Weekly Report for Week Ending May 8, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  May 12, 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 (Shoemaker)
7. CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss/Saulson)

Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 09:36:12 -0500
From: Alan Wiseman <agw@gravity.phys.uwm.edu>

UL Chairs meeting: 7 May 03.

Alan Wiseman (chair, minutes), Mike Landry, Gaby Gonzalez, Rai
Weiss, Stan Whitcomb, Peter Fritschel, Barry Barrish, John
Zweizig, David Shoemaker, Maria Alesandra Papa, Albert Lazzarini,
Keith Riles, Patrick Brady.

1) Speakers for Amaldi.  We have been asked for nominations.

   Kanda's is organizing a session
      UL groups have put forward the following names for
      four major talks.
       Burst = Alan Weinstein
       SB = John Whelan
       Pulsar  =  Graham Woan, Bruce Allen
       Inspiral = Gaby Gonzalez (possibly others)

       Peter Saulson has also been asked to  come up
       with a name for the Plenary session speaker, eg to
       give a talk like Erik K's talk at the APS meeting.

  -- Everyone: follow the LSC presentations  proceedure.
  -- 10 May deadline for abstracts
  -- Talks should be vetted with reviewers.
  -- Several others (eg Duncan) are going to submit abstracts
     to this Kanda session, as well.
      -- concern that we will compete against each other.
      -- David S will draft and circulate to the speakers above
         and chairs  explaining
         that four talks are the collaborations highest priority.
      -- additional talks should be vetted within the working groups,
         provided they aren't "results" talks.
  -- We will not require a telecon presentation in advance.

1') Vetting results for Amaldi: does anyone plan on presenting
   something fundementally new, eg a new method or a new S2
   results?

   Burst is exploring the idea of talk on GRB.  Rai and others
   are very circumspect about doing this.  It hasn't received
   the review that our other methods have.

2) Status of S1 Publications
   All.

   Inspiral: tweaking paper, analysis is done, no significant
             changes in site.  Expecting to circulate late next
             week.

   Pulsar: - Needed to rerun monte carlo for some timing and some single
             precission problems.
           - Rerunning Freq domain MonteCarlo.
           - Time domain has been redone.
           - Dealing with Stan's comments on how to handle  UL
             vs detection.
           - Expectation: next week.

   SB: - finished error (re)calculation.
       - expect to send out version to group and reviewers today
       - Expect to send version to collaboration early next week.
       - working with Gaby on firming up calibration numbers,
         will finalize today.

3) Post mortem on the f-2-f.
   Patrick and All:
 
     - ACTION: Patrick will circulate minutes.

     - ACTION: Press release procedure (will be) needs to be
       posted (Gary and Peter) on LSC website.
 
     - ACTION: paper acknowledgement paragraph (will be) needs
       to be posted (Gary and Peter) on LSC website.

     - ACTION: Procedure for having publications approved. Alan will see
       that his email is posted  on LSC website.

     - Don't need working group on Stat Methods, but we should
       have working meetings on the subject as needed.
       * eg should have some discussion at ASIS session at LSC
         meeting.
       * Barry: GWIC is also working this problem

     - LSC newsletter: everyone likes the idea, but there aren't
       volunteers to do the work.  Alan agrees to send minutes of
       UL Chair's meetings to collaboration.

     - Data quality (John Zw) will be the point man.
       Keith has distributed web page to all groups.

     - ACTION: plans for S2'. (See Stan's email.)
       * Groups should send their plans and "buy off" on actually
         doing the run. [Burst has already sent theirs.]
       * Rai: possibly early part (few days) of run may resemble
         an engineering run.

     - reorganizing the groups: No decission, but proposals
       should be updated and S2 plans need to be circulated.
       Alan will work with Peter Saulson to set a date.

4) Meeting times.
   ACTION: Alan will look into finding a summer meeting time.
   Will meet again in about 2 weeks
   meeting adjourned 11am pdt
 

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

There was a site teleconference on Thursday, May 8, 2003.  The following issues were discussed:

• Convenience Checks (Action #58)--Ed Jasnow will be at Hanford Monday to set up convenience checking associated with the P-Card accounts of Fred and Otto.  This is being done instead of setting up Corporate checking accounts.  Action #58 is modified accordingly.  The auditors seem happy with the method used to control P-Card expenses.  We will implement at Hanford first to see how it works, to be followed at Livingston in six months or so.
• Operating Costs--We spent some time in the discussing the adequacy of the current Operating Budgets for Advanced R&D for FY 2003 for making spending priority decisions.  We need to review the Advanced R&D budgets against the more recent information in the Advanced LIGO Cost Book.  Florence can provide the FY 2003 Advanced R&D budgets easily.  I have asked Thomas to provide a listing of the Cost Book estimates for Advanced LIGO R&D planned for FY 2003 by WBS for comparison.  We are meeting with Gary on Monday to discuss this.
• Hanford Building Modifications--Concrete has been poured for the new entrance doors and holes have been drilled for the sunshade.  Punch list items for the fire suppression system are still outstanding.
• Livingston Access Gate--asphalt will be laid tomorrow.
• Livingston Storage Building--steel is being delivered today, grading is underway, and concrete will be poured next week.  Over time Livingston plans to move the entire contents of the off-site storage building into the new building with the exception of the old bake out power trailers, which will be surplussed.
• Drainage at Entrance to OSB at Livingston--forming up for the new walkways.
• Staffing--there is a staffing meeting scheduled for May 19.
• Visas--a new form is required for holders of "J" visas, and holders must have the original of this form when traveling overseas.  Keep in mind that the LSC meeting will be in Germany.  Large numbers of people are stuck outside of the country just waiting for processing.  The form does not assure that delays will not be encountered, but not having it will ensure delays.
• Property--Electric Vehicles for Sites--Ed Chargois may be close to a deal for electric vehicles for Hanford.
• Safety--There was a safety audit at Hanford last week.  A report is being prepared.

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

• No report (GSA Expo 2003, San Antonio, TX).

>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

Began gathering documents from far past about Hanford site selection, site criteria, and any documents relevant to the current discussions about the Maiden wind farm.  Have looked through two large file cabinets and several boxes and located most of the documents requested.

Designed an email return form for electronic documents not correctly submitted.  This covers a variety of problems encountered that doesn't comply with normal processing.  An email will go out tomorrow alerting staff to the new document return procedure to begin on Monday, May 12.

Continued to work through all the problem submittals that were removed from the dcc/OUT and placed on my local drive for handling.  There are still about 200 left to process.

• 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 was steady.  Continued to address the existing problems.

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Completed two internal modifications to Teknicircuits to change the tax status and to move funds to the new poetas for Hanford and Livingston.  Completed the tax change on Waveprecision which required two old poetas to be opened to complete the internal modification.  Prepared requisition to submit to JPL for the Raytheon work order.  There is $58k at JPL which will be funded to the work order.  The money was previously sent to JPL.  Working on completing the transfer of funds on the Digikey and GP blankets.  Receiving is being coordinated with Dorothy on these blankets so that the transactions can be completed.
• On the two pcard orders for Phil destined for Russia, both shipments are still in Russian customs.  The carriers have requested the Russian government to make an exception to permit 3rd party billing on our behalf.  We are awaiting a response from Russia whether they will accept 3rd party payment of customs duty and taxes.
• Completing the change orders to NTD, Coastal Bridge, Air Products, and Digikey.
• Prepared and submitted a report to Purchasing of all the subcontracts that require A-133 filings.
• I have been requested to enter all subcontract change orders for LIGO in the Purchasing shadow system, Access.  I will be requesting for the database to be entered on my computer and for training to enter the data as the change orders come in.

• Working on change orders to correct tax problems (vendors neglect to invoice for taxes due), processing PO's and following up with vendor's.

• The final financial reports for April 2003 have been prepared and are posted on the network.
• The report for the Visitor Program as of April 2003 has been completed and was given to Donna Tomlinson.
• Worked on updating the Construction report so that we can closely monitor the status of the remaining funds, as of today, there is $2.2 million in unspent funds, however existing adjusted encumbrances and planned expenditures  are $2.3 million.  Adjusted encumbrances means that the encumbrances in Oracle are reduced for existing purchase order balances that are not anticipated to be needed for the remaining Construction effort and increased for encumbrances for purchases made by P-card, that I have been informed of,  that are not yet reflected in Oracle.
• Requested that blanket orders and miscellaneous other encumbrances that are not required for the remaining Construction effort be moved to Operations accounts.  This is apparently a time consuming procedure in the Oracle system for blanket type Purchase Orders, which involves changing many lines in the Purchase Module.
• Prepared four Cost Transfer Requests to move expenditures for RFI Measurement Equipment to Operations accounts.

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

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

• RFP for AdLIGO SEI Mechanical Structures: Addendum No. 2: extending the proposal due date, revising  the planned contract type for Phase II (design development), and revising several specifications, was released to potential proposers.  Companies who initially dropped out of the competition were advised of our changed plans and invited to reconsider their initial position.
• RFP for AdLIGO Optics Coating R&D: The RFP cover letter is in LIGO/LSC review.
• Crystal Systems, Inc.: CO#13, for a purchase of 16 HEMLITE Sapphire 'Q' substrates, was released to Purchasing.
• Wave Precision Corp.: CO#22, for a purchase of 32 mechanical Q R&D substrates, was released to Purchasing.

• Asphalt is being poured for the widened road required for the access gate at LLO.  The material for the gate itself has arrived at the site.
• Grading is being performed for the pre-fabricated storage building at LLO.   Pouring of the concrete slab should be done next week.
• Work has begun on the modifications to the Laboratory Building at LHO.  Concrete has been poured for the posts for the double glass doors, and holes have been drilled for the steel sun shades.

