Weekly Report for Week Ending July 31, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  August 4, 2003 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

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

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Saulson)

Minutes of LSC Executive Committee meeting
25 July 2003, 1100 - 1230 EDT
 

Attending: Bruce Allen, Sam Finn, Joe Giaime, Albert Lazzarini, Dave Reitze, Keith
Riles, Gary Sanders, David Shoemaker, Daniel Sigg, Rai Weiss, Alan Wiseman,
Peter Saulson (chair, minutes)
 

Announcements:
a) Joe Giaime is the new Chair of the Suspensions Working Group. He will ease
into his new responsibilities at the upcoming LSC meeting. Congratulations Joe, and
good luck! (Also, thanks to David.)
b) After the Aug 18-21 LSC meeting in Hannover, the subsequent LSC meeting will
be at LHO on 10-13 November 2003.
 

S1 papers:
   Alan Wiseman reported that the Pulsar paper has been posted to the DCC for its
final one-week comment period. LSC members should read it, and report any mistakes
to Alan, the Pulsar co-chairs, and to the Spokesperson. After this period (and
the correction of any mistakes noted), the next step will be to post the paper to
gr-qc.
   Alan also reported that the Inspiral paper is within days of reaching the same
stage. The Stochastic paper is almost finished with the corrections made in response
to comments from the reviewers and the LSC Executive Committee. Next, it will be
read by the ad hoc committee from the LSC Executive Committee, and then posted for
its final one-week comment period.
   The Burst paper is with reviewers for one final reading. At next week's Burst
Group telecon, the group hopes to declare the paper ready for release to the LSC
for comment, before submission to the LSC Executive Committee for approval.
   The S1 Instrument paper is with its LSC reviewer, Joe Giaime. He is mostly through
a careful reading, and is trying to finish comments to allow the paper to be posted
at the same time as the first analysis paper. The Executive Committee discussed
the possibility of seeking to publish the paper in the proceedings of the
Amaldi meeting (which will appear archivally as an issue of Classical and Quantum
Gravity), in the role of the commissioning talk. Someone will have to speak with the
Editorial Board of CQG, as the paper will almost certainly violate page limits, but
no one thought that would cause too much of a problem.
 

Planning for the August LSC meeting:
   Benno was not present, but the organization of the meeting seems to be going
very well.
   David presented a draft schedule for the talks at the meeting. With some minor
adjustments, it appears to be a good plan for the talks.
 

Report from the GWIC and Amaldi meetings:
   Sam described the discussions at GWIC concerning Publication Procedure
Suggestions, and also the formation of a GWIC statistics committee.
   A set of proposals was discussed and adopted by GWIC, giving suggestions on how
publication of gravity wave observations should be coordinated within the gravity
wave community. They are aimed at early consultation about new results, and giving
the chance for constructive comments. While the spirit is very much in line with
LIGO policy (indeed, LIGO/LSC members drafted and pushed for this new set of
suggestions), some changes in the LSC Publication Policy are probably required to
fully comply.
   GWIC also appointed a new statistics committee, charged with codifying a set of
statistical procedures/standards that will facilitate comparison of results from
different groups. The members are: Finn (chair), Schutz, Vitale, Vicere, and
Fujimoto. The group hopes to present a first report at the Dec 2003 GWDAW.
   There was some discussion about the news that MOU's have been concluded between
TAMA and the Rome group, and between AEI and the Rome group. We also discussed
the LSC's stance toward the Rome group. Simply put, we hope to check results from
the Rome group in an independent manner.
 

Possible revision of LSC Publication Policy:
   As mentioned above, the GWIC discussions may call for revision of the LSC
Publication Policy. In addition, there has been some discussion within the LSC about
the scope of the policy's coverage of so-called "technical" papers: What set of
papers by LSC members need to come to the LSC for review before submission for
publication?
   Both of these issues are important enough that the policy should be reviewed
to see if it can be improved. The LSC Spokesperson will appoint a committee to
propose whatever changes are necessary.
 

