Weekly Report for Week Ending August 29, 2002

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  September 2, 2002 will be:

 CANCELLED DUE TO HOLIDAY

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

Subject: Notes from LSC Executive committee meeting 8/20/02

to: LSC executive committee
from: R. Weiss August 29, 2002
concerning: Notes from the LSC Executive Committee meeting August 20,2002

LSC Service Functions
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A new proposal was made by Keith Riles to populate the scientific
support during LIGO runs. The concept is to have LSC groups contract
in proportion to the FTE in the group to carry out a range of service
functions. The types of service functions include:

*   scientific monitoring of shifts (highest priority)
*   commissioning and instrument improvement
*   investigations providing detector characterization
*   validation of analysis software

The relative importance of the various types
of activities other than shifts are still being discussed.
Nevertheless, the concept was accepted in outline and
will be incorporated in the MOU's between the Laboratory
and the LSC groups.

In the next year as we approach full scientific operation, more scientists
than presently taking shifts will need to be trained. Once we are
in steady operations (probably S3) it may well be enough to change
the character of the scientific monitoring so that a single scientific
shift per site will be adequate.

Analysis of E7 and S1 data
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The structure of the "upper limit" groups will be continued for the
S1 data analysis. (After the Executive meeting, the "upper limit"
groups gave reports on their work with E7 data most of which was
impressive and gave the LSC the confidence that S1 data can be
analysed with interesting results in a timely manner.) One week
after the end of the S1 run, the groups will give a short
prospectus of their goals and strategy for S1 analysis and also
provide a preliminary estimate of the quality of the data. A LSC
wide telephone conference will be organized for this.
Drafts of initial papers will be circulated by the groups to the
LSC involved in LIGO I for discussion on November 1. The aim is to
provide vetted papers to the scientific community by January 1.
 

In order to maintain this tight schedule, the reduced data sets should
become available to the collaboration during the S1 run and the final
data available within days of the end of the S1 run.
 
 

GEO/LIGO data exchange and roles in the "upper limit" groups
----------------------------------------------------------
A significant discussion of the way the GEO and LIGO data
is used by the "upper limit" groups and how it becomes available
to the groups took place both at the executive meeting and then
later in the "upper limit" sessions of the main meeting. It is clear
that high level discussions between LIGO and GEO management are
needed and will begin immediately.
 

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Operations--Administration

There was a site teleconference held on Thursday, August 29, 2002. The following issues were among those discussed:

Livingston Staging Building--Still a lot of noise and vibration in the HVAC systems.  Some things need to be changed.  Also have not yet received as-built drawings, installed equipment manuals, warranties, and certificates.  There are remaining punch list items.  Mark will fax the list to Ed.

A job walk for the Time and Material contract for partitions in the Staging Building is scheduled for Tuesday, September 3.  Proposals are due on September 10th.  The target is to have a contractor on board by the end of September.

Hanford Laboratory Building--Otto is on vacation.

Amphibious Vehicle for Livingston--Mark has sent a borchure to Barry.  No issues with insurance as long as the vehicle is used for appropriate purposes by responsible people who have been trained and are on a list of authorized users.

Property--Ed Chargois previously reported that NIH in Bethesda, MD might prove to be a good source of almost new furniture for both sites.  He is getting pictures of candidate items.

Use of Auditoriums by General Public--two issues: requires notification of NSF DGA of intentions, and the NSF should inform the DOE of intentions.  Outreach related activities should not be a problem.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through August 29, 2002 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• No 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

• Finalized last minute LSC submittals.  It appears there are only six (6) presentations yet to be submitted.  All others were processed, posted on the web, and made available electronically as they were submitted, most within a couple of hours.  I believe this was the most successful LSC to date for document turn-around and many positive comments were made about the rapid availability.
• Met with Bill and Ryan to finalize the batch of templates to be presented to Gary tomorrow.  There were a total of 12 templates, some with variances to accommodate the different observatories and MIT.
• Processed a heavy load of non-LSC electronic documents.
• Continued to have difficulty with email.  Every day it is dropping between 500 and 2000 emails that were previously handled back into the in box.  Both Larry and Mike have tried several changes, but today continued to see the unneccessary deluge. This makes it difficult to know what has been handled and what hasn't.  Additionally, all the hundreds of attachments are being redeposited into the attachment file.  Will continue to work with Larry for resolution.
• Reminder to LIGO staff:  Please make sure that as a minimum, each document submitted has a LIGO number, author's name, and date.  It's surprising how many documents are missing one of more of these essential pieces of information!.

ACTIVITY

• No report (vacation)

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Finalized and sent out the RFQ for the office and lab partitions for LLO.
• Processed change order #9 to the Newark blanket PO.   Issued reimbursements and invoice attached orders.  Reconciled pcard.  Working on moving funds on MIT, obtaining quote on FKM maintenance blanket.  Investigating difference in Richard Price contract which vendor states we owe them money.  Working on Intelligent Video Systems so that the invoice can get the paid next week.   Finishing moving funds for Florence Kaufman as requested.
• Becoming familiar with the changes in Oracle pertaining to the IIi upgrade to see how it affects our transactions and procedures.  This assists in troubleshooting on internal modifications to orders.

