LIGO Weekly Report

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LSC Issues (Weiss)

From: Rainer Weiss <weiss@ligo.mit.edu>
to: LSC executive committee
from: R. Weiss January 5, 2003
Notes from the LSC Executive Committee meeting January 3, 2003

TAMA/LIGO working group
------------------------
The executive committee approved the candidates for the joint data analysis
group which had formed at the GWDAW meeting.

Goddard Space Flight Center request to increase FTE to analyse LIGO I data
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Camp has asked for approval, prior to additional MOU negotiations,
to increase the effort at Goddard in the analysis of LIGO data in search of
coincidences with Gamma Ray bursts. He is proposing to add John Cannizo a
scientist at Goddard and the University of Maryland and Todd Strohmayer
a scientist and programmer at Goddard to the group. The scientific value
of the investigations is recognized by the committee but several issues
were brought up which need to be dealt with. Some are not specific
to this proposal. I will call Jordan Camp.

1) The effort needs to be coordinated with others already on going in the
LSC, in particular, the burst upper limit group needs to be coupled to
this effort.

2) Need an understanding about the authorship of LIGO I papers. The
assumption is that new people at this stage of the LIGO I program
will not be general authors on the group papers but rather authors on
special investigation papers. Also an understanding is needed
concerning the availability of new FTE for shift and other Collaboration
service functions.

Moscow State University request for detector characterization data
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The request to access LIGO I data for the study of various instrument features
without good coupling to the experimental teams at the sites was met with some
concern. The proposed investigations should be coupled to the LSC committee on detector
characterization. The major issue is possible misinterpretation through insufficient
discussion with the scientists who actually know the idiosyncracies of the
apparatus. I have been asked to discuss the proposal with Vladimir and Kip.

Competition for time at the LSC meetings
----------------------------------------
Discussed the proposal by Ken Strain to include QND measurements
in the interferometer configuration session of the March LSC meeting. Although
preparation of the first result papers for publication
and the increased activities in advanced LIGO planning have priority, it was now
considered important even for advanced LIGO planning (primarily in deciding on
fringe modulation techniques) to include these advanced techniques. The amount of
time dedicated to the various activities at the March meeting will need careful
planning which should begin in February and not wait until March.

Statement on shifts and other service functions
-----------------------------------------------
The draft letter on shifts and service functions will be sent
to the LSC Council with two changes. The first is to mention that LSC groups
assign an individual to interact with the shift organizer. The second
change is in the numerical example where 12 hour shifts were assumed.
A more acceptable case are 8 hour shifts.

April 5-9, 2003 APS meeting speakers
-------------------------------------
Peter Saulson raised the issue of the need for LSC coordination of a set of talks on
LIGO scientific results being planned by Sam Finn to be given at the APS meeting.
A session on LIGO in general has been planned by Patrick Brady in consultation
with Gary Sanders and Barry Barish. The abstracts for the talks are needed by January
10 so that coordination with Alan Wiseman, the upper limit group chairs, and
Peter Saulson needs to take place in the coming week. The choice of speakers
needs to consider that there will be other meetings in the coming year and that the
talks should be distributed between the active participants in the upper limit
groups.

Gary Sanders will provide a statement of acknowledgement (NSF, PPARC,etc) to be used
by all speakers and in the papers to be submitted for publication.

Upper limit paper and report review committees
-----------------------------------------------
I have been requested to hold a telephone conference for the review committees
to provide suggestions for process and to answer questions. Will try to set
this up between Jan 20 - 22.

LSC Support for the advanced LIGO proposal
------------------------------------------
Gary Sanders suggested that the LIGO Laboratory organize the LSC wide outreach
program. The plans for outreach activities are part of all NSF proposals and
LSC institutions have been providing outreach on their own. The idea would be to
coordinate and improve the quality of the program by hiring a person especially
interested in and good at it. The program developed would then be used by all
institutions in the LSC. The idea seemed attractive to the committee.

A letter endorsing the advanced LIGO proposal was discussed. The letter is to be signed
by all LSC institution Principal Investigators and is addressed to Bev Berger and Tom
Lucatorto. It will accompany the proposal submission. Several suggestions
to improve the letter were made. I hope to circulate the letter to the PI's when the
the first draft of the proposal becomes available.

Next LSC Executive Committee meeting
-------------------------------------
Friday January 24, 2003 at 11AM EST

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

There were site teleconferences held on Thursday, January 2, 2003 and Thursday, January 9, 2003. The following issues were among those discussed:

Cost vs Budget Status--Based on current spending rates and factoring in extra bi-weekly payrolls period that occur twice each year, we forecast $32 million in expenditures for FY 2003. The $28 million flat funding profile plus the $4 million carry forward from FY 2002 will cover this, but does not provide the growth needed for full operations. Nor does it provide the bridge funds typically required at the end of the year while NSF funding gets through the approval cycle.

Civil Construction at Livingston--The interior walls in the Staging Building are approximately 70 percent complete.

Civil Construction at Hanford--Information needed for proposed modifications to the Laboratory Building have not yet been received..

