Weekly Report for Week Ending November 15, 2001

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  November 19, 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:

Late yesterday, I received word that our retired LIGO Safety Officer, Mike Zydowicz, died suddenly at home.
Even in retirement, Mike continued with an active interest in the progress of the LIGO Project.
His most recent contribution to LIGO, was as a member of last week's Hanford Safety Audit team and he was looking forward to participating in planning for the next safety audit.

GHS note: Last week I traveled to Hanford for an annual safety audit, accompanied by Bill Tyler, Caz Szcilowicz (head of Caltech Safety) and Mike Zydowicz. We spent a productive day at Hanford with Otto, Fred, Doug Cook, and in telecon with Jonathan Kern. Mike contributed his many years of experience to thinking about our safety issues. He had decades of flight systems and propulsion experience, largely at JPL. He earned a NASA Exceptional Service medal for his contribution to resolving important technical issues in a Mars mission that was successful. He helped us put into place many of our safety policies and practices. He enjoyed interrupting his retirement to help on LIGO appraisals. We spent a fine evening last week talking about his very recent RV tour around the western states and many space program war stories. He enjoyed helping us and he cared for LIGO. He will be missed.
 

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Operations--Administration

• There was a teleconference on Thursday, November 15. Items discussed included:
• The Financial Tracking Report indicates that we have already spent $1,000,000 of FY02 expenses. This is being funded from the $2,600,000 of FY01 carry over.
• The petty cash accounts at the sites will be revised as follows: The construction account at Livingston will be closed, and the remaining accounts will be reduced from $20,000 to $10,000.
• The site accounts for detector support, 2.8 and 3.8, will be put in as fabrication accounts, which are overhead-free.
• Information regarding 24/7 operations from other installations will be circulated and a meeting held to discuss the development of practices and procedures for LIGO.
• Discussion was held to review the results of the Safety Audit at Hanford. The audit was considered successful, and the action items will be handled.
• There will be a Safety Audit at Hanford next week.  One of the issues to be discussed will be Action #102 below: the preparation of a policy concerning procurements and issues of safety, shipping, reliability, maintainability, etc.
• Status of new account codes: The Office of Sponsored Research is not yet working on the new (FY 2002 Operations) accounts.  Ed Jasnow and Phil Lindquist to pursue.  We are still waiting for the NSF to send us their proposed Cooperative Agreement for us to consider and approve.  We expect that changes to previously worked material will be minimal.  Gary has seen the proposed changes to the Laboratory Charter, and they were very minor.  The MIT Proposal was FedEx'd to the NSF last Monday.  If we get any comments, they will be forwarded immediately to MIT.
• We expect that the contract for the Hanford OSB East building will be signed by Caltech Finance (Controller) today.
• Caltech has selected a single non-mandatory campus-wide travel agency (Montrose Travel).  As described last week, this agency will be in a position to negotiate favorable rates.  Caltech did $2 million in travel last year, of which LIGO was $500K.  "City Pair" rates will be negotiated with selected airlines for routes frequently traveled.  LIGO has been selected to meet with the new agency first to establish procedures and suggest high volume routes.  Montrose plans to establish an office right on campus.
• Rental Car Insurance: Caltech negotiates insurance rates with each company, which is then included in their daily rates.  Budget has refused to negotiate such a rate.  In Pasco, Budget may be the only choice especially late at night.  If you use Budget, you should take the waivers.  Overseas, there are special requirements for rental cars, which are being studied.  More later.
• As a result of the terrorist attacks, new travel restrictions are now in effect throughout the United States.  These include the random stopping of travelers to check for identification.  Therefore, it is strongly recommended that all LIGO travelers who are not American citizens travel with their passports and visas in their possession at all times. This will minimize any delays that may be encountered in your travel.

The list of previous actions assigned through November 1, 2001 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• Assisted the Detector Group (G. Billingsley) with the packing and shipping of Optic to Wave Precision (John Tardif) of Moorpark, CA. Account Number P182400.
• Assisted the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with the packing and shipping of five(5) 3"x1" Fused Silica Substrates, Serial Numbers 1, 2, 5,11,and 12 valued at $5000. each to Stanford University (Dr S. Rowan) Account Number P157711.
• Assisted the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with the packing , shipping and US Customs Clearance Documentation for five (5) 3"x1" Fused Silica Substrates Serial Numbers 3,4, 6, 14. and 15 valued at $5000. each to the University of Glasgow (Prof. Jim Hough) Account Number P157711.
• Assisted the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with the packing and shipping of several Optic parts to Stanford University ( Dr. R. Route) Account NumberP157746
• Assisted the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with the packing, shipping and US Customs Clearance Documentation for four (4) 3"x1" Fused Silica Substrates Serial Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 valued at $2500. each to SMA-VIRGO (Dr. J.M. Mackowski) Lyon , France.

