enhanced to support a broader
level of frame query. It is now possible to read in data
from both LLO and LHO at the uniquely over user specified
GPS times. This will support the needs of the MDC.
 

A code freeze of LDAS will go into effect either Thursday
night or Friday depending on the staff's ability to stabilize
the dataConditionAPI. Expectations are to have the next
release of LDAS (0.0.20) by next Thursday. We are working
very closely with the LSC this week to coordinate changes
in the wrapperAPI, LAL, and LALwrapper so that a single
coherent release of all of these packages will be made
available at the same time.
 

The effort to migrate to GCC 3.0.1 has stalled. There is
little chance this will happen before the fall of this
year and may have to be delay until winter due to several
short-comings of the GCC 3.0.1 compiler (lack of support
for long long and still unable to handle C++ exceptions
properly).
 

Last Week (LSC Week):
 

In expectation of a new release of GCC, version 3.0.1, due out this
week, LDAS was once again built against the buggy but more standardized
GCC 3.0. There were several source code changes required as part of this
migration test which have now been made. The biggest surprise was the
discovery of a bug in the I/O handlers for unsigned integers in the new
GCC compiler.
 

A new patched version of LDAS 0.0.19 compatible with the openSSH shell
was placed on the development server and rsync'ed to the sites. This
was necessary to continue to have a running version of LDAS at Hanford
which is now using the new openSSH.
 

LDAS was enhanced this week to more fully support translation of out-
put results into frames. Several test were made using various LDAS
API data products as sources for frame data.
 

The frameAPI was also upgraded to support more complex frame data
queries of the form suggested by Sam Finn. These will be needed for
the next MDC. One of the test completed involved taking the multiDim-
Data from search codes running inside the wrapperAPI and casting these
to frames.
 

There were a few software issues that came up this week involving inter-
API deadlocks. Code changes have been made to the genericAPI and have
been tested and shown to resolve the earlier problems.
 

a new patch file was created for using the latest release of LAM's
message passing interface library. LDAS will officially migrate to
this version of LAM with the next release of GCC.
 

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
This week:

LDAS Administration
-------------------

Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)

I did the usual HPSS stuff (unjamming tapes, restarting servers,
repacking tapes, adding users, etc.).  Mostly repacking tapes, since
we're once again using them up at a furious pace.  In the case of the
Redwood tapes, this is directly LIGO related as the E5 data is being
ingested.

I set up the links for the E5 trend data.

I did some cursory testing of the T3s with QFS using separate T3s for
metadata/data and trying out the shared mode.  This showed a slight
improvement in performance over using the internal Sun disks for
metadata (as one might expect), averaging ~80Mb/sec for reads.  And the
shared mode seems to work fine--in general the reader can read faster
than the writer can write.

But since it's not likely that we'll use that configuration (since it
would involve dedicating a whole T3 to metadata), I went back to using
a single T3, now with 2 partitions, one 1Gb partition for metadata and
the rest of the disk for data.  I'm still working with this, but it
seems to be about a 12% performance hit on reads (i.e. about 70Mb/sec)
for 48Mb blocks and much worse for small blocks (e.g.  <2Mb/sec;I'm
triming the number of tests I run because it's taking a forever to run
the typical tests at that speed).
 

---- Forwarded message from Dan Kozak -----

Tested the shared reader/writer QFS configuration using a single T3 for
both data and metadata.  Haven't calculated averages for all the runs
yet, but here are some preliminary results.

With the T3 cache on and the reader and writer in synch with each
other, write speeds of 8 second frame sized files were ~70Mb/sec, read
speeds were ~60Mb/sec.  With a delay to simulate the behavior of the
framebuilder (i.e. only writing an 8 second frame sized file once every
8 seconds) the reader easily kept up with the writer.

With the T3 cache on but the reader and writer out of synch gave writes
averaging ~62Mb/sec but with more variation in throughput between runs
(46-80Mb/sec).  Reads hovered around 34Mb/sec.