• Prepared updated lists of account numbers which are now posted on the LIGO Internal Bulletin Board.  We are continuing to have inappropriate charges to Fiscal Period 2001 accounts - 10 months after the close of that fiscal period.  Please make sure that you are using the current account numbers, this is particularly important for Internal Charges such as book store purchases, shipping, etc.that are not initiated through LIGO's purchasing staff.
• Progress made on straightening out charges from JPL, I have been notified that approximately $100,000 of credits that are now in a Caltech "holding" account will be applied to LIGO accounts.  This will reduce the expenditures charged to LIGO accounts to a reasonable amount for services rendered.  However, there may be more work involved in allocating the charges to the appropriate LIGO accounts.
• Started preparing reports for August.

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

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

• Nothing significant to report.

CONSTRUCTION:

• The Request for Quotation for the Time & Material contract for the LLO Staging Building partitions was released on Tuesday, August 27.  A job walk for the project is scheduled for Tuesday, September 3, with proposals due on Tuesday, September 10.
• Several items still need to be completed on the LLO Staging Building.  Our mechanical engineering consultant has written a report on the condition of the HVAC system after the completion of balancing.  This report will be forwarded to Brunt Construction for their action.  Additionally, several items on the punch list remain to be completed.  At this time, we are retaining $108,000 on this contract, none of which will be paid until everything has been completed.

• Sandy Pool, of OGC, has determined that use of the auditorium in the LHO Laboratory Building by the public must be concurred in by the NSF, and that, further, the NSF must inform the DoE of such usage as required by the MOU in place between those two agencies.  He has also stated anyone using the auditorium with our consent is covered by the Caltech umbrella insurance policy.
• Discussions between Ed Jasnow and Darren Artura, Caltech insurance office, have confirmed that there are no special insurance requirements related to the operation of an all-terrain vehicle being acquired by LLO.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Torres, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for nineteen (19) new/revised trips and there are eight (8) trips which are in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and paper work completed.
• Completed twenty-seven (27) Expense Reports and there are sixteen (16) reports yet to be done.  Contacted a couple of travelers who have long-term outstanding Expense Reports and asked for their cooperation in sending me their receipts so that the trip(s) in question can be closed.
• Reconciled sixty-nine (69) P-Card items which required numerous phone calls to hotels, etc. in order to track down which traveler incurred which charge, and pulling each traveler's file to assure that charges are correct for each fee incurred.  Assisted a few travelers with their questions in regard to their P-Card and/or reconciliation.
• At Criselda Rodriguez-Brodeur's request I spent a morning training a new member (Jennifer Mertz) of her office in the reconciling of P-Card charges.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for August 26, 2002.  Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement.
• I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.

• Processed the usual incoming invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems, and reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther for the week of August 19. For the total number of incoming invoices received for this period see "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham.
• Processed the usual requisitions and change orders on-line.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
• Reorganized my office area and turned some old files over to DCC.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database and helped out this week in the DCC.

• Submitted to the DCC progress reports from: GEO, Carleton College, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and NAOJ-TAMA.
• Posted on the small web page for review documents from Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Southeastern Louisiana.
• Over a couple of days, I. Petrac and I verified names and addresses for participants listed on Attachments Z.  Updated these with newly arrived information from the organizations.
• Along with C. Akutagawa, preparing a list of names to remove from the LIGO roster as they are no longer on the Caltech campus.
• Placed several Pcard orders, and reconciled a few.  Prepared a return to vendor who will investigate why the parts consistently break.
• Receiving packages for L. Jones while he's away on vacation.

Template meeting with Bill/Linda.  Meeting prep with graphic designer re: press kit.  NSF Boardroom images sent to representatives for review.  Work with Livingston site re: photo shoot.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

There was no Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting this week.  The Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal continues to have the Highest Priority.  Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.

Finished re-programming the baseline in accordance with the program plan endorsed by management.  Will post data with budget data requested by David Shoemaker.

The following is a summary of status by sub system:

• COC - Work on action items per second review continues.  Garilynn continues to execute action items.
• PSL - Completed input of data provided from Peter that facilitated the separation of LZH scope from LIGO Lab scope.
• AOS - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• IO -  Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• SUS - Finished processing update data through 8.16.02.
• SEI - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• ISC - Mike continues to work on the WBS dictionary.  No comments as of 8.29.02 on the draft detailed schedule and no WBS dictionary.
• LDAS - No data / feedback from Albert to date.
• INSTALL - Started review and processing of data developed by Dennis Coyne and provided by Gary Sanders.
• 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 LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.  Nothing new to report.

Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.  Nothing new to report.

Cost Book Tool.

• ROSTER DATABASE: Followed up with Inspiral Working Group and received list of members.  Rita completed coding input for the Inspiral Working Group.
• COST BOOK DATABASE: Continue to verbally communicate the username and password to users.   Continued preparing data requested by David Shoemaker regarding 2003 budgeting.  Will post data to web for viewing by parties by Friday AM.  Met with Phil, Ed J., and Florence to discuss a new process for handling contingency.
• Gang of 5+: Followed up with Gina and will send data files to Veronica to post on Internal Bulletin Board.