>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

• Progress continues in the conversion of archived financial records to .pdf files.
• The scanning of all IFIS budget reports, 1991 through 1998 has begun.  Out of a total of 47,000 pages already 16,000 have been scanned, representing 2 GB of data.  Once all scanning is completed, the files will be burned on to CD's.
• Running the core optic certifications/specifications .pdf files through OCR continues.
• Redesigned a Caltech/LIGO shipping receipt for Ed Chargois.
• Preparations continued for the LIGO Christmas party, less than 4 weeks away (that's hard to believe. . .).

ACTIVITY

• Processed and distributed 2 DCN's
• It was a busy week for electronic document processing
• Progress continues on converting old account charge files to electronic form

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>

• Finalizing researching the figures and data to be provided to the DCAA auditors on the LIGO subcontracts which includes payments made in FY2001 and dates of Certifications.
• Completed change order #4 to Yakama, change order #3 to Xerox, and change order #8 to Crystal Systems.
• Closed out several one-time po's. Transferred funds on a JPL work order.

Completed and posted monthly reports for Operations, Construction and R&D.  The Construction report is now in the same format as Operations and R&D.

Attended meeting by Project Accounting department describing the life cycle of a Grant, Award or Cooperative Agreement.

Attended meeting with Property Accounting regarding issues related to tracking of LIGO property.

At Alan Weinstein's request, tracked down some charges to Campus Research accounts, issued Cost Transfer Request for charges posted in error.

The reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

• Nothing to report.

• Nothing to report.

SUPPORT

Irene Baldon

• I continue to work with Rudy Arvizu, Purchasing, Hertz and Enterprise Car Rental on insurance and price rates for LIGO. Rudy has given Mary Farrell, Hertz Dist. Mgr., approval for rates she has quoted for Pasco, WA, and is working with her on LIGO's problems with Hertz-Pasco adhering to these rates. Enterprise Car Rental has given LIGO it's own Corporate Discount No. (32V1308) in order that proper billing can be accomplished. Also, Enterprise has agreed to accept my P-Card for 3rd Party charges (a real break through for car rental agencies). Hertz is now working on accepting my card also.
• Processed the paper work for zero (0) new/revised trips. I have seven (7) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done. Worked on several trips that were changed or modified for various reasons.
• Completed thirty (39) Expense Reports (including a couple of very involved/time trips) and there are two (2) reports to be done. I'm holding one (1) report that needs additional information/receipts from the traveler before submitting and five (5) that need a check from the traveler before submitting. I continue to contact travelers with outstanding trips as time permits. Some progress is being made.
• Reconciled thirty-three (33) items on my P-Card. These required telephone calls to vendors who do not enter the traveler's name on their charges.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itineraries for November 12, 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.

• Attended meetings on sponsored awards and property management.
• For DCAA auditors, calculated total amount paid in FY01 for each subcontract (~90).
• Received and processed invoices for payment on-line. The total incoming invoices received for this period can be seen in "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham. Tracked and followed up on various invoice problems.
• Processed the usual requisitions and change orders on-line.  Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of November 5.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and supports Linda and Cleveland (DCC) the remainder of the week.

• Scanned documents from India, CaRT, GEO, and LA Tech; submitted these to the DCC. Also updated the LSC database with info from Attachments Z.
• Posted Penn State documents on the small web page for review.
• Met with C. Akutagawa regarding ongoing update of the LIGO roster.
• Received incoming orders on Riccardo's behalf for parts going onto LVDT boards. Currently working on the report showing data for vendor, part number, and unit and final price. Awaiting the last delivery to complete the report.
• Prepared forms for a new board, and also for one to ship; packaged a couple of others. Did minor edits to the DCN. The form is now available in Word, and also in .dot from the home page. Updated the database with board information.
• Placed Pcard orders, and chased the paper work to reconcile others. So far this period I show 34 transactions. Set up a telecon for the E2E simulation group.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 11.09 to 11.15

Accomplishments:

• Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting was held this week on November 13th.  Subject of the meeting was the current status of the MRE effort with regard to scope, cost estimate, and schedule.  Send draft out for review on Thursday the 8th and send final material for meeting on Monday the 12th.
• 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:
1. COC - Work on action items per second review continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
2. PSL - Issued cost and resource loaded reports and awaiting comments.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
3. AOS - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.  Received data from David Shoemaker for the Photon Actuator and reviewing.
4. IO -  Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
5. SUS - Working with SUS group to incorporate current comments.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
6. SEI - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
7. ISC - Received data from David Shoemaker for the Photon Actuator and reviewing.
8. All other subsystems have yet to be scheduled for their first review.  These dates are pending per direction from Gary Sanders and Dennis Coyne.
• Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Nothing to report.
• Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Nothing to report.
• Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.  
• Nothing to report.
• Continue to test the Cost Book Tool. 
• Continue to work on coding changes to the resource database to accommodate resource loading and leveling by discipline.
• Continue to run tests on reports using other sub-system data.
• Verifying and checking business rules for cost loading.  Cost loaded all work to date for meeting of the 13th.
• Mapping and formatting of OPS cost data for input on hold pending finalization of co-operative agreement.
• Scheduled phone conference with BK for Friday to discuss application of business rules.
• 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