S2 results schedule and presentations plan:
   We discussed the following key dates for S2 analysis results:
Nov 03 LSC meeting
Dec 03 GWDAW
Mar 04 LSC meeting
May 04 APS meeting
   At the August LSC meeting, we will ask all groups to propose their S2 analysis
schedule, with milestones. The schedule should propose achievable goals for
reasonably prompt results. This should be balanced with the need to make many
of the analyses more sophisticated and complete than was possible for S1.
 

DMT Infrastructure Committee
   Keith Riles submitted a memo calling for more LSC involvement in and support
of the DMT. Barry Barish wrote a note endorsing the idea, provided that the LSC
is able to take on real responsibility for DMT support. At the meeting, Sam Finn
noted that with the approval of LIGO's ITR proposal, there will be funds for
about 2 FTEs at LSC institutions; this could go a long way toward allowing the
LSC to take on this responsibility. We will discuss this in more detail at the
Hannover meeting.

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

There was no site teleconference on Thursday, July 31, 2003.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through July 17, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• Screeners & Users Seminar, Nashville, TN

>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 this week.
• 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--first day back yesterday.

 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>

• No report--knee surgery.

• No report--vacation.

• Spent considerable time investigating expenditures which appeared to be charged to incorrect Expenditure Types.  For an item to be eligible to be classified as an equipment expenditure type it must meet all 3 of the following criteria:

  1.  An acquisition cost of $5000 or more.
2.  A useful life or two or more years.
3.  A stand alone item.
Acquisition cost includes "invoice amount, sales tax, freight costs, installation costs, costs for the initial complement of supplies neededto place the asset into service, accessory and auxiliary apparatus necessary to make it usable for the purpose for which it was acquired; less trade or trade in discounts and/or educational allowances".  Acquisition cost does not include "Federal Excise tax, duty, insurance, maintenance and warranty costs".
• Responded to a request for funding realignment in the Construction Award.  Reminder, the Construction Award is more than fully committed and has ended as of June 30, 2003.  There should be no new charges to any account in the Construction Award.
Worked on reports for July 2003.

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

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)
Nothing significant to report - just returned from vacation.

From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

No report this week (vacation).

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for five (5) new/revised trips. There are approximately three (3) 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 all arrangements airline tickets, hotel reservations, river cruise, super shuttle (to/from LAX) for 18 LIGO/SURF students (including LIGO/SURF Director) to travel to LHO for their Annual Field Trip.
• Completed fifteen (15) Expense Reports and there are twenty-three (23) 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 no reports more than 30 days old.
• Reconciled twenty-six (26) 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.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for July 29, 2003. Arranged six (6) new teleconferences and arranged two (2) new reservations on the LIGO Calendar.

• With Gina on vacation and Ruth's sudden medical leave, I have been involved in several other duties on a full time basis. These include: adding lines to purchase orders, canceling purchase orders, changing expenditure types, talking with suppliers, end users and other people who had questions regarding purchases. I've also placed p-card orders. I've been in close contact with Caltech's Acquisitions Department (Phyllis Burton, who has been helping out with POs and change orders; Kevin Speaks, who has been helping by authorizing approval for changes on existing POs over $10K).  Other than that, routine as usual (see below).
• Processed invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of July 21.
• Processed requisitions and change orders (no payment requests this reporting period).
• Monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

• LIGO Summer Party on Saturday
• FastLane Submission of Revised ITR 2003 Budget proposal #0326281  -w/Lazzarini and MIT
• FastLane Submission of Annual Report for Operations by August 1  -w/Lindquist et al.
• Photo project
• Matriculation of visitors
• Laser Safety Training session this week
• Visitor Lunch w/Akutagawa and HR et al.
• PMA space survey

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 07.25 to 07.31

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.
Working on draft text of implementation.  Submitted a draft work plan for Larry's review.

