Weekly Report for Week Ending February 27, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  March 3, 2003 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

1. Announcements
2. LSC Issues (Weiss)
3. Comments on Weekly Report
4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)
• Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
• Administration (Lindquist)
• Sites (Raab, Coles, Shoemaker, Sanders)
• Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
• Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
• Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)
7. CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED

Special Items:   STATUS OF S1 PAPERS, CONSTRUCTION FUNDS EXPENDITURES

Special Announcements:

Information is below and can be found at:

http://atcaltech.caltech.edu/calendar/item.tcl?calendar_id=35258
 

EARNEST C. WATSON LECTURE SERIES

Date: March 5, 2003 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM

Location: Beckman Auditorium - Find on Campus Map

"Catching the Waves with LIGO," Barry Barish, Linde Professor of Physics and director, LIGO Laboratory, Caltech.
Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 as a consequence of the general theory of relativity. In his theory, concentrations of mass (or energy) warp space-time, and changes in the shape of such objects cause distortions called gravitational waves that propagate through the Universe at the speed of light. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is being developed to detect gravitational waves from such sources as compact binary systems, spinning neutron stars, supernovae and even cosmological sources. LIGO consists of two widely separated long baseline interferometers that will be used in coincidence. The construction of these devices is complete and initial searches for gravitational waves are under way.

MORE INFO: LIGO Home Page

Lecture or concert series: Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series
For further information: contact Caltech Ticket Office events@caltech.edu phone: (626) 395-4652
Sponsored by: Caltech Public Events
 
 

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

There was a site teleconferences held on Thursday, February 27, 2003.

• A discussion was held regarding the amount of construction funds remaining which must be spent by this June 30.  It was agreed that Florence Kaufman would distribute a report showing the remaining construction funds, and it would be discussed at the Monday Executive Committee meeting.
• A list of visa problems over the last year will be compiled and sent by Gary Sanders to the OSTP.  The official charged with obtaining visas for scientists will forward this to the INS.
• There was a discussion of teleconferencing services, comparing use of the Caltech operators to AT&T teleconferencing services.  It was brought out that the AT&T service is charged to overhead while the Caltech service is charged directly to a LIGO account.  There were also reliability issues with the Caltech service.  Ed Jasnow was to provide Gary with information on the AT&T service.

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

• Provided assistance to the Detector Group (M. Smith) with the packing and shipping of a Tilt Platform RA NO. 99 serial number 70416 , to PIEZOSYSTEM JENA (J. Latinski) Hopedale. MA. Account Number P205472.
• Provided assistance to the Low Frequency Noise Suppression (R. DeSalvo) with the packing, shipping and the preparation of US Customs Documentation for Items being shipped to the University Of PISA( Frrancesco Fidecaro) "For Research Only" . This shipment is valued at $6,146.00. Account Number P204289.
• Provided assistance to the Detector Group (P. King) with the packing and shipping of machined hardware to MIT ( D. Ottaway) . Account Number P204597.

>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

No report.

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

• Electronic document activity remains very busy.  Processed a set of LASTI drawings.
• Completed organizing past years fax transmission reports and filed.
• Organized, created file folders, and filed documentation.

 Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Completed an internal modification for MIT in order for the invoice to be paid.
• Worked with Florence and Esther in resolving a long outstanding issue on two encumbrances on the Newark Electronics blanket. The two commitments have been removed from the POETAs. One over-encumbered amount of $8,498.45 has been removed from the blanket PO, whereas one over-encumbered amount of $166.50 still remains showing on the blanket PO only (not on the actual POETA).
• Completed change order 20 to Excel Group, change order #4 to Air Products, and change order 12 to U.S. Department of Energy to add funds for the FY2003 invoice.
• Placed and reconciled pcard orders.
• Two of the three subcontracts audited by CPSR (American Electric and Intelligent Video) have been completed by the auditors with no exceptions noted by the auditors. They are still reviewing Northrop Grumman. The auditors will be at Caltech through Friday, February 28, 2003.

• No Report This Week.

• Responded to funding realignment request from Project Accounting for two fiscal year 2003 Operations accounts.
• Worked on reports for February 2003.


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

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

• AdLIGO / SEI Mechanical Structures: Positive responses to our Letter of  Interest were received from all solicited sources. RFP package is in preparation.

 
• The estimate for the changes to the LHO Laboratory Building has come in from Chervenell at $76,000.  This compares to the LIGO estimate of $45,000.   These changes are the double glass doors, the steel sun shades, and additional carpet.  Although the costs are higher than the original estimate, they are still within the budget approved by the Change Control Board.
• Estimates for initial rework on the LLO Staging Building are $17,000.  These include re-design of the high-bay air conditioning to reduce noise and various other tasks.

