Weekly Report for Week Ending July 17, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  July 21, 2003 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

STAFFING COMMITTEE MEETING

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Saulson)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, July 17, 2003.  The following items were among those discussed:

Budget vs Expenditures

• Sort of discussed last week--hasn't changed, carry forward is predicted at $4 to $5 million.
• Concern is that this carry forward has to pay for certain tasks.  This must be integrated with the current budget exercise for FY 2004.

• Final Invoices for Construction Work--missing some final invoices from Coastal Bridge, Max Grigsby, etc.
• Status of Chervenell Construction effort on Glass Vestibule for Laboratory Building at Hanford--no visible sign of a start yet.
• Status of Access Gate at Livingston--complete, invoices on the way.
• Status of Pre-Fabricated Storage Building at Livingston--One Third Occupied, moving stuff in.

• Disposition of Power Supplies at Livingston---probably have stuff out 2 to 2-1/2 weeks
• Proposing to get golf carts (ala Hanford) for use on the Livingston site.

• Florence has sent out an index of possible procedures.  The objective is to create a web site.  Please review and let us know if there is anything not covered that should be covered.

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

• Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with the shipment of copies of the Coating Research and Development  and Production Coating of Advance LIGO Optic Proposal to MIT (D. Shoemaker and G. Harry) and  the University Of Glasgow (D. Reitze)  via Federal Express.  Account Number P204296.
• Provided assistance to the Director's Office by  preparing a Purchase  Request to Intersect Systems International for finalizing the relocation of Ben Johnson  from Atlanta Ga. to Richland, Wa  Account Number LIGO.DIR 1.1.1 NSFLIGO. FY020N.
• Provided support to the LLO by preparing the Report of Excess Property (SF120) to the National Science Foundation  for the equipment accumulated at the conclusion to the Bake-Out: Four (4) Trailers, seven (7) Transformers 45 KVA, four (4) Transformers 500 KVA, four (4) Cooling Units, four (4) Power Supplies DC Magnet, three(3) Chiller Package, one (1) Monarch and one (1) Harding  Lathe.
• Provided assistance to the LHO with the preparation of US Customs  Documentation for deliver three (3) Seismometer serials numbers 100106, 100144, and 60152) with Connection Boxes, Cables, and Alignment Pin to Max-Plack Institut fur Gravitations Physik, Hanover Germany, Dr. K. Mossavi.  The packages departed Frankfurt sorting facility 7/17/03 at 5:48 am..

>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>

Web pages for the DCC give simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database. Take a look. . .

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• No report--illness.
• Reminder to LIGO staff:  Please make sure that as a minimum, each document submitted has a LIGO number, author's name, and date.  Many documents are missing one of more of these essential pieces of information!

ACTIVITY
No report--automoibile accident (it hasn't been a good week in the DCC)
Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Reconciled and prepared monthly report for pcard orders.
• Completed change orders and finished paperwork for recent change orders on the subcontracts.
• Working on the two sample contracts for two large orders going to NSF for approval.  .

• No report this week.

• Prepared and sent out an analysis of R&D budgets, expenditures and encumbrances through June.
• Prepared an analysis comparing FY04 budgets to spending through June.
• Spent some time on resolving some questions related to Visitors.
• Worked on Procedures Manual.
• Updated monthly reports.

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

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

• No report this week (vacation).

CONSTRUCTION:

Work on the glass vestibule on the LHO Laboratory Building has not yet started since the aluminum frame has not yet arrived.  Chervenell will be informed that they cannot be paid for this work after September 30, 2003, because of the expiration of the funds under the construction cooperative agreement.

Two contract packages are being prepared for NSF review.  They are for the machining and assembly of the EPI for Livingston.  The packages will be sent to the NSF on July 18.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for twenty-two (22) new/revised trips.  There are approximately seven (7) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and/or paper work completed.  And an additional two (2) general inquiries.  Until further notice I will be doing travel for LHO travelers.  I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.
• Completed twenty-seven (27) Expense Reports and there are eighteen (18) 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.  Presently there are three (3) reports more than 30 days old.
• Reconciled fifty-seven (57) 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.  There were a total of one-hundred-fiftty-three (157) items for the month ending July 15, 2003.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for July 14, 2003.  Arranged two (2) new teleconferences and arranged two (2) new reservations on the LIGO Calendar.

 

 

• Processed the usual invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of July 7.
• 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.


A "new" Competitive Source Selection Justification form has been issued by Caltech. This new form goes into effect immediately. Please be sure to use this form when submitting your next purchase requisition that involves competitive source selection. The new form has been posted on the LIGO Bulletin Board.
 

• LIGO Summer party details.  Photo Project.  LIGO Birthday Celebration.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Will be at Timberline Conf. from July 21 -23 ( http://www.timberline.com/company/media/educ_conf.htm ), Vacation July 24 and 25.

Accomplishments:

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/

• Continued development of a proposal for implementing Primavera Project Planner Enterprise.
• Began execution of travel reservations.
• Working on draft of estimated costs and plan.
• http://www.primavera.com/events/conference.html

• Prepared cost loading data as requested by Phil to respond to several NSF queries.