Traffic control systems--The change request for Hanford has been approved and Hanford is proceeding, Livingston has some verbal quotes, but more work is required. Decisions are required concerning communications between the gate and the control room.

Advanced R&D--David Shoemaker is going to be in charge of the Advanced R&D Program. Project Controls will set him up as the task manager and reports will be distributed accordingly.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through January 2, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>
Weekly Status Report for 12/26/02 and 01/02/03

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. . .

WE 01/09/03	Packages	Faxes
In	17	29
Out	7	29

From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>
Weekly Status Report for 12/26/02 and 01/02/03

The Change Control Board approved the use of $180,000 of construction funds for various activities at the Hanford site, including double glass doors and sun shades for the Laboratory Building, paving of parking lot, and traffic control systems. This should conclude construction at the Hanford observatory.

Progress continues on the traffic control systems at both sites. LLO has received a proposal for the widening of the access road to accommodate the gates and readers, and is waiting for a quote on the gates.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting was held on Tuesday the 7th of January. The subject of the meeting was the status of the detailed cost estimate and a forecast of a request amount.

We have completed the final draft of the annual report covering activities from December 2001 through November 30, 2002. It will be sent to the NSF tomorrow.
To support the proposal early next year for a LIGO upgrade, we have prepared an update to the Annual Report for Operations that was submitted to the NSF in September. This very first draft has been provided to Gary for comment and assignment of additional action.

Change Request CR-030001 to provide funds for completion of the Hanford Construction activities was approved during a meeting of the LIGO Change Control Board held as part of the Executive Committee Meeting on Monday, January 6, 2003. Meeting minutes have been distributed (attachment to EMAIL): LIGO-M030001-00-P.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

An audit team consisting of G. Billingsley (LSO), C. Scislowicz, H. Issaian, A. Jefferson of Caltech Safety Office and W. Tyler, is conducting laser safety audits of various Caltech LIGO facilities where lasers are operated. Presently, only the 40M facility remains to be audited. As part of this audit activity, laser users are also being asked to submit a LIGO Laser Safety Inventory form (Appendix B, of LIGO-M960001) for all LIGO lasers at Caltech. Copies of the inventory data for class IIIb and IV lasers will also be provided to the Caltech Safety Office for updating LIGO's laser registrations.

A revised/update of the LIGO Laser Safety Program (LIGO-M960001) document was completed and distributed for comments/corrections. The primary revision was to incorporate ANSI Z136.5, "Safe Use of Lasers in Educational Institutions" for LIGO laser guidelines. The other revision was to update Appendix E baseline eye examination protocol and clarify the eye exam process. Once the program revision is approved and released, the updated forms (appendicies) will be available on-line.

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

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)
December 20, 2002 - January 9, 2003
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Efforts are concentrated on WFS on the 4k and noise hunting on the 2k as respective S2
freezes approach. Visitors to the lab include A. Ivanov (CDS reconfiguration),
R. Schofield (acoustic noise hunting on the 2k), and P. Brady (LDAS/LAL S2 issues).

2K IFO (H2)
-----------

The 2k continues M2-like capricious behaviour of alternately locking and not locking for long
stretches. Sometimes problems are understood (e.g. transients in MMT1 due to bad
connections on an anti-aliasing chassis), at other points it is unclear why good locking
resumes. Since last Saturday the 2k has been quickly and robustly locking.

Fred notes that the 2k needs a factor of ten in sensitivity by S2 in order to be
scientifically relevant, as it is lagging the pair of 4k's. While the noise floor may
not be well understood, work is underway to eliminate the grotesque acoustic structure
observed mid-frequency by dumping beams properly and realigning ISC chains. Much of the
structure seen at higher frequencies is coherent with the common mode. December work on the
MC refl path improved frequency noise, for example, reducing a peak at 320Hz by a factor of
five.

The 4k continues to lock robustly and with improved sensitivity, thanks to a common mode
gain boost stage just in time for Christmas. The main contributor of noise in the 100Hz
to 300Hz region is believed to be coming in on POB_I. Some lock loss events due to the
AS_I servo reaching limits were fixed by doubling the servo's range.

A modified FSS card (like the one now operating on the 2k) was tested on the 4k PSL and
a unity gain frequency of 600kHz and a gain at 100kHz of 25dB were noted.

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

Interferometer: Valera worked on the reflected port optics - measuring the beam waist size and position. He also worked with Brian, Peter and Rana on the periscope lens installation. Joe Kovalik measured the calibrations of the various frequency control loops of the PSL and mode cleaner. (Joe Kovalik)

LDAS admin:
1) Changed all the passwords on LLO's LDAS;
2) Configured ldas-jobs in the first approximation;
3) Uploaded LHO's RDS.
4) Moving to the new building is 95% complete: what remains is to test
everything and to clean the mess. Thank you everybody who helped!