• A presentation was given on Thursday, February 27, discussing options for the traffic control access gate at LLO.  After discussion, it was agreed to locate the gate approximately 100 feet east of the fork into the parking lot. There will be a re-design to incorporate the "T" area into a turn-around.  Also, there will be specific recommendations regarding the gate design and the opening technology.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for twenty-five (25) new/revised trips and there are sixteen (16) trips which are in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and/or paper work completed.  Also assisted P-Card holders with their travel plans/reservations or revisions.  Until further notice I will be doing travel for LHO travelers.
• Completed six (6) Expense Reports and there are fifteen (16) reports yet to be done.  I continue to contact travelers who have outstanding Expense Reports (more than one (1) month old) to ask for their cooperation in sending me their receipts so that I can close their trip(s).
• Reconciled forty-one (41) P-Card items which required numerous phone calls to hotels, etc. in order to track down which traveler incurred which charge, and the pulling of 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 and completed month-end for another.
• Continued to collect EFT (Electronic Funds Transmittal) forms for new direct deposit of travel expense checks.  It is hoped that we will be able to initiate this pilot program starting April 1, 2003.  Your cooperation in promptly returning the form to me (Irene Baldon, M.C. 18-34), filled out, with a VOIDED check or deposit slip attached, is greatly appreciated.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for February 24, 2002.  Arranged numerous teleconferences and entered reservations on the LIGO Calendar as needed.  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 invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of February 17.
• Processed the usual requisitions, change orders and payment requests.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

• Completed 3rd floor copy/supply room project
• Preparation for Adv. LIGO submission to NSF
• Worked on calendar issues

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 02.21 to 02.27

Accomplishments:

Out of the office the 21st and 27th.

Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meetings were not held this week.  Next meeting is pending Adv. LIGO Proposal Submittal.

 For list of documents that are being used to develop Adv. LIGO Cost and Schedule, see http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/Cost_MTG_082002/

Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)

• Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.
• The following is a summary of status by sub system:
• COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• PSL -  No action items pending.
• AOS - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• IO -  Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• SUS - No action items pending.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 02.14.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 02.28.03.
• SEI - Received revised (Version 3) data from Dennis and data input of WBS and BOE is in progress.
• ISC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• LDAS - No action required at this point in time.
• INSTALL - Dennis provided a revision and data input is in progress.
• DAQ - No action required at this point in time.
• PM - No action required at this point in time.
• FAC - No action required at this point in time.
• SUP - Need estimate for support equipment.  Action item to be executed by Dennis.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 02.14.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 02.28.03.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 02.14.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 02.28.03.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 02.14.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 02.28.03.

• ROSTER DATABASE:
• Working with Larry and Barbara to set up a process by which the roster database updates selected alias lists.
• Received updated files and posted and tested.
• BK is incorporating comments.

• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• Continue to verbally communicate the username and password to users.
• BK is continuing work on action items.
• Posted updated files and tested.  Sent comments to BK.

Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.

• See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

Sent requested data to Caltech's Office of Sponsored Research.

Change Request CR-030002 to adjust the FY 2003 operating budgets to reflect actual staffing during the first quarter has been prepared.  Additional information is required.

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)

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

Interferometer: This past week we have not been able to lock the interferometer for any appreciable length of time during the day due to ground motion. Even the weekend was disappointing. We have been able to run routinely during the night, with the exception of Wednesday evening and early Thursday morning. The cause of the poor locking appears to have been  due to changes in the PRM gain introduced into the upscript and downscript common mode turn on code. Once these values were restored, operation returned to normal.

CDS: Set up a soft-robot ROBO-SCIMON to automate some S2 elog entries for Lock Statistics which has been working well. Working on updating Redbook webpages to reflect the current state of the ifo system. Ordered a 436 GB disk array for LLO's DTT and user account disk spaces. Working with DVD-Robot backup scripts for DVD-backups and retrieval. Created a medm screen button to start autocalibration lines. Ran into a couple of problems with Diagnostics being closed after a few minutes of no activity. Looking into solving the problem by keeping a dtterm open all the time. Chethan

Seismic:
No big news this week. Still configuring 3D digital data and drawings for LIGO 1 to advanced LIGO. At the request of Larry Jones, I have been investing various translation schemes to export files to if potential bidders and vendors cannot use native SolidWorks files. It appears that an ACIS (.sat) file would be the likely candidate (although what version still needs to be determined). I have also (at the suggestion of Jonathan Kern) been finding and archiving previous versions of the HEPI actuator package. We felt this was important so that we have a digital path to backtrack legacy data. Marcel

GC:
Most of this week has been spent moving across the street to the new offices. Hooked up the network connection to several of the new offices. Ordered some additional wireless access points to have wireless in all of the new offices. Ordered a projector for the conference room in the new building. This is not a LCD projector. Instead it uses the DLP technology by TI. I am pretty satisfied with the image quality. There are several advantages to the DLP, but also a couple of disadvantages. Ordered a video conferencing camera to permanently mount in the auditorium. Looking into some bandwidth problems with Larry et al. - Shannon

LDAS admin
1) Fixing gaps in 107 channel RDS.
2) Experimenting with Szabi's ndas RDS.
Data analysis
1) Running waveburst at sites on S2.
2) Fixed bugs in computing some properties of the triggers.
3) Introduced more selection handles into DSO to increase its
sensitivity without overloading the database.
Igor Yakushin