• Changed design to align with LIGO home page.
• See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

I have placed a draft proposal file (.pdf format) on the web for review and comment.  I think that this is more or less ready for entry into FastLane except
1) I received the MIT Proposal today.  The Proposal Budgets will have to be modified to reflect a modest increment.
2) There is no discussion of actual costs for FY 2002.  I propose to add a section that shows actual costs vs budgets graphically for FY 2002 for Caltech, Hanford, Livingston, MIT, and R&D.  Data for August will be available late next week or early the following week (Florence has some work to do to combine various WBS elements to give me the summarizations proposed.)

We are preparing the budget model fof FY 2003.  All reserve will be allocated in Planning Packages for items that have been identified on the contingency liens list.  We will also establish separate budget lines for items budgeted but not yet purchased in FY 2002.

The following change requests have been submitted:
 

I propose to present CR-020011 and CR-020012 during the next Executive Committee Meeting.

• General Computing has an action to update CR-010012.
• Technical and Engineering Support has an action to update CR-020009.
• Technical and Engineering Support has an action to update CR-020013.

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

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report this week.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by F. Raab)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(see ilog for details - if it's not in the ilog, it didn't happen...)
 

We are in the midst of the science run. Both H2 and H1 have been having troubles during the days, when noise from construction of the vitrification plant at Hanford peaks. Typically seismic levels are about 3 times normal background, which is not bad by Louisiana standards, but the 1-minute band-limited seismic RMS from 1-3 Hz drives up by a factor of 5 from that level with about a 50% duty cycle. Both interferometers will hold lock during these episodes, but once lock is lost H2 has trouble regaining its composure and H1 will not lock again until backgrounds return to more reasonable levels in the late afternoon or early evening. We have gotten locks of more than 12 hours, but we cannot hold science mode that long because of a need to dress up alignments to prevent loss of sensitivity and lockability. The need for working wavefront sensors is obvious. By the time we lose lock alignment is awful and needs quite a bit of tweaking. We have been holding a duty cycle of 40-45% for H1 and 65-75% for H2 - pretty dismal compared to spec. I expect that we could do better on duty cycle if we could spend a day trouble-shooting, but S1 prevents this.
 

In the high seismic noise periods, H2 has a higher rate of glitches - principally related to  POB degrees of freedom. H1 does not seem to have the same sensitivity. At night we go hours with no glitches being picked by ZGlitch - but the monitor is not very useful unless glitches are so strong they can overcome the low-frequency noise. We have requested some band-limit filtering in some monitor prior to glitch finding. Nonetheless, I expect ZGlitch would have had no trouble finding glitches of the size we experienced in E7. So there has been some progress.
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Coles)

GC: * Reinstalled an IDS between the LSU router and our firewall. I have been examining the logs, and the most common priority 1 traffic seen has been microsoft web server exploits. The other common one is rpc.statd exploits against linux. Most (but not all) have been self replication type stuff. I did see a couple items that looked like manual network probes. * Worked a few user support issues. * Looked into the CalTech site licensing which just came about in the last couple of months. Still trying to get a determination of whether or not the observatories are eligible. The person that administers this program is evidently in the hospital which is the reason for lack of responses. * Set up a web demo of some software for this afternoon. * Once again looking at how to effectively consolidate some of the computer services here. (web, mail, SQL, etc.) * Deciding where to place "Big Brother" to do network monitoring. * Ordered a small VPN appliance to evaluate for use here at Livingston for local staff to use. * Checking into a new hack that allows any attacker to lock up a windows machine that has NetBios enabled (pretty much any windows machine!) LDAS * Ordered the remaining 7 machines for the VPN network. They will be shipped to the individual sites and billed separately. (Shannon)

Data analysis:
1) playing with correlation DSO; 2) writing wave DSO.
LDAS hardware:
Sent 20 tapes with raw data to Caltech, 3 tapes with RDS to MIT and 3
tapes with RDS to UWM. No sign of P4 RAID so far.
(Igor)
 

Interferometer:
The interferometer has been running very smoothly at night, although we have experienced very high seismic levels during the day as soon beginning at dawn as a consequence of the logging activity approaching the LVEA.

We are making detailed plans for installation and commissioning activities immediately following S1. The highest priority will be the conversion of the electronics to support the DSCs. During the S1 run, we will organize commissioning teams to address the check out, characterization, and implementation of the new electronics as well as other activities that need to be addressed prior to S2. Advance preparation of of modified electronics boards is now underway.