LDAS data analysis:
1) Finished debugging BLOB insertion to database from waveburst DSO;
2) Submitted first approximation of waveburst DSO to CVS;
3) Working on adding correlation calculation to waveburst DSO;
4) Working on vectorizing waveburst DSO;
--
Igor Yakushin

This week has been taken up with the LDAS move to the new building. We
have all of the equipment moved over there and are bringing things up
now.
I am also troubleshooting a problem with one of my edge switches. I
have 10-15% packet loss to the switch. This is the switch that LDAS and
general computing will plug into in the new building.
--
Shannon Roddy

HEPI / LAST
Ken Mason called out attention to a problem on the hydraulic actuators,
which is allowing fluid to enter the volume between the bleed valves and
their safety caps. I find that a machinist at the shop decided to
increase the depth of a threaded counter bore, which is the cause of the
leakage. I failed to catch this when the received parts were inspected.
Similarly, the valve installed in the leaking bore was redesigned, and I
installed and delivered an earlier, obsolete valve in the too-short
bore. This aggravated the problem. Recognizing the defects allows us
to proceed with bleeding and testing safely, and I'm having the correct
valves manufactured ASAP should Ken decide to install them.
Also working on summarizing for Dennis total costs incurred in
production of the 12 prototype actuators, as well as obtaining quotes
from our vendors for a complete LLO SEI installation. (Hammond, Kern)

Optics / Laser
Arrangements are complete and we have a new ophthalmologist to perform
the battery of tests required for our Laser Safety examination.
Received and installed the Laser safety Interlock card printer. It
prints too faintly, so we've ordered a quantity of 'dummy' cards to
experiment with. (Carter, Watts, Kern)

Outreach:
A review of the rough draft for the Livingston portion of the outreach proposal was held Friday, Jan 3. Jerry Pine participated in the review along with Karen Worth of EDC. Souhern University was represented by their Vice Chancellor for Research, Mildred Smalley, along with Dean and Asst Dean of the College of Education, an Ed faculty member, and Steve mcGuire - chair of the Physics Dept. Kerry Davidson of the La Board of Regents (the board that defines education policy for the state of Louisiana) also attended. Gary Sanders, Mark Coles, Phil Lindquist, Jill Andrews, and Hall Daily also participating in various parts of the daylong review. A second iteration of the proposal with a narrow, more sharply defined focus will be distributed in about 2 weeks. (Coles)

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

DETECTOR SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

Seismic Upgrade Project

Hydraulic External Pre-Isolation (HEPI)

see also the LASTI report

Marcel Hammond, Jonathan Kern

Ken Mason called out attention to a problem on the hydraulic actuators, which is allowing fluid to enter the volume between the bleed valves and their safety caps. I find that a machinist at the shop decided to increase the depth of a threaded counter bore, which is the cause of the leakage. I failed to catch this when the received parts were inspected. Similarly, the valve installed in the leaking bore was redesigned, and I installed and delivered an earlier, obsolete valve in the too-short bore. This aggravated the problem. Recognizing the defects allows us to proceed with bleeding and testing safely, and I'm having the correct valves manufactured ASAP should Ken decide to install them.

Note from Dennis Coyne: This small “weeping” leak is internal to the actuator and does not present a problem to the LASTI installation.

Also working on summarizing for Dennis total costs incurred in production of the 12 prototype actuators, as well as obtaining quotes from our vendors for a complete LLO SEI installation.

Note from Dennis Coyne: Costs are being gathered in preparation for a design review and CCB request. A decision regarding an electro-magnetic and/or hydraulic actuator implementation will not occur until after sufficient LASTI test results have been obtained and a lab review has been conducted.

Ken Mailand

An optical contamination test of the LASTI fluid (Aquamil) is nearly completed, the results so far look good (see the optical contamination cavity testing comments below).

Also a biological growth test is showing nothing after 5 weeks.

We are expecting delivery of 2 samples of other clear fluids, for possible use at LASTI, or at the sites. These fluid formulas are clear, water soluble, fire resistant, and non toxic, and meet our basic fluid specifications on file in the DCC doc.# E021116 -A-D.

I continue to work on the documentation and cataloging of the Pump Station, and the production version design, and an assembly strategy.

Electro-Magnetic External Pre-Isolator (MEPI)

See the LASTI report

DMT

John Zweizig

This week I have been summarizing the current configurations of the DMT monitors for use in determining what should be changed before S2. I have also been writing a DMT monitor that can will detect and tag injected signals.

CDS Software

Rolf Bork reporting

Alex is at LHO this week, primarily to replace the DAQ Framebuilder network with a new 2Gbit/sec link. With the new network in place, the DAQ controller load dropped from 98% capacity to ~54%, so we should be in good shape for a while.

Both Framebuilders at LHO are now running with Frame Version 6. The LLO Framebuilders will be upgraded tomorrow after the LDAS T3 systems are back on line.

Due to problems with the Variable Delay Timing (VDT) modules, I've changed out the Digital Suspension and LSC code at LLO to go back to polling the Pentek modules instead of the VDT for data ready. To reduce the effects of polling on ADC noise, the last Pentek in the end stations and LOS controllers is polled instead of the first. In the case of LOS controllers, the last Pentek does not have any signals connected to its ADC inputs. For the LSC, a third Pentek was added to avoid polling the first two, as these have critical signals. We are also looking at moving the GPS Ramp signal to this new Pentek to get rid of the cross talk noise. I'm hoping we can get a new IFO spectrum this week to see what effects these changes have had before moving the code to LHO.