Confirmed travel arrangements for User's Conference in November.

http://www.primavera.com/events/conference.html

• 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.  I will make a first cut of schedule changes for Janeen to 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.

• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 08.01.03.

• ROSTER DATABASE:
• BK is continuing work on action items.
• Input of supervisor, dept., and specialty codes will continue after authorship list is complete.
• Continued ongoing co-ordination with Albert, Peter S., and Stan W., on the authorship data.
• Worked with Irena regarding LSC mailing lists.

• 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 requested input by Friday, July 25, 2003 for the Annual Report and Request for FY 2004 Funding.  So far, I have received material from the Detector Group, Hanford, and the 40-Meter.

I have also prepared a draft of the budget model for FY 2004.

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)

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)

2K IFO

Single arms, the SM, PRM, and state 3 have locked on the 2k, however, full locking still eludes us.  The Thursday afternoon status is summarized here .  The POB photodiode was swapped out on ISCT10 and acquisition looked promising, with state four pops evident.  However, while remeasuring g-factors, several cpu's have crashed, delaying lock.

A WFS1 characterization has been performed, elogged here .

Some 2k material from the previous week:
Similar to the 4k setup, hardware and software laserpower controls have been installed on the 2k; some commissioning remains.
MC work including alignment, wfs board fixes and the autolocker enhancements took place.  Asc/lsc/dsc instabilities hampered efforts towards full locking, however these appear to be resolved.
Acoustic enclosures for both 2k and 4k AS ports were investigated.

4K IFO

SURF student Jared Markowitz found that 4k  DAQ channels coming through h1adcupem and h1adcusus (i.e. not, for instance, AS_Q) had aliased peaks .  The aliases occur at the strange frequency of (f_sample/2 - f_orig_peak), and have been lurking since Jan 2003.  The aliasing problem was software-induced, and the bug was fixed later in the week.

Upconversion problems apparent in recent noise spectra were attributed to the POB PD, and solved .

The replacement of a 1" lens on the POX periscope with a 2" one, plus alignment of the beampath has resulted in reduced correlation of WFS2 demod signals with its DC outputs.

A new AS_I servo was installed, the AS_I bandwidth was increased to 30Hz, and resonant gains were added.  The servo was properly tuned for the 4k, having be previously set for 28MHz (the 2k modulation frequency).  Saturation in the AS2 I-phase drive signal necessitated the swapping out of the revA dewhitening board with a revB2 one.

Several calibrated spectra were obtained during the week (some a little more optimistic than others!); the one shown here acurately reflects the current state of the H1 interferometer.  The spectrum was produced with increased light (20mA) on the AS2 photodiode.

ETMY received a new suspension controller , plus AI board and dewhitening.  The new coil diver employs run/acquire switching, and modified resistors for larger acquire currents.

A study of LN2 seismic events showed 5-7 events per day that propogate into the locked 4k IFO.

Some 4k material from the previous week:
Power into the 4k ifo was ramped from 0.85W to 2.35W while in common mode.  Details can be found here .  Calibrated spectra this week have not achieved S2 levels however, as we have acquired combs of 60Hz noise with sidebands of stack and other mechanical resonances.
A coarse alignment system employing WFS1 and WFS5 on the AS port has been commissioned on single arms of the 4k ifo.  Six d.o.f. are controlled in a given arm, including both test masses and MMT3 (BS) for the X (Y) arm.  The system is robust; arm transmissions as low as 0.4 have been aligned to unity in under one minute.

DAQ

GC was upgraded to gigabit ethernet .  Last week there was followup work on the migration of 2k and 4k epics processes to linux, and corrective work on the 2k reflective memory, which was problematic.  The state of cds as of one week ago is shown here .
 

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

L1 Commissioning
-----------------------
After last week's spectacular vent procedure, we were disappointed to
find an instrumentation error had crept into our final QA
check on one chamber, such that the HAM1 table was out of level by
about 1 milliradian. This skewed the
mode cleaner and steering optics beyond their operating range.
We were confronted with the real possibility of having to open up again,
taking a severe hit in absorbed water vapor and
associated pumping time.
 