• The following is a summary of status by sub system:
• COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• PSL -  No action items pending.  Information due from Peter, regarding changes to scope assignment, per discussions with Benno.
• AOS - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• IO -  Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• SUS - No action items pending.  Discussed schedule changes with Janeen.  I will make a first cut for her review.
• SEI - No action items pending.
• ISC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• LDAS - No action required at this point in time.
• INSTALL - No action items pending.
• 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.

• Continue input of changes and comments from Mike Zucker.

• ROSTER DATABASE:
• BK is continuing work on action items.
• Input of supervisor, dept., and specialty codes will continue after authorship list is complete.
• Continued modifying the authorship queries to format data per Albert's specifications.
• Continued ongoing co-ordination with Albert, Peter S., and Stan W., on the authorship data.

• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• BK is continuing work on action items.

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

I have distributed a proposed outline and writing assignments for contributions for the Operations Annual Report and Work Plan for FY 2004.  I am requesting input by Friday, July 25, 2003 (sooner if possible).  So far, I have received material from the Detector Group.

I have also prepared a draft of the budget model for FY 2004.  The total exceeds the $33 million funding profile by $800+K and includes no reserve.  Please review for potential reductions or omissions.

The LIGO Change Control Board met on July 14, 2003 as part of the normally scheduled Executive Committee Meeting.  A .pdf version of the minutes has been prepared.

The following change request was approved

Change Request CR-030014--Operations Staffing - Adjustment to Reflect Third Quarter Actual Staffing

Signed originals of the documents will be found in the document control center.

The following change request has been distributed Executive Committee for possible discussion July 28, 2003.

CR-030015

FY 2003 Livingston Observatory Detector Maintenance Expenses (Increment)

R. Wooley

July 14, 2003

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

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

• Nothing significant to report this week.

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

no report

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

Commissioning

The interferometer runs in the low noise state.  there was a problem with the gain in th UL coil fro ETMX.  The problem seemed to go away when the anti-aliasing board was switched from rev. C to rev. B although there does not seem to be a problem with the board.

Some studies of intensity noise coupling into the ASQ signal was done using the DTT controlled laser intensity driver.

An accelerometer was placed on top of the PSL periscope to look for correlations between table motion and the ASQ signal.

(Amin)
Calibrated all WFS detectors in preparation for a post-vent characterization.
RF preliminary data has been posted in the LLO e-log.
WFS 2 notch filter repaired as per Gaby Gonzalez's approval.
 

Preparations for the vent

(Gary Traylor)
 We are moving right along with preparation for the vent next week. The labs have been cleaned, Garments and door covers inventoried, HAM and BSC cleanrooms have been cleaned and turned on, in vacuum tools are being cleaned, platforms and bellybars are cleaned and staged, purge air has been checked out and we are in the process of staging all of the tools for door removal. There are still many small things to do but we are chipping away at the mountain and seem to be in good shape. Thanks to all who have helped with the preparations!

LLO seismic retrofit

(Kern)
Document "Engineering Estimates of Large Contract Costs in support of
the External Pre-Isolation (EPI) Production Effort" completed by Dennis
and Jonathan and forwarded to Ed Jasnow for revision. 2 more large
purchase requisitions for machine and fabrication work have been sent to
Ed Jasnow. The last large bid package for the External Pre-isolator has
been released and is due July 18. DCN for the hydraulic actuator is
completed. Met with Amit and Brian to clear up issues with the
proportional valve calibration manifold. Will authorize machine work
next week. Completed a model of the simplified HEPI bypass tree using
only Swagelok production parts vacuum brazed together, and sent to
Swagelok for estimate.

Laser Safety

(Kern)
A laser safety incident occurred July 16 and the IFO is shut down. All
of Wednesday spent gathering data and incident reports from personnel
involved. Working with Gary Sanders to resolve the issue and re-open the
shutter.

CDS

(Khan)
1) Continued work of on Digital Suspension Watchdog Sstem. We found that
there is an incompatibility between the LOS coil driver Fault output and the
XYCOM 212 digital input. The LOS coil driver is TTL output and the XYCOM 212
is opto isolated input needing 15 ma of current. The issue has to be
resolved by Caltech design team.
2) Working on EPICS Linux interface to be implemented after the S3 run.
3) Preparing a tutorial on Digital Signal Processing to be presented to SURF
students.

Data Analysis

(Yunyong Wang)
I'm doing the s2 data quality study. Taking the 11 AS_Q loudest "events'
which listed by Brian as the triggers I went through the channels of
L1:ASC-WFS1_QY and QP, WFS2_IY,( IP,QY and QP ) and Found a strange
effect in WFS2_IY,IP,QY.and QP channels to one of the loudest AS_Q
'trigger' 731605040. The amplitudes are smaller than the common one
by 3 orders. The WFS2 signal went back to normal at about 731619904.
I will continue working on it and see the details.

(Franzen)
1) since last week I have continued to work on a simple e2e model of the LLO. I am trying to understand how the misplacement of the RM affects the response functions and if/how the planned movement of the ITMy would help. B.Bhawal and H. Yamamoto have been extremely helpful in explaining the code for me.
2) I have also continued to work on a S2 glitch study as proposed by G. Gonzales.
3) some time I ago we (Amber at Stanford and myself) found a bug in the mode cleaner class in the Melody code. This is now being investigated.

(Yakushin)
Still studying how well waveburst can detect hardware injections using
various wavelets (Biorthogonal, Daubecheis, Symlet) and various
parameters.