New LOS controller code loaded at LLO also has the new dewhite and run/acquire switching that has previously shown to be successful in the end station controller software.

Lori is in the process of loading the new ASC code here at LLO. Testing should start tomorrow.

CDS Hardware

Rich Abbott reporting

PSL Intensity Stabilization Servo (ISS): Worked with Flavio to get the ISS running. Thanks to his diligence, the system is now working with the new transfer function and the two actuator approach. The new system has much more dynamic range than the old single actuator system. We communicated the changes to Rai while he was at CIT and he is going to try and get it installed at LLO. He also obtained the current shunt from Peter King to examine the circuit for slew rate issues. We are characterizing the system and getting ready to make a better optical setup.

Note from Dennis Coyne: Like the PSL FSS modifications at LHO, the planned ISS modifications at LLO are as yet unreviewed by the Revision Technical Review Board (RTRB). The intent is to explore the efficacy and robustness of this possible solution as input to a review before adopting the solution on all interferometers. This aggressive approach, which deviates from review policy, is also motivated by the possibility of immediate performance improvement for S2.

CDS Shop Cleanup: Todd and I are directing a general cleanup effort (throw away session) in the Wilson House to allow for long range storage of stuff. Things are getting better over here in terms of organization...

Jay Heefner reporting

Pentek Noise and Glitch Testing: Testing of the pentek modules for input referred noise, output referred noise and output glitches is 95% complete and a draft report has been written. Next week a few final tests will be conducted, then the report will be issued as a technical document.

LOS Coil DAQ Readout: Preliminary circuit design and simulation have begun.

EMI Upgrade: Equipto is providing us with a preliminary quote for EMI racks. It should be available next week.

Jay is meeting with Tracewell next week to discuss their EMI-rated VME crates.

Advanced LIGO DAC: Frequency Devices is planning on shipping the prototype to us for test in the next two weeks.

PSL

PeterKing

The high current photodetector is now functional. The thermal shutdown

mentioned in previous reports was due to a short in the series output

resistor, either because of some stray solder or FR-4 shavings. The

magnitude response of the photodetector requires some tweaking of the

compensation capacitor used in the transimpedance stage but is flat to 10 MHz,

exhibits about 3 dB of gain peaking at 20 MHz before falling off.

The output noise measurement is a little affected by the varying output

noise of the SR560 amplifier used to boost the output. Early numbers for

the dark noise of the photodetector are 3 nV/Sqrt[Hz] at 10 Hz and

1 nV/Sqrt[Hz] above 100 Hz. At 10 Hz, the photodetector is 3 times the

design specification. I hope to start high power testing of the

photodetector later this week.

Lee Cardenas

MOPA S/N 119 sent to be repaired on 8/16/02
Lightwave Electronics contacted and found out that the Pockell Cell (EOM) sent to be
aligned along with the optical train of the 10 watt laser is not going to be possible.
Dan Feehan from Lightwave explains that the power drift of the laser was due to the
thermal cavity length and the changed of the beam waist location due to the
Pockell Cell (EOM). The mode match was off by ~ 1.00 inch from the input
aperture of the power amplifier. Without the EOM in place, They claim power
obtained is 12.0 watts. and stable. We'll have to install the EOM in place and
make the mode match ourselves. I have explained to Dan that the most power
dissipated across the EOM when i aligned in place was no more than 5-20 milliwatt.
He said that he is going to send back the laser without the EOM in place, Otherwise,
He won't be able to warrant the Laser.

Optics Analysis

Erika D’Ambrosio

I run Melody for the "cold" configuration corresponding to Livingston and I got results that for the sidebands are different from the ones I got running the FFT-code, even using a huge number of modes in Melody (all TEM_mn with m+n<=20).

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38
Cavity #3 Reference Cavity.ready!
Taking measurements every day.

Cavity #2 Test cavity
The chamber is pumping with new cleaned mirrors ~ 70ppm each.We are taking RGA measurements.

New chamber ready for modification (soldered base and base insulator) -- waiting on the machine shop.

Found a good glass blower shop to make a few contamination cavities. Designing the new cavities is in progress. (pockets for sample to be next to mirror)
Looking into suspending the cavity with springs, the same configuration as the PSL reference cavity.

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)
Contamination Cavity # 1
Cavity with test sample aquamill still in progress and taking measurements every day.
Measurements of absorption, ringdown and cavity thermal lensing measurements.
We'll continue taking measurements for two more weeks.

Note from Dennis Coyne: By eye it appears that the change in absorption is < ~0.2 ppm/year; A chi-square fit will be performed.

Waiting for more samples from Ken Mailand. Ken will let us know.

Scatterometer
Scatterometer recovering is in progress now.