As an alternative we developed a procedure to tilt the external HAM supports
in a controlled way to recover the prior operating state, using the ensemble
of suspended optics and their local damping sensors
as our precision internal "level". In a series
of coordinated moves we were able to reduce the tilt error by a factor
of three to five in both planes.
 

This was still insufficient to immediately recover mode cleaner operation, but
after an exhaustive realignment Tuesday night through
Wednesday we had flashes of resonance; after further work today (Thursday)
we have finally recovered solid locking of the mode cleaner. In addition, we
found flashes in the Michelson and PRM, indicating no gross errors in the
other core optics (recall ITMy was also moved in the vent).
 

We are now doing fine alignment and should be back on the program tomorrow.
We expect to have a preliminary "peek" down each
beam tube this weekend and are now estimating we can open the
beamtubes indefinitely starting late next week.
 
 

Safety & Security (R. Riesen)
-----------------------------
Continuing work on modification and generation of Laser Safety SOP's
Setting up auto swipe laser hazard warning signs for the 4 tables in the LVEA
Generating a Vent Readiness plan
Streamlining the Swipe card software
 

Laser Safety (J. Kern)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Working with Rich to handoff the SOPs and documentation he will be
needing.
 

Detector Support (J. Kern)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advisory only to the HAM-1 realignment and tilt effort, scaring up
documentation and prior log entries.
 
 

CDS Computing and Networks (C. Paramesawariah)
-----------------------------------------------
DAQEPICS froze and lost connection a few times. Traced the problem to bad CPU on
the Ultra10. Replaced the DAQ EDCU/EPICS's old sun workstation Ultra10 by
putting a relective memory card into the Sun Blade 100 used for iocstat and fired
two more epics processes for edcu and daqepics on it. Haven't had any problems
since then.
 

All Sun Blade 2000s and 150s ready to go. Waiting on the cables to install them.
I will be using one of them to run as a temporary framebuilder to test LDAS's
software.
 

Working with Natalia on wavelet decompositions of seismic and asq signals for
glitchtracking experiment she is working on.
 

Installed a Foreview network monitor tool. Temporary license expires on aug 8.
New license from Marconiis very expensive for our application. Thinking of
writing a code to access information from switches directly and interfacing it
with epics.
 

CDS Software (A. Khan)
----------------------
1) Helped as a crew member during the installation of the baffles on the
mirrors
 

2) Cleared the reamianing issues of the Watchdog implementation, including
the XYCom 212 optocoupler interface to the TTL output.
 

3) Helped Joe Kovalik realigned the mode cleaner as it was affected by the
recent work on the HAM1.
 

LLO seismic retrofit (J. Kern)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Completed an round of error correction on the actuator drawing package
and forwarded to Stanford for review. Submitted 2 more PRs for Dennis
approval. Working with Whitey Valve to fabricate a crossover system for
actuator R&R at the pier.
 
 
 

General Computing (T. Evans)
----------------------------
We have been having some network problems caused by a failing
card in a network switch. The card has been removed and its
connections moved to another card. We should now be back to
normal, and should have a spare replacement card within a few
days.
 
 

LDAS (I. Yakushin)
---------------------
LDAS admin:
1) Shipped the old 48 nodes to MIT.
2) Still having trouble with IDE RAID: switching to a different kernel
version helped to avoid periodic freezing of the system. However, so far
I was unable to replace the failed disk: the system just does not see
it. Most likely the problem is either in bad 3ware card or cable.
 

LDAS data analysis:
1) Fixed a bug in metadata output format in waveburst.
2) Added a coincidence between mixed clusters in one channel and gw
candidates in another channel.
 

Amazing and Spectacular Contributions (P. King)
------------------------------------------------
For most of the intervening period I was a general dogsbody for the
various vent activities at LLO.
 