Other: Occupancy approval for the new office space was received from the Fire Marshall last Friday. We have begun to move people into the new offices.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Suspended optics:
• The 40m has been vented since Thursday to install suspended optics.
• The BS, ITMx, and ITMy were installed in their respective chambers by Steve, Dennis, and Osamu.
• They were all hooked up to their digital suspension controllers, and they all are damping fine.
• Steve, Dennis, Osamu, and Alexei installed optical levers on all 3 optics, using small red lasers and in-vacuum mirrors. Getting 5-7% of the light back; not bad. Detectors not yet installed.
• Bob has assembled two SOS's (for PRM and SRM) and two MOS's (for ETMx and ETMy), in preparation for suspending the optics. A few missing parts (screws, top assembly) are missing, and have been ordered. The OSEMs are ready. Janeen will do some mechanical tests on the MOS.
• Steve is investigating the use of indium, to replace the viton and springs in the suspension earthquake stops. He's been discussing this with Mark Barton.
• Suspended mass mode cleaner (Ugolini, Miyakawa, Vass, Abbott):
• Osamu measured the seismic noise on top of the MC2 stack (up to 100 Hz, but with little coherence with the floor above 50 Hz; from 50-100 Hz, it's probably dominated by acoustic noise). Including the pendulum TF, the curve explains the MC noise spectrum well, below 50 Hz, except for: (a) f < 1 Hz, which is very time-variable; (b) bounce mode peak at 16 Hz; (c) peak at 30 Hz, right near the cross-over frequency between the MCL and MCF servo paths; the servos are 180degrees out of phase there, and that needs to be fixed.
• After all the installation, Dennis and Osamu re-established alignment of the MC optics, and observed fringes while in air. The light power was very low, so the MC servo signal was very small; too small to lock robustly.
• Still, it looks like the modified MCL path (through a Pentek ADC instead of an ICS110B) works.
• Ben's re-wiring for the universal dewhitening board was completed and checked out. Many problems with the board were discovered and fixed. However, the software is not controlling the hardware universal dewhitening properly; Ben and Alex Ivanov are working together to fix it.
• All the electronics required to complete the WFS ASC for the MC have been passed on to Lori, to complete the ASC software.
• Core digital suspension controllers (DSC), and other Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Bork, Taylor):
• Rolf and Jay are developing a complete re-layout of our DSC system, using a commodity PC rather than a VME Pentium to do the filtering, leaving the VME Pentium to do IO only. Instead of 4 VME crates to run 8 DSC's, (limited by the filtering in the VME Pentium), only ONE would be needed (freeing up modules for completion of our endstation DSCs and LSC system). Tests at Wilson House are ongoing; should know whether the new scheme will work in the next week. Jay and Ben will rework the rack wiring (1Y4 and 1Y5). We hope to meke the mods by the end of March.
• Ben and Jay will review the necessary mods to get gps timing signals to the end racks.
• Jay is drawing up a LIGO-I-like LSC system for the 40m dual-recycled IFO, including 8 I/Q demod boards from LSC PD's.
• PSL and ISS (O. Miyakawa, B. Abbott, R. Abbott, F. Nocera, D. Ugolini, S. Vass):
• We are planning on making phase noise measurements to our VCO, and potentially also increasing its dynamic range (to compensate for the higher seismic noise at the 40m lab).
• We are also reviewing the mods to the FSS that are recommended by Rick Savage.
• Work on ISS has been slow this week; Flavio is sick and Rich is on vacation.
• Optical sensing (Smith, Ourjoumtsev, Goggin, Miyakawa):
• Alex and Lisa completed the installation of the optics for the SP beamline. Alexei gave a list of missing parts to Mike, who is updating the parts list.
• Alex has completed his code and a nice GUI for calculating the beam size and Guoy phase for all beamlines in the main IFO. As a first exercise, he'll study the effect of moving the PZT steering mirror from the MMT to the next table (which Mike found was necessary for mechanical reasons).
• Alex will soon begin the assembly and commissioning of an electro-optic shutter for the MCR, AP and SP beams.
• OPTICS PARTS LIST, Orders pending: Input mode-matching telescope off-axis parabolic mirrors are expected 3/10/03 from SORL; drive electronics to drive the x and y axes of the 2nd PZT vacuum IFO steering mirror are expected 3/3/03 from Piezo-Jena; repair of two damaged tilt platforms expected week of 4/7. Re-worked IFO MMT parts and light-weight PZT steering mirror holder are pending. 1.5 in mirrors for the light-weight PZT steering mirrors are pending from CVI.
• FARADAY ISOLATOR: The Faraday isolator was assembled and aligned by Mike and Alex. The transmissivity was 0.97 and the extinction ratio was an appalling 0.11. Subsequently, the horizontal input and output polarizers were rotated by approximately 3 deg in the horizontal plane and the extinction ratio improved to 2.5E-3, with the transmissivity dropping to 0.91. Coincidentally, the 3 deg rotation brought the front face of each polarizer normal to the beam; however, the polarizers were designed with a 3 deg wedge on the entrance face, so that the beam would not enter normal to the face to avoid glint reflections. Clearly something is wrong, and further testing and discussions with Karl Lambrecht and EOT will be necessary before we can resolve the problem.
• OPTICAL LEVER ASSY: Reworked parts were received and are awaiting checking and assembly.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Ugolini, Vass, Jones):
• The 40m has been vented since Thursday, for optics installation. We'll pump back down on Friday.
• Steve noted that our new in-vacuum cables, which have a non-insulated copper braiding, are lying on the optical tables and the floor of the chamber, and Jay said that this was not good. Steve and Osamu will look for evidence of ground loops with this situation.
• Steve replaced the failed TP3 dry scroll forepump with a spare. He's not sure why the pump failed.
• Steve and Bob are adding a new large dry scroll forepump behind TP2.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor, Cardenas):
• Bob completed bake jobs for Janeen, Mike Smith, Ken Mason, and Larry Jones.
• Bob is assembling the in-vacuum camera mirror parts for the 40m. A missing screw has been ordered.
• Bob is making 5 more OSEMs for Janeen / Glasgow.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

Since our last report we have eliminated most of the remaining
discrepancy in the error signals between NAC and SAC. We had found that
their error signals differed by about a factor of five, and we found
that the problem was again in the RF photodiodes. We pulled all three
photodiodes out of the instrument and checked their resonant circuits.
None of them were tuned to the correct frequency. CDS tuned them for
us, and the error signals between the two arm cavities are now matched
to approximately 10%. Many thanks to Rich and Dave for their help
tuning these units!