We have made all modifications to turn 10 Universal Dewhite boards from rev B1 to rev B5. Modifications to the LOS controlllers is ongoing. We have completed 2 of 8 boards and chassis. Completed the modification to the new 1X6 (sos suspensions). The modifications allows MC2 to be independently controlled. Installed interface boards for all LVEA optics which will allow us to use the existing field cables after the digital suspension installation. Began building the interface cables that connect the new suspension racks to 1X22. Built the cross-connects for the end stations. I'm waiting for more material so that we can begin wiring them. (Rus)

HEPI: All fabricated components of the hydraulic External Pre-Isolator were delivered to MIT this morning. The machined springs are completed and Marcel has them back at LLO for characterization. This will take a few days and next week we will have everything in hand to begin HEPI installation on the LASTI BSC (excluding the actuators). From the machine shop we've received the Actuator Plate, Diaphragm, Diaphragm Restraint, Bypass Resistor, Bypass Resistor Cap, and from HYSPAN the order for 24 Bellows. A first article of the actuator assembly has been sent to Solar Atmospheres in Souderton, PA for vacuum brazing and we're waiting to receive it back for inspection. I just received from the machine shop the quote for the balance of machine parts (primarily the tripod assembly) and will give to Marie Woods at MIT to issue a PO. It looks like we'll receive the bulk of the actuator parts from the machine shop in about 3 weeks, at which time we can begin assembly. My plan is to assemble 1 or 2 units as pathfinders. Unless we meet some unexpected problems it looks like we will have hydraulic actuators ready for installation in LASTI in late October. (Hammond, Kern)

I have been quite busy with spring characterization (machined springs) as well as supporting the vendor in drawing questions and concerns. Bottom line is that we are trying to keep the fabrication of parts flowing smoothly. I have resorted to sending the vendor (P & N Machine) E-Drawings because it is quicker to produce this medium than traditional drawings, plus there is an added advantage of having the luxury to look at the part in 3-D and manipulate it in real time. I spent sometime this week preparing these for the vendor and gave him a quick tutorial over the phone on how to best use the program. He quickly saw the benefits of the E-Drawing application and was delighted. We should certainly try to use this technology to advance design communications internal to LIGO as well as external. (Jonathan Kern also suggested this last week) We are still waiting from the Stanford group on information regarding the co-location of the L4C sensors. There are a few more design issues to address for the HEPI actuator, but Jonathan Kern, Ken Mason and myself are in the process of ironing them out. (Marcel)

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Suspended mass mode cleaner (Ugolini, Miyakawa, Vass, Abbott, Benna, Bonfield, Berdnikov):
• Osamu has remeasured the finesse; the method is the same as before (breaking MC lock by shutting off the VCO path), but the oscillation at the moment of breaking lock is smaller, so he trusts the measurement more. The vaule is 1630 +/- 49.
• Osamu used the Tropel to measure a modulation depth of 0.23 with the RF output adjust slider at full scale. A slider setting of 4.5 volts gives the design spec of 0.1 for the depth.
• Osamu believes he understands the problem with the polarization of light to the MC better now. It was a combination of three things, all associated with optical or electro-optical components in the IOO path. These have all been addressed.
• Ben and David have been doing the bulk of the mode cleaner work. They found that the pole-zero modules had not been activated, and have turned all of them on. They added an medm screen with on-off switches for these modules, and put a link on the MC servo amp screen.
• Ben received a second MC servo card from Mohana, but it has a number of problems (resistors removed during testing and never replaced), so we're sticking with our current one. He and David measured the VCO transfer function again now that the DC offsets have been fixed, and they match closely even in phase. The main difference is, as before, gain, so Ben is going to swap a couple of resistors and boost the servo card gain by 20-30 dB. They are checking to see if it can lock now, though, since no one has checked since Dennis zeroed the DC offsets the Friday before last.
• Ben is increasing the gain of the PSL path on our old mode cleaner servo card by 30dB in hopes that that will help it to lock.
• Ben noticed that the Pole-Zero modules were not switched on, so he and David added epics screens to switch them on.
• Suspension Controllers (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor, Ugolini, Miyakawa, Berdnikov): David reported some odd behavior in the suspensions: MC2 was damping poorly, the alignment seemed to depend strongly on the side OSEM gain, and the side sensor value was jumping rapidly between 0.9 and zero. This last part hinted strongly at the ADC "channel jumping" in the DAQ we've seen before, and sure enough, Ilya had rebooted the DAQ and DSC last Thursday.
• PSL/IOO (Ugolini, Abbott, Miyakawa, Vass, Sekido): Aya calibrated the position and angle QPDs, but took the data back to Japan with her. Mike has a more careful procedure outlined (more on that later), so we'll redo it.
• Optical sensing (Smith):
• IO Diagnostics: A technical note was written to describe the design and calibration procedure for the IO position sensing and angle sensing optical systems. Parts for the alignment fixture to implement the calibration procedure was ordered.
• Optics Parts List: Parts were received from Newport and New Focus. The integrated layout drawings of all the ISC tables has been updated to reflect recent changes.
• VAC MIRROR MOUNT: The design drawings for the 2in fixed vacuum mirror mount were completed. These differ from the Dynamic Light Controls mounts in that they are non-adjustable and stiffer. Parts will be ordered shortly.
• Optics (Billingsley, Armandula) and suspensions (Romie):
• We are preparing everything before the arrival of Betsy Bland on September 9, to help us hang 3 core optics (BS, ITMx, ETMx), and teach us to hang the remaining 4.
• From Helena: Two suspension structures are 90% assembled. Magnet/ dumbbell sets are being assembled. Received a translation stage and a pocket microscope. These items will be used for suspending and balancing optics. A holder to carry and store cleaned 5" mirrors is in fabrication.
• Electronics (B. Abbott, Taylor):
• Bob is putting BNC connectors on the coaxial video cable for the cameras to the auxillary rack. He has run video cables for seven cameras, and has powered up one Watek just for practice.
• Bob has built 4 out of 15 OSEMs needed for the 3 suspensions we will hang in September, and sees no problem with finishing them all by Sept. 9th.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Vass, Jones):
• Steve was concerned that the pressure in the main volume was dropping so slowly, so he did some leak checking. The out- gassing rate is the same as it's always been, so he's satisfied that there is no leak, and we just have a lot of water to pump out.
• The SE crane driver failed and will be fixed tomorrow. This is two recent burnouts, and Steve noticed that while the old crane drivers are rated for 480 volts 3-phase, the new ones are 460 volts, and our 3-phase supply is actually 510 volts! The electricians reduced it to 490 volts yesterday.
• Dennis completed the EPICS programming to readback and control our new terbopump controllers TP2 and TP3. He was able to readout the status and rotation speed of the pumps, and turn them on/off/standby from the medm screen. The problem is that, just like with the ion pumps, the serial code crashes after 1/2-1 hour of running. Dennis suspects that the problem is not with the code, but with the VME CPU. There are four serial ports, but only two communications chips, with two channels each. We've been running for months with port 1 (on one chip) talking to the nitrogen supply gauge and port 2 (on the other chip) talking to the pressure gauge switchbox. But put anything in port 3 and you have crashes. We will need to get another CPU anyway; now is the time to do it.
South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor, Cardenas): Bob has two bakes going -- one set of seismic stack cables in oven C, one batch of parts for Janeen in oven B. Oven E is being prepped to bake about 800 different screws for Janeen as well.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