The first round of system ID on the hydraulic actuator system which is
installed on the BSC has been completed. If anyone wants to look at this
data they should send me email at richard@ligo.mit.edu. The pumping system
has been running for 5 days now without any problems being noticed. We are
now putting the system in bleed mode to remove any air which might have
accumulated in the actuator in the last week, where it will remain over
the weekend.

The HAM with the magnetic actuators has been recharacterized with the
repaired electronics and efforts are currently under way to control it.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Coyne, Forbes, Hammond, Kern, Mason, MacInnis, McKenzie,
Mittleman, Ottaway, Rankin, Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

LASTI PSL (Ottaway, Rollins)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Still on travel

Sideband Camera (Goda et al)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Blair finished the first draft of her undergraduate
thesis on the enhancements of scanning methods of a sideband camera, and
Nergis and I are reading through it and will give her comments
and suggestions this week.

Before the Christmas, Dave and I took the final set of data in order to
understand the sideband camera better so that we will be able to install a
sideband camera at each cite without serious problem.

EPI characterization (Mittleman, Rankin)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
No report

HEPI Design, installation, test
-------------------------------------------------------
The installation has been completed with all sensors functioning. Brian Lantz
was able to
measure transfer functions on all four piers before he left for Stanford.

Tested the noise at each hydraulic actuator in an attempt to determine the
amount of air
remaining in the hydraulic actuators. Pier 2 horizontal was found to have
substantially more
noise than the others. This weekend we are going to flip the horizontal actuator
up and bleed
all actuators for 48 hours.

Triple Suspension Prototype Test
-------------------------------------------------------
The design of the solid stack stand-in
which will be used on HAM 21 at LASTI has been completed and has
been ordered. All parts are scheduled to arrive on 1/17. They will require a
clean and bake
before they are installed into the HAM.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
    Summation cavity code
    ------------------------
    (Hiro) FP and PRM summation cavity code improvement and validation still
      going on.

Osamu and Hiro discussed further about the fast calculation of the
field in dual recycling cavity.

    Adlib code
    --------------
    (Hiro) ModalModel codes are updated. It now supports the curvature mismatch
     reflection matrix and implements some caching for speed improvement. One
     immediate use is to remove the explicit limit of the modes used in e2e.

(Biplab) Modified files so that the code is able to run with any spatial
modal order (there had been an upper limit at m+n<5 until now).

Took first steps for comparison of the e2e results with Melody which is
also a MOdal Model based simulation.

    Documentation
    ----------------
    (Biplab) The "primitive" document is updated for the recent changes related
     to the introduction of the global simulation option "KeepGuoyOffset".

    Alfi
    -----
    (Bruce)
     - [4.0 days] Worked on streamlining the local and remote
       distribution of Alfi.

    (Melody)
    - Continued working with the automated tester for alfi5.
    - Worked with Bruce in improving the alfi5 distribution process.

REPORT DATED JAN 02, 2003:
--------------------------
    Weekly Physics Meeting
    -----------------------
    Matt, Hiro, Biplab discussed SimLIGO and WFS issues.

    e2e outside support
    ---------------------
    (Hiro) Michaela Malec (Institut fuer Atom- und Molekuelphysik / GEO) has
    started using e2e, and posted a series of questions in the ligo-e2e-physics
    mail. Questions and ambiguities are answered and the answers and sample
    codes are available in http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~hiro/cavhiro.tar.Z.

    Adlib physics
    -----------------
    (Hiro, Biplab)
      - Clarified the rotation operation
      - Found the condition to preset a mode mismatched cavity close to
        resonance.

    Summation cavity
    ------------------
    (Hiro)
      - Summation cavity code (FP, PRM) updated - validating now
      - Osamu Miyakawa has started formulating for the dual recycling cavity
        based on the formulation by Hiro and Malik
      - Started writing LIGO Document T030001-00-E "Fast simulation of fields
        in compound optics systems", which summarizes the summation cavity
        formulation.

    Adlib Code
    ------------
    (Biplab) The "keepGuoyOffset" option associated with each propagator
    (for both primitive and summation modules) is now made a global option
    and can be set in a "field_gen" module. This option is utilized (e.g.)
    to study the thermal lensing problem and to keep track of the mirror
    displacements as the IFO gets hotter. With new changes, if this option
    is set to "false", the IFO can build-up its power even in presence of
    mismatches. Several files were modified.

    Alfi
    -----
    (Bruce)
      - [2.0 days] General minor bug work and documentation updates.

    (Melody)
      - Continued working on the automated tester for alfi5.
      - Finished updating the Alfi5 manual available from the e2e homepage

Software Systems (Blackburn)
The month long struggle to resolve the core dumps in the lightWeightAPI were
solved this week when Kent postulated that the objectSpace C++ socket library
had been compiled with too high an optimization. This also fixed the more
recent core dumping problems seen in the frameAPI. Since the C++ socket library
was recompiled on Monday with lower optimization levels, no API has dropped
a core file during normal operations (only during shutdowns). This has been
a source of tremendous concern so close to the software freeze for the E9 and
S2 runs. All are greatly relieved at having solved the puzzle. It does mean
that we will not be building the version of LDAS for the runs with high compiler
optimizations (a limitation from the transition to the new GCC 3.2.1) so there
is expected to be slight performance hit until a new compiler arrives.