(T. Findley and S. Yoshida)
Continued working on the e2e box to investigate local damping. Last week
the position gain worked properly but not the pitch and yaw gain. Using a
LOS box, we looked into the problem. We found that in order to use the
local gain control properly, the time step of calculation must be on the
order of 1e-5 sec. This is because the AD converter in the controller box
uses a sampling rate of 16 kHz. By giving a time step of 1.33e-6 sec, all
of pos, pit and yaw output respond to changes in the gains used.
 

LDAS admin

(Yakushin)
1) Fixed LED problem in node 3.
2) After reruning memtest86 on nodes discovered memory problems with
nodes 13 and 24. ASA sent replacement memory that seems to fix the
problem.
3) New beowulf and datacon successfully passed burntest and are now
integrated into LDAS.
4) Cloned 35 beowulf nodes and integrated them into LDAS.
5) Configured MIT database for daily backups. Modified database backup
configuration at CIT to have backup copies on 2 different file systems.
 

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Installation (Vass, Ugolini, Miyakawa, Smith, everyone):
• The 40m was vented on Tuesday 7/8 without incident. We did notice, however, that the ion pump currents rose somewhat after the pumpdown even with their gate valves closed. One has since begun to decrease, and John Worden has told us the rest will probably follow suit.
• Steve moved the MC2 feedthroughs to the east side of the MC end chamber, and put a window on the back of the chamber for Mike Smith's photon actuation experiment. A 4'x3' table has been placed next to the window as well, for Mike/Tom's laser.
• Several irises have been cleaned by Bob, and were installed on Friday 7/11 to lock down the laser alignment.
• The old steering mirrors for PSL->MC, MC->MCR, and MC->MCT are being replaced by mirrors with better (DLC) mounts, with due attention to polarization (unlike before).
• The PSL beam was observed to flash through the MC (in air), verifying the correct alignment of all the above changes.
• The remaining input optics (Faraday Isolator, mode matching telescope, various steering mirrors and pickoffs, PZT steering mirrors, etc) are installed and are being aligned to the PSL beam.
• A procedure for pre-aligning the 40M IFO was developed by Mike Smith and described in the document T030141-00, which is in the process of being finalized. Alignment targets were designed and manufactured and are in process of being cleaned and baked. The IR autocollimation equipment has been staged in preparation for the pre-alignment.
• The first step of the procedure is to use the PSL beam to align the IO train through the Faraday isolator, and lay down defining irises. This step is nearing completion, and the PSL beam will no longer be needed for alignment. The 2nd step uses the IR autocollimator to align from the ETMs back through to the Faraday Isolator, for the hand-off. We are beginning this phase now.
• We hope to install both ETMs by the end of this week, so as to pursue the alignment 2nd phase, and to facilitate debugging of the ETM DSC's.
• We have decided to NOT install the PRM and SRM during this vent, to make the commissioning of the FabryPerot Michelson easier. We'll have to shedule another vent, some months from now, to install the recycling mirrors and re-align everything. Meanwhile, the mirrors will sit in the clean flowbench in the south annex.
• Steve is continuing to assemble and prepare all the misc things that must be installed, including: optical-quality viewports, in-vac oplev mirrors, cameras, beam dumps, shutter flags, cables for the MMT picomotor, shutter flag picomotors, and PZT steering mirrors.
• Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor)
• Ben has been testing the ETMY suspension rack 1Y9. The auxiliary crate readbacks appear to be working fine, but the front end crate is not. Ben figures that we still need a Xycom controller screen for the dewhitening switches; Jay cranked one out yesterday. Ben is now beginning the remainder of the ETMY testing, and will move on to ETMX.
• We plan to install the ETMs in the next few days, so Ben can try to damp them.
• All of the remaining electronics racks were anchored to the floor last week.
• Ben continues to populate the LSC/ASC racks 1X2 and 1X3.
• Art is waiting for FLKM 64s to arrive from the sites so that he can finish the LSC wiring in 1X3.
• Jay, Ian, and Calloway successfully prototyped their new digital demodulation board using the PMC at the 40m PSL.
• Optical levers (Bhatt, Goggin, Smith, Vass, Taylor):
• Naman and Lisa have looked at the signals from one oplev QPD through the electronics chain to the EPICS screen.
• They found some channel assignment problems, with help from Ben. It turned out to be a code problem which Alex quickly fixed. There seems to be another problem in the EPICS display, a flipping of the sign of pitch or yaw; being debugged.
• Mike and Naman went over the oplev parts list. All the parts for all 7 oplevs are in hand, and Naman is assembling them on their proper tables, and beginning the job of checking out the readout chain for each.
• Naman is thinking about what lens to put in front of the QPDs, ie, what the optimal spot size should be. We have a 10mm dia QPD, we figure a beam with beam radius w = 3 mm should be about right. Naman will use the beam scan to measure the beam size and divergence.
• Mike has to update the telescope design. He designed it for 960 nm light, but we're using read 670 nm laser diodes.
• Naman continues to learn about the oplev system and Mike's telescope design. She'll assemble and test the prototype.
• Bob is making more cables for the optical levers.
• PSL and ISS (O. Miyakawa, B. Abbott, R. Abbott, F. Nocera, D. Ugolini, S. Vass, C. Mow-Lowry):
• Conor continues to refine his plan to re-layout the PSL. Seiji has been thinking about, and plans to help with, these mods.
• Reducing the number of mirrors in the main beam path by 2 requires us to put both PZT steering mirrors on the periscope, 20 cm apart. Conor figures this is sufficient lever arm to displace the beam at the MC input by a sufficient amount to servo it effectively (should we choose to implement the MC ASC this way, which we currently don't plan to do, anyway).
• Conor and Rich and Ben are modifying the frequency servo board to bypass a slow slew-rate op amp with a faster one. This should allow us to increase the UGF of the PSL FSS from ~ 200 kHz to the neighborhood of 1 MHz.