• OUT OF OFFICE ON 11.22 and 11.23. (TURKEY DAY!)
• Next weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting to be determined.
• 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 - Will schedule next meeting.
• AOS - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD. (New data from David to be input).
• IO - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• SUS - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• 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.
• ISC - Finish review of data.  Input data and change WBS as requested.
• Will import cost data and complete schedule integration.
• Will Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 11.16.01 and  post to site by the 20th.
• Will Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 11.16.01 and  post to site by the 20th.
• Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule and incorporate any changes.  
• Will update the plan with progress as of 11.16.01 and  post to site by the 20th.
• Cost Book Tool development continues.  (Highest Priority Task)
• Will continue ops cost data input when available.
• Will continue to work with BK importing data and executing action items.
• Will execute phone conference on Friday the 16th regarding business rules.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Web Site.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.

Reports (Lindquist)

Nothing to report.

I have scheduled a meeting of the LIGO Change Control Board (CCB) for Tuesday, November 20, 2001 at 9:00 am PST in the Engineering Conference Room (ECR).  The following Change Requests will be discussed (Because some personnel will not be available, it may not be possible to act on all of these.  However, at a minimum I would like to address completed and closed accounts.):
 

The following change requests have been distributed to the Change Board:
 

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

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

• Worked with Rita Torres on updating the LIGO Roster file.
• Assisted Florence Kaufman with gathering past details related to the 3 new construction Fabrication accounts that are in the process of being set up
• Various personnel/payroll related work

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

• The Hanford Safety Audit (see agenda LIGO-M010249-01-M) was conducted on Thursday, the 8th of November, 2001. The members of the Audit Team were Gary Sanders, Caz Scislowicz, Mike Zydowicz and Bill Tyler. (A sad note, Mike Zydowicz died suddenly this past Tuesday afternoon at home.)
• An audit report is being prepared which will include the new action items, previous assigned action item status/comments and the Lessons-Learned summary information.
• Continued the effort to obtain cost estimates for adding a fire suppression system to the LDAS computer room in Lauritsen. Caltech Physical Plant engineering group is also been asked to provide a cost estimate since they will be involved if this room modification is undertaken.
• Have also obtained a bid to extend the raised floor and to add an access ramp.
• Meanwhile, work continues on completing a move of Tyler from room 29.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

CDS: Added an "l1ifoconfigure" medm screen that has save and restore buttons for saving the configurations of the interferometer in Michelson, PRM, Xarm and Yarm. Changed the scripts to make it working. ezcawrite and ezcaread channel access commands need new Solaris 8 OS. Currently the scripts for restore are running on "control2" control room machine which has Solaris 8, through rsh.
Planning on upgrading the CDS machines to Solaris 8 operating system. Also in the process of identifying the memory upgrade needed for the cds machines. I will be ordering them as soon as I finalize the part numbers for the models we have.Found a problem with Lan Emulation Configuration Server (LECS) on our ASX 1000 ATM Backbone switch. Three of the control room machines which were rebooted didnt come back. Temporarily they have been brought back with 10 base T ethernet. We tried to restart the LECS server after loading the lecs.cfg file. But the computers still gave an error "LECS failed to respond". ATM switch needs to be shutdown and restarted. (Cheithan)

Detector: Optics and Installation: Received a set of drawings from the manufacturer of our PSL acoustic enclosure about a week ago. Found a disconnect occurred between the salesman and engineering staff and the access doors Stan wanted along the electronic rack side were too large to be opened completely. I finally got into the engineering loop and spoke with the detailer. Turns out that the weight/ft^2 is about 10 pounds and hinged windows are a problem because of the thin steel skin. He suggested that we
use what they call 'plugs', being removable panels ~ 3 ft^2 held into position by snap latches. They will have substantial "D" handles on each side and can be removed in the few seconds that it takes to pop 4 latches. nFurthermore, they can provide better isolation because the clearances are closer than necessary for a hinged door. Joe, Rai and I agreed that this was acceptable and I returned the marked up drawings last Friday. Spoke with their installation foreman Mark Johnson and he briefed me on the installation scheme. The panels will be shipped in palletized form within plywood crates. They will have shop dust on them, and I plan to offload the panels in the large airlock where we can uncrate and clean them before moving into the LVEA. Looks like we'll receive the material Dec 10 > 15. Programming of the Laser Safety Interlock system is in progress, and the installer hopes to complete the programming Spent some time identifying and locating logging and industrial noise sites from aerial surveys. See LLO
i-log 11/13/01. (Jonathan Kern)