no report

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Kern, Goldman, Harry, MacInnis, Mason, Mittleman, Ottaway,
Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
=============================================================
 

PSL (Dave O and Jamie R):

This week the Alternative FSS Servo was resurrected. A few modifications
were done and a unity gain frequency of 1 MHz was achieved.
        #MZ: cool! good job.

Photodiodes (Dave O and Mike Z):

A couple of photodiodes from Electro Optic Systems were received and a
basic charaterization was done. Regrettfully these found to have
properties inferior to our best photodiodes from alternative vendors.
For the record Junction Capacitance = 180 pF (9 V bias voltage) Quantum
Efficiency = 75% It was also noticed that the substrate had significant
amounts of contamination, this was easily removed once the glass window
was removed using a nitrogen purge.

EPI Modeling (Dave O, Rich M and Dennis C):

This week we held a telecon to review the state of our current modeling
effort to understand the HAM MEPI system. Following this we are
pursuing the following approach.  For frequencies below the lowest
support structure resonance (18 Hz) we are treating the support
structure as a solid body and are considering the dynamics of the
spring and masses as discreet objects. Above the 18 Hz resonance the
effective mass of the stack is significantly less than that of the
support table so we are neglecting the mass of the stack and are doing
a finite element model of the support structure as an elastic body.
Brian Lantz's model for the control of a BSC is being modified to a HAM
system.

  Brian has just release a new version of his BSC model which is
significantly different from the previous version.  We are currently
modifying this to accommodate the HAM model.  We have also received a
program which runs a stepped sine analysis on the DSpace system from
Katie Lilienkamp, a mechanical engineer graduate student who is
considering working with us.  This program is currently being modified
to meet our needs.

MEPI / LASTI (Mason, Ottoway, Mittleman, MacInnis, Kern):

The EPI work on HAM-13 is moving along.  Last week we completed the
installation of all 4 External Pre-Isolators and magnets.  This week
we're installing the suspension springs and load cells.  As of this
(Wed) afternoon we've installed springs into three of the EPIs, and
have them tensioned so they are suspended just above their vertical
stops.  Table alignment has held very well, considering the trauma our
inexperience is imposing on the stack.  Yaw remains <100 u-rad from our
initial position and pitch <140 u-rad.  Tomorrow morning we'll suspend
the fourth pier on its springs.  Cabling is substantially complete and
we hope to enable a MEPI system sometime next week.

HEPI (Hammond, Kern):
        #MZ: maybe also reported under LLO?
All of the fabricated components of the hydraulic External Pre-Isolator
were delivered to MIT this morning.  The machined springs are completed
and Marcel has them back at LLO for characterization. This will take a
few days and next week we will have everything in hand to begin HEPI
installation on the LASTI BSC (excluding the actuators). From the
machine shop we've received the Actuator Plate, Diaphragm, Diaphragm
Restraint, Bypass Resistor, Bypass Resistor Cap, and from HYSPAN the
order for 24 Bellows.  A first article of the actuator assembly has
been sent to Solar Atmospheres in Souderton, PA for vacuum brazing and
we're waiting to receive it back for inspection. I just received from
the machine shop the quote for the balance of machine parts (primarily
the tripod assembly) and will give to Marie Woods at MIT to issue a PO.
It looks like we'll receive the bulk of the actuator parts from the
machine shop in about 3 weeks, at which time we can begin assembly.  My
plan is to assemble 1 or 2 units as pathfinders. Unless we meet some
unexpected problems it looks like we will have hydraulic actuators
ready for installation in LASTI in late October.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
SLU
--------------
Hiro visited SLU to meet with Jim Howatt, the head of the computer division of SLU,
where e2e will be installed to be used for the simulation and educational
purpose by Sany Yoshida.