Turning off the T3 cache but with the reader and writer in synch gave
~46Mb/sec write and ~50Mb/sec reads, with a bit more variation in
throughput between runs.  Are we seeing the effects of the disk's own
caching here?

The worst case scenario (T3 cache off, reader and writer out of synch)
gave ~35Mb/sec writes and ~45Mb/sec reads.

I think contention between the reader and writer for metadata (and
data?) plays a part in these numbers.

----- End of forwarded message from Dan Kozak -----

(Al Wilson/Stuart Anderson)

An informative meeting with Sun has uncovered a low-cost solution to
sharing the large LDAS disk cache at LHO and LLO to additional CDS/GDS
machines without having to do an expected major upgrade of disk controllers.
The software to enable this will be officially available around January
or February of 2002. An interim solution with 1 or 2 shared T3's will
be implemented much sooner.

The LDAS operating system configuration software (cfdef) has been setup
for controlling Solaris machines as well as Linux and is undergoing initial
testing as the MIT Sun servers are being initially configured.

The LIGO archive has all of the trend frames from E5 and all of the
LHO full frames successfully ingested. However, UPS has lost the shipment
of data from LLO so it will have to be re-written from the disk cache at LLO
and shipped again via, FedEX!

The ldas-dev Beowulf was upgraded to the linux kernel 2.4.6 to fix,
"critical shortage of bounce buffers." An 18" flat screen monitor
has been installed and is working in the cramped quarters in the
machine room.
 

The ldas-test system has been upgraded to RH7.1/openssh but is still
being used for QFS testing. A 3rd 2200VA UPS has been installed to
run the 2 E450's in 215 Synchrotron providing enough overhead to
allow a simultaneous power up of all LDAS equipment.
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)

Trouble-shot E450 reboots w/ sun
Sun came out and change CPU#2 on E450
Installed powerstrips on back of cluster rack
 (this replaces the ad-hoc power strips we were using)
Starting to install Caltech images on ldas equipment
 data conditioning server
 

Livingston
----------
(Shannon Roddy)
 

LDAS is now up and running under RH7.1/openssh.

Controlmon and linuxbox1 were updated to RH 7.1 using the new scripts.
 They are both running OpenSSH now.  Beowulf and Datacon were changed to
OpenSSH also.  Gregg's temperature monitoring script alarmed yesterday
when the AC was cut off to the mass storage room for maintenance.  The
AC was cut off for approximately 30 minutes.  Continuing work on Big
Brother and the APC software.
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)

0) LDAS is now up and running under RH7.1/openssh.

1) Assisted in upgrading linuxbox1 and controlmon to RedHat 7.1.

2) Assisted in switching from ssh to openssh on the ldas network.  (This
change has no effect on Guild or users running jobs from outside the
ldas network.)

3) Sunbox1 has been renamed tapecontrol.  The LHO LDAS network
temporarily has no sunbox1.  We do have a Sun Ultra 10 formerly used as
datacon or beowulf) that will be come the new sunbox1.

4) Dell has replaced LHO beowulf node 11's hard drive.  I am currently
re-running the burn-in test and configuring the node.  It should return
to service by the end of today.

5) Worked with CDS to get minute and second trend data collection
stabilized, after repeated disk failures on the CDS IDE raid box that
stored trends.  For now, we will use a combination of a loaner D1000
local the framebuilder and the one of the T3s on the ldas network to
store trend data.

6) Worked on developing the DSO for the known pulsar search within
ldas.  Mostly this involved upgrading the OS and packages on my laptop,
and starting to initiate planning for the requirements for generating
short time baseline FFTs of the data (SFTs).
 

Data Analysis Activities
This week:
 

Last Week (LSC Week):
 

Vicere':
* I have continued developing a method for blind burst detection,
  which takes into account the correlations due to the colored
  noise. I should be able soon to start writing the code and test
  it on PEM data: the goal is to have the analysis ready for the
  network meeting in September.
General Computing (Wallace)
This week:
 

MIT:
-Working on setting things up for the MDC. Includes setting up
video conferencing as well as a wireless network.
 