LDAS: Spent a little bit of time showing Igor around the computing equipment for LDAS. Received the SF in yesterday. Unpacked it and placed it in the Mass Storage Room this morning, but I will have to find a permanent place to put it. It is starting to get crowded in there.
GC: Installed Pcard software on Allen Sibley's machine. Received in the rackmount Penguins to replace the ones given to the laser safety interlock and the building control machine. I will start experimenting with IMAP/SSL and SSL web pages for our email service here. If it works well, I may ask for some volunteers to test it for a couple of weeks, and if people like it we can switch over. (Shannon)

We have been preparing for the support of the E6 run this weekend. We replaced failed power supplies in one of the raid disks on decatur.We have been looking at the possibility of upgrading two of our older PCs which are dedicated instrument controllers. (Tom Evans)

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• PSL (Abbott, Ugolini, Vass, Smith, King):
• Mike Smith has completed a modified layout of the PSL optics, to take the FSS beam from the main beam after it decends the periscope (as is done at the two Hanford PSLs). Mode matching calculations for the revised beam waists and cavities on the PSL table have been completed. A final iteration on the placement of the mode matching lenses will be done after the final locations of the elements on the PSL table are confirmed. Dennis has confirmed all the locations of the elements. We will now order the 10 new lenses, and implement these changes.
• The beam profile exiting the PMC has been measured with the BeamScan, and it is wonderfully gaussian.
• Ben has almost finished the modifications to the PSL servos per Rick Karwoski's four DCN's.
• Dennis and Ben found problems with the quad PDs used to sense PSL exit beam position and angle fluctuations; after fixing, they are re-calibrating and re-performing stability measurements.
• Aside from the above, Dennis has completed all the measurements for the PSL commissioning test report, and is writing the report.
• The PSL enclosure wiring is now totally complete, after 5 months of struggling with mis-wiring of a very simple system. The people who made the enclosure came by on Monday and Tuesday and put in current stopping diodes that protect the magnetic switches from further harm yet necessitated a DC power supply instead of the transformer that was there.
• Input mode cleaner: The three SOS optics for the 13m input mode cleaner should be polished, coated, and measured by January or February. We plan to begin installation of the input mode cleaner shortly thereafter. We are focusing on acquiring all the equipment we need: suspensions, digital suspension controllers, sensing optics and electro-optics, and LSC and ASC. This includes the next 3 items:
• Suspensions (Romie): Betsy (Weaver) Bland reports that the clean/bake of the seven SOS suspensions is nearly complete at Hanford. Janeen reports that she, Helena, Betsy, and Mark Barton will be available in Jan/Feb to assemble the SOSs for the input mode cleaner, hang and balance the optics, and prepare for vacuum installation. Many thanks to them!
• Suspension controllers (Ben Abbott, Heefner): Electronics for the 40m suspensions are in the process of being fabricated in the Wilson house back shop. Todd and Ben are beginning to work a list of what is needed for completion. The immediate goal is a complete system for the input mode cleaner (3 suspensions) by February.
• Interferometer sensing (Smith, AJW): Mike will assemble a list of components necessary to sense the input mode cleaner reflected and transmitted beams. The immediate goal is a complete system for the input mode cleaner (3 suspensions) by February.
• Optical lever telescopes (Smith): Mike is designing angle-sensing telescopes for the optical levers for the LIGO beam-splitters. These will be used for all seven optical levers at the 40m. Details from Mike: A preliminary design for a 7.5 m to 54 m zoom objective lens, to be added to the optical lever sensor package, is in process. With this objective lens, the optical lever beam displacement will be converted to purely angular motion of the test mirror; the maximum deflection sensitivity of the new optical lever sensor will be < 0.2 microradians. The design requires the position detector assembly optical lever box to be approximately 29 inches long, instead of the present 16.25. It may be possible to place the new box in the same location as the BSC2 box at LLO.
• PEM (Ugolini, Abbott, Lin): The magnetometer has been permanently mounted, and attentuators are installed to prevent saturating the DAQ ADCs. We need to figure out how to calibrate it. We are installing communication cables to the four STACIS controllers for readout/monitoring.
• Facilities (Vass, Jones, Smith, AJW):
• All optical windows (re-coated for 1064) have arrived and are in hand.
• A 34" vacuum tube extension for the 12m mode cleaner (to make it a 13m mode cleaner) has been ordered and it will ship directly to Hanford for baking in 4 weeks.
• Still investigating why the ion pump in the south end has failed.
• We got 0.6" of rain this week; no roof leaks!
• Our two 10-year-old Balzer TPU-060 turbo-pumps will soon no longer be supported by the manufacturer. We're looking to do any needed maintenance (bearing replacement) now.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

Since our last report, we have been working on improving lock
acquisition in the TNI.  With our old servos, full lock took at least
two hours to acquire, and that needs to be substantially reduced before
significant progress can be made in noise reduction.
 