S1
----
Biplab and Hiro are in LHO and LLO respectively for the S1 run and taking
shift duties.

SimLIGO
-----------
(Matt) SimLIGO_020827.tar.gz is in ~mevans/tmp/ and seems to be working.
This intermediate version of SimLIGO contains working wavefront sensors
which control the pitch degree of freedom for all core optics except the BS
(which is to be controlled with signals from QPDX and QPDY).  The yaw DOF is not
controlled because there appears to be a bug in the recycling summation cavity.
Biplab is looking into this.

The optical lever servos, still used for yaw on all optics, have been
made a little more realistic.  They now run at 16k and are routed into
the suspension controller independent of the OSEM signals.

The common-mode servo is not turned on in this version, though I suspect
it could be made to work with little effort.  I expect that on my next
visit I will get the yaw DOF working, use QPDX and QPDy to control the BS,
and upgrade the CM servo to the latest version found on the LHO 4k.

FP cavity tilt
-----------------
(Hiro) performed more calculations, analytically and numerically, related to the
time dependence of powers of a cavity with time dependent mirror tilts. The
observed "energy non conservation" is still not understood whether it is a real
physical effect, or a limitation of the modal model or a bug of e2e
implementation.

software distribution
------------------------
(Hiro, Ed maros) Worked to build a new tarbal. A new script is created to simplify
the creation of new tarbal. During this process, some ambiguous points in the
distribution / installation documents are refined. Based on this new tarbal, the
e2e softwares at LLO are updated to the latest.

(Ed Maros) created script for generating an e2e tarball.

Alfi 5
------
(Bruce)Continued work on the parser for better error messaging.

(Melody) Continued work on the automated tester for alfi5.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)
At this time there has been only light use of the LDAS systems at the
sites. The DMT is generating triggers and placing these in the database and
the Reduced Data Set Frames are being generated, but only a couple of
dataPipeline jobs have  been sent to date.

[A Lazzarini note: If this is a real trend in the LIGO/LSC computing model, then we will
have to re-think the distribution of computing power at the observatories vs. universities.
Originally, we had anticipated a need to process data at a rate equal to its generation, near the
interferometers. If the collaboration does not find this useful, we should re-locate nodes
to a centralized facility where theiir aggregated power is greater than their distributed sum -- also easier to maintain.
I am frankly puzzled why UL gropus have been patiently awaiting their RDS sets to show up at their home institutions before looking at the data -- if something is wrong with S1, we will not have known for almost 1/2 of the S1 run!]

The issue with the "state data object" creation, storage and re-ingestion
that were discovered last week have been tracked down and fixed. It is now
working again. This is fortuitous since it was reported at the LSC meeting
last week that the Burst Group is ready to start using this function. This
required changes to the wrapperAPI, dataConditionAPI and the
eventMonitorAPI, as well as to the user command macros.

Several new issues in the metaDataAPI were discovered in association with
the fix for the ILWD objects with comments causing ingestions to fail. This
fix caused duplication errors when processing an ILWD with two table
contained within. This now works and a set of test scripts have been added
to the repository to allow us to track this issue in future modifications.

Several issues with resampling and the metadata used to resample were
identified by the dataConditionAPI working group. These issues have been
logged as bugs in the bug tracking system. The Matrix class was also revised
for the dataConditionAPI.

The rewrite for the frameAPI to use more CPUs has shown some mixed results
this week. Earlier it was found to work extremely well but when these
changes were integrated into CVS with other major changes, and then rebuilt
from CVS it was found to not work. This has been traced to a file missing
from CVS and LDAS is being rebuilt with this file included to see if this
fixes the problem.

There are several new examples on the web for using the frameCPP library
that is used by several packages within the LIGO Laboratory and the LSC.
These should help authors of applications more easily use the data in
FrProcData structures found in the Reduced Data Set Frames being written by
LDAS for the Science Run.

The new version 6 frameCPP is still under development. Most of the code is
in place, and in fact is now in CVS. However, very little testing has been
carried out and it has yet to be integrated into the LDAS frameAPI.

The emergency socket and operator socket code has been re-worked to be
entirely event driven. This should put an end to the partial strings
received from user requests. It may also improve overall performance in the
system.

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

* HPSS: Resumed migration of large files off of Redwoods (CACR took delivery of
        more 9940 tapes).

* SAM-QFS: Did more test runs simulating writing tapes at a site and importing
           them into the CIT archive. Started setting up to ingest real S1 data.

* Did some work to try to get hsi from saiph to HPSS over HPN working.
  So far, nothing that has been suggested has helped.  I'll continue to
  pursue this with Mike Gleicher and James Patton.

