Weekly Report for Week Ending May 15, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  May 19, 2003 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

STAFFING MEETING

Special Announcements:

It gives us great pleasure to announce that Mike Zucker has accepted our offer to lead the team at the LIGO Livingston Observatory. Mike is a widely respected member of the LIGO Laboratory and the gravitational wave community. He is a pioneer in this field and is currently involved with some of the most demanding problems in our field. He will bring to Livingston his very deep knowledge of our field, his long experience in interferometry and his great leadership skills.

Mike will assume this post this summer and will begin by dividing his time between Livingston and MIT, where he will play a role in the delivery of the new isolation systems to LLO over the next few years.

Mike replaces Mark Coles who will leave LIGO for a very important role at NSF in the oversight of large facilities like LIGO. We thank Mark for his able leadership of the facilities group during LIGO construction and for the fine observatory that he has played an important role in establishing. Mark can be very proud of having arrived on a green field and that, as he departs, the LLO sensitivity to inspirals at 1.2 megaparsecs is world leading. It has been a long path from a green field to sensitivity outside our galaxy. Thank you Mark and good luck at NSF!

Congratulations Mike!

Barry Barish and Gary Sanders
 

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

There was a site teleconference on Thursday, May 15, 2003.  The following issues were discussed:

• Convenience Checks (Action #58)--Ed Jasnow was at Hanford this week to set up convenience checking associated with the P-Card accounts of Fred and Otto.
• Construction Costs--There are $2 million left in the checkbook.  Encumbrances actually oversubscribe the funding by about $135K.  Monitoring the storage building costs, and lab outfitting at Hanford.  Some charges have been made via P-Cards.  Rick Savage will be requested to provide a list of expenditures.  It is possible that some items have been mischarged and need to be corrected.
• Hanford Building Modifications--No progress this week.  Punch list items for the fire suppression system are still outstanding.
• Livingston Access Gate--Pouring concrete today.  Road has been widened although wear surface is not down yet..
• Livingston Storage Building--Will be up in time.

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

• Provided assistance to the Low Frequency Noise Suppression Section (R. DeSalvo) with the preparation of  a shipping container constructed by the Caltech Carpentry Shop. Account Number LIGO.LFNS 5.11 NSFLIGO.02ON.
• Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing and shipping of a 2kITM03 Mirror to the LHO (D. Cook) . Account Number P204422.
• Provided assistance to the Low Frequency Noise Suppression Section (R. DeSalvo) with packing and shipping of three (3) Optical Bench Feet to LHO (A. Takamori) for delivery NLT 5-21-03.  Account Number LIGO.LFNS 5.11 NSFLIFO.FY02ON.
• Provided assistance to the Low Frequency Noise Suppression Section (R. DeSalvo) with the prepration of US Customs documentation, packing and shipping of  Electronic Boards and Chips to Galli and Morelli (Mr Galli) in Italy with final destination to the National Astronomical Observatory in Tokyo, Japan.  Account Number P204289.

>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

Met with Janeen and Callum to work out a process for coordination between the "virtual library" and the DCC.  Several issues were defined that need resolution.  Callum will be experimenting with submitting a .pdf and a solid works file to see if Solid Works can be saved in increments without overriding earlier changes or versions.

Worked with David Shoemaker on compiling a complete bilographic listing of relevant Advanced LIGO documents.  Some were already in the DCC, some were downloaded from a website, but many remain unavailable for processing.  Will continue working on collecting these missing documents so the list will be fully represented by electronically available versions from the DCC.

Had several major viruses on my computer and Mike and Larry have been working all week to rebuild it.  It will hopefully be ready by the end of this week.

To ensure that everything is up and working on my computer, we postponed the start of work for George Stokes until next Monday.

• 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 very light for the week.  At this time, I believe all problematic documents have been addressed.
• Assisted the LDAS group in packaging and returning 22 packages to SUN.

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Completed the internal modifications to change poetas on the GP Manufacturing blanket, Digikey blanket, Tecknicircuits, and Newark blankets.  Transferred funds on the subcontract to University of Florida per Irena's request.  Set up the order for George Stokes working with DCC.  Received several change order requests on the subcontracts.
• Prepared a spreadsheet with data extracted as requested by LIGO pertaining to several subcontracts.
• Continue to work with Bill Tyler and Ed Jasnow on the funds issue for the Raytheon JPL transfer through September 30, 2003.
• The shipment from VAT to Russia has cleared and been delivered to Russia.  The second shipment by Pfeiffer Vacuum is still working it's way through Russian customs.
• Closed one time PO's for LIGO through November 2002 that have been billed.
• Pcard requests are still coming through which are not on the Caltech requisition form.  End users are being notified to utilize the Caltech requisition form on subsequent requests.  We have been requested to comply with the use of Caltech forms for processing requests.
• Placed and reconciled pcard orders as requested.