• LHO will be switching from a commercial checking account to convenience checks attached to P-cards for its petty cash requirements.  This will be observed for six months, and, if successful, will be implemented at LLO.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for nine (9) new/revised trips.  There are approximately twenty-one (21) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and/or paper work completed.  Also assisted a number of P-Card holders with their travel plans/reservations or revisions.  Until further notice I will be doing travel for LHO travelers.
• The 2003 SURF Program will be held from June 16th thru August 22nd.  This year LIGO/Caltech will have twenty (20) students, LIGO/Hanford will have seven (7), and LIGO/Livingston will have three (3), with four (4) going to Pisa, Italy.  I have started ticketing the thirty (30) coming to one of the three (3) LIGO sites and Pisa will be handling the four (4) going there.
• Completed ten (10) Expense Reports and there are fifteen (15) 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 they can be closed in a timely manner.  There are nine (9) reports more than 30 days old at this time.  Completed one (1) Expense Report for a traveler who has his own P-Card but was having difficulty.
• Reconciled thirty-six (36) P-Card items which required numerous phone calls to hotels, car rentals, 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/problems in regard to their P-Card and/or reconciliation.
• I'm happy to report that the new EFT Program for Travel Reimbursement Direct Deposit has had it's first run (just yesterday) and although there were a couple of minor bugs Michelle and I were able to work them out successfully and are working on a few others.  Prospects are good for a successful implementation.  If you have any questions or problems with EFT please let me know so that we can address it promptly.  For those of you who have not as yet sent me your form for participation please send it to me as soon as possible and I'll get you signed up immediately.  Thanks for your cooperation and help on this one.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for May 5, 2003.  Arranged four (3) new teleconferences and revised one (1) other; and entered five (5) new reservations on the LIGO Calendar.  Also 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 during the period April 7 through May 2.
• 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.

• Quarterly Newsletter--We have been working on a Quarterly Newsletter for congressional and community leadership and staff over the past few weeks.  A final edit has been submitted as is with a few very minor edits to going to press.
• NSF Review--Working on  arrangements.
• Sagety Meeting--Attended Safety Meeting facilitated by PMA and Caltech Safety office.
• SURF--Preparations for SURF students' arrival in June.

 

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Out of the office on 5.02

Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting was not held this week.

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)

• Prepared resource loading data for Dennis Coyne for a two year period.
• Prepared logic report for use by David Shoemaker.
• Conducted a second schedule review meeting with David Shoemaker.
• Continued preparing revised budget sheet data.
• 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 05.02.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 05.16.03.
• Responded to questions regarding Adv. LIGO SUS planning and costing.
• 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 05.02.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 05.16.03.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 05.02.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 05.16.03.

• ROSTER DATABASE:
• BK is continuing work on action items.
• Continued input of supervisor, dept., and specialty codes.

• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• BK is continuing work on action items.
• Continued to work on preparing format for hard copy version to be submitted for NSF reviews.
• Posted updated files provided by BK.  Tested.

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

The Construction project quarterly report for the end of February was scheduled to be submitted at the end of March.  Irena has been working on this, but has been distrtacted by a number of other priority issues: LSC, contract activities for seismic isolation, core optics, etc.  We have discussed priorities, and the quarterly report is still slipping.

I have prepared and distributed a model for projecting FY 2009 operating costs, and I have requested additional input from Dennis, David, Fred, Mark, Albert, etc.  The forecast should address the basic forecast (initial LIGO escalated), replanning needed to address current experience not in budget, the increment for Advanced LIGO, and R&D.

The following change requests were considered by the LIGO Change Control Board (during the Executive Committee Meeting on Monday, May 5, 2003):
 

CR-030008	Furniture for the auditorium lobby, interaction area underneath the skylight atrium in the OSB, and on the second floor interaction area of the new laboratory/office building.	M. Coles	April 29, 2003
CR-030009	Cabinets, Case Work, Furnishings at Livingston	A. Sibley	April 29, 2003
CR-030010	Revised scheme for Technical and Facility grounds at Livingston	A. Sibley	May 2, 2003

Change Board minutes have been prepared for Gary's signature (LIGO-M030091-00-P).  CR-030008 was held pending additional information.  CR-030009 was approved.  CR-030010 was approved.

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

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report.
 

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

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory
(compiled by D. Sigg)

Some more information about our crazy 4K SPOB was collected here.

The 2K optical efficiency of the input train has been remeasured here.
No significant degradation of the MC visibility could be observed.

More 4K PSL/IOO work has been performed to increase the power

The 4K POY beam previously reported missing had been found at nominal position; see here.

The WFS work on the 4K continued. The focus was on increasing the bandwitdh. Details can be found here.