(Al Wilson)

* A lot of work with the CIT and TEST systems.

* Installed a new Fast Iron II switch and hooked up GigE to all of the
  machines in the CIT system (minus nodes).

* Install PCI GigE cards in Beowulf and Datacon.

* Prepped Fiber runs for the New Raid systems and the Ldas in a box systems.

* Did some house keeping in the computer room.

(Stuart Anderson)

* Started archiving S1 data to HPSS.

* Upgraded the LDAS-CIT network switch and all remaining servers to
  Gigabit Ethernet.

* Determined that the 10 Mbit/s network bandwidth to LHO is a factor
  of 2 too slow to replicated the Reduced Data Set (RDS) frames to
  Caltech in real-time.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)

* Loaded PreS1 data onto ldas.

* Started burntest on pc raid box (Tuesday).

* Begun loading S1 data onto pc raid box.

* Running jobs to cull out asq channel from E7 RDS frames.

* Ordering 19" rack unit and rack mount UPS.

* Got quote for Gigabit Fiber Ethernet card (Antares).

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)

* Sent 20 tapes with raw data to Caltech, 3 tapes with RDS to MIT and
  3 tapes with RDS to UWM.

* No sign of P4 RAID so far. [A. Lazzarini note: it appears that UPS lost the unit somewhere between pickup and their So. Calif. distribution hub. We are re-allocating
one of the units designated for Caltech to LLO in the interim. Lesson learned: do not use UPS!]

(Shannon Roddy)

* Ordered the remaining 7 machines for the VPN network.  They
  will be shipped to the individual sites and billed separately.

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

* Coordinated with Igor the running of tapecontrol scripts to archive
  raw frame data for preS1 injections and during S1 at LHO and LLO. The
  first 20 tapes from each site have been sent to Caltech.

* Coordinated with Isabel, Igor, and Shannon the running of tapecontrol
  scripts to write RDS output from LDAS to tape.  Currently tapes are
  written simultaneously for UWM and MIT and each site has received 4
  tapes with data.

* Working to finish the set up of the new 2 TB Raid Server at LHO. The
  burntest should end today (but was still running this morning).

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Data Analysis activities at MIT
===============================

o Establish criteria on selecting locked segments and apply
  them on E7 bursts analysis (Laura with input from Alan).
o Document Excess Power DSO status after E7 investigations
  and communicate it to its authors (Erik).
o E7 bursts analysis bits and pieces (Stefan, Laura, Erik).
o Prepare infrastructure to reduce E7 data (currently on MIT
  disks) down to the AS_Q channel (Keith, Erik - in progress).
o Prepare infrastructure to perform sanity checks between
  various levels of reduced data (full raw frames, RDS',
  strain only). The goal is to confront analysis output on a
  statistically significant sample to establish confidence in
  the data reduction scheme (Erik, Laura, Tania).
o Setting up stochastic DSO LDAS pipeline at MIT (Tania).

Shawhan:
* Helped Anand Sengupta (IUCAA) figure out how to run his search code (prototype of
the Extended Hierarchical Search for binary inspirals) on the LDAS test
system using data from E7.  Previously, he had just been using the standalone
wrapperAPI.

* Currently re-implementing the LARS server to provide remote access to the
E7 (and soon S1) data in the HPSS archive.

Yakushin:
1) studying a correlation DSO; 2) writing wavelet DSO.

Weinstein:
- Took S1 shifts at LHO. Watched the Rayleigh monitor.
When the IFOs are in lock, it's pretty quiet - very few bursts!
- Working on running burst DSOs online,
interfacing with Duncan's online dso monitoring web tool.

General Computing (Wallace)

Lazzarini: We held a site-wide teleconference to review an IT Security Plan I drafted with input from GC, LDAS and CDS.
There was much discussion and a number of useful resolutions to outstanding issues. The Plan should bne ready in time to send it to NSF for our Fall review.

MIT:
(Keith)
-Installed updated license/version of mathematica on gc
-Removed 'lancelot' DMT machine from gcnet and dedicated it to DMT/LDAS
-Copied home dirs of remote DMT / LDAS users over to lancelot

Livingston:
(Shannon)
- Reinstalled an IDS between the LSU router and our firewall. I
have been examining the logs, and the most common priority 1
traffic seen has been microsoft web server exploits.  The
other common one is rpc.statd exploits against linux.  Most
(but not all) have been self replication type stuff.  I did
see a couple items that looked like manual network probes.
- Worked a few user support issues.
- Looked into the CalTech site licensing which just came about
in the last couple of months.  Still trying to get a
determination of whether or not the observatories are
eligible.  The person that administers this program is
evidently out sick which is the reason for lack of
responses.
- Set up a web demo of some software for this afternoon.
- Once again looking at how to effectively consolidate some of
the computer services here. (web, mail, SQL, etc.)
- Deciding where to place "Big Brother" to do network
monitoring.
- Ordered a small VPN appliance to evaluate for use here at
Livingston for local staff to use.
- Checking into a new hack that allows any attacker to lock up a
windows machine that has NetBios enabled (pretty much any
windows machine!)