• Conor has a clean way to switch the optical path of the FSS pickoff from pre-PMC to post-PMC, easily, and requiring no changes to the mode-matching lenses.
• Moving the FSS pickoff to post-PMC *may* require us to compensate for the PMC pole in the frequency servo board. This change is easy to do and undo, to easily compare the noise performance in both configurations.
• Ben has put together and tested an ISS PD for Mike Smith so that he can use it in his Photon Actuation tests. Now he has to make a pile more, for the sites.
• Optical sensing (Smith):
• OPTICS PARTS LIST, Received parts: Aluminum coated mirrors for optlev mirrors and additional mirror posts and clamps were received. The mirrors for the PZT steering assemblies were received.
• Orders pending: 1 q-switch E/O shutter from Fast Pulse. Spherical collection mirror from Rolyn for the BRDF meter.
• FARADAY ISOLATOR: Faraday isolator was placed inside the input chamber and is process of final alignment.
• OPTICAL LEVER ASSY: Naman is staging all of the external and in-vacuum components.
• IFO STEERING MIRRORS: A revised layout was done to simplify the path between the two PZT steering mirrors. The change reduced the path length between the IMMT and the ITM. This effects the mode-matching slightly, but the mode-matching of the IMMT can be re-optimized to < 10E-6 by changing the defocusing of the telescope from the pre-focused value of 1.2 mm to 1.1 mm; the correction is less than the uncertainty in the pre-focus of the telescope, and this change will be made with the Pico motor once the IFO is locked. The new placement of the displacement steering mirror still provides a range of displacement of the IFO beam at the PRM of +/- 1mm. The PZT steering mirrors are awaiting installation in the vacuum chamber.
• SPS BREWSTER PRISM MIRROR: Installed in vacuum chamber.
• IMMT: The input MMT was placed inside the input chamber and is process of final alignment.
• IN-VACUUM MIRRORS: In-vacuum mirrors are in the process of being assembled with the appropriate mirrors and beam splitters.
• PHOTON DRIVE R&D: Tom Essinger-Hileman has designed the optical system using the ABCD matrix formulation with Mathematica, and has established three congugal image points: the laser spot, the spot on the mirror, and the spot on the ISS PD. He has made a layout of the 40m photon drive experiment using ACAD. All of the parts have been received for the apparatus. Tom and Steve installed a 3ft x 4ft optical table at the end of the MC chamber for mounting the apparatus, and Steve moved the OSEM wiring to the side viewport and installed a new viewport in the end of the MC chamber. Tom completed an analysis of the change in photocurrent as a result of beam displacement jitter and spot size on the surface of the QPD. He is working on a new layout in which the laser beam is sampled before hitting the mirror, rather than the present design which samples the returned beam. Aidan Crook is at MIT working with Peter Fritschel.
• Mode Cleaner (Miyakawa)
• Osamu recentered the MC beam on MC2 before the vent, and realigned all of the MC optics.
• Osamu found that the dewhitening filters for the MC1,2,3 DSC's, which have had repeated switching problems, were still off. He jumpered back in a filter that had been bypassed, and will work with Ben and Jay to make sure these switches work in the future.
• With that change, the mode cleaner noise is now as good or better than it ever was! It is dominated by seismic noise below 30 Hz. From 30 Hz on up, it is as good or better than specs, except for a forest of peaks near 200 Hz which is associated with acoustic noise on the PSL table. Conor's mods (see above) should reduce this.
• Osamu still thinks there's excess electronics noise which can be improved. The mods to the FSS to increase its UGF (see above) should help at higher frequencies. Osamu plans to replace the resistors in the DSC coil drivers, which should reduce the electronics noise in the 100 Hz region.
• Osamu had reduced the gain of the position, pitch and yaw damping in all 3 MC DSC's, from 1.0 to 0.1, so that the Q's of the pendulum modes went from ~4 to ~ 40. He found that this was helping reduce the noise. Now, with the above changes and fixes, he no longer needs to do this; gains are back up at 1.0.
Mode Cleaner WFS system (Ourjoumtsev, Abbott, Eichenfield):
• Alexei had a very productive July 4 weekend before leaving us. He has commissioned the MC WFS system and ASC feedback to MC2 and MC3 P/Y (four feedback loops). He has used it to demonstrate:
• If you misalign the mode cleaner "by hand" (changing the offsets on MC2 and MC3 P/Y), the MC transmitted power falls. Switch on the ASC, and the alignment and transmitted power quickly go back to their optimal points, and the transmitted power becomes more stable.
• Transmitted power is observed to decline by a factor ~ 2 overnight, presumably due to thermal variations. With the ASC system on, transmitted power remains stable for many hours.
• The noise spectrum of the transmitted power was measured with ASC off and on. With ASC off, there is a large peak at microseim and at the various pendulum frequencies ~ 0.85 Hz. With ASC on, that peak disappears, but new (smaller) peaks at ~2-3 Hz appear. Presumably, this is an artifact of un-optimized feedback filtering, and can be eliminated.
• This is a tremendous acheivement! Alexei has documented these measurements, along with a first-draft "User manual": Preliminary report on Mode Cleaner WFS alignment system commissioning.
• Conor and Matt absorbed the final core dump from Alexei on both the WFS and EO shutter systems, before he returned to France. They will pursue the optimization and full characterization of the system, over the summer (once our vent is over and the MC is back in operation).
• Matt is also working on his WFS Simulink model and making great progress. He and Conor have found some errors in some of the WFS documentation. He is emailing lots of questions to Daniel Sigg and Nergis.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor):
• Bob is working on the baffles for LLO. Since this is high priority, it preempts all his 40m work.
• Bob continues to do baking and scanning for the Gingin hybrid OSEMs and associated parts, for Janeen.
• His small sonic cleaner has broken again, but the larger one is still fine.