New ASC/LSC was installed and tested (see here)

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

We have closed all loops in pitch and yaw by acting on MC1, MC2 and MC3.
We currently have the servos AC coupled with a few Hz bandwidth.  There
is a factor of  about 10 suppression of fluctuations in transmitted light
levels around 1 Hz.  We need to verify that this does not introduce more
noise from coupling noise from the stack modes unto the laser beam pointing.
We also hope to reduce noise from angular beam jitter around 1 Hz.
 

We temporarily placed a pockels cell AM modulator on the PSL table to produce
sidebands for a PRC length measurement.
 

Joe Kovalik
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Worked with Joe on MC WFS. All loops are closed. Need to measure the
effect on ifo angular and intensity noise.
Worked with Andri and Joe on PRC length measurement. Made another attempt
to measure using AM modulator. No conclusive results yet.
 

Valera
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talked to Hugh Radkins at LHO about the tidal servo. He is Fed-Ex'ing a
modified MINCO controller to LLO which has higher temperature sensitivity
than our current one. We plan to switch the controller and retune the PID.
If the new box works our current one will be sent to LHO for use in a
SURF project.
 

Brian
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS admin:
1) Helped Erik to get gds_triggers, sngl_burst, inspiral tables in txt
format for S2 from both sites using DB2's export.
2) Replacing T3s batteries.
3) Reading DB2 performance manuals
4) Ordered extra power supply for the foundary switch.
 

Igor
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seismic Amelioration
 

Here is the weekly update for the seismic amelioration efforts:
 

Testing to validate my modal analysis continues. I put a copy of the new
offload spring so Dennis Coyne could download it and run the analysis in
SDRC. I am finishing up the details of the drawing package for the spring so
it can be reviewed. A DCN will follow pending results of the static battery
test.
 

Marcel
 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CDS:
 

LLOFb0 is back online with more disk space. Compiled Channel Access gateway
for epics R3.13.3. Still need to test it.
 

Power outage in mass storage room this morning. All CDS SUN
servers/workstations in Mass Storage Room were down. Brought them back
online.
 

Chethan
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is my progress report:
 

1)Debugging the asc front-end code for missing and wrong indexed channels.
2)Preparing reboot and shut down scripts for our target cpu's.
3)Working with Joe on the WFS filtering implementation.
 

Ash
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Suspended optics:
• Our two ETMs are ready for installation.
• Steve and Osamu attempted to balance our PRM and SRM, but discovered that the large (2.5degree) wedge on the optic in the SOS suspension causes the magnets to be offset with respect to the OSEMs. After consulting with Janeen and Helena, they decided to remove the OSEM holding brackets, and machine out holes to allow the OSEMS to be shifted a bit, thus centering the magnets in them. The machining is already done, and Bob has cleaned it and it's in the bake oven. Hope to have the PRM and SRM ready for installation by the end of next week. Janeen will submit a DCN with the changes. Conor took some great pictures with his new 4MP digital camera.
• PSL and ISS (O. Miyakawa, B. Abbott, R. Abbott, F. Nocera, D. Ugolini, S. Vass, C. Mow-Lowry):
• Conor proposes to re-layout the PSL beam, to (1) reduce the number of turns from the MOPA to the periscope by two mirrors; (2) pick off the FSS beam after the PMC, as is done at LLO, to stabilize against PMC displacement noise. Peter and Rich think it's a good idea. We may have to compensate the FSS for the PMC cavity pole, so Conor will attempt to measure it.
• Core digital suspension controllers (DSC), MC WFS, and other Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Bork, Taylor):
• Ben, with help from Jay and Dennis, have at last completed the troubleshooting and fixing of the newly configured DSC system. All the whitening boards are now fixed. Several software problems were fixed by Alex. Jay and Ben fixed the Anti-Alias chassis that was giving us trouble.
• Now, all installed optics (MC1, MC2, MC3, BS, ITMX, ITMY) are damping well!
• Attempts to re-lock the mode cleaner are now in progress. The MCL signal is taking a different path, and problems are being debugged.
• Alex is continuing work on the IO WFS Linux PC code, in particular getting the GDS test points working.
• The IO WFS VME code still needs some work; Rolf will need to get the 16K DAQ channels working.
• Dennis and Conor will see if MC1,MC2,MC3 need re-diagonalizing.
• Bob continues to wire the auxiliary rack (1X1), which holds the electro-optics shutter signals, video switch, and other misc stuff. Dennis and Bob tested the video switch manually, to be sure it works.
• Optical sensing (Smith, Ourjoumtsev, Goggin, Miyakawa):
• OPTICS PARTS LIST, Received parts: Repair of damaged tilt platform S/N 70416 with drive amplifier from Piezo Jena.
• Orders pending: 1 q-switch E/O shutter from Fast Pulse; 1 Brewster's angle polarizer for SPS anamorphic prism steering mirror from KLC;
• FARADAY ISOLATOR: Parts will be disassembled for cleaning and baking.
• OPTICAL LEVER ASSY: Assembly on hold.
• IFO STEERING MIRRORS: Parts are on hand, awaiting assembly for fit checking
• MODE MATCHING TELESCOPE: MMT was assembled and tested with the COS IR autocollimator. The primary and secondary mirror spacing was varied by means of the attached "Pico motor"; best focus (@infinity) was determined by observing the sharpness of the retro-reflected reticle pattern through the MMT. The best focus could be determined within +/- 0.25 mm of the correct mirror spacing. An approximately Gaussian 1064 laser beam was transmitted through the MMT and the beam profile was scanned before and after the MMT. Within the uncertainty of the slightly non-Gaussian beam profile, the MMT appears to preserve the Gaussian profile of the beam. Further, it focuses the beam well in both x and y, showing no evidence of astigmatism.
• Alexei got some beam reflected off the newly damped MC1, and thence to the MCR beamline and the newly installed WFS's. There was too much light; the Kepco HV power supply drew too much current. Since there is one supply for 2 WFS's, it affected the other WFS when only one was exposed to the beam. Alexei and Conor are evaluating how much light should be on the WFSs.
• Meanwhile, however, Alexei sees 29MHz demodulated signals from the WFS.
• Alexei has ordered 6 kV pulsers for our electro-optic shutters, and has returned our 3 kV ones.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Ugolini, Vass, Jones):
• The east end ion pump (EEIP) had a bad fan on the controller; Steve fixed it.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor, Cardenas):
• Bob is cleaning and baking the re-machined OSEM bracket for our PRM and SRM suspensions.
• Bob is ready to clean and bake the MMT and Faraday isolator, as soon as they're fully checked out.
Osamu has confirmed his understanding of the matrix summation approximation in the dual-recycling summation cavity for E2E, and is beginning to write Matlab code to simulate it. He'll be in Japan for the next month, and will work on this there. He will be working with Japanese students who will come in the summer to work with Seiji and Hiro.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