Now that the instrument is back up and running, we have resumed our
hunt for dominant noise sources. Using a stereo amplifier and a pair of
headphones to listen to the error signals, we identified a spurious
interferometer in NAC that appears to dominate the noise floor between
(approximately) a few hundred hertz and a kilohertz. This noise comes
from light scattered off optical elements on the output table, just
before the camera used to identify the NAC's resonant mode. This
problem is surprisingly tenacious, but we are working to eliminate it.

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Lantz, Hardham, Coyne, Hammond, Kern, Lilienthal,
Mason, MacInnis, Mittleman, Ottaway, Rankin, Rollins,
Shoemaker, Zucker, Zuo)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Rich and Dave are on site this week doing shifts. Ken Mason
reports:
 

External Pre-Isolators
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Completed HEPI and MEPI detail and assembly drawings and filed them in the DCC. The MEPI
assembly and Installation procedures have also been filed into the DCC. HEPI procedures have
been started and will be filed shortly.
 

The BSC chamber at LASTI has been cleaned and clean rooms set up and running in preparation for
placing sensors on the optics table.
 

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E Physics meeting
--------------------
We discussed the various peaks and bumps in the current sensitivity curves
from all IFOs and their possible origins. The bumps at 90-100hz range
originating from WFS system and at 20-25hz originating from mich signal
were discussed at length. There was also discussion if errors in the NSPOB
light measurement due to BS alignment adjustment could be the reason
behind some discrepancies in calibration.
 

LHO 4k lock loss
------------------
(Hiro) From Feb.19 to 23, Hiro took owl shifts at LHO. During this period,
 causes of lock loss of H1 were looked for. There was one lock loss due to
 an earthquake, and still the coil current saturation was not observed.
 More systematic study with the help by people at the site will be needed
 to implement a good lock loss mechanism. During the LSC meeting, this will
 be looked into at LLO together with Matt Evans.
 

LLO modeling
---------------
(Hiro) So far, only LHO4k IFO parameters are properly documented for the use of
 e2e. Sany Yoshida has started to create a macro file for LLO. He modified
 the file for LHO4k to create one for LLO 4k COC. Hiro is checking into it.
 Sany is working to make a macro file of LLO IOO. Another input needed for
 the LLO simulation is the seismic noise. Sany provided data, and Hiro and
 Virginio are making a PSD fit so that a simple LLO site simulation can be
 done.
 

Mode mismatch
---------------
(Biplab) The comparison between FFT and E2E results for sideband power in
 LHO4k under various mismatched states turned out to be more encouraging than
 that for LHO2k. Unlike in LHO2k, the two codes agree with each other at
 least qualitatively. Possible reasons are being looked into.
 

Dual CPU unit ordered
-----------------------
(Hiro) Larry placed an order two units of dual CPU (3.05GHz x 2) box for
 the simulation purpose. The simulation effort now needs fast CPUs to make
 the modeling more productive, fast CPU with nicely optimized version of
 gcc. These will be placed in the Westbridge 3rd floor. Main use is as
 number crunching server, but one unit will be used to study the
 compatibility of new versions of ALFI.
 

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Biplab) A new release of the e2e software package is now available
 as tarball (e2e-1.7.11.tar.gz) from the 'Download' link of the e2e
 homepage: http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~e2e
 This one includes a bug-fixing (by Matt) for BS position in recycling
 summation cavity.
 

(Melody) Continued on the optimization of the modeler's FUNC_xxx modules.
 

Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
 - Worked on implementation of automatically managed data path junctions.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
A significant amount of progress has been made in reliability of the mpiAPI
this week. As of last night's testing, we were back down to our 1-in-10000 or
less failure rate in this code (compared to the roughly 1-in-100 currently
seen in the version being used at the sites). More testing is needed, but we
think we are back in the region of reliability seen in the S1 run for this
particular component of LDAS.
 

The frameAPI continues to be difficult for the programming staff to fix. The
migration to the new GCC 3.2.2 did not by itself resolve the problems seen in
the frameAPI (random core dumps). However, attempts to optimize with this new
compiler disclosed an issue with the C++ developers using _XYZ and XYZ_t names
in several hundred places in the code. This is in strict violation of the ANSI C++
standard, which reserves these for internal compiler use. I have asked that all
instances of these variable names these be removed from the source code and that the changes be tested before
becoming part of the CVS repository. It is not likely that these will fix all
of our issues with the frameAPI, but it has already been shown to resolve one
issue.
 

Attempts to fully optimize the LDAS build are still unsuccessful at producing
a working system. We have determined that it is inlining of functions and not
the level of -O# optimization that is causing the problems. A effort is under
way to determine if we have missed some small detail in compiling the compiler
that could account for the inlining producing bad executable LDAS.
 

Several improvements were made in the performance of the controlMonitorAPI
when viewing logfiles. An index was added as well as larger buffers for
parsing the contents of these logs.
 

An issue with the dataqualitychannel reported by Greg Mendell has been tracked
down and fixed in the dataCondtionAPI. It will be part of the next LDAS release.
 