 
 

Livingston:
(Tom)
-We have upgraded our mail server to a faster machine.
-We have had some network difficulties, which have been
traced to a problem with the Bell South T1 line, and
which have been repaired.
-We are expecting to have our second T1 line working
tomorrow, and we hope that, in addition to the increased
bandwidth, a second line will also give us improved
reliability.
 

(Shannon)
-Nothing to report as I am switching roles to dedicate time 100% to LDAS
except in case of emergency.
-I will be preparing a report on information that I learned at the USENIX
Security Symposium in Washington.  I plan on taking Monday and Tuesday
next week to prepare this.
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Busy cleaning up after the LSC Conference.  All projectors and laptops
have been packed and mailed back to the sites they were borrowed from.
- The Sun technician came out to repair an Ultra 60 that had been DOA.
It is working fine now.
- Purchased a replacement disk for an Ultra 10 that can no longer access
its disk.
- Requested information from Ed Chargois as to how to dispose of several
monitors which no longer function.  Also, how to dispose of outdated
software.
- Prepared an estimated budget for FY 2002, as well as reviewing current
expenditures and comparing them to the financial reports for
discrepancies.
-  The wireless network was a big hit with everyone, as was DHCP.  I
have several on site staff who have requested wireless cards for their
laptops instead of the ethernet connection.
- Requested the latest version of the Pcard software be sent to us on
CDROM.  Found out that we are several versions behind Caltech.
-  Helped several users get access to the Caltech ITS site licensed
software for Norton Antivirus and AutoCAD.
- Requested quotes and used my pcard to purchase some supplies for the
site CDS network.
 

CIT:
(Mick)
-With Mike and Wendy, assembled new rack and prepared for movement of PC
servers
-From Lisa, learned to configure a new hard disk in UNIX
Learned to configure a new hard disk in UNIX
-Loaded ascella and new Blade 100 (cdsbdl)
-Compiled updated instructions for loading GC UNIX workstations; working on
CDS instructions
-Assisted Lisa restoring Mohana's email from daily backups and
reconfiguring Eudora
-Compiled list of LIGO PCs to keep track of which we have images of.
-Began Tape Restoration Project - this one is going to be a doozy.  Older
tapes are inconsistently and inconveniently labeled.  Managed to restore 1
tape completely and most of another.  Current status: temporary restore
destination drive is full.
(Mike)
-Performed maintenance work on multiple printers, which included paper jams
changing drum kits and toner cartridges.
-Charlotte Py, I loaded Mechanical Desktop this has the .IGES translator.
-Worked in the server room cleaning out some more items getting ready to move
NT servers into server room.
-Loaded a PC for 40meter 200Mhz P11 with 64 MB of ram.
-Barry Barish, his office PC power failure, the switch was burnt out the
case had to be replace.
-Dr. Barish, Laptop ran a disk and tape backup and setting up multiple
network configurations for travel, using a program called net switcher.
-Assembled a Blade 1000, installed 4Gig of ram and DVDROM.
-Donna's, PC software glitch that corrupted OS, must reload OS. Backed up
users DATA.
-Worked with Larry and Keith on setting up video conferencing.
 

(Lisa)
- Spent some more time working with the Solstice Backup software.  The backups
are running very well. I've done some restores, which are soooo much easier than
with ufsrestore.  The NT's are now backed up daily -- except Pherkab which for
some unknown reason can't talk to the server.
- Changed the mount point on op140m in the 40meter.
- Fixed up Flavio's pc which had some residual corruption after a virus.
- Usual round of account and alias creation.
- Figured out a way for people to use the ITS site licenses for Matlab if all
licenses are taken on Ligo.  Contact me if you would like details.
- Put an OS on a blade100.  The final configuration for the workstation is not
yet determined.
- Fixed some funky e-mail problems for Irene and Mohana.
- Fixed a weird problem with dial-up to the 800 number.  A note to those who use
the modem pool:  if you aren't using DHCP, you really should be.  It avoids
weird configuration errors.
- Spent some time working out some detail level issues with using Ghost.
 