Bob continues to work with Steve and Mike to get all the parts to be installed in the vacuum prepped and ready.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

no report

LASTI (Mittleman)

EPI
 

We are close to wrapping up the HAM-MEPI experiment.  The combined
local-modal controller worked very well and we plan to us this experience
to design the HAM-HEPI controller.  Some results can be found on the July
15 and 16 MIT-LASTI ilog. One last problem that we plan to spend a day or
two on is that in some of the degrees of freedom most of the remaining RMS
motion is at frequencies where there are zeros in the control transfer
functions.  This data is posted on the July 16 ilog entry.
 

The have also designed a 6 loop controller for the BSC-HEPI system which
uses 4 blended loops and 2 loops which are position sensors only.  We are
currently testing this controller.
 

MIT Quadruple Pendulum Prototype
 

Andrew is very close to beginning to measure transfer functions from the
global control actuators to movement of the test mass.  He has finished
constructing the needed electronics, he has also assembled two more local
damping OSEMs to replace ones that had broken.  He is currently finishing
up the instillation of the second set of six local damping OSEMs.
 
 

EPI Design
 

Marcel Hammond has been at MIT to assist in the creation of finished
solid models of the EPI system. The part models and sub-assemblies for
both the HAM and BSC are complete.  Several assembly and fabrication
drawings need to be completed.
 

LASTI EPI Installation
 

We have met with the plumbers who installed the HEPI plumbing for the
first BSC installation to have them give quotes for providing piping for
two HAMS. One will be done quickly to enable us to move the hydraulic
actuators to the MEPI HAM and do further testing. The other is for the
HAM, which will be used for advanced ligo.
 

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Weekly Physics Meeting
------------------------
Giancarlo Cella (who is visiting us for 2 weeks) and Virginio discussed
the tasks needed for the mechanical simulation and validation of the
model. It was decided that in next 1-2 days the violin modes and blades
would be validated and next week, on Virginio's return from LHO, other
topics would be discussed and tried.
Ken Yoshiki from LLO discussed with Biplab and Hiro a few results
related to his investigation on effects of changing the recycling cavity lengths
on the sensitivity of LLO - a problem suggested to him by Rai and Rana.
 

Mechanical Simulation
--------------------------
Giancarlo Cella arrived July 15th, and is going to stay until the
end of July. He is going to go to Hanford next week so that he can work
together with Virginio.
The main purpose of the trip is to discuss (1) the future plan of the
mechanical simulation development and (2) transferring the development
and maintenance more in Caltech.
 

FFT
-----------
(Raghu, Hiro, Biplab)
The conversion of the measured phasemap file to the format FFT program
can read is completed.
4 phasemaps of the arms of the Hanford 4k IFO have been processed and
FFT was run under 3 configurations.
(1) Without phasemap, symmetric arms (ETMx and ETMy use the average of
the two as built ROC, same for ITMx and ITMy)
(2) Without phasemap and with as-built ROCs.
(3) With phasemap with as-built ROCs.
 

The contrast defect (=2*PowerDark/PowerBright) for the above three cases
are 1e-6, 7.52e-5 and 3.15e-4 respectively.
 

The phasemaps cover 15 cm diameter region, and the outside of that is
assumed to be 0. An algorithm to fill that region is under development.
For these runs, proper shot noise limited sensitivity curve is being
evaluated, but the contrast defect values give a good measure of effect.
 

Effect of beam rotation and cavity shift
-------------------------------------------
(Hiro) The effect of the beam rotation and cavity shift has been
studied.
The purpose is to understand (1) how mirror tlit is affected by the
jitter of the input beam and the offset of the arm cavity axis off from the
beam line, and (2) how this DC tilt affects the noise. These are done
with and without radiation pressure effect.
 

Effect of changing lengths in recycling cavity on LLO sensitivity
------------------------------------------------------------------
(Biplab) Interacted with Ken Yoshiki of LLO on the proper use of E2E
  and LLO parameters and discussed the results.
 

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Biplab)  A sign-bug related to the transverse direction (X or Y) shifts
of "beam-shifter" and "mirror" has been corrected and the code has
been CVS-committed.
We decided to introduce the longitudinal shift originating from
transversal shift of mirrors (a second order effect) in the code. Under some
situation this number could be non-negligible.
We also decided to start using functions that do Modal Model
calculations upto any order. Until now we have been using matrices with explicitly
written expressions generated from Mathematica.
 