• No report.

• Submitted request for new fabrication account and PTA set-up for the Access Gate at Livingston.  The new account is LIGO.GATEL/1 NSFLIGO.FY02CA, the alias is P357308.
• Revised list of account numbers and requested that the new lists be posted on the Internal Bulletin Board.
• Worked on updating Construction and Operations reports for May.
• Assembled information for inclusion in Procedures Manual.

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

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

• Corning: CO No. 6 for five pieces of fused silica material was released to Purchasing. An advance copy was faxed to the vendor.
• SIOM: CO No. 7, for a no-cost extension of the contract through the end of the year, was released to Purchasing.
• RFP for AdLIGO Optics Coating R&D: Final drafts are in Project Controls review..

• Progress continues on the modifications to the LHO Laboratory Building.  Holes have been drilled for the additional sun shades, and footings have been inserted for the double glass doors.
• Concrete is being poured for the LLO access gate.  The widening of the road is completed, although the final asphalt top has not been applied.
• The concrete slab for the LLO pre-fabricated storage building has been completed, with assembly of the building scheduled shortly.

• LHO is now officially on P-card convenience checks for its petty cash needs.  The commercial checking account will be closed when the last check clears.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for fifteen (15) new/revised trips.  There are approximately eighteen (18) 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.  Two (2) additional last minute students were added to Caltech's ranks.  LIGO/Caltech will have twenty (22) 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-two (32) coming to one of the three (3) LIGO sites and Pisa will be handling the four (4) going there.
• Completed fifteen (15) Expense Reports and there are ten (10) 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 four (4) 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 twenty-three (23) 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 continues to be functioning well and although there were a couple of minor bugs Michelle and I are working on them.  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.
• 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 May 5.
• 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.

• Gathering press contacts for a LSC media info site in conjunction with the LIGO media information page.
• Working on details for NSF Adv. LIGO review June 11-13.
• Working with Torrie on a high school student tour in late May.
• More work on the Quarterly Newsletter for Congress [to be sent out shorly -pel].
• p-card due Friday.
• Worked with C. Akutagawa re: details for LIGO/SURF Orientation.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

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 and cost loading data for Albert L.
• Finished round of schedule changes as directed by David Shoemaker.
• Finished update of cost profiles base upon revised schedule data.
• Prepared a development cost comparison to R&D budgets.
• Followed-up with Veronica regarding cost and schedule content to be included on the web site.
• 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.
• Prepared a WBS listing in Excel format as requested by Justin at Rutherford Lab.
• Met with Janeen and reviewed schedule changes.  I will incorporate additional information she provided and re-align baseline.
• 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 - No action required at this point in time.

• I was requested by David Shoemaker to revise the 40-Meter Baseline to be inline with actual progress achieved to date.

• Received changes and comments from Mike Zucker.

• 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.

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 third model for projecting FY 2009 operating costs, and I will now be preparing a supporting document for Gary/Barry review.

I have prepared a response to the NSF DCAA Audit Report Questions.  This material has been provided to Gary before forwarding to Caltech Administration.

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 signed and will be sent to the DCC (LIGO-M030091-00-P).  CR-030008 was held pending additional information--specifically, competitive bids

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

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

Met with the individual that is preparing the cost estimate for the server room fire suppression system. Also toured the room and adjacent office space to assess the extent of the modifications required for the fire suppression system.  The cost estimate for an Inergen type of system is expected to be available by the end of next week.

Reviewed the draft LHO safety audit action item list with C. Scisiowicz for the final draft of the audit report.

Also reviewed at that time, was the new LLO SOP for Personnel Accountability for the laser safety interlock system and a proposed policy for alarm system trips of the laser shutter. Agreement was made to adopt the proposed alarm trip policy.

LIGO LASER SAFETY ALARM TRIP POLICY
This alarm trip and restart policy is to be implemented at both observatories, and has two important features:

1. The policy permits laser restart to be administered locally if the alarm trip incident DOES NOT involve an errant beam situation.

2. However, if an ERRANT BEAM condition occurs at any time, then the approval for restart must be obtained from the Deputy Director (G. Sanders).

In all cases, the events are to be recorded and a summary of these events reviewed at the annual safety audit.  The sites have been asked to make sure that they incorporate this policy into LIGO laser safety documents where appropriate and that all laser personnel are aware of this policy.
 

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

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Locking problems plagued both ifo's, with possible causes including code changes and
increased vit plant noise.