1.2 LLO
=======
 The spare 10-W laser was installed on the PSL table.  The laser is
temporarily running with the new chiller but with the laser power supply
talking to the old chiller so that there will not be any error messages.
For some reason I do not recall, pressing the IGNORE option on startup
results in a "Cycle Power" message about a quarter of an hour later.  Some
initial characterisation of the laser and frequency stabilisation servo was
done.  On an initial glance it looks as if we are experiencing some
problems with the phase-correcting Pockels cell.
 

The mode-matching lenses for the pre-modecleaner have not been adjusted but
right now we have 40% more power going through the system.
 

Spare resonant phase modulators have been ordered.
 

2.1 PSL
=======
The quotation for repair of NPRO S/N #238 has come in.  Lightwave
diagnosed the problem to be that the pump diode had reached its end of
life.  This NPRO was originally shipped to us in April 1997.  The repair
bill is estimated to be $5147.
 
 

S2 Inspiral Analysis (B. O'Reilly, G. Gonzalez)
-----------------------------------------------
Conducted a successful 3-day face-to-face meeting of
the inspiral group at LLO.
 

S2 Data Quality (Yun Yong Wang)
---------------------------------
1). Continue doing the S2 data quality study with the channels of
L1:ASC-WFS2_IP ( IY,QP,and QY). I found that the signals of WFS2_IY
and WFS2_IP are always positive. That means either the mirrors are
suspended in some angles or the beam alignment is no good.
 

2).Did the veto investigations for the Inspiral S2 data analysis
pipeline.Taking  the 11 loudest 'events' as 'trigger' I went through
the channels of
 L1:SUS-ETMX_OPLEV_PERROR ( and YERROR),
 L1:SUS_ETMY_OPLEV_PERROR ( and YERROR),
 L1:SUS-ITMX_OPLVE_PERROR ( and YERROR),
 L1:SUS-ITMY_OPLEV_PERROR ( and YERROR),
 L1:SUS-RM_OPLEV_PERROR   ( and YERROR),
 L1:SUS-BS_OPLEV_PERROR   ( and YERROR),
 L1:SUS-MMT3_OPLEV_PEEROR ( and YERROR),
I saw that only the channel of L1:SUS-ITMX_OPLEV_YERROR has weak
response for the "trigger' and it's hard to use as the veto channel.
 

3).Start checking  the channels of L1:LSC-REFL_I ( and Q),L1:LSC-POB_I
and POB_Q for the Veto investigation and found some interesting effects. I
will continue doing it.
 
 

E2E modeling of core optics plant and S2 analysis (K. Franzen)
--------------------------------------------------------------
1) Further e2e investigations on the LLO ASQ response functions versus
the RM position, the ITMy position and the BS transmission respectively.
This work is done in collaboration with B. Bhawal and H.Yamamoto.
 

2) Continued my S2 data glitch investigation as suggested by G. Gonzalez.
 

3) Participated in the inspiral upper limits f2f meeting at LLO and was
assigned another two tasks.
 
 

E2E modeling of SOS (T. Findley and S. Yoshida)
------------------------------------------------
To provide realistic suspension point motion to the SOS e2e box we are
working on, we estimated the HAM table-top motion. We recorded MMT3
position signal from the DAQ channel, and calculated the time series of the
table-top motion using a theoretical transfer function of the LOS. Then we
gave the resultant time series to the suspension point of the SOS box to
compute the position motion of the SOS, and compared the resultant power
spectrum with measurement. Like the measured spectrum, the computed
spectrum shows peaks at the natural SOS position resonance (1 Hz) and the
table stack resonance (~1.5 Hz). However, the computed spectrum shows
higher 1 Hz peak than the measurement, indicating that in the local damping
in the SOS box is still not properly functioning.
 

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

no report

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

This week we closed our chamber and pumped out.  After a quick and rough

alignment, we got good visibility on all three cavities, 67% for the

mode cleaner and NAC, and 62% for SAC. (With work, we have gotten close

to 90% for the mode cleaner before, but with our high-g-factor arm

cavities, 67% seems to be about the best we can get.) MC and SAC lock

reliably and robustly, remaining locked even when someone is climbing

on the outside of the chamber to disconnect the crane.  We did not try

to lock NAC.