Our initial lock had a unity-gain frequency of about 350Hz, which leads
to a mean time between locks of some tens of minutes.  It is reasonably
straightforward to increase the gain uniformly at all frequencies,
bringing the unity-gain frequency up to 1.3kHz.  This improves lock
acquisition somewhat, but the mean time between locks is still several
minutes.  This is an improvement, but since the system catches in the
TEM00 mode less than one-third of the time, we would like to do better.
 

With our current filters, the highest stable unity-gain frequency we can
obtain without exciting mechanical modes appears to be 1.9kHz.  We can
increase this frequency somewhat at the expense of attenuation at
27.5kHz, our lowest mechanical resonant frequency.  The system then
catches promptly, but the mechanical mode quickly rings up to an
amplitude that produces nonlinear oscillations in the error signal,
making effective noise or unity-gain frequency measurements impossible.
Our highest priority now is to change the rolloff in our filters,
preserving the attenuation at 27.5kHz but improving phase margin below
10kHz.  We are currently putting together electronics to do that.
 

The photothermal experiment is also coming along well.  The cavity
locks and we find a thermal displacement of our aluminum mirror of about
10^-11 m/sqrtHz, which is roughly that expected from theory.  However,
the model gives a signal proportional to 1/f, while the data is roughly
proportional to 1/f^2, and the phase differs by 70 degrees between
the two.  We are proceeding to investigate these discrepancies.

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Bayer, Fritschel, Goda, Harry, Laliberty, MacInnis, Mason,
Miller, Mittleman, Ottaway, Phinney, Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
 

=======================================================================
 

BSC SEI INSTALLATION:
The last phase of SEI installation was to add 500 lbs of counterweights
to simulate the (absent) internal payload.  These were shipped from LHO
and arrived yesterday, but with damage to the crate; several weights
broke out and breached their wrapping, compromising cleanliness.
Fortunately some similar weights earmarked for HAM13 were on hand.  The
dirty ones will be reprocessed and used in the HAM later.  We expect to
finish and seal up the BSC today (Thursday).  We are going to delay
leakchecking until work on HAM13 is completed as well.
 

HAM13 SOS INSTALLATION:  The SOS balancing is underway in the optics
lab. While we now have all the vacuum parts except the viewports
(currently delayed at the coater; originally expected 11/1), we did
come up short on some of the installation aids such as platforms, belly
bars and internal handles.  They are being shipped but the sum of these
details probably will slip the SOS installation to the week after
Thanksgiving (no real schedule impact, we had just wanted to be done
before the holidays).
 

HYDRAULIC ACTUATORS:  Ken ordered the three Streckheisen seismometers
(>$40k worth).  He is still having difficulties simultaneously
satisfying stress concentration, mounting, and manufacturability
constraints.  We hope some brainstorming with Brian Lantz and Dan DeBra
from Stanford will help; they are visiting us today and tomorrow.
Joshua is continuing experiments on the prototype pump/accumulator skid
to understand its dynamics.
 

CDS/DAQ/GDS:  Our GDS system is running smoothly and stably with the
replacement RAID disk provided by Dave Barker at LHO.  Keith mounted it
on Lancelot with no problems.
 
PSL:
Continued work on characterizing the frequency stabilization servo
actuators and electronics.  Calculated the final modematching into the
SOS test cavity going into HAM13; now implementing the solution
on the table.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
> Mechanics modeling

Next Tuesday, Nov. 20th at 9:00AM PST, a telephone conference is scheduled to discuss the modeling of mechanics in e2e for the adv.LIGO. Information is available at e2e home page http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~e2e.

Giancarlo Cella is visiting CIT from 11th till 20th. The main focuses are
(1) transfer knowledge of MSE  (mechanical simulation engine) to Virginio so that Virginio can maintain and develop without heavily relying on Cella
(2) resolve known issues (bug fixes and completion of important objects, BLADE, BEAM, etc)
(3) complete LIGO I HAM stack and adv.LIGO 4 pend. models.

Cella gave a talk at the weekly e2e meeting about his MSE, and the improvements in the new version. Virginio summarized the modeling he is working with Giancarlo.