The frameAPI has dominated the effort of much of the group this week. It now
has compress capabilities which are being tested and turning up lots of bugs.
It also has a tendency to stall on some jobs until the 3600 second time out
has been reach - A similar issue was last seen with the E7 version of LDAS and
fixed for the S1 run. It is not expected to be from the same bug but the source
is not understood and still being studied. At present, we loose a few jobs out
of every 1000 from this issue.

Several issues with the metadata written to FRPROC structures have been
identified in problem reports and fixed. These issues were minor but needed
to be cleaned up before the science run. Most were related to the large
conceptual change in the FRPROC structure in the last Frame Spec Update.

We are also seeing a few out of a 1000 jobs fail in the wrapperAPI due to an
error on the first call into the MPI library. This could be due to changes in
the mpiAPI or due to the recent upgrade of our LAM MPI source code to the
latest version. We are backing out the LAM library first to see if it is in
our mpiAPI code or in the Notre Dame LAM code. This will require more study
and will not be better understood until we've had a couple of days of testing
with the old LAM in place.

A gradual code freeze on the CVS repository is now in place. All developers
not on the 6th floor are temporarily limited to read only access and those
developers on the 6th floor which have completed developing required
functionality for the next release are frozen out. It is expected that a full
CVS code freeze will take place on Monday. Only bug fixes that have been fully
tested and code reviewed will be allowed in after that and they must go through
the CVS librarian.

A bug in the eventMonitorAPI which caused it to group several DSO multidim
objects into a single data product has been fixed. Now if a unique output
product is requested by the user, they will get one per multidim object instead
of being lumped together based on the socket tranmission objects.

The documentation for using the controlMonitorAPI client with its new BLT
widget set is on the development web pages. The new GUI is much faster and
has a nice look and feel to its plots.

Several minor modifications to the database tables have been requested by the
upper limits groups in preparation for the S2 run. These changes are now in
place on the LDAS-DEV system and will be added to test scripts. They will be
generated at the sites in time for the pre-release pushes.

For the dataConditionAPI this week, completed datacon action for producing
a linear filter from a specification of zeroes, poles and gain. Documentation
for the new function called zpg2linfilt() has been added to the LDAS User
Command web pages. Also completed code for polynomial expansion from roots
and polynomial multiplication, added C++ functions for promoting real data
objects to their complex equivalent while preserving all other attributes,
e.g., TimeSeries<float> to TimeSeries<complex<float> >. Several open problem
reports on the dataConditionAPI and its documentation were also close this
week. Commenced working on PR1818 "Need action for applying time-dependent
calibration" requested by Alan Weinstein.

A performance test of the new compression routines in the frameCPP library
were carried out using LDAS. There are several compression routines which
were compared with GZIP's compression/performance. Preliminary results are
interesting in that they suggest that the frameCPP compression can actually
bet GZIP under most circumstances! This implies that it might be better to
compress the data arrays in the frame files as opposed to compressing the
full frame files (from a disk storage point of view).

A benchmark of the FFTW fast Fourier Transform C library using the new GCC
compiler this week suggests that even though we are not able to gain LDAS
performance with the new C++ compiler, the C compiler has speeded up the
FFT by about 15%. The FFT boost will effect the dataConditionAPI and the
DSO search codes running on the Beowulf Clusters.

* Made HPSS and SAM-QFS data consistent with each other, working on making
IDE-RAIDs consistent as well.

* Got "fixed" Qlogic cards and instructions for installation. Will
install as soon as ldas-archive is back up.

* Did some work on HPSS to try to revive hsi/ftp, but it ended up needed
hardware work.

* Installed BB on the test system. I am having a lot of false positives
with the new code. I will have to iron out some of the bugs before I
release it on to the DEV system

* Identified and debugged reduced NFS client read performance on Solaris 9
(set nfs:nfs3_nra=4).

* Dealt with unexpected loss of air cooling to Millikan computer room with
automatic electric outage to prevent equipment overheating.

* Configured ldas-jobs in the first approximation in the absence of more
specifications.

* Moving to the new building is 95% complete: what remains is to test
everything and to clean the mess. Thank you everybody who helped!

* This week has been taken up with the LDAS move to the new building.
We
have all of the equipment moved over there and are bringing things up now.

* I am also troubleshooting a problem with one of my edge switches.
I have 10-15% packet loss to the switch. This is the switch that
LDAS and general computing will plug into in the new building.

* The raw M2 frame data was sent to Caltech and successfully archived
in HPSS. GPS times available are 723952784 to 723974432 (as previously
reported this data is also available on on disk in /frame10/M2/Data[0-6]
from fortress, sand, and stone, at LHO.

* A limited amount of LLO v5 RDS frames from S1 for GPS times 714994352
to 715069216 have been made available on fortress, by request for dtt
studies, in this directory: /ldasdisks/LLOrds/Tape14.