Initial tests indicate that our in-vacuum modifications have

substantially reduced the coupling to the output optical table.  We can

now focus SAC's output beam down to a very small spot on its diagnostic

camera, using just one lens outside the chamber, and we can hear no

response in the error signal when we shake the output table. (Before

the modifications, shaking this table produced a loud response in the

error signal.) We are now trying to find any sign of coupling using a

spectrum analyzer, to see if we can quantify the reduction.  It remains

to be seen if reducing this coupling lowers the overall noise floor.

LASTI (Ottoway)

Work continues to investigate work around solutions for the BSC weight
problem. Results will be presented at the LSC review of LASTI.
 

MEPI
 

We adjusted the tension in the off load springs to move the HAM support
table. Using the measurements from this we generated a matrix based on the
tension in the springs that can be used to position the support structure.
After this procedure we found that the MEPI controls no longer worked, we
are currently investigating this.
 

HEPI
 

 One of the limits to the BSC control strategy is the flexibility in the
piers that results in a loss of actuation authority at 20-25Hz. We have
installed a reaction mass driver on the BSC pier and using a geophone
mounted on the pier we are attempting to dynamically stiff the pier.
 

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Weekly Physics Meeting
------------------------
Ken Yoshiki from LLO discussed his results on the effect of changing recycling cavity
lengths on various transfer functions. Malik discussed the effect of
radiation pressure and angular fluctuations. Hiro and Biplab discussed
FFT results related to the effect of mirror phasemaps on the sensitivity of
LIGO interferometers.
 

Mechanical Simulation (Cella, Sannibale)
-------------------------------------------
G.Cella visited LIGO for 2 weeks. He spent one week at LHO to work closely
with Virginio. The summary of the past work, the progress during this trip
and the future plan is available from e2e home page, linked via
"MSE development pan".
In summary, 3 major issues which showed problems in the past are all solved in the latest version of MSE:
1) excitation of the violin mode vis mass actuation,
2) Blade model with internal mode and
3) LIGO stack with multiple legs,
.
G.Cella is concentrating on the implementation of state-space-matrix,
as the foundation of the bridge from the frequency domain representation to
the time domain model.
 

The major bugs found in the past in the MSE simulation engine are:
-Violin mode simulation: impossible to excite violin modes with a force
 actuator
-Stack simulation: shape of each transfer was qualitatively right but
 resonances frequency quite off respect to the experimental data.
-Triangular blade code: not working.
 

The new redesign of the library should be able to properly address all those
issues.
 

Near future TBD list:
-check new actuator code with violin modes
-rewrite a simplified version of the triangular blade code using as basic
 element the rectangular blade.
-check the new blade code in static and dynamic regime
-build a triangular blade object using a set of scaled rectangular blades
 and check the static and dynamic response.
 

Far future TBD list:
 Translate the the old simulations code from mse to the new mse library.
 These are the simulations:
 LIGO 1 suspension
 Adv. LIGO Quadruple Pendulum Suspension
 Adv. LIGO Triple Pendulum Suspension
 HAM Stacks
 BSC Stacks
 

Tasks completed:
 Checking of the actuation of the violin modes done using a simple pendulum
 suspension and using a LIGO1 like suspension. Everything  seems working
 properly. The violin modes can be properly excited and seen by a position
 sensor. The  rectangular blade code is completed and the the verification
 of the proper static behavior is under process
 

FFT simulation with actual phasemap
----------------------------------------
(Dodda, Bhawal, Yamamoto, Kells, D'Ambrosio)
The conversion of the measured phasemaps of the HR side of all ITMs and
ETMs (H1,H2,L1) has been finished. The FFT runs for LHO4k has been completed
and the shot noise limited sensitivity has been calculated using the formula
given in the B. Bochner's thesis. The effect on the sensitivity due to the
surface aberration is minimal. This can be naively explained by the fact
that the RMS of the phase variation in the central region is almost the
same as the case of lambda / 1800 quoted in the Bochner's thesis. The
absolute value of the sensitivity at the high frequency region, dominated by
the shot noise, is a few times smaller (better) than the SDR curve.
The formula of the shot noise limited sensitivity is revisited to understand
how reliable this calculation is under the realistic condition, with the
help of e2e simulation.
 