The threaded data socket model currently in place in the metaDataAPI has now
been added to the eventMonitorAPI. This should slightly improve the performance
of the eventmonitorAPI. In addition, some unnecessary memory overhead was
removed from the eventMonitorAPI.
 

The most common cause for jobs to fail at the site this week was due to the
search codes trying to analyze data as it is generated at the framebuilder,
with no delays. Frames are aways going to be 16 seconds behind their marked
timestamps since they have 16 seconds of data in them. The system itself has
delays in writing these to disk and publishing that they are on disk. LDAS
then has delays discovering these and as a result it is not a good ideal to
look for frames using LDAS in realtime - the jobs are going to fail. We also
pushed a new version of LAL and LALwrapper to the sites this week (this is
the LSC search code library). We were able to swap it into place in twenty
seconds. Only one job failed due to the swapout. There was a small hickup
in the diskcache at LLO when identically named calibration frame files were
place on the LDAS system in two different subdirectories (an old set and a
new set). Once the old frames were removed the system was once again able
to handle requests for these frames.
 

LDAS was finally tested this week interfaced to the SAM/QFS system. Burst
group jobs were submitted all night on Tuesday and successfully got their
frame data from the large tape storage system. This is a major milestone
since no code changes were necessary to LDAS to be able to accomplish this.
There may be room for tuning to make an LDAS system work more efficiently
when getting data from tapes, but the fact that it worked by design is was
a great moment for us.
 

We began the process of creating RDS frames here at Caltech. (They are already
being generated at the sites). This is to allow distribution to the Tier II
centers since the sites do not have the bandwidth to distribute these frames.
A hickup occurred right out of the starting block. The channel list being used
at LLO didn't work on the full LLO frames here at Caltech. Looking further,
it was discovered that the scripts at the two sites are not the same and that
the method of running the scripts differ. We are working to unify the process
and expect to have everything on track by the end of the week. We are adopting
the mechanism of running jobs used at Hanford as the method to be used here.
 

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

* Spent most of my time this week trying to get the 1Gb FC HBA on saiph
  talking to 2Gb FC switch, and with the expertise of Qlogic's Daniel
  Hoang, it is now working.
 

* In the process of getting that to work, we determined that 1Gb HBAs
  will talk to the switch over long (880m) fibre runs.
 

* The 1Gb HBA on dataserver-cit is also talking to the switch, but I
  haven't got the SAM-FS filesystem on that machine working yet.
 

* Created some HPSS accounts.
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Setting up BB to report to a graphing plug-in. Larrd. This will give us
  the ability to plot trends in the BB data.
 

* Assisted Dan with installing fiber in Powell-Booth.
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Ran the first successful integration tests of LDAS with SAM-QFS.
  LDAS jobs that requested data that was not already available from
  the disk cache blocked until SAM-QFS automatically staged the data
  to disk and then proceeded to successfully process the job. No code
  changes to LDAS where required.
 

* Received the actual 1200 TB (1.2 PB !) SAM-QFS license from Sun, which Dan Kozak
  has successfully installed at Caltech.
 

* Successfully archived the first 7.5TByte of S2 data into the SAM-QFS
  central archive at Caltech and sent the original tapes back to the
  Observatories.
 

* Confirmed that the hardware order for additional tape robotics and
  tape drives for the Observatories and Caltech have been sent to the
  vendor.
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
 

* Finished taping ASQ data off of ldas equipment.
 

* Getting secondary quotes for pc raid unit.
 

* Still troubleshooting pc raid unit.
 

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

* Fixing gaps in 107 channel RDS.
 

* Experimenting with Szabi's ndas RDS.
 
 
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
 

* The tapecontrol scripts have been running smoothly since Feb 10 to
  record on tape all the raw full frame data at LHO and LLO.  Shipments of
  tapes have been going from LHO to Caltech and back on a regular basis.
 

* The creatrds loop script has been running at LHO, generating the
  "level 1" rds frames.  The LHO rds frames are now 83hr behind real-time
  and still losing ground slowly.  However, this is still not a panic
  situation, and we have plans to catch up before we fall too far behind.
  (And all rds frames for all S2 times will be regenerated from raw data
  at Caltech regardless.)
 

* Three beowulf nodes have failed at LHO, starting from the week before
  S2: node23, node25, and node32. I've replaced the hard drive in node25
  and rerun the burntest on it.  It has passed and appears to be working
  again. However, given that this node has crashed before, I am currently
  leaving it out of the list of available nodes.  I also replaced the hard
  drive in node23, but it failed the burntest. It has also crashed in the
  past.  Node32 has had several failures in the past, the thus the entire
  box is suspect.  Thus an RMA has been issued to send nodes 23 and 32
  back to the manufacturer for repair or replacement.
 