(Wendy)
- loaded Solaris on Vega for practice
- ghosted a few drives
- tested a hard drive
- installed Exceed on a Wilson House PC
- edited/updated inventory map
- checked on PCs at Wilson House
- put in new toners and drum in printers in Millikan and Bridge with Mike
- old M30 died, configured new M30 in terms of IP address, additional
software, printers, etc.
- in the process of rebuilding loaner laptops and imaging them
 

(Larry)
-The usual procurement issues. So far just making some equipment and supplies
purchases no major items to track down. Working on SUN maintenance contract for
the servers.
-Received a couple of budgetary quotes for the GIGE network and will be
requesting a few more from a couple of other companies that have equipment here
on campus.
-Worked with Mike and Keith on the video conferencing system. We found the same
problem here that we had at Hanford. The units the camera is connected to and
running the VRVS software needs to have at least 256MB of ram for it to run
cleanly. Also, having a clean install of the OS, meaning that the OS was not
upgraded but loaded on from scratch, improves the reliability of the video
conference session. We've found the VRVS SW to have some difficulties if it
needs to be re-installed.
Work on the video conferencing will continue.
-Discussed the wireless and DHCP situation with the other Sysadmins at the sites
and have decided that the MAC address of the machines will now have to be
recorded in order to track down problems. This information will also probably
become part of the information needed for conference attendees.
-The general items of fixing PC's, updating accounts and e-mail aliases.
 

(Barbara)
- Fixed problems with search tools when searching for names with apostrophes.
- Fixed a couple of problems with the costbook reports.  Reposted the PDF
versions.
- Install new LSC rosters.  Now any database changes are reflected
immediately in the rosters.  Began working with Rita so the LIGO roster
will be the same.
- Installed LDAS site changes for LDAS MIT.
- Continued posting LSC transparencies -- 90 so far.
- Make other web site changes to Travel, Fellowships, LSC, TNI.
 

Last Week (LSC Week):
 

*** MIT ***
(Keith)
- Installed DHCP on SB100 router
- Installed NAT on SB100 router
- Brought up wireless network at MIT
  Investigating various configurations
- Installed video software/hardware on PC
  (all in prep of MDC)
- Tracking down SCSI bus errors on new file server
 

*** Livingston ***
(Tom)
We have gotten a price from LSU for the router for our second
T1 line. They should be out here next Tuesday to install a
temporary router, which they will loan us until ours arrives.
 

*** Caltech ***
(Larry)
-Purchased a number of items for the LSC. Mostly cables and converters for
the Video broadcast and network.
-Installed the video card and camera on the computer assigned to the
presentation computer. The computer needed more memory. A minimum of 256MB
is needed for things to work correctly. The camera worked with the VRVS
software for some time but gradually degraded to where the s/w will not
even reload. After some testing it was concluded the system needs a
complete rebuild. Used a different s/w pkg. for the LSC
mtg. Tues. session.
The VRVS system looks to be a good way to do video conferencing.
Thanks to Mike P. who spent a great deal of time remotely on the setup of
the system.
-Still fighting virus issues.
-Setup a  couple of computers for the LSC, got Linda Turner up and running
and assisted a number of other attendees with their setups.
-The Hanford group, Christine, Dave, Richard and others did a great job in
preparing for the meeting. Many positive comments on the wireless and DHCP
setup, so Christine should be pleased with the effort to make things work.
 

(Mike)
- Loaded a PC with full General Computing software installation.
- Power outage on Friday morning that caused multiple sparc stations not to boot to their last state; file system was corrupted. I had to run fsck command to get these systems back up.
- Helping Larry setup a video conference, broadcasting out of Hanford.
- Set up Net Meeting with Larry Wallace for LSC meeting on my computer, and then set this program up on Dr. Drever's computer. I had to not only installed Net Meeting but I also had to download video capture software for win98 'directx8 plug-in'.
- Working in the server room with Mick and Windy supervising moving furniture around making room for new rack and moving out tape cabinet from original spot. Removing back doors off existing computer racks. Then we setup a new computer rack, which includes assembling shelves and drilling holes in the top of rack to run ethernet cables threw and setting up power strips & UPS. We are just about ready to move NTSRV's into server room but well wait until Larry's return on Monday.
- Worked with surf students trying to get IGES translator installed no luck on this.
- Added some more memory to a few computers.
- Going over tape restore project with Lisa.
 