no report

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Allen, Coyne, Mason, MacInnis,
Mittleman, Ottaway, Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 

MEPI Progress (Ottaway, Mittleman, Rankin, Zuo, Nayfeh, Allen)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We finished up examining the effects of the constrained layer damping
on the HAM gullwings. Some data plots can be found on the May 6th Lasti
I-log. The main effect between 40 and 100Hz seems to be the removal of
the mass associated with the constraining layer, which was about 75kg.
At these frequencies there seemed to be minimal damping.
 

I have also been investigating the possibilities of implementing a
combined local and modal controller.
 

PSL (Ottaway, Adhikari, Rollins, Zucker)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Continued trying to get the upgraded FSS to work properly. We cannot
seem to get useful (as opposed to destructive)
phase correction in the Pockels cell path. We have chased a number of
circuit issues in the process but remain puzzled.
 

Efforts to diagnose the noise floor of the super intensity stabilizer
were hampered by lack of frequency stabilization, so this is getting to
be a problem. We may have to punt and ask around for a spare "standard"
FSS board.
 

AdL MC Triple Pendulum Installation (Myron, Ken, Bill, Jamie)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Installation of the optics table into HAM 21 has been completed. This
table sits on solid spacers in place of the HYTEC stack, and also has
solid adapters between the crossbeam and the
pier (at some future date these latter spacers will be retrofitted with
EPI's). The table has been placed 11.5 cm below the standard LIGO I
table height to simulate the LIGO-2 active HAM seismic
table height, in preparation for the triple pendulum to be installed
this summer. The installation went very smoothly and all the bolts lined
up the first time; doors are back on the HAM.
 

See the LASTI Ilog for cool installation pictures.
 

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E Weekly Physics meeting
----------------------------
Biplab presented equations and simulation results related to the
response of LIGO 6-optics system to dynamical misalignments.
 

SimLIGO
-----------
(Matt) Continuing work on the REFL_NR signal, I have used REFL_NR to
 implement the long desired common-mode servo in SimLIGO.  The UGF is
 limited to less than 10kHz by the simulation timestep, but I believe
 we can compensate for this, at least qualitatively, by reducing the
 frequency and intensity input noises at high frequency.  This change
 will increase the ability of SimLIGO to accurately model IFO noise
 propagation.
 

 In the ASC system, I've moved the WFS2 sensor in SimLIGO to the POX
 port.  This is consistent with the current configuration at LHO and
 similar to LLO (which has WFS2 on POY).  After moving this sensor,
 I remeasured the ASC sensing matrix and am testing ASC control. This
 change has implications in noise hunting and control stability (e.g.,
 can the QPD signals be fed back to the test masses?) and is tied to
 the proposed use of REFL_NR.
 

Dynamical misalignment
------------------------
(Biplab & Hiro) The rest of the differences between Daniel's and e2e's
 results for LIGO 6-optics system have been sorted out. We also reached
 an understanding of the difference in behavior of signal at near and far
 field.
 