* Still working with Robert Schofield to save some of the PEM injection
  data on disk at the sites.  A tape was sent to me from Igor with the LLO
  PEM injections.  I plan to put them on disk at LHO via fortress.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
 

Mendell:
This week I finished work on the knownpulsardemod.loop.tcl driver
script. The script can now get locked segments from the database in real
time, condense them and shorten the segments by a prescribed amount (to
avoid data right before lock loss, for instance) and to parse them to
produce a quality channel. Last report I indicated I was having problems
with using ascii2frame to create the quality channel, but it was just a
syntax issue in the driver script. It is working once again. Also, I
reported a bug in the -dbqualitychannel option to the ldas dataPipeline
command.  This has been fixed by ldas, for the next release. I have also
updated the driver script to run using the S2 calibration scheme and
successfully tested this on the ldas-test system.  I am now ready to
start generating SFTs on the S2 data, but plan to wait until next week,
when ldas is released with a bug fix to the frameAPI.  Between now and
then I plan to run further tests on ldas-test.
(Last week):
I am still working to update the knownpulsardemod.loop.tcl driver
script. The script can now get locked segments from the database in real
time and parse them to produce a quality channel.  However, there may be
some issues with ldas reading this quality channel after it has been
converted to frame format by ascii2frame. (The ascii2frame code I'm
using may be out of date, so I will get the latest code and try this
again.)  I also ran jobs on the ldas test system at Caltech using the
-dbqualitychannel option. There seems to be a bug in the output of this
option. I am working to report on this now. Once the quality channel
issue is resolved, I still need to test getting the calibration data
into my code using the S2 format for this data.
 

Weinstein:
- Working with Laura to run huge numbers of burst simulation runs
(at ldas-mit) with S1 data through the time-dependent calibration.
- Continuing to study hardware burst injections;
workingon investigating non-detections, with Shourov & Laura.
- Continuing to study the effect of HPF, whitening, and
base-band filtering in datacond.
- Monitoring S2 online burst searches.
 

Laura Cadonati:
- S1 calibrated simulations: received from Alan the new version of
burstptod.tcl that uses the time dependent calibration for simulation
injections and started injections on roughly 20% of the triple
coincidence, post epoch veto S1 data.
-S1 analysis: compared notes (event by event) with Erik and solved the
apparent discrepancies (mostly due to slightly different implementation
of the cuts). There are still some differences in the background results
- S2 hardware injections: set up a plan, with Shourov and Alan, for
further investigations.
- S2 playground analysis: double and triple coincidences are running on
the online data - for preliminary results, see
http://lancelot.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/PlaygndOnline/S2playgndOnline.html
 

Stefan Ballmer:
- The birth of fastGlitch:
  I converted an old root script from Laura to a standalone, added a
moderately sophisticated
  configuration file reader and added some functionality to
automatically save plots in
  different graphics formats and loop over a set of triggers.
- I did some scripting for an automated execution of fastGlitch at the
sites.
- I was fighting with some compatibility issues with the gcc 2.95.2
of fortress
- I have some issues with not seeing big glitches in the time
series. Still working on it.
-I also wrote a documentation page for fastGlitch, see
http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/~sballmer/fastGlitch/
 

Erik Katsavounidis
-  Continued on S1 analysis investigations.
 

K. Reilly:
I have been busy with the correlation-coefficient frequency-time ("CC") maps (for the stochastic search) for most of the week.
There were several things buried in the LAL documentation
that I had to find (i.e. I wanted to check the units on the
various stochastic data products).   Also I had to get better
acquainted with those documents in order to give the GriPhyN
group a summary of the stochastic data analysis procedures (this
was very good for my personal edification). Now I am working
on generating improved CC-maps. Several features are
going to be added, such as more consistent axes and maps
with and with out "noisy" jobs. We are working toward
the complete S1 data analysis, but it was only today that John
Whelan was able to find the bug in the code preventing
us from running the analysis.
 

Yakushin:
1) Running waveburst at sites on S2.
2) Fixed bugs in computing some properties of the triggers.
3) Introduced more selection handles into DSO to increase its
sensitivity without overloading the database.
 

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Troubleshot desktop pc hardware problems (bad RAM I think)
-Troubleshot new desktop pc (perhaps bad hdd)
-Installed new version of Office for Marie
-Created accounts for new users
-Finished off current networking troubleshooting with MIT networking
 (we now see an order of magnitude improvement in outgoing speeds)
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Most of this week has been spent moving across the street to the new
offices.
-Hooked up the network connection to several of the new offices.
Ordered
some additional wireless access points to have wireless in all of the
new offices.
-Ordered a projector for the conference room in the new building.  This
is not a LCD projector.  Instead it uses the DLP technology by TI.  I am
pretty satisfied with the image quality.  There are several advantages
to the DLP, but also a couple of disadvantages.
-Ordered a video conferencing camera to permanently mount in the
auditorium.
-Looking into some bandwidth problems with Larry et al.
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Rebuilt the OS on a laptop.
- Added a new user account.
- Other misc. user support.
 

CIT:
[Bruce Sears]
-Ilog maintenance.
        Rewrote part of an admin tool.
 
(Veronica)
- LIGO website:
Rewrote and updated Science Bulletin Board page.
Updated travel-related documents at the Internal Bulletin Board page.
Working on modifying the DCC databases to accommodate secure areas for
various groups.
Posted updates to various pages throughout the website. Merged multiple
documents and converted into a pdf for the Aspen2003 presentation; posted
the final file.
- LSC website: Posting daily updates to the March meeting page
- CaJAGWR website:
Working on smil video/slideshow combinations for past seminars. Usual web
update and support.
 

(Lisa)
- Cleaned up disk space on home7.
- Made a report of mp3's on the system.
- Moved Janeen's home account, /usr2 and /usr3 directories so that she could use
the new version of ideas and have her ideas files backed up.
- Began working on the inventory of sun machines for ITS.
- Reactivated a student account.
- Started building a blade100 as a development box.
- Looked into some "slowdowns" with becrux.  Spent a day testing becrux from
home.  Some of the problems reported are definitely specific to the Macintosh
platform.
 