> LIGO I locking simulation with mode mismatch

Biplab, Hiro, Matt: We were having problem in locking when a
mismatched beam was sent as input to Han2k model. Some success
has been achieved in this problem by choosing proper offsets
in mirror position thus helping the locking system by keeping it
closer to the locked state.
We discussed about the proper interpretation of locked state
in presence of mismatched beam.

> LSC modeling (Luca)

The Matlab model describing the LSC electronics (from the Whitening to the
Anti-Imaging board) has been copied into e2e. The TF of only the LSC
electronics as produced from e2e and Matlab are identical. There is,
however, disagreement in the way the LSC digital filters are digitized
in e2e that produces an unacceptable disagreement above 1kHz. This problem
needs to be addressed.

Hiro has prepared an e2e model of one LIGO arm, with local damping
to the masses and a simple LSC controller. I am presently getting familiar
with it before I include the LSC model of the controllers.

> alfi4 and box parser
    A few crucial issues related to alfi4 and box file parsing were found, and Ed fixed.
    One of the bug prevented Bill Butler from running his configuration with better seismic model.

> alfi5
    Bruce and Melody are working on the new alfi based on JAVA.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

The 0.0.22 release went out over the weekend. It was needed no later than
Sunday for the Supercomputing Conference demo of Griphyn/LDAS. There was a
small startup issue at Hanford which has been seen in the past but not to
the extent seen over the weekend. There were also several problems found
with the system during testing and after the release which we had no choose
but to forge ahead with given the time schedule demands placed by the demo.
These have now been fixed in the development snapshot of LDAS. One of these
bugs was impacting the ability to prepare for the Periodic MDC. The problem
was with data requests which didn't overlap a frame boundary. The frames at
Hanford are now 16 seconds long and so it is very likely to have a request
which falls in the middle of a frame. The temporary workaround is to request
data which starts at modulus 16 of a GPS second.

(AL NOTE: We have been informed that the numerous LIGO-GriPhyN demonstrations in Denver at SC01 went
well and was very well received! My thanks to everyone who made it possible, not only at Caltech, but also at USC and UWM)

We also assisted Penn State with setting up their database for release of
LDAS. A script was developed for the PEM Deep Mining project and the Inspiral
group which will query the segment tables in the database to determine if new
data has been generated before issuing a job to LDAS to analyze the data.

We also discuss in several meeting with the LSC the issue of how to best
provide response functions to the community and to LDAS search codes. This
could involve using the database, but another complementary option may be
to have a webserver with a cgi script which can serve up appropriate sets
of response functions to user requests.

UWM has carried out a mini-MDC of the inspiral search code using the LDAS
system at UWM. The challenge successfully discovered the set of single blind
inspirals injected into a simulated data set of frames.

After the release of LDAS, we tested the new release of LAM, the message
passing interface (MPI) library used by LDAS and the LSC. We found this
release fixed a bug that was causing some of our search requests to die
and it has the added advantage of being backwards compatable so we didn't
need to recompile against it (an advantage of using shared objects in LDAS
and LAL). We subsequently pushed this release to all the LIGO Lab ldas
systems and informed the LSC MPI group of the results.

The efficiency of several of our release test scripts was reviewed and
were possible improved.

We also added the LDAS home page (web) files and cgi scripts to the LDAS
cvs repository. Previously this was managed by Barbara, but with her
departure we are taking a more active role in managing these files.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)

Worked on HPSS data migration to 9940 tapes (ongoing).  Dug HPSS out of
the hole it was in vis a via no available 3590 tapes and the
corresponding disk caches having filled.  For the first time in months,
there are no tape warnings in the classes of service that use 3590
tapes.

Began work on scripts to semi-automate the process of migration off of
3590 and Redwood tapes.

Restarted HPSS many times.

Worked on purchase of LIGO 9940 tape drives (ongoing).
 

(Al Wilson)

installed kernel 2.4.9-12 on the linux machines at cit,dev,test. A couple
of them still need to be reboot on the new kernel. Set up the rpmsync
packages for RH7.2 Still refineing the cfdef program.
 

(Ed Maros)

Did major cleanup of /ldcg directory for Intel Linux and Solaris.
 

(Stuart Anderson)

Installed additional KVM ports in ldas-dev and ldas-test systems.
Installed UPS units to support the new SF880 servers at Caltech.
Handed off the request to buy and install 50um multi-mode fiber at Caltech
  to support LDAS GigE and Fiber Channel networks.
Rebuilt filesystems at LHO to continue diagnosing the QFS filesystem problems.
Installed Solaris 8 Maintenance Update 6 on E450 to evaluate suitability for LDAS servers.
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)

requested and received license key for QFS software
began looking into Shannon's BBrother setup
received fax of P.O. for sun hardware
 

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

getting price quotes for Igor's computer.  Spent a little bit of
time showing Igor around the computing equipment for LDAS.  Received the
SF in yesterday.  Unpacked it and placed it in the Mass Storage Room
this morning, but I will have to find a permanent place to put it.  It
is starting to get crowded in there.
 