A suggestion for a possible H1 S2 epoch veto can be found at
http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=05/11/2003&anchor_to_scroll_to=2003:05:11:21:19:31-robert

A measurement of the RF-AM of the 4k MC transmitted light was made, see
http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=05/14/2003&anchor_to_scroll_to=2003:05:14:13:03:37-gustafso

The 4k relative phase between the I and Q phase signals for both AS1 and AS2 was measured,
http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=05/13/2003&anchor_to_scroll_to=2003:05:13:17:39:46-rick

A 4k y-arm length measurement was performed,
http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=05/14/2003&anchor_to_scroll_to=2003:05:14:17:07:59-rick

The LSC, ASC and endstation code was cycled through several upgrades and debugging
sessions, in part to accomodate high power operation.  A list of the changes to the code
can be found at
http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=05/09/2003&anchor_to_scroll_to=2003:05:09:17:23:10-rolf
 
 

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

Interferometer: We installed the spare MOPA in the optics lab and are preparing it for a swap with the one on the PSL table. We now see 9.3 Watts out of the laser with the pockels cell installed and aligned. Efforts continue to measure the length of the recycling cavity. Andri now has a preliminary result. The counterpoiseground surrounding the X-end station has been reworked and brought up to code. Work on the X-mid station is underway. Interferometer spectra will  be acquired to assess the benefit of this. Work continues on the implementation of the WFS loops. This work has been frustrated by slow angular drifts in ETM-x which have made it difficult to maintain a stable alignment.

LDAS admin:
1) Replaced failed T3 disk.
2) Ordered UPSes and cables for the new hardware.
3) Copying NDAS frames from tapes to hard disk.

LDAS data analysis:
Working to add noise estimate for each event in the waveburst to have a
consistent procedure for setting thresholds for corresponding events in
different ifos.
(Igor)

GC:
Setting up a laptop for Bonnie to use next week for a presentation.
Setting up Gerry's old machine for Doug's use as a dual boot workstation.
Helped Ed Daw look at Alvar since it did not come up properly after a power failure in the mass storage room.
Considering buying a couple more RHN accounts from Red Hat since more and more people are wanting to dual boot their machines. This helps me keep up with whether or not they are doing security updates, etc.
Working on the modem issue. Bellsouth changed our phone lines from analog to ISDN this week and the modems will need to be replaced/reconfigured. The connect speed is about the same after the conversion, but I have a new piece of hardware I need to try. Hopefully this will improve the dial up speeds and allow me to replace the portmaster which appears to be dying.
Reinstalled the OS on the scanner machine and bought a USB drive adapter so that the old files are still on the machine.
set up a couple of new accounts and also did some work on the form that I am using for new accounts. I am requiring people to fill out this form and agree to the computer usage policy before I activate the account. This form has worked pretty well so far.

LDAS:
Discussed the power and cooling requirements for the new LDAS hardware in the LDAS room. Long term I believe that the cooling system in the room will have to be changed. Short term, I think we are OK. Allen is looking into this. Also Rusyl is working with the contractor on the power requirements.
We have added 12 more pieces of CAT5 cable between the LDAS room and the comm. closet so that we can get away from the temporary GC connections.
This will also allow me to hook up the KVM to Igor's office.
(Shannon)

Other: Barry announced to an all hands meeting of the LLO staff that Mike Zucker will become the new Head of the LIGO Livingston Observatory. Congratulations Mike!