(Mike)
NTSRV's,
-Worked on loading a backup 2000 Server.
-Updated all critical/security updates on all 2000 servers and other clean
up maintenance the included troubleshooting system errors that were
reported in the logs, viewing security logs, looking for unknown user
intrusions/security changes and compacting database on Pherkab.
-Started loading two workstations but did not have time to finish loading
updates, security and loading GC software.
-Ran 2000 pro critical/security updates on the following users PC's, Gina
Salone, Calum Torrie, Janeen Romie, and GariLynn Billingsley.
-Called a laptop in for Ed Chargois and ordered some replacement parts
that are due today.
-Caltech ran a cat5 data drop for us, to Barry Barish's office. This is
attended for us to pull his Ethernet connection, off the 125 subnet and
switch him over to the 115 subnet. This all went okay until we notice that
the printer hp1 was no longer able to print. After troubleshooting the old
lines we notice that one of the connectors from the MAU 125 subnet has a
broken connector. We ended up pulling the printer hp1 off the 125 subnet as
well. All our users on East Bridge are now on the 115 subnet, which means
no more token ring topology on the first floor.
 

(Larry)
-Spent time working on a number of procurements and have a few more to go. The
items for the E2E servers have been ordered. Quotes for Foundry equipment
maintenance contracts have been reworked and should be finalized this week.
-Finally received the CISCO router and pinged the company again for the quote on
the router that is to go to Hanford. It was to be ordered a few weeks ago.
-Along the same lines, after various discussions concerning the network at the
Observatories, we will be collecting data on current network usage as well as
estimated future usage, in an effort to get more bandwidth.
During the S2 run Livingston is using all of its bandwidth and has been feeling
the problems associated with not having enough bandwidth for their WAN
connection.
Hanford appears to being doing better since Christine and Cullen got things back
to working order. They are getting some heavy usage but we won't know if they
are being saturated for a few more days.
-Spent time reloading/rebuilding a couple of the Foundry Edge switches. They
have been tested out and installed by Mike and myself. We will be keeping an eye
on the one on the third floor of Bridge since the unit appears to be running on
the warm side.
We've also noticed that someone has been playing around with the jumper cables
in the closet. This has been causing problems for the end users since their
ports are being switched around. We've asked people on the third floor to watch
for anyone in the closet and to let us know so.
-The Calcium calendar tool has had a little more interest since MIT started
using it. There have been a few more people added to the list of users. We will
be loading a new version of the program as well as getting it installed on the
web server. This should take place over the next few weeks.
-Helped a few users clean up some of their files.
-Restored a number of files.
-Was able to spend a few hours on documentation. We still have a lot to do in
that department.
-Restarted a number of user accounts of people that are returning to work on the
Project.
 

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

From: Jay Heefner <jay@ligo.caltech.edu>

Freq Devices DAC
============================
- The prototype module should be shipped to CIT this week for test.

Adv LIGO Suspensions
==============================
- System drawings and layouts have been started for the LASTI system and the CIT system for the Recycling mirror prototype.

LOS Coil DAQ
==============================
- The prototype is fully functional and seems to meet all requirements. The design for the final circuit has been started and should be ready for review in 2 weeks.

EMI retrofit
================================
- Quotes for racks have been received. Prototypes for test should be ordered by next week.

40 Meter LSC
=================================
- Initial system level designs and drawing have been started.
 

From: Larry Jones <ljones@ligo.caltech.edu>
AdLIGO SEI structures:

The draft version of the technical elements of the Statement of Work and the Design Requirements for the AdLIGO SEI structure design and fabrication contract was sent to Giaime and Lantz for their final inputs. Our schedule is to have the RFP package ready for project management review on 3/10 and for mailing to potential bidders on 3/14. The contract plan is for three contractors to perform value engineering studies on the Technology Demonstrator design (by HPD) during Phase I, two contractors design the HAM and BSC structures and build prototypes for LASTI during Phase II, and one or two contractors fabricate the production structures during Phase III. (Larry Jones & Irena Petrac)
 

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

AdLIGO Suspensions
The suspension group has been working with Larry Jones to support his seismic RFQ. We are fine tuning the quad designs w.r.t. the total mass budgets. Much progress has been made. Calum confirmed the mode cleaner total mass and center of mass. We will do the same for the RM.
Bob Taylor is waiting for approval from Dennis for the RGA scan of the spacers. He'll ship them after that - hopefully by Friday. They are already in the green shipping container, ready to go.

I've ordered two more dSPACE DAC boards, to be sent to Ken Mason at MIT, to allow real time testing of the MC and RM suspensions at LASTI.

I've spoken with Gina and Ruth about the RFQ for the mode cleaner parts. They hope to have a draft RFQ to me tomorrow morning.

We've discovered that the wire EDM process used to fabricate the 316 stainless osem heads magnetizes the heads. Calum held a meeting this morning to discuss strategy. We're hoping to get provisional approval from the vacuum review board to use an anodized aluminum head.

Calum has produced the list of parts for the mode cleaner suspension that will allow me to make travelers for the parts. We hope to disassemble the LASTI suspension next week, etch their part numbers on each of the parts, and get them to Bob Taylor for clean and bake.

Gin Gin
Helena is assembling the Gin Gin ITM suspension. I'm working on designing the ETM suspension. Bob Taylor hopes to get the osems to me by Monday. I've got a call in to Jay for status on the electronics. Helena is working on an assembly document to include in the shipment of the supsension to Gin Gin next week.
 