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

1)  The QFS "File system full - ENOSPC" error occurred again on fb3
(last occurred Nov 2). One of the stripe groups may have been full. A
case # for this problem had previously been opened with Sun.  Followed
up on this with Sun, and emailed them a description of the QFS problems
we've had and corresponding kernel messages.  Stuart has configured and
built new QFS file systems to make disk space usage easier to diagnose.
Testing continues.

2) Worked on creating test scripts for the Known Pulsar Demod Mock Data
Challenge.

3) Prepared the tapecontrol script configuration files for E6 and ran
tests.  We are ready to go at LHO and LLO.

The main log files for this script during the run are at:

http://www.ldas.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/tapecontrol/logs/log.html
for LHO,

http://www.ldas.ligo-la.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/tapecontrol/logs/log.html
for LLO.

4) Worked with LDAS to debug job failures during request for frames by
time at LHO.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Wireless troubleshooting
    Computer/networking setup in NW22 (bldg next door)
    Ordered more wireless accessories
-Ligotools upgraded (that package is sweet)
-Restored user archive data from tape
-Spec'd out and ordered replacement video pc
-Troubleshooting backup script for new file server

-Larry extracted and e-mailed data files to Richard M.. The difficulty was
finding a 5&1/2 floppy drive that worked.

Livingston:
(Tom)
-We have been preparing for the support of the E6 run this weekend.
-We replaced failed power supplies in one of the raid disks on decatur.
-We have been looking at the possibility of upgrading two of our older
PCs which are dedicated instrument controllers.

(Shannon)
-Installed Pcard software on Allen Sibley's machine.
-Received the rackmount Penguins to replace the ones given to the laser safety
interlock and the building control machine.
-I will start experimenting with IMAP/SSL and SSL web pages for our e-mail
service here. If it works out correctly we will try distributing it out for
all of the locations.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Setup two new guest computers, 2GHz Dell PCs.  This included
installing the standard application software packages as well as a few
specialized software packages.  Setup the network configuration and
installed printers.  Created user areas for guests to get their e-mail
and provide work storage space.
- Installed more freeware software on the application server. Fortress,
the LSC "sandbox" computer, is still running Solaris 7 because until
recently drivers for the peripherals and network cards were not
available for Solaris 8.  These drivers are now available, but the
computer is so heavily used and relied on for Engineering run data that
there has not been a good time to take the computer down for the day.
This has caused some problems in that every other Sun on site is now
running Solaris 8 and all the freeware software is for Solaris 8.  Now
some of the freeware software won't run on fortress.  The plan is to
find some time early next year, after the E7 run, to upgrade fortress.
- Purchased more memory for all the GC Sun Ultra10s.  Purchased a flat
screen monitor and computer cart for the video conferencing system.
Purchased fast ethernet card for the GC 3810 in the staging building so
fortress can have fast ethernet access to the LDAS T3 disks for
Engineering run data.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Ken M.'s is PC acting up when running AutoCAD 2000i looks like I have to reload
AutoCAD.
I have made necessary arrangements with Ken to correct this problem.
-Loaded 2 PC's with full General Computing software, and ran a diagnostics
on all hardware.
-Laptop ran a ghost image after reloading all G/C software and transferred
to backup server.
-Ran created ghost images for two PC's that are transfers to backup server.
-Project Science website keeps losing its TCP/IP connections. I have been
trouble shooting this web server to try to prevent this from happening
again. We have stopped all other web services besides projectscience.org, to run
this website by its self.
-40M printing problem on Martian network.
Called HPC to do a complete service that included changing fuser and
rollers and cleaning up the printer.
I had a networking issue to take care of that included connecting a
'lab
computer' to this printer on the Martian subnet 113. I ended up using Jet
Direct software to get this computer to print.