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Core digital suspension controllers (DSC), MC WFS, and other Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Bork, Taylor):
• All installed optics (MC1, MC2, MC3, BS, ITMX, ITMY) are damping well with the new DSC system. The electronics for PRM and SRM seem to operate fine, but are having trouble damping because the optics are not installed yet.
• From Rolf: Code had to be fixed this week to get the all the suspension signals into DAQ properly and the MCL signal properly sent to EPICS from the suspension PCs.
• Rolf: The GDS signals from the suspension PCs are late by 1/16 second. This should be an easy fix in the DAQ router software.
• Rolf: Added the capability of the IOO VME system to acquire 16KHz channels to the DAQ as well as 2KHz channels. This allows the IOO VME system to acquire all IOO/PSL DAQ channels, thereby removing the previous long DAQ cable runs from the PSL area down to the DAQ analog data collection unit (ADCU).
• Ben made a list of DAQ channels for Rolf, and learned that the Generic DAQ Interface Board needs modification to condition all of the channels correctly with regards to gain and filtration, and to reorder one of the channels to limit them to 16.
• Rolf: Signals to IOO M1/M2 are comming off the wrong (3rd) pentek. This is corrected and needs a reboot to move the outputs back to the first Pentek.
• Rolf: Work will start next week on the 40m end station controllers, which should only take a few days (very minor mods to existing software).
• Ben is rearranging the end rack drawings to reduce the number of needed VME crates by one per end.
• Dennis et al are preparing to re-diagonalize any optics that need it.
• The servo gains will be tweaked to optimize x_rms. From dtt displacement spectra it looks like the ITMs will need higher gain.
• Bob continues to wire the auxiliary rack (1X1), which holds the electro-optics shutter signals, video switch, and other misc stuff. He had to shift all the crates back several inches so that the rack door would close. Dennis will set up to boot the cpu; He and Alexei will work on the database for EOS channels.
• Ben is updating the rack drawing for 1X1 to incorporate recent changes.
• We need to run AC power to the small racks that hold EOS electronics. Steve & Ben will pursue.
• We have enumerated all the places, in vacuum, which need wiring to auxiliary components (PZT steering mirrors and picomotors for shutters, flags, MMT). We will prepare pigtail-like in-vac cables for these devices.
• Suspended mass mode cleaner (Ugolini, Miyakawa, Vass, Abbott):
• The DSC system, and MCL path, now all work.
• Dennis restored Autoburt biases to the mirror pitch & yaw, and saw flashes on MC2 and light on the photodiodes; so alignment hasn't changed much.
• Dennis & Conor are re-aligning the MC mirrors, and attempting to re-lock.
• Alexei is working on the MC WFS system: Ben helped Alexei troubleshoot a bad WFS Demod board and replaced the bad chips. It now operates fine. 2 of 4 quads on the WFS2 head appear to have large offsets. The output to the PZT steering mirrors on the PSL table are being debugged. Signals from dtt excitation are seen on test points. Rolf and Alexei are checking out the path to the mirrors themselves. IO WFS medm screens are being refined.
• Suspended optics:
• Bob cleaned and baked the new part to hold the OSEMs on our SOSs which have the PRM and SRM, and which have 2.5degree wedges, necessitating the changes. Steve et al will re-hang these optics and prepare them for installation, in the next week.
• PSL and ISS (O. Miyakawa, B. Abbott, R. Abbott, F. Nocera, D. Ugolini, S. Vass, C. Mow-Lowry):
• Conor is planning a re-layout of 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.
• Conor has measured and modeled the frequency reference cavity pole, and is doing the same for the PMC cavity pole, in case it needs compensation in the FSS servo.
• Optical sensing (Smith, Ourjoumtsev, Goggin, Miyakawa):
• OPTICS PARTS LIST, 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: Updated the parts list and released the final assembly drawing. Parts will be disassembled for cleaning and baking. Prepared traveller.
• OPTICAL LEVER ASSY: Assembly on hold.
• IFO STEERING MIRRORS: Updated the parts list and released the final assembly drawing. Parts are on hand, awaiting assembly for fit checking. Prepared traveller.
• MODE MATCHING TELESCOPE: Alternate MMT with spherical mirrors was assembled and tested with the COS IR autocollimator. The astigmatism is so bad that with a double pass test through the autocollimator, only the on-axis portion of the reticle pattern could be focussed. By comparison, the off-axis parabolic mirror telescope causes negligible distortion of the double pass reticle pattern. Updated the parts list for the parabolic mirror version and released the final assembly drawing. Parts will be disassembled for cleaning and baking. Prepared traveller.
• SPS BREWSTER PRISM MIRROR: Updated the parts list and released the final assembly drawing. Prepared traveller. All parts are on hand except for the Brewster prism, which is expected the week of 5/19.
• Alexei discovered that all the beamsplitter mirrors on the MCR beamline downstream of where the EOS will go (to the LSCPD and WFSs) were for S-polarization, not P-polarization; he replaced them with the correct mirrors. He continues to evaluate how much power the WFSs need.
• Alexei received three 6KV DEI pulsers for the EOS system. He continues to work on getting EPICS control of the EOS systems, and AC power to the EOS control racks, with help from Dennis and Bob.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Ugolini, Vass, Jones):
• Steve and Bob cleaned and removed a bunch of cabinets to make room for desks for summer students. There's LOTS of surplus vacuum equipment (including high-quality VAT right-angle manual valves) available to any interested LIGOn; check it out!
• Steve is getting a portable air conditioning unit for the control room, before the summer students (each of whom burn hundreds of watts) arrive. He's also getting desks and chairs.
• Larry has the shop making six picommotor-controlled in-vac shutter flags. Steve is working with Mike Smith on vac-compatible beam dumps.
• The east end ion pump (EEIP) has been repaired and is working fine.
• Dennis has completed the vacuum and psl sections of the comprehensive procedures manual, and is moving on to other sections.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor, Cardenas):
• Bob cleaned, baked, and scanned the re-machined OSEM bracket for our PRM and SRM suspensions, and some vented screws and mirror mounts.
• Bob helped Ken, Mike finish the new LIGO1 errant beam baffles and clean them, they will go too the heat treaters today.
• Bob is ready to clean and bake the MMT and Faraday isolator, as soon as they're fully checked out.
Osamu continues to work on development of the dual-recycling summation cavity for E2E, while in Japan for the month.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

no report

LASTI (Zucker)

no report

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
 

LSC-related: the LIGO data group met for extensive discussions with the PSU
Tier II center people. This was a very beneficial and productive face-to-face.
 