Dual recycling Michelson cavity
--------------------------------
 Osamu make further calculation to confirm the approximation of the
 matrix summation is appropriate. Osamu is going to write a code on matlab
 first for easy prototyping, and the code will be ported to e2e later.
 Hiro provided him the code for the FP cavity using the same technique,
 so that Osamu can write a matlab prototype in a form easy to be ported
 to e2e.
 

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Hiro) Some of the codes - thread, parser, mirror, IO - are validated and
 submitted to CVS. Some validations are still under way. Parser improvement
 had less merit than originally estimated. Using the built-in profiler,
 it was found that, on average, FUNCs modules performance are improved
 by 10% in speed.
 

(Melody)
 -  Worked with Hiro on the modeler optimizations.
 -  Started finding out how to optimize the code using the Linux boxes.
 

(Ed Maros)
 Worked on allowing the setting of optimization level at build time. This
 needs to be experimented with before setting the default value in the
 build-e2e script.
 

Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
        - Fixed a bug created by new code involving external node view.
        - Speeded Trim Connections algorithm to make it 10 times faster
          (PR 390).
        - Fixed issue where junctions were not automatically removed when
          they should be (PR 393).
        - Working on new port movement options (PR 392).
 

(Melody) Fixed problems with the cut/copy/paste feature.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
Code changes to speed up the metaDataAPI last week resulted in a new
memory leak in the putMetaData user commands in that API. Changes to
this API have now been tested on one of the standalone boxes and on
the development system and seem to be fixed to the point where it is
no longer detectable over night.
 

Code changes were also made in several sections of the dataConditionAPI
to remove memory leaks. None of these changes fixed the roughly 3 to 4
kilobyte leak per job seen in this API though.
 

The modified createRDS command which allows users to collect channels
from multiple interferometers in a single Reduced Data Set Frame file
began to be tested this week. Initial testing has been limited and has
determined that there is a large memory leak in the code. Over night
testing in a single job (non-concurrent) mode also produced a couple
of core files which are being analyzed. More work will be needed on
this new code before it is ready to be signed off for the next release
of LDAS. New test scripts are being developed to more fully test this
code.
 

The new test-menu in the controlMonitorAPI GUI is almost complete. A
tarball for the client was produced today for the first time which has
most of the test scripts integrated into the GUI. A few more tests are
to be added before it is complete. This new menu will facilitate
testing LDAS by developers and first-time LDAS installations and LDAS
upgrades.
 

Completed work on the base64 support in the lightWeightAPI, including
working closely with Daneil and Rauha to assure this is compatable with
the DTT application.
 

Added automatic generation of a XML DTD for LIGO_LW documents as a link
on our LDAS websights as part of the build LDAS process.
 

We have completed the testing of the standalond wrapperAPI under Redhat
Linux 9.0. This involved upgrading LDAS to work with the newer versions
of autoconfig and automake distributed with RH9.
 

We have begun testing LDAS against the latest release of GCC compiler,
version 3.2.3. Jobs has been run for a couple of hours on a standalone
Sun Solaris box. This test did produce a couple of unexpected coredumps
which are being evaluated. We hope to be able to run test scripts on
the LDAS development system over the weekend (under both Solaris and
Linux). This is the compiler that we are targeting for the next LDAS
release. It is not know yet if this compiler resolves the issues that
prevented us from optimizing code compiles with the previous 3.2.x
releases of GCC.
 

Added manditory username and password authentication to the emergency
sockets within the martian network. This will provide better visibility
into the system maintenance performed by system operators.
 

Added support for an "-autoexpand" option to dataPipelines so that jobs
like the periodic search performed by Greg Mendell can be greatly
streamlined in syntax.
 

Worked to improve the support within the diskCacheAPI for degeneracy
in frames and support for NDAS frames.
 

A few modifications were made to the lightWeightAPI and the metaDataAPI
to reduce the probability of jobs failing with the "malformed command"
error message. This particular error has for the last few weeks been
the major failure mode in our nightly and weekend testing.
 

A new set of graphs for tracking CPU usage have been added to the
controlMonitorAPI GUI. This will facilitate determination of the CPU
load on various LDAS computers in the locale of failures seen during
nightly and weekend testing.
 

Philip Charlton (RDS Frame Generation):
 

Currently the S2 RDS creation stands at about 80% of LHO done and
75% of LLO done. I hope to finish off the remainder by Monday morning,
except for a few "holes" that might need to be filled in by hand. With
the new tape drives installed the rate of data reduced:wall time is about
5:1.
 

I'm also working more on the RDS scripts to make them smarter. The new
version (not yet in use) is able to determine what raw and RDS data is
visible to LDAS, and only do reduction on raw data that has not already
been reduced.
 

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

* Continued to managed SAM-QFS resources in support of RDS creation (S2 data).
 