(Melody)
- Worked on a prototype that performs dynamic linking between several
shared libraries in the Sun and Linux platforms. Since getting
the prototype to work, I have been working on a scheme to dynamically
compile the "Equations" portion of FUNC_xxx modules.
 

Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
  * Completed full Alfi documentation.
  * Misc Problem Reports being fixed.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
 

The new issues with the development branch of the mpiAPI were backed
out this week. The high failure rate associated with the post 0.7.0 code ended
once the 0.7.0 version was move to the head of the development branch. This
clearly points to bugs in the new code which will be worked on starting late
this week.
 

New code was added to the managerAPI to prevent the multiple emailings
for the same error condition which has occasionally been seen.
 

Threaded C++ code for the diskcacheAPI was delivered this week. It is
being integrated into the TCL layer of that API at this time.
 

Threaded C++ code for the insertion of metadata by the metaDataAPI was
also delivered this week. This code has been integrated on a test platform
and a few issues are being sorted out before adding it to the development
system and subsequently into CVS.
 

LDAS software staff spent a non-trivial portion of the week assisting
the UWM center with their efforts to upgrade to the 0.7.0 release of LDAS.
The LIGO-Livingston system administrators also needed assistance after the
big hardware upgrade there this week.
 

Added web documentation for Kalman filter function rmvm() which is part
of the dataConditionAPI and used to ReMove Violin Modes. This needs more
fleshing out from Eric Rotthoff (at Penn State) to be complete.
 

The eventMonitorAPI continues to drop core due to memory corruption in
the code used to validate database table access. The programmers believe
this is due to memory management issues in the hash map class, but the
evidence is not very strong at this time. An test of this will be performed today
by pre-allocating the memory thereby removing the need to routinely
manage the memory in the hash map.
 

Asside from the issues with the eventMonitorAPI, the development branch
of LDAS is now very fast, able to handle over 1100 jobs per hour for
exteneded periods of time. We are seeing a 20% boost in performance this week due
to an upgrade in the switch used for the beowulf cluster from fast
ethernet to
gigE speeds.
 

We now have a solution which allows us to run the old release of DB2
(version 7.2) on RedHat 9. This will also allow us to start using our standalone
LDAS system boxes for preliminary development and remove the conflict against
code stability resently seen on the LDAS-DEV system.
 

An all day meeting of the GriPhyN/LIGO applications team was held at the
USC-ISI offices on Wednesday of this week. The focus was on the planning
for the super computing conference this year, but went beyond this to
include the possibility to carry out a scientifically meaningful search using
the planned technologies. Plans were also discussed for using the grid to
carry out stochastic searches, but this received less attention than the
much more computationally demanding periodic source search plans.
 

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

* Configured big filesystem (~11TB) of 3510 RAID arrays.  Started
running tests but one of the units appears to have failed.  Problem awaits my
return to Caltech.
 

* Met with IPAC folks vis-a-vis their SAM-FS experience.  Received very
   useful information regarding L700 robot configuration.
 

* Worked on ldas-archive problem where 4 of 6 drives quit working until
   they were IPL'd (reset at the drive level).
 

* Have monitored ldas-archive behavior and "kicked it" occasionally to
keep Greg's createRDS jobs running smoothly.  The overall problem seems to
be reading 9940A written tapes in 9940B drives.  While this is supposed
to work and mostly does, it occasionally fails in ways that make jobs
take forever...I've seen other reports on the Net about 9940A/B problems.
 

* Traveled to LHO to install L700 robot under SAM.  So far this has
involved:
 

     * Helping with physical hookup (power and FC).
 

     * Loading tapes.
 

     * Getting new SAM media license for L700 (the one we'd gotten in
       advance assumed ACSLS connectivity).
 

     * Doing some SAM training/discussion with Greg and Ben.
 

     * Discovering bug in stagerd (it dies if any QFS filesystems are
       readonly).  I've talked to Sun about this with unsatisfactory
       results and will pursue the issue when I return to Caltech.
 

     * Developing workaround for above bug (creating .stage directories
       in each filesystem with zero length rm0-3 files to mimic rw
       filesystems).
 

     * Working on problem reading data back from 9940B tape.
 

     * Working on bizarre problem where T3-1 shows up as target id 32
       after the machine is rebooted.
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Cloaning additional nodes in LDAS-CIT.
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Upgraded the LDAS-DEV switch to use copper Gigabit Ethernet for
   the datacon and beowulf servers as well as all 8 nodes.
 

* Replaced the chassis for the large 15-slot copper GigE switch in
LDAS-CIT to solve a problem with one of the slots.
 

* Attended an all-day Griphyn meeting to discuss Grid solutions for the
   large-area pulsar search.
 

* Reduced the heat load in 605 Millikan by moving two computers out.
 

* Upgraded Apache on LDAS web servers to fix a minor security problem.
 

* Installed the release version of LAL and a post-release bug fix
   version of LALWrapper on all the Lab LDAS systems.
 

* Received two fixed nodes back from ASA.
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
 

* Need Al's help with cfdef files for MIT.
 

* Troubleshooting LDR .
 

* Installing LDR on linux box primarily for testing purposes.
 