In addition, we took advantage of the PSU visit to host a second face-to-face for the
LSC Computing Committee. A number of issues were discussed and are being addressed
that cover planned deployment of new software configurations and operating system kernels
across the sites; unified accounts management using globus grid security infrastructure; development of the
MOU between the Tier II centers and the iVDGL PIs (Avery, Foster, et al.); upcoming PSU hardware procurement
for their Tier II center.  A set of minutes will be issued and made available for distribution.
 

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Outreach (TAMA)
---------------
Dr. Hayakawa and Prof. Ohashi of Institute of Cosmic Ray Research, a
member institution of TAMA, have contacted us notifying that
Dr.Hayakawa is going to start using e2e for CLIO and LCGT modeling. He
has downloaded the software and has started playing with it. Hiro
provided guidance to him. This is part of the collaboration documented
in a LIGO-TAMA MOU-attachment.
 

SimLIGO
-----------
(Matt) This week I worked on understanding, in the context of SimLIGO,
 the current ASC control problems seen at LHO.  The problem is the
 translation of a non-diagonal and somewhat variable sensing matrix
 into a stable control matrix and gain hierarchy. I have had some success,
 but have yet to develop a general solution.
 

Dynamical misalignment
------------------------
(Biplab) Ran Daniel's Mathematica code to generate plots for the transfer
 functions of LIGO for dynamical misalignments and compared with e2e
 results. Some differences still exist.
 

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Hiro) e2e distribution:
 The e2e package has made a evolutional change and the current
 distribution package is not appropriate any more. Hiro, Matt, Bruce and
 Melody discussed the issue. Melody will update the document. Bruce will
 look into reorganizing the distribution package.
 

(Hiro) modeler code:
 Hiro and Melody kept working on looking into code integrity. This
 includes the treatment of threads (it seems RH9 linux has solved a
 problem which caused modeler crash when thread is used), validation of
 codes recently updated and the speed improvements due to code
 modifications and compilation conditions.
 

(Melody)
        -  Tested the modeler's performance with different optimization
           levels and the multithreaded capabilities in the Linux box.
        -  Currently updating the E2E build instructions.
 

(Ed Maros) Worked with Melody on optimization
 

Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
        - Working on problems with trim connection and junctions.
        - More preparation work for implementation of bundler widget.
        - Implementing new Unconnected data type.
 

(Melody) Tested alfi5 in the Linux box.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
A significant amount of knowledge concerning the migration of LDAS to RedHat
9 was gained this week, but little new progress. It was discovered that the
new fast thread model in RH 9 causes problems for TCL when compiled with
the two versions of GCC we are most familiar with and have slated as being
in our pool of candidates for a GCC compiler. There have been some suggestive
words in news groups that it is best to use a newer version of GCC which will
be coming out in the near future when using RH 9, but this is not an option
if we want to meet our schedule. We are presently investigating if the slightly
customized version of GCC that is shipped with RH (and not available to us
for Solaris) can solve the TCL problem. We have also attempted to use the
TCL which comes with RH9 and it does solve the thread issue, but it has its
own long list of parsing bugs which are too extensive to justify a brut force
approach based on that TCL which comes with RH 9. Another issue with RH 9 is
that the currently adopted version of DB2 (version 7.2) which we have been
using for the LDAS database for the past year can not be successfully installed
at this time on RH 9. We were successful, after jumping through a few hoop,
able to install DB2 version 8.1 on RH 9. Once we migrate to RH 9, we will be
forced to upgrade our database server's version. This will require a new
investigation to assure that LDAS works with DB2 version 8.1, and we do have
some evidence that this is the case under Linux, but we will need to pursue
this under Solaris as well in the immediate future, but no problems are
expected.
 

We have tested running the wrapperAPI that has been constructed based on the
Redhat 7.3 development environment on nodes running Redhat 9. The wrapperAPI
runs but coredumps on exit from processing. We may have found a fix for this
but testing was interrupted yesterday by needs to prepare for a power outage
in Millikan. This is the configuration we hope to have working for the next
release of LDAS (0.7.0). All LDAS APIs except the wrapperAPI will be strictly
supported only under Redhat 7.3, while the wrapperAPI will (hopefully) be
supported under Redhat 7.3 and Redhat 9. We have been working on this goal
for about a month now and have yet to find the "key" that unlocks all the
problems. Some of the issues were resolved by upgrading the autoconfig and
automake tools under RedHat 7.3 to be the same as those under Redhat 9. This
require a one week effort in rewriting the configuration scripts for LDAS
with lots of supporting testing. I'm optimistic that we have almost "cracked"
this "nut". However, because of these issues we have desided to postpone the
code freeze for the next release of LDAS that had been tentatively scheduled
for the end of this week.
 