(Lisa)
- Compiled, tested and installed a mac address access list on the orinoco
wireless access points.
- Built an ultra1 as a secure samba server for Riccardo to transfer his data in
the synchatron.
- Cleaned up some mail aliases
- Did research to find undocumented keywords for the .mailrc file.  I began a
FAQ to collect this information where everyone can find it.
- Wrote some other FAQs.  The General Computing FAQs have quite a lot of useful
information at this point.  You can view them at:
http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/docuserv/computing/faq/faq.html

(Larry)
-Once again worked a number of purchases. No real problems just a lot of little
items needed for different people. I have canceled a number of s/w maintenance
contracts, Island and Applix. These packages very rarely get used and the
licenses are good for some time, as people move over to other packages we will
remove these old packages. We will keep the s/w around a year for historical
needs.
-Did some more P-card s/w installation work. Tested the written procedure and
will be making some minor changes to it. Sent out the new library to the
Observatories.
-Worked with Ed C. on getting rid of old equipment.
-Went over a number of NIS+ procedures with different people. The setup of the
credential tables has caused some minor issues.
-Working a number of security related issues. Mostly documentation and policy
statement work.
-Working on getting more information for high-speed WAN connection at Hanford.
Still nothing new for the high-speed Livingston WAN connection but we will keep
looking.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

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

Homogeneity of one a-axis sapphire piece has been completed, for one polarization.  The rms homogeneity of the a-axis piece is 13 nm compared to 30-50nm for the m-axis pieces we have measured.  There are still 3 detailed measurements to perform, 2 for the other piece (for each polarization) and one for the other polarization on the current piece.
 

Bill Kells and I have been probing the question of "surface vs. bulk" as the cause of the inhomogeneity we see.  I have rotated a piece through 16 degrees in an attempt to see if the homogeneity features move with features on either surface.  Bill is scrutinizing the data.

From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO Coatings

Trip to SMA/VIRGO - Lyon
The meeting in Lyon with J.M. Mackowski was very positive.
His latest research on coating absorption anticipates that reaching our 0.05 ppm absorption goal may be tangible.
He identified factors contributing to absorption losses and developed methods to minimize them.
Factors found that contribute to absorption are:
1) from the substrate: residues from polishing and cleaning processes, sub-surface defects, diffusion
2) from the environment: dust particles and chemical contamination
3) from the coater: chamber walls, ion sources, target material impurities.
His latest absorption measurements at 1064nm show:
Mean absorption on a 18mm dia. fused silica substrate : 0.20ppm
Sampling: 450 micrometers
Resolution: 100 micrometers
Sigma= 0.14 ppm, max.=1.87ppm
Sensitivity: 0.05 ppm
This result is repeatable.

Visit to VIRGO / Perugia
This visit was very valuable because one of our discussion with Michele Punturo and Helios Vocca was the handling of coated masses.
Mackowski set up very strict handling requirements for the VIRGO coated optics during assembly. These folks complied by developing very sophisticated procedures.
These same handling requirements are about to be imposed on Advanced LIGO coated masses and this is an issue that we have not addressed at that level.
Jean-Marie's concerns are very valid ones.
He designed and had manufactured very expensive baking vessels to prevent coating contamination during annealing, as an example, as well as covers to protect the surface of the coated optics during assembly.
He does not advocate cleaning the optics after they have been coated.
He performed surface analysis on parts kept for months covered in HIS clean-room finding no traces of contamination.
How should we proceed?

Silicate Bonding
Discussed silicate bonding processes, they have very similar experiences to ours having seen many of the effects that we observed.

Thermal noise studies - "Q" measurements
Shipped to Lyon as planned, 4 thin substrates. Four thick substrates were shipped from Glasgow.
Two of each substrate type are being coated with 2 layers - 1/4 wave each of SiO2 and Ta2O5 .
The others with 30 layers-1/4 wave of the same materials.

Shipped 5 substrates to Glasgow and 5 to Stanford to have "Q" measurements taken before coating.
Have 4 thin substrates to be shipped to MIT or Syracuse for the same purpose.

Received 9 coated substrates from MLD. They have been sent to Roger Route at Stanford to be characterized for absorption.
 
AdLIGO Suspensions
Calum Torrie
Janeen and I went over the proposed plans for pre-prototype work with Norna Robertson at Stanford and Eoin Elliffe and Mike Plissi in Glasgow. As a result I added to the existing AUTOCAD drawings that were in workshop with Ricardo Paniagua.
The various off the shelf parts we require have arrived.
Designed the upper mass, including all of its extra parts, for the prototype Mode Cleaner suspension in AUTOCAD. The position of the centre of mass and the exact mass is now known. This latter is crucial for the blade design.
Continued discussions with Glasgow of tests on existing blades. Eoin Elliffe is producing good results so far. Hope to verify with experimental data from GEO 600 soon.
 

Janeen Romie
We have some C-250 maraging steel on order, due for delivery in early January in time for Norna's visit.
Working with Calum and SEI folks on blade design.
 

Mark Barton
This week I did a final tidy-up of my suspension model and released it: <
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~mbarton/SUSmodels/asus4v2/index.html>. It
has all the features I planned for it except that I withdrew the export
to Matlab feature because I struck a bug/misfeature in the Export[]
command. It's obvious how a workaround can be done, but I wanted to
release something useful in advance of the suspension modelling meeting
next week.

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