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

* Fixed LED problem in node 3.
 

* After reruning memtest86 on nodes discovered memory problems with
   nodes 13 and 24. ASA sent replacement memory that seems to fix the
   problem.
 

* New beowulf and datacon successfully passed burntest and are now
   integrated into LDAS.
 

* Cloned 35 beowulf nodes and integrated them into LDAS.
 

* Configured MIT database for daily backups. Modified database backup
   configuration at CIT to have backup copies on 2 different file
systems.
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
 

* Continuing to work with Robert Schofield to create an intersite S2
   PEM RDS for his analysis.
 

* Ben Johnson and I recabled the fiber channel devices in LDAS room at
LHO to work with the new fiber channel switch.  Everything worked
except the dual port FC HBA on dataserver; the single port FC HBA does work,
for now.
 

* Working with Ben Johnson and Dan Kozak to set up the L700 tape
library system and samfs at LHO.  The hardware is up and running and
the software installed.  Some issues remain with getting the software to
work with our set up of filesystems.  The framebuilder file systems
are read-only to LDAS and the archiver software has issues if read-only
samfs filesytems exists, even if the file systems are not part of the
archive sets in the archiver.cmd file.  We have several work arounds
for this, and Dan has initiated a bug fix request with Sun.
 

* Ben Johnson and I have organized boxes for our old 64 node beowulf
cluster for shipping to MIT this Friday. (Ed Chargois has organized
the shipping.) Ben has finished installing the new 140 node cluster here;
parts of the new cluster are available to LDAS LHO while final tests
of the new nodes continues.
 

(Ben Johnson)
 

* Finished cloning all 140 LHO nodes. In combination with the old
   beowulf box, the LDAS LHO cluster is working (118 nodes up at this
time) and is running LDAS.
 

* New datacon box is working inside LDAS now.
 

* Burntesting nodes 1-18. Move to nodes 19-60 July 18.
 

* Old nodes are ready to be shipped to MIT. The movers will come July
18, pack them into boxes, and ship them out.
 

* Working with Dan Kozak on L700 installation. We can successfully load
   tapes in the robot, and communicate via SAMFS, but there appear to be
   some difficulties with either the tapes or the tape drives. Still
   working on the problems.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Reilly, K.:
I have been continuing my work both on the DSO and generating the
stochastic group's intermediate data products. I would be done with the
latter completely by now but little snafus have come up (such as electricians
bumping sgwb and causing it to disconnect from the internet). I should be able
to finish the "final" read of the ilwds into matlab by late tomorrow.  I
had update and recompile new versions of lal and lalwrapper this week becuase of
the new releases.  I was able to get all stochastic functionality into lal
by moving most of the header files and .c files into the lal area. make check ran
successfully on this new code.  However,  I went back to the older version (i.e. the
lalwrapper version) and decided to try to make the move in a cleaner way. I
started by going line by line through the stochastic DSO.  I also began to
question whether or not it is or will ever be necessary to move everything
into lal and have a lal only version. I did an io test which showed that if make better
use of data read in and read in larger chunks of  data then we can speed our
analysis between 5 and 500 times or more depending on what we do. I spend
yesterday at ISI for the GriphynLigo f2f.
 

Shawhan:
 

* Continuing to work with Evan Ochsner on methods to veto "garbage"
events in the inspiral search.  This week he has looked at the
qualitative differences between loud "garbage" events vs. clean simulated events in
the S1 data, and is implementing a few algorithms to distinguish them.
 

* Met with Alessandra Buonanno, Yanbei Chen and Michele Vallisneri to
go over plans for searching for high-mass inspirals in the S2 data.
 

* Participated in a day-long meeting at the USC Information Sciences
Institute to plan how to apply grid computing resources to do scientific
analysis of LIGO data.
 

* Updated the versions of the lal, lalwrapper, and segments packages
in LIGOtools.
 

Weinstein:
- Presented preliminary results from S1 burst analysis
   at Amaldi5, last week in Pisa.
- Continuing to work on mods to burst paper,
   in response to reviewer's comments.
- Debating with burst members about the relative merits
   of h_rss vs h_char.
 

Mendell:
1) The first version of the stackslide DSO has been started.  A basic
form of the code that stacks SFT data should be finished in a few
weeks.  The goal is to have the first working version completed by the
August LSC meeting.
 

2) Worked with my SURF student Anah Mourant on her pulsar parameter
estimation code for LALApps. The code currently produces intermediate
results that have been checked against known values for test cases. The
final version of the code should be completed this week. Testing of the
code and running it on simulated data will take place during the last
month of her project.
 

Creighton:
Worked on resolving differences in the phase model for pulsars in
binary systems between the injection code in LAL and the analysis code
written by the Birmingham group.
 

Yakushin:
Still studying how well waveburst can detect hardware injections using
various wavelets (Biorthogonal, Daubecheis, Symlet) and various
parameters.
 