The new version of the createRDS command that will support ingesting frames
from multiple interferometers and writing out them out in a single RDS is now
in place and about 90% tested. It uses the Frames table of contents, which
the previous version did not. It was hoped that this would give about a 10 to
20 percent increase in performance since the whole frame no longer needs to
be read but it did not.
 

We have made no progress in getting LDAS software to work with higher levels
of optimization and function inlining under solaris. This is degrading our
performance and needs serious attention, though the solution may also involve
a newer version of GCC since the problem first showed up once we migrated to
a new more ANSI/ISO compliant version of GCC. As an aside this upgrade did
fix many thread issues and memory leaks issues we were experiencing with the
older versions of GCC so its a case of having to take some loses with some
gains. The net sum is a gain for the long term maintainability of LDAS.
 

The controlMonitorAPI now has a working test menu which allows users designated
with control level privileges the ability to test each type of user command
with a simple click of the mouse in the GUI. The test script are now integrated
into CVS and built into the controlMonitorAPI as part of each build.
 

We spent two days this week meeting with the technical staff from Penn State
that will be responsible for the Tier II center there. Discussions covered
planned hardware to be purchased at the PSU center, database federation and
replication, grid technologies and DMT. One of significant outcomes of the
meeting was the formation of a team including participation from the PSU
group to help bring our database federation/replication solution on-line.
The new team was given an overview of the solution LDAS had committed too.
This lead to some concerns so we generated a new set of requirements to
address these concerns. The new Database Team has been tasks with taking
these new requirement and determining what topology of federation/replication
best meets them. Another significant outcome of the meeting was the disclosure
of a "wrapper" to the off-line DMT that allows it to run under a globus
enabled grid environment. This is still prototype, but there was consensus
that this approach had appeal.
 

The ability to save to file results which fail to be inserted into the LDAS
database due to internal database server deadlocks was added to the metadataAPI.
This will allow users to issue a putmetadata command with the saved file at a
later date when the deadlock is resolved without repeating an analysis.
 

A new memory leak has been introduced in the metaDataAPI this week. All code
changes have been in the TCL layer so the localization of the bug is somewhat
easy and has been isolated to code used for the putMetaData command. Efforts
continued to the remaining small memory leaks still present in the data-
ConditionAPI but no progress to report at this time.
 

The creation of RDS frames for the S2 Science Run on the LDAS-CIT system has
completed. The availability of the RDS frames has been announced to the Tier
II centers by Philip Charlton. They are being mirrored to these sites using
LDR, a grid/globus tool for data replication. For convenience, the last task
Philip needs to do on this is move some data from one disk to another so
that data is organised into single directories of 100,000 seconds each
(~6000 files).
 

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

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

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

* Got SB1000 (saiph) to see Fibre Channel devices again, by running the
  SAN 4.2 install script for a third time allowing it to pick up more patches.
 

* Investigated release behavior of SAM-QFS and discovered that
  /archive/ndas had been marked "do not release" which meant that all the
  directories and files subsequently created under it had inherited this
  behavior.  After setting the release behavior of these
  directories/files back to the default, the release behavior of the
  system as a whole got better (since 90% of the disk cache had been
  filled with NDAS files before).
 

* Replaced all the power supplies in the T3 RAID arrays in Powell-Booth.
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Set up the 3.0GHz boxes for the new Datacon, and Beowulf in the LDAS-DEV
  system. They have RH7.3 and are ready to go.
 

* Have two of the new nodes on line in the dev system, Node17 and node18.
  These are being tested for node compatibility for RH9.
 

* Doing system imager testing with node19, so far so good.
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Visit with Albert Lazzarini to the LDAS Beowulf cluster vendor to
  check on the status of our 420 node order.
[Lazzarini note: we have learned that the ship is in transit.
The date they have proposed for last delivery is holding firm (early June).]
 

* Obtained shipping schedule on the remaining Sun Microsystems order--last
  partial shipment on May 22.
 

* Worked with Al Wilson to shutdown and restart all 6th floor Millikan
  computers for the scheduled building power outage.
 

* Worked with Ed Maros to rebuild the /ldcg tools with the new bug-fix
  version of gcc (3.2.3).
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
 

* Submitted paperwork from extra power to ldas lab to support cluster nodes.
 

* Collected data for current network speeds.
 

* Continuing to administer LDR to get S2 segments to MIT.
 