Yakushin:
1) Finished debugging BLOB insertion to database from waveburst DSO;
2) Submitted first approximation of waveburst DSO to CVS;
3) Working on adding correlation calculation to waveburst DSO;
4) Working on vectorizing waveburst DSO;

Weinstein:
- Working on modeling of burst sources in the galaxy; see
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ajw/bursts/GalaxyModel.pdf
- Working on making use of time-dependent calibration info
in burst simulations in datacond; in consultation with Philip,
requested added functionality to datacond.
- Reviewing the tools for running burst DSO's online during S2.

Shawhan:
I have continued to study the use of auxiliary-channel vetoes in the
inspiral upper limit analysis, in particular to evaluate their "safety"
(i.e. confidence that a gravitational wave could not veto itself).
I found that the coupling between AS_Q (the gravitational-wave channel)
and AS_I is much larger than expected, though the degree of coupling
varies significantly over time. This has led us to discard AS_I as a
veto channel. I have done a fairly thorough study of AS_Q couplings
to REFL_Q and REFL_I, including a survey of various times thoughout the
S1 run, which constrains the degree of coupling to these channels.
I am proposing to the group to use REFL_I as a veto for H1, with a high
SNR threshold and a very conservative SNR-ratio requirement, which
still is able to eliminate the occasional H1 glitches which show up so
clearly in REFL_I.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Installed / configured IBM and Dell laptops
-Testing wireless connectivity in XP to Lucent AP-1000 hubs
-Investigating new cite licenses for matlab / mathematica

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-This week has been taken up with the LDAS move to the new building. We
have all of the equipment moved over there and are bringing things up
now.
-I am also troubleshooting a problem with one of my edge switches. I
have 10-15% packet loss to the switch. This is the switch that LDAS and
general computing will plug into in the new building.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Started upgrading GC sun computers to Solaris 9 OS.
- Created a new user group for LSC people working on an LDAS/DMT web
page so that they could write files to the apache directories on the
ldas-jobs workstation set up by Greg Mendell.
- Blocked some IP addresses at the router that were trying to hack into
a Linux/Windows XP laptop owned by a UofO long term visitor.
- Reordered a laptop and desktop from Dell, the original orders placed
over a month ago had gotten lost at Dell.
- Helped a user track down an e-mail problem that ended up being a
corrupt e-mail file on the server. Removed the corrupted file and the
user's e-mail worked again.

(Larry)
-Contacted John M. and Cullen T. to see where things were with the WAN
installation and getting the existing connection back to an acceptable
performance level.
John is working on setting up a meeting to go over the new WAN installation.
No reply as of yet on the network performance issue.

CIT:
(Lisa)
- Implemented certificate based relaying on becrux. This is currently in beta
testing.
- Opened a case with sun regarding upgrade of the Solstice Backup software. Sun
is currently saying that our support contract does not entitle us to the
upgrade.
- Replaced a failing hard disk on luna.
- Made changes to the daily/weekly backups to fix some glitches and add rigel to
the backup scheme.
- Helped a user with some csh questions.
- Fixed some user problems resulting from the home account move to rigel.

(Mike)
-Loaded a new laptop for Dennis Coyne.
-Swapped out a laptop and hardware for John Zweizig.
-Reloaded two laptops for loaner pool.
-Updated firewall software on all NT servers.
-Added additional security features to all servers.
-M91 was having problems with the real player media server; I ended up
having to reinstall the software which is now back up and running.
-Reloaded a pc for Hareem Tariq that was infected with a virus plus
had to backup a huge amount of data that was stored on this PC. I am just
about finished with this reload.
-Had a computer at Wilson House that was infected with a virus, which required a
reload; plus I found a hardware problem that I corrected.
-Performed a lot of user support this week regarding viruses, software & network
issues.

(Veronica)
-LIGO website: scheduled a training session at the Digital Media Center
for a trial run of digitizing/compressing a short VHS tape. In addition to
training, this will provide an example of what would be involved in
processing of existing VHS tapes should we decide to do it in-house.
Obtained a rough cost estimate from DMC for the job.
-Completed, tested, and posted the video/slideshow combo of last LIGO
seminar. That required troubleshooting of the RealMedia server, which we
did with Mike.
-Updated various webpages throughout the website.
- LSC website: posted a few updates.
- GNATS database: troubleshooting a category that does not pipe incoming
problem reports into a corresponding directory. The directory will need to
be reconfigured. Provided user support.
- CaJAGWR: posted the updates to the website. Provided administrative
support.
- Started working on the Advanced LIGO proposal.