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

Erika and I have been continuing diverse work on optical
distortion
modeling relevant for Adv Ligo. We are finishing up a
paper on
the circumstances of SB imbalance in interferometers.
This is closely
related to understanding the impact of thermal lensing
(the primary
inducer of SB imbalance at Adv Ligo power levels). So we
have
been trying to gear both these studies to the immediate
Sapphire/FS
downselect needs.
 

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

    This week I spent several days working with the OSEMs on the LASTI MC
prototype. By placing insulators strategically I was able to work around
the problem reported last week that some of the coils were shorted to
their formers and so couldn't be plugged in simultaneously. I was able to
get the side OSEM and the three top OSEMs installed and the pitch, yaw,
roll and side servos operating. I needed to adjust the polarities of a
few signals but the default gain values that I had programmed (on the
basis of the design model, taking into account measured sensor/actuator
sensitivities) gave good damping straight away.  Unfortunately I hit a
major snag with the OSEMs for the longitudinal/yaw DOFs: the coil
formers, which were supposedly made from non-magnetic stainless steel,
were in fact so magnetic that the magnets would do nothing but stick to
them, dragging the top mass completely out of alignment and immobilizing
it. (In retrospect it was obvious that some of the same misbehaviour had
been occurring for the top OSEMs, but there it was merely annoying
because of the lower compliance in the vertical.) After doing an
extensive post-mortem with Calum it appears that there isn't any
workaround for this - the coils will have to be remade. Annealing the
formers at 1000C would probably fix the magnetism, but is not an option
for the parts with coils and LED/PD circuit boards fitted. Balancing the
force with a dummy magnet/former pair on the opposite side was tried but
doesn't work because the non-linearity is too great and the equilibrium
is unstable.
 

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

MC

Working with the rest of the suspension team we have been looking at re-working the design of the hybrid OSEM heads. For this we have been looking at using different materials for the head design as well as improving the accountability of each process during the production of a hybrid OSEM.

RM

Mike Lloyd and I have been working on the 3D layout of the masses for the recycling mirror suspension and the details of each mass. With help from Norna and Caroline and Mike Plissi in Glasgow we have been looking at the design for the cantilever blades and the deflection of the upper mass.
 

From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>

Sapphire Q Measurements
-----------------------

We have data for five modes of the 'good' sapphire.  The highest mode Q is still
2.0e8, the next highest is 1.7e8.  The distribution of Q for the various modes
is in reasonable agreement with a model that assumes the loss to have a 'bulk'
contribution plus a 'barrel' contribution proportional to the fraction of
oscillation energy in the poorly polished barrel.  We will try to get data for
more modes to extend this analysis.
 

We also have data for six modes of the 'bad' sapphire.  In this case, the
highest Q is 1.8e8, for the same mode that has the highest Q in the 'good'
sapphire.  Mode by mode, the Q's for this sapphire are comparable to those of
the 'good' sapphire, but slightly lower, but we have not put nearly as much work
into it and so are not drawing any conclusions.
 

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>

Three wee weekly after Aspen and after the seminar and visitor week (Stefano Braccini, Akiteru Takamori, Kenji Numata,Matteo Barsuglia, Kazuhiro Yamamoto) in Caltech.

Charles left for INSA
Stefano Tirelli coming for a month to finish his third year thesis work on stress strain.

Lisa Kaltenegger, for the one that remember her, one of the early SAS students, is sending her best greeting and wishes to the entire SAS group. Good to hear that she still thinks of us.

Charles, Eric
Before laving made several stress strain tests, some with good linearity and getting within a factor of two from the nominal strength (to be recalibrated and confirmed). Setup an O2 free glove box complete of O2 sensor, hot plate for brazing, cooling circuit and thinner gloves for improved brazing. Ready to go. Trained Eric for stress strain and brazing.

Allyson, Eric
Made new indentation sets after polishing the surfaces, imaged the indentations with Scanning Electron Microscope, Analysing data.

Eric
Installed new anvils designed with Charles. Splatting with camera to document the process and understand the splat efficiency problems.
Got trained on SEM, EDM, Electropolish.
Making new melts of MoRuB including a new tentative recipe for improved glassification.

Eric, Stefano,
Made few brazes.

Stefano
Trained himself on Charless stress strain algorithms.
Designing and building a new thermodynamic stress-strain testing machine with no moving parts (based on thermal expansion of a aluminium rod in a mini oven). This machine should be free of the problems of the rotating screws in the old commercial machine.

Haein Choi-yim, Riccardo
Made new alloys loaded with Diamond powders for the Ultrasound milling machine.

Riccardo
Maintenance and improvement of machines

Francesco Cordero
Made measurements on MoRuB samples. Unfortunately the squirted out material is damaging the results (Q factors different for all modes) and still getting Q factors in the thousands, and not exponential decays. Alessandro machined off the excess braze and will try again soon as well as with clamped samples.
Alessandro also assisting in upgrading the readout of the Q-factor instrument.

Charles, Hareem, Riccardo, Eric
Splatting samples, mini-arc melter with problems, vacuum pump running on fumes of oil, refilled hoping for non permanent damage. Drilled peep hole to allow oil inspection.
Will try new splat heads.

Alessandro
Working with the Ultra-Sound mill. Testing different configurations and machining strategies.

Francesco Fidecaro
Measured some pure aluminium thermal conductivity curves before returning in Italy.

Hareem
Helping in Splatting. Studying for exams.
 

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