(Wendy)
- Moved furniture around with Mike
- Moved surplus equipment to subbasement with Mick
- Successfully printed out computer map on the plotter
- Learned to ufsdump and ufsrestore
- Learned to scan documents for OCR software usage
- With Mick, installed new server rack and wired it
- Loaded one PC
- Tested memory sticks, and installed memory stick in computer M30
 

(Mik)
- assisted Mike loading vega
- with Mike and Wendy, assembled rack in server room, and prepared for
movement of PC servers
- began addressing tape restoration project (learning how to correctly use
ufsrestore, currently writing script to ease process)
- learned to configure a new hard disk in UNIX
 

(Lisa)
- built an ultra2 with an ext. hard drive and tape drives for the tape
restoration project.  Trained Mick, Wendy and Mike on what all was involved.
Got the restoration underway.
- created a couple of modem pool accounts
- worked on some small unix problems in the 40meter.
- tried to setup a black list on the mail server.  I got part of it but I don't
think we are configured use the m4 pre-processor.  Larry and I are going to work
on it when he gets back.
- setup an ntp server on rana for the 40meter.
 

(Barbara)
- Continued efforts on automating web LSC roster to be data-driven web pages.
- Modified costbook detail report for basis of estimate and task list.
- Began posting LSC transparencies.  Updated Publications pages.  Installed reworked News, Travel, and Calendar pages.  Began migrating to a new style sheet.
 

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

Fram Janeen Romie:
Working on 40m TM suspension design.
Working on AdLIGO SUS blade spring analysis.
 

From Rich Abbott:
Wrote initial requirements for voice coil actuator design
 

Put together information to order 12 more of the capacitance position sensors with the help of Marcell Hammond.
 

From: Francesco Fidecaro <fidecaro_f@ligo.caltech.edu>

Akiteru, Alessandro, Florian in Hongo.
Great exciting news. Accelerometer loop now closed and IP damping clearly visible on spectra. Residual motion above 0.02 Hz at IP platform level is expected to be well below fringe spacing. In attachment the effect of damping is clearly seen.

Lia
Analyzed 2+4 days of LVDT data. Found 2 LVDT with primary that slipped from support. Will test with improved primary binding. Is performing test with external, stable, signal generator.

Mathieu
Varied wire length to see effect of torque on stress. Found it to be very small. Stress accumulates on sharp edges. Will try to smooth junction between wires and prism. Also tried a split cone instead of a prism, but the connection to the suspension wire is unclear.

Charlotte
200 micron x 5 mm x 10 mm joint, Delta T is now 3.4 K with 4 K reservoir. Max stress is now 109 MPa, allowed max 150 MPa, using tensile strength 300-400 MPa times 0.5 safety factor. Using 180, 200, 300 micron joint thicknesses, studied max allowed angle for bending. Found linear behaviour. Worked on analytical model on rectangular rod to check heat flow calculations. Numerical and semi-analytic model with T^3 conductivity coincide within 10^-3 K.
Model of cylindrical flex joint for Inverted Pendulum. Elastic constant 37 kN/m in given geometry. Study of thermal conductivity with sink at 4 K and 250 mW power to be dissipated. Low and constant T gradient achieved over the 2 flex joints. Also tried with 20 mK sink, effect of T^3 conductivity clearly visible. Need AUTOCAD extension for IGES format (this format is now required for all contractors of US administration, according to the IGES web site...).

Francesco
Fruitful LSC meeting in Hanford. Exploring gravity gradients at low frequency, in particular from atmospheric origin.
 

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