* Helped with SAM-QFS and AIT2 shuffling for the writing of NDAS files to
  AIT2 for shipment to LLO.  Done.
 

* Worked with STK field service to replace one of our new 9940Bs that was
  having positioning errors.
 

* Installed temp QFS license on LHO gateway box.
 

* Ran vol verify on all LHO T3s.  Two of them produced some output during
  the verify--I've asked Sun to comment on the meaning of the somewhat
  cryptic log messages.
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Finished building the new racks for the nodes at Caltech.
 

* Found and built code for the drivers for the e1000 network interface for
  RH7.3 and the new Datacon and Beowulf machines.
 

* Troubleshooting ldasbox 3,4 These system lock up after 24hours of use.
  They have past a mem test and are getting a 24 hour burn in test.
 

* Replaced the PS for the T3's at cit.
 

* Installed a new hard drive on Bosco to add space for the users apps.
 

* Troubleshooting IDE-Raid box. Still narrowing down the failure.
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Working with Caltech engineers to start the facility upgrade of the
  main LDAS computer room at Caltech for a new 210 node Beowulf cluster.
  The electrical work has started and the additional cooling unit order
  will be placed today (May 08).
 

* Developed a new computer room floor layout to accommodate 6 racks
  of computers for the new larger Beowulf cluster for LDAS-CIT.
 

* Received confirmation that the first component (40 out of 420)
  of the new Beowulf nodes have shipped (May 07). They were received May 08!
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
 

* Received 7 19" racks for cluster (attached coasters to racks).
 

* Talked with MIT electricians regarding power requirements for cluster.
 

* Installed extra harddrive into first pcraid box.
 

* Running burntest on first pcraid box.
 

* Continuing to move S2 data with LDR utility.
 

* Waiting to get approval for NDAS data replication from UWM.
 

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

* Helped Erik to get gds_triggers, sngl_burst, inspiral tables in txt
  format for S2 from both sites using DB2's export.
 

* Replacing T3s batteries.
 

* Reading DB2 performance manuals
 

* Ordered extra power supply for the new Foundary switch.
 

(Shannon Roddy)
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
 

* Worked with Sun and Ben Johnson to replace half of the batteries in
  all of our T3s which have reached their 2 year lifetime. The second half
  should be replaced within a few days.
 

* Continuing to prepare for the installation of the new beowulf cluster
  at LHO. Cat 5e cables and UPS units have been ordered.  Fiber cables
  will be ordered today.
 

* Finished archiving the ndas data onto tape at CIT for shipment to LLO.
 

(Ben Johnson)
 

* Assisted Sun tech in the installation of new batteries in the T3's,
  and new DIMM into dataserver.
 

* Continuing to work with Sun Microsystems with the sticky bit error in
  dataserver (see PR# 1977)
 

* Continuing work on sofware for the LHO LDAS room temperature monitor.
 

* Have successfully been able to shutdown and restart LDAS, move
  individual API's to different LDAS servers, and control LDAS from
  the cmonClient and through the command line.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
K. Reilly:
This week I returned from Brownsville where I spent time working
with Joe R. on the stochastic group error analysis.  We also discussed
what changes will be made to the stochastic DSO and data analysis
pipeline.  In order to start this work it was necessary to install the
standalone wrapperAPI. We made attempts to do this for Joe's computer
feynman before we realized it was running an out of date version of linux.
I then began work to install the wrapperAPI on my computer at caltech (bosco).
Things were difficult at first because, it was not clear to me that I should
not check out the HEAD versions of lal, lalwrapper ldas. (I feel this could
be made clearer in the documentation and I have suggested it to Ed and
Stuart.) Finally after a few hick-ups I believe I have successfully installed
the standalone wrapper. I still need to follow the tests suggested.
Once
this has been completed I can start working on the DSO.
 

Mendell:
I have been planning what direction my efforts should go in next, and the
project for my summer SURF student.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Shawhan)
* Attended the "O'Hare meeting" to discuss data analysis strategies for S2 data and beyond.
* Constructed definitive lists of S2 data segments for offline analysis and as a framework for data quality investigations.
 

Lazzarini:
Prepared LIGO Science Seminar, and thereby generated several new projections of the stochastic background results
that may become incoporated into the paper (e..g, evolution of our estimate over the S1 as the statistics improve with length of observation).
 

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Purchased RedHat up2date patch utility for ldas users
-Received fiber patch cords from Larry for ldas equipment
-Ordered misc computer supplies
-Discussing Linux for DMT services at MIT
-Investigating IPSec for wireless security
-Waiting for Albert L. to approve webserver certificate so we
 can use it on the Calcium calendar server at MIT
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Replaced portmaster to accommodate ISDN.
-Installing s/w on various machines.
-Regular user support.
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Purchased toner cartridges and fuser and drum kits for the color
printer.
- Purchased a new laptop for a new hire.
- Purchased new batteries for an old laptop.
- Finalized the quote from CDWG for Cisco GigE equipment.  Working on
final quote from CDWG for Foundry GigE equipment.  Now that the GigE
upgrade is not going to be paid out of construction money I am having to
review the spending on my operations budget to determine if there will
be any money this year to buy the GigE network upgrade.
- Misc. user support, mostly for e-mail accounts and questions on network
file transfers.
 