(Larry)
-Made a number of changes in the computer server room. Mostly rearrangement of
computers and cables. Moved the users home accounts to another server and
increased the disk space for the home accounts. Most of the problems from the
move were stale NFS issues. So far things appear to be running well.
The setting up of new accounts procedure has changed. The new home-account
server is running Solaris9 which is not compatible with the tools we use for
setting up accounts. Two additional steps now have to take place.
-The purchasing arena has been a busy one. More items for a number of people.
The big items are the new routers for CIT and Hanford. The CIT router order is
in place and the Hanford one will be after a few more logistical issues are
worked out.
A couple of laptops have been ordered. It should be noted that most people
should expect to use their laptop/workstation for two-three years before being
eligible for an upgrade. We are getting most of laptops with a three year
warranty.
-The General Computing Usage policy has been sent out. So far about 45 people
have responded. That with some of the feed back and questions, has been a
pleasant surprise. We are now working on updating some of the documentation and
getting web pages setup with more detailed information/instructions related to
the policy.
-Worked a number of issues getting different users back up and running.
-We now have a site license for Math Type, which is a equation editor for
Microsoft Word. We have already started distributing it and will be passing it
along to MIT, Hanford and Livingston.
-The regular of setting up users, blocking bad e-mail locations and
documentation all being done on a daily basis.
-Working on the distribution of the new licensing we have for Matlab.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

Visit
I was visiting the U. of Glasgow from the 13th of December until the 24th of December. I will write a full report on this visit for next week.

Mode Cleaner
Mark Barton has been measuring the pendulum frequencies of the mode cleaner suspension. In order to compare this to theory it is necessary to edit the parameter set in the model to be consistent with the actual suspension.
Therefore I have been calculating the mass and moment of inertias of the various stages of the assembly using SolidWorks.

Helena and I are working on completing the assembly of the second suspension and hope to have this done by the end of the week.

Workshop have been working on several duplicate parts that are needed for one suspension to go to LASTI.

Cantilever Blades
Eoin Elliffe, Mike Plissi and I met to discuss the modelling and manufacture of cantilever blades using an ANSYS model written by Eoin. The plan is to get several prototype blades made using numbers predicted by Eoin's model.

David Shoemaker raised the question of whether the fallback optic (fused silica) for the AdvLIGO FM would be a worse interference problem (with the BSC support tube) than the planned sapphire. It turns out that the planned optic for the FM is fused silica, with no change for fallback. This optic is 35 cm dia. X 11.8 cm thick, compared with the 32 cm dia. X 13 cm thick that was drawn for the interference check. This is not a major difference; the interference problem remains about the same.

Silicate bonding - SF4 glass
Bonded 8 SF4 substrates to silica substrates. These were 1/2"dia. pieces.
Used a 1:6 sodium silicate solution. The bonds were cured for 36 days before they were tested.
The bonds did not show signs of stress when viewed under the polariscope.
The first bond was loaded with 16 kg and failed after ~20 minutes. A second bond loaded with 4.5 kg also failed after a few hours. We are looking into the problem.
Made 4 more bonds with newly bought sodium silicate solution.

Advanced LIGO Coatings
J.M. Mackowski will coat a 3"dia. x 1"thick substrate with doped tantalum to compare results with the thin substrate already coated with the same material. He expects to have the part finished by the end of the month.

Have been preparing to investigate the H1 and/or H2
TL next week at LHO. Besides cooking up specific things
to measure, have devoted much time to reviewing old
simulations (FFT) on this. Working with Erika (now back
stateside) and P. Fritschel (to understand agreement
with his new estimates of AS port detection "efficiency".

Have also been analyzing how the full locking servos
cope with the offset in the l+ servo (due to the TL).
Have been analyzing this with Biplab who has been doing
related things with the e2e. So he is now doing some
pertinant e2e simulations for me.

I am chasing up the hardware prices for a photodiode test setup. These
are to be included in the "basis of estimate" costing. In going through
the costings, I have identified 5 items that, perhaps, ought to be removed.
These items do not have a large dollar amount associated with them, so the
impact is minimal, especially when the costs for the photodiode test setup
are put in.

AdLIGO Suspensions
Inputing my proposal changes.
Mark and I started pendulum frequency testing last week. An accelerometer was used first. Now, Mark is using an eddy current sensor with a shaker. He is working with Calum on checking the parameter set. This week, the second MC will be moved to another table for structure frequency testing.

We're awaiting cables from Paul Russell for local damping testing, and hope those will come any day. Mark and I already moved the dSPACE system over to the Synchrotron. Helena and I glued magnets and dumbbells onto the two metal masses this week. They are ready to be swapped in tomorrow morning. Helena has been writing up a preliminary assembly document

Charles, Riccardo
More misery on brazing. Now we can wet well MoRuB and Vitralloy, but having problems with braze surface oxyde.

Alessandro
While writing the paper, made an additional check on the horizontal accelerometers. Found a stupid limitation in the old accelerometers damping performance. The wiring was underestimated and was limiting the Q. New wiring boosted the Q from ten or a few tens to well over 1000 (at <0.5 Hz!) and still rising (presently limited by vacuum in his test setup).
The result is an even improved horizontal accelerometer performance, now limited by the electronics even with the cheaper aluminium body (the CuBe is for the moment redundant).
Received the Ultra Sound Milling Machine, Installing in Pisa.

Mike
Finished up cryogenic measurements on sapphire fibers thermal conductivity. No surface roughness effect found and no effect to be expected unless the fibers roughness is reduced to less than 4 Angstrom level.

Weekly Report for Week Ending January 9, 2003

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