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Provided comments to Albert's IT Security Plan Document.  Attended a
meeting on Thursday morning to discuss the document.
- On vacation the rest of the week.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Taking Microsoft training courses for the next few weeks.

(Wendy)
-Finished loading software and ghosting two machines, including one
high-end user machine
-Worked on restoring tapes
-Delivered mail to 40m house
-Random tasks, such as printers

(Veronica)
- LSC website: re-worked a database of meeting transparencies to add a
table for closed session talks. Posted remaining talks as they kept coming
in. Tracked down a problem with one of the database tables that was
causing an error message on loading.
- LIGO website: rewrote a webpage for other GW projects with LIGO-related
activity; the new page is now posted.
Working on webpages for the upcoming Aspen 2003 Winter Conference.
Posted a link to the new Visitors Program webpages.

(Lisa)
- Vast and voluminous amounts of work on the mailman/mhonarc/webglimpse mailing
list system.  This includes helping folks configure their privacy settings and
setting up apache authentication into the archives.  Next I will be looking at
how to automatically filter out administrative notices from the archives.
- Worked with ITS security as questions/problems came up.

(Bruce Sears)
- General Ilog Maintenance:            (0.5 days)

(Larry)
-Spent a deal of time working on printer fixes. One issue that came up was HP
not having recorded our extended warranty after many hours on the phone I
finally was able to get a person to look into the issue.
-Worked a couple of IT security issues. Both were viruses on machines. Both
machines did have the latest virus-scan files. We've not had time to track down
how the machines were infected but both machines were rebuilt.
-Working a number of VRVS issues. Still trying to get better resolution out of
the system.
-Performed a few more network tests with new WAN connection at Hanford. I was
able to get 4.8 Mb/s on a steady basis, which is a big improvement over the
past.
-Worked a number of procurement issues and spent time reconciling items on the
P-card. Reconciling orders has become a real time sink but I guess it beats the
alternative.
Distributed a number of items to various users.
-Helped DCC out on a couple of file downloads/fixes as well as checked out one
of their pc's that was having a problem. So far nothing major but we will keep
an eye on it since it was a unit that needed a major h/w overhall a few months
ago.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>

2.2 AdLIGO PSL

    Testing of the frequency stabilization related electronics destined for
the University of Hannover is about to commence.  Thus far only the VCO has
been tested whilst the laser has been checked out with the PSL Lab's set of
cards.
 

From: "Mark Barton" <mbarton@ligo.caltech.edu>

    This week I attended a training session on the use of the dSpace
controller system at the dSpace facility in Michigan. I also submitted a
report and request for information about a weakness I encountered in the
system: the output of some Simulink blocks (e.g., the elliptic filters)
can depend critically on the order of the ODE solution method selected
and it's not obvious what order will be adequate in a particular case.

From: Bill Kells <kells@ligo.caltech.edu>

Besides usual monitoring of ongoing sapphire development
issues (with
Garilynn and J. camp) I've been focusing on the newly
brought up issue
of "flattop beams" . We (Erika and I) had done much work
(~ FFT simulations)
on this in the past but put it asside as a "beyond ADvL"
project". so
we are revisiting. Working now to have something
coherent to contribute
next week (by phone).

Also working on other simulations pertinant to AdL
design (normal Gaussian beams)
using FFT and e2e (have actually spent large amount of
time this week on
algorithmatic issues I found: with Hiro and Biplab).
Overall focus is on problems
pertaining to the upcoming downselect.
 

From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO Suspensions

I) Mode Cleaner

i) Cantilever Blades
See report from Janeen Romie
ii) Wire Jigs
Mike Plissi and I have measured all of the wires for the 3 stages of the first prototype suspension. Mike has recommended a couple of small changes that have been incorporated into the design.
iii) Masses
The 3 masses have been assembled successfully, this has taken longer than expected as we have been organising our delivery of silver plated and stainless steel bolts.
iv) Coils
GEO should be delivering the coils for the mode cleaner this week.

II) Workshop
Both the Physics workshop and Central Engineering have been delivering the last of the piece parts for the suspension.

III) Single Pendulum Experiment
Norna Robertson and I have been analysing some initial results taken by John Veitch on a Single Pendulum with crossed blades and 2 wires off one blade. We are interested in extending our bank of results on how big an effect the crossing of the blades and 2 wires off one blade has on the pitch mode of a pendulum.
 

From: Janeen Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdLIGO Suspensions
Superior Jig has delivered four large MC blades. Calum and Mike Plissi have been characterizing them, finding curious results. The balance of four more large blades will be delivered from Superior Jig, via Gina courier, tomorrow morning. Four more small blades will be shipped from SJI on Friday, 8/30. Superior Jig made these blades by EDMing them out a billet of maraging steel. I will be picking up the Lobart blades, produced by the traditional rolling process, this afternoon. It will be interesting to compare the results of these blades, made from two different processes.
I've spend most of the week procuring parts or chasing procurements for the AdLIGO MC prototype suspensions or the new osem assemblies.

Working with UFl on penultimate mass designs. It's good to start interfacing with them.
 

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