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
-Built / configured new pc for Nergis/Go
-Ran further tests on triplesync Calcium calendar utility
-Ran test on Samba over SSH (doesn't look like it will work for us)
-Installed IDEAS software
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Troubleshooting our internet connection with LSU right now.  It seems
that our bandwidth has gone to about 100 kilobit.
-Spent time planning my trip to Pasadena an mountain view for  a security
audit and a class.
-Started attempting to migrate to LDAP this week for multiple reasons.
However, it seems that Sun's LDAP server does not come with RFC2307
compliance.  This is a stated requirement from Sun for LDAP migration.
Why they supply a LDAP server that does not meet their requirements is
beyond me.  I will be placing a call to Sun today to try and get some
support on this.  It appears that even using Sun's software, this will
be a real pain.  I spent ~15 hours on this so far this week.
-Working with a backup software company to come up with a backup scheme.
I have evaluated their software and it seems to work well so far.  Now
I am working with them to figure out a scheme for disaster recovery that
will include a backup server failure.
 
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
-Going over the documentation and working on the logistics to configure
the new Cisco GigE switch and interfaces.  I plan to swap the network over
from the FORE ATM system to the Cisco GigE system this Sunday, 7/20.
- I've done some more testing on our new OC3 network connection.  I am
still only getting less than 10baseT speeds.  I found a few changes to
the configuration that eliminated errors on the fastethernet interface,
but did nothing to increase the bandwidth.  I will do further testing
with PNNL and esnet when I get my GigE network going.
- The usual user support for new staff, SURF students and old staff.
 

CIT:
(Mike)
-Loaded two more PC's with OS and General Computing software and setup two
cubicles for two more surf students.
-Started loading two additional PC's for more surf students that are coming.
-Worked on a pop up issue that comes up with out running a browser. I
disable the messaging service but this seems not to correct the problem.
The problem seems to be with adware & spyware software that has been loaded
on these computers. This usually happens when you download freeware
software or when you subscribe to some kind of web service. After doing
some research, this adware/spyware is keeping track of what websites you
have visited and what products you are interested in, to spam you through
email/pop-ups. The big problem is some of these spyware programs are
searching for credit card info, keystrokes, and passwords. Another issue is
it slows down your computers performance plus eats up your bandwidth. When
surfing the Internet you must be careful with certain ads or freeware
software you download from the Internet. This is very annoying but could
also turn to be very destructive. There is some software out there that I
am testing that will clean your computer and also run in the background to
prevent this from happening again. After running this software on my
workstation, it surprisingly found 1,511 traces of spyware and I am not
having a problem with pop-ups. (STRANGE) Here is a link to check out:
http://www.wisinfo.com/thereporter/news/archive/local_11046656.shtml
I will be looking more into this issue.
-Osamu had two viruses W32.Klez.H@mm and W32.Sobig.E@mm that corrupted the
OS on his PC. I clean this computer from the viruses and tried to reload
the OS on top of his old installation but failed; I still came up with
problems. I am formatting the drive and doing a clean install.
-Ran security/os updates on all NTSRV's and went through security logs to
check for intrusions. Everything looks okay!
-Burned all end of month backups to DVD.
-Had a lot of onsite user support that included fixing printers,
networking issues and software problems.
 

(Lisa)
- Built an ultra10 to replace a blade150 with hardare problems.
- Ran maintenance updates on sadal, spica, lsc1 and hamal.
- Contacted sun regarding solstice backup updates.  They should be shipping out
the new version.
- Finished my evaluation of bogofilter, a bayseian spam filter.  It's good for
single user use but requires too much custom interaction for a facility as large
as ours.
- Created a number of new accounts.
- Created a calendar to track expiration of licenses.
- Updated the system user scripts.
- Patched the mailman system.
- Worked with a number of people on email configuration.
 

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: Installed a new video compression/processing software
package; started capturing and compressing my collection of recently made
digital video footage.
Videotaped the 3rd part of the SURF lecture by Alan Weinstein on LIGO
physics.
Working on a database application for Cindy to help her input visitor
information and publish it on the web. Working on the scripting and
database troubleshooting. Did the necessary ODBC setup on the amaldi
server to allow data input and access, and added a new website to the IIS
webserver.  Helping Cindy with general computer skills. Burned a CD with
files related to Visitor Program for her to use.
Reworked a script for the Internal Bulletin Board, for better
compatibility with various browser/platform versions.
Posted updates to the LIGO website. Some minor issues of restricted access.
Working on a webpage for posting LIGO talks from the 5th Amaldi
Conference. David Shoemaker has indicated that the organizers may ask us
to post all the talk files at a local server.
- Project Science: user support.
- CaJAGWR website: updating the roster.
 

(Larry)
-This has been quite a week for user support. Setting up accounts, working
out the logistics on where to put equipment and people has taken a great
deal of time. So far we have been able to get everyone setup.
-Installed version 7.1 of ansys on to sargas. So far it has passed the preliminary tests.
-Running down financial information has also been a time consuming item. Getting
information from IBM has really been difficult.
-Worked a number of PC issues. Most were just initial setup issues. Moved a number of
h/w items around. Going up the stairs with the SUN monitors is definitely no fun.
-Worked with Mike on a couple of security issues. Hopefully, we will have a few more
tools for people to use to keep their machines clean.
-Have been assisting the front office in setting up things for some of the new tasks
that they are now performing.
-The GigE connection to the Campus backbone has been delayed. We were missing a needed
component and the ITS people are involved in a major project and will not be able to get
back to us for a couple of weeks.
-Spending some time on the LIGO wan issues. Shannon and I are starting to reopen some
items there. Working on getting more information and bench mark items for the Hanford
install. Christine has been busy troubleshooting that installation.
 

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

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