* Setting up new pc raid units (burntests, benchmarking
  different raid / non raid filesystems, different o/s's).
 

* Shifting equipment in racks to accommodate new datacon
  and beowulf rack mount units.
 

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

* Working to add noise estimate for each event in the waveburst to have a
  consistent procedure for setting thresholds for corresponding events in
  different ifos.
 

(Shannon Roddy)
 

* Discussed the power and cooling requirements for the new LDAS hardware
  in the LDAS room.  Long term I believe that the cooling system in the
  room will have to be changed.  Short term, I think we are OK.  Allen is
  looking into this.  Also Rusyl is working with the contractor on the
  power requirements.
 

* We have added 12 more pieces of CAT5 cable between the LDAS room and the
  comm. closet so that we can get away from the temporary GC connections.
  This will also allow me to hook up the KVM to Igor's office.
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
 

* Completed orders for UPS units, a transformer, and  cables for the
  new FC and GigE switches, and new beowulf cluster for LDAS at LHO.
 

* Circuits for the new equipment are being added to the LDAS room today
  and tomorrow.
 

* Installed new ASA Raid box on the LDAS LHO network.  It is currently
  running our burntest.
 

* Working with Igor to read S2 ndas data from tape onto disk at LLO.
 

(Ben Johnson)
 

* Finished comm program for the Omega RD820 temperature monitor. Will
  perform final long-run in situ tests next week.
 

* Assisted with the replacement of final batch of batteries for the T3
  arrays, and with the replacement of a memory bank and a system board for
  dataserver.
 

* Replaced faulty T3 disk 4 in t3-5.
 

* Performed basic hardware and software setup new beowulf and datacon
  units. They have not been placed on the network yet.
 

* Continuing to work with ASA Computers on repairing node32 of our
  present beowulf cluster.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
 

Weinstein:
- working on burst paper.
- set up routines for filtering bursts through S2 calibration
  in matlab, to facilitate work by Laura Cadonati.
 

Creighton:
 

I have finished my study of precision issues in band-pass IIR
filtering.  In addition to the round-off noise introduced by the
original digitization, there is significant additional round-off noise
introduced by (single-precision) IIR filters, which can dominate the
filtered output if the input spanned a large dynamic range.  This can
be effectively eliminated by (1) copying the single-precision data to
a double-precision array and performing double-precision filtering, or
(2) rewritiing the filtering routine so that intermediate variables
*and* auxiliary arrays are double precision.  The second will require
significant rewriting of the code, so for now the PULGroup will be
using the first method.  Eventually I will revise the LAL code to do
the second, which should be marginally more efficient.
 

K. Reilly:
Friday through Monday I spent reading v13 of the S1 stochastic paper
and giving comments to the group (Peter F.).  The rest of my time I have
been spending learning about writing LAL code, so that we can start
to turn the DSO into LAL routines while leaving it compatible
with LDAS. Joe and I spent sometime further discussing the ultimate
structure of the stochastic data analysis codes.
 

Mendell:
1) Working with the PULG group to update the SFT specification.  The
main issues to decide are what metadata should be stored in the SFT
frames, naming conventions, and how to organize documentation.
 

2) Working with the PULG group and Malik Rakhmanov to write test code,
independent of LAL, to check the beam pattern response functions that
are in LAL.  We have started with code written by my SURF student, Brian
Cameron, last summer. Other code written by David Chin already does
checking within LAL. We will also add independent tests of timing
routines in LAL as well. The most important of these, for the purposes
of computing the detector response, are the LAL routines that convert
GPS time to sidereal time.  It is important to understand that all of
this functionality has been tested and verified in many ways in the
past.  What Malik and I will do is incorporate existing code and
standardize it so that a complete set of test functions run during every
"make check" of LAL when it is built. We will also provide documentation
in LAL on how to run exhaustive versions of these tests from the command
line.
 

Yakushin:
Working to add noise estimate for each event in the waveburst to have a
consistent procedure for setting thresholds for corresponding events in
different ifos.
 

Peter Shawhan:
 

* S1 inspiral analysis: Checked lists of events used in analysis, and found
that several LDAS jobs had actually failed without returning an error
message, so they were not noticed at the time.  The failed jobs are being
re-run to fill in the gaps.
 

* S2 data quality: Went through files of segment-by-segment Epics channel
differences during S2, and collected information about all of the LSC
filters during the run.
 

Lazzarini:
Working to complete the final draft of the stochastic upper limits paper.
 