CIT:
(Lisa)
- Setup a new server to replace canopus.
- Setup castor as a web server.
- Finished the monthly backups.
- More e-mail support.
- Worked with Larry on a network problem that affected becrux.
- Burned DVD's of home accounts that needed to be archived.
- Ran cables in the server room with some help from Mike.
 

(Veronica)
- Advanced LIGO website that includes the upcoming NSF review information,
as well as AdvLIGO proposal and costbook, has been the major assignment
this week.
- LIGO website: posted various updates.
- CaJAGWR website: recorded and processed the video of the LIGO/CaJAGWR
talk; preparing it to be posted along with a set of viewgraphs.
- LSC website: posting abstracts of the upcoming talks.
 

(Mike)
-Finished up loading a laptop for Erika Ambrosio.
-Loading a workstation for Janeen/Calum's engineering group.
-Worked on setting up a visitor's workstation by configuring e-mail and
loading additional software.
-Larry and I setup and configured a new color printer for Ryan/Cindy.
-Worked on all NTSRV's by upgrading OS patches, security updates and
updating firewall software.
-There was a hardware issue with Pictor, which included a hard disk failure. I
installed a temporary hard disk, until I received a replacement from AZTEC
computers who claims they did not have a replacement drive and would have
to get a RMA replacement from western digital which is the manufacture of
the hard drive that went south. I restored Pictor from a ghost image.
-Updated the ghost image for this server. I am also working on a new
replacement 2U- server to transfer M91 to. (M91 is our real media server.)
-Larry and I setup and configured a new color printer. I also went around
and installed the new drivers to this printer on all our local users here
in bridge annex.
 

(Larry)
-Spent a great deal of time working on PC's. I've asked Mike to write up a quick
instruction set for the PC user's on how to run the "diskclean" and
"diskdefragment" utilities. These should be run on a regular basis.
-Worked with Lisa and others on getting the home accounts cleaned up. We have
been burning DVD's and CD's for a number of people that have left. A few others
are trying to get their data reorganized into a more usable format, which helps
on seeing what can be removed from the system.
-Along that same note we have purchased additional disk space to accommodate the
SURF students and will be acquiring more space for those needing a scratch area
to do data analysis.
-Spent time working with the DCC. There will be some internal procedure changes
and additional equipment installed to help in that area. Some support in file
transfers, cleanups, conversions and printing. We are trying to get to a point
to benchmark a new utility the group is looking at.
-Moved some of the servers around in the server room along with some recabling.
-Worked a number of license issues. So far the good news is on the Matlab s/w.
Discovered they were sending some of the licenses to another person on the
project, so now I know where they are at and who to contact when we need a
roaming license. There are a couple of other license issues up in the air.
-The maintenance contracts for the tape robot and the s/w have been renewed for
another year.
-More than usual amount of user support. Mainly PC assistance and some
application work.
-The usual work with adding and modifying user accounts. We are back to adding
5-10 locations a day on the e-mail server. Still we don't have the large amount
of spam we've received in the past. Along the same line, I've been checking for
false positives and going through the logs to check for dropouts from specific
senders. So far nothing of major concern has popped up.
-Worked a number of procurements and reconciliations.
 

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

LZH

- new laser heads designed and in work shop, ready mid Mai
- simulations of single path pumping (avoids damage of the fibre by back reflection of
pump light)
- worked on costing and scheduling for AdvLIGO lasers
- designed a setup for testing the laser heads before installation into a laser cavity

Stanford

- double passed edge pumped slab -> 104W, mode looks ok (M 2 ~ 1.1-1.2),
- discovered reason for low gain in end-pumped slabs: a lot of pump light leaks through
grinded edges of slab (not the TIR surfaces), polishing of these surfaces increased small
signal gain by factor of four
- during polishing of slabs TIR surface was damaged and based on that destroyed when
slab was pumped harder, new slab is currently polished only along the undoped ends
- future plan: start with 20W Lightwave system, double pass two sequential end pumped
slabs to achieve 200W
- measurements on quantum noise in saturated amplifiers are planned

Florida

- set up and analysed fully compensated FI
- FK51 rod delivered
- investigation of depolarization in 180MHz modulator are under way

Adelaide

- work on 10W laser for TAMA and Gingin, some problems with double-diode pump
module for TAMA laser (axis of the two diodes in the single package are not aligned,
sent back to manufacturer), 10W prototype works fine
- improved setup for birefringence diagnostic of slabs
- slabs for new end-pumped design were manufactured and are with polisher

next conference call: July 3 rd !!! no call in June

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