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Installed up2date utility on several ldas user machine
-Received certificate from DOEgrid CA service
-Running test server with new certificate
-Created accounts for MIT urop summer students
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Setting up a laptop for Bonnie to use next week for a presentation.
-Setting up Gerry's old machine for Doug's use as a dual boot workstation.
-Helped Ed Daw look at Alvar since it did not come up properly after a
power failure in the mass storage room.
-Considering buying a couple more RHN accounts from Red Hat since more
and more people are wanting to dual boot their machines.  This helps me
keep up with whether or not they are doing security updates, etc.
-Working on the modem issue.  Bellsouth changed our phone lines from
analog to ISDN this week and the modems will need to be
replaced/reconfigured.  The connect speed is about the same after the
conversion, but I have a new piece of hardware I need to try.  Hopefully
this will improve the dial up speeds and allow me to replace the
portmaster which appears to be dying.
-Reinstalled the OS on the scanner machine and bought a USB drive adapter
so that the old files are still on the machine.
-Set up a couple of new accounts and also did some work on the form that
I am using for new accounts.  I am requiring people to fill out this
form and agree to the computer usage policy before I activate the
account.  This form has worked pretty well so far.
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Received the final GigE network upgrade quotes for both Foundry and
Cisco from CDWG.  The prices are almost identical.
- Setup two new laptops.  Helped a new laptop user to understand how to
use their laptop.
- Contacted reps for Sun and Reliaty backup to get maintenance contracts
renewed for another year and to get upgraded software from Reliaty.
- Helped swap out PCs for the FMCS system.  The old PC had lost it's
hard drive, so I swapped it out for one of my spare PCs.
- Spent some time working on my laser power, rotation stage, epics
software.
 

CIT:
(Mike)
Moved and rack mounted M91 & Pictor from my office back into the server room
due to a maintenance issues and a hardware failure. I also did update ghost
images on both of these servers.
-Our ghost server had an OS problem that ended up in me having to reload
this server it is now back up and running. I would like to let all our
users know that a good percentage of the ghost images that are stored on
the server are win98 and I now have most of you updated to 2000 pro.
I would like to get current ghost images from all our users that are
running windows workstations. I will start this process in the early
morning hours and hope to have everyone updated ASAP, without any down
time. I will notify you the night before I would even make an attempt to
update any of our users.
-Worked on Linda Turner's laptop due was having problems with the OS and
it turned out to be a virus. I had to wipe the disk and reload the OS and
reload all applications. This is still in the process.
-Loaded a new laptop for Barry with all General Computing Software and today
I will be transferring over his data over to the new laptop.
-Finished up loading an engineering workstation for a visitor that is
coming from Glasgow.
 

(Veronica)
- Time was spent almost exclusively on building and support of the
Advanced LIGO website. The website is ready for the reviewers to use; some
setup and editing need to be finished.
- LIGO website: started on catching up on what's accumulated in the past
days as I was working on Advanced LIGO. Updating account information at
Internal Bulletin Board at the moment.
- LSC website: the same - catching up on postings left to wait until now.
- CaJAGWR website: user support at an urgent request by Kip, website
maintenance.
 

(Lisa)
- Hardening the security on the new www.ligo.
- Worked with Larry on putting more disk space on rigel.
- Still doing a fair amount of user support on e-mail, mostly helping people
learn how to secure their home connections.
- Made DVD's for people who needed help managing their home account disk space
usage.
- Reprogrammed the wireless access points many times.
- Fixed the Forte 7 licensing on ldas-suntest1.
- Looked at what it would take to upgrade all of the solaris boxes to netscape
7.  It's a fairly major task that would be difficult to roll out.
 

(Larry)
-Spent more time than usual working on PC's. Most of the issues were cleared up by
running maintenance programs on the units.
-Continued working different issues with the VRVS and related video conferencing
programs. There appears to be enough interest that we are working on a noon-time
seminar on how to use the system. We'll announce the time and place when we get things
lined up. We are shooting for the first of June before the reviews start.
-A lot of work going over licensing issues. Each company, that has provided a EDU site
license, is treating how their s/w can be used differently.
The SDRC pkg. has been purchased by EDS and will be incorporated into their
Unigraphics system in the near future.
We have a few more Matlab group licenses but it appears all but a few have been
checked out. We've also added to our network license pool.
-Worked on a number of procurement issues. This should slow down now that we are
coming to the end of the construction budget.
-Went over the form Livingston is using for their new accounts. The CIT group will
probably be using a similar form.
Along that same line we need people to inform us ASAP when they are going to have
visitors needing wireless access. It does take some time to update the wireless access
points.
-Worked on a few of the servers and edge switches.
-Regular user support, adding of accounts and checking e-mail issues. We are still
adding locations to be blocked and reviewing the logs for false positives.
-The new LIGO web server is just about ready to be put on-line. Just a few more items
to take care of but they will have to wait a few more weeks. Also, another internal
secure web server is about to be put on-line.
 

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

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