The calculation is done using the phasemap in the central 15cm diameter
region. The outside area was filled with three constant values to assess the
systematic error due to finite aperture knowledge of the phase map. This came out to be 3%.
Now work is going on to calculate (educated guess) the phasemap in that outer region from
the information in the central region.
 

Bill, Erika, Biplab and Hiro had a meeting to discuss about the plan of
the future work. The main focus now is decided to use only the ITM - ETM
test masses and to carefully analyze the FFT run results to understand the
effect on the LIGO I performance. Following this will be the inclusion
of BS and RM phasemaps. Bill has a feeling that this will not be so much of
an importance. Major uncertainty in the modeling will be the thermal
lensing effect. Biplab is going to maintain the phase maps and the FFT
run results so that interested people can use data.
 

Radiation Pressure for LIGO I
-------------------------------
(Xu, Yamamoto, Agresti)
The effect of the radiation pressure on LIGO I locked state was
studied. The pitch mode excited by the radiation pressure can make the
system unstable if the ASC is not properly tuned. In the simulation, if common pitch
QPD is not used (i.e., the beam is not forced to the ETM center), the
unstable mode induced by the radiation pressure (second mode in Fig.3
in T030120 by D.Sigg) caused the lock break. This indicates that
the radiation pressure needs to be taken into account when designing a
stable control when full power is loaded.
When the system is stably locked with full ASC control, the pitch angle
has a DC offset of around 0.1 micro radian due to the radiation
pressure force, and the yaw angle is
around 5 time larger than the case without radiation pressure (the
effect on yaw was studied by giving a tilt on the input beam).
 

Juri Agresti has started to build a FP cavity simulation with radiation
pressure effect. This is to validate and extend the analysis by Danniel
(T030039, T030120).
 

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Melody)
        - Working on a prototype that dynamically creates C++ source based
        on box files definition.  Completed the portion of the prototype
        which, during code execution, compiles the newly created C++ source,
        adds them to a shared library and uses the methods in the library.
        The dynamic compilation will be used to process the FUNC_xxx routines
        for the modeler.   Using the native compiler will allow optimization,
        more functions, and additional constructs (while-loops, if-then-else,
        etc) which are currently not available.
 

Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
        - Working on window resize issues (PR 294.)
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
C++ changes to make sure temporary arrays remain in scope and to remove
the uses of ostringstream to get string representations of numerical
values  and the removal of virtual inline methods on the basis of filed
problem reports against GNU's GCC compiler have shown significant
improvements in the reliability of LDAS APIs over the past week. Not
all issues have been resolved but lost jobs due to coredumps is down
to less than 0.07% (that's down from about 50% at last week's high).
We are continuing to find places in the code where these modifications
are needed and expect the complete review of the code to take another
week or two.
 

The best news this week is that the problem with jobs failing in the
mpiAPI with errors messages stating that the lamd processes for the MPI
jobs were missing has been resolved. We have now gone more than two days
without seeing this error message (over 50,000 jobs) while it was seen
prior to the fix to take place every 200 or so jobs.
 

Tested new threaded diskcache API on ldas-dev. When multiple threads
were allowed to run the machine was starved for cpu resources. When
a single thread was run the API seemed inordinately slow, so this code
is not quite ready for a night-long test run yet.
 

The effort to support concurrent the insertion of the metaDataAPI has
been renewed. New code is now able to run without memory leaks and is
being tested on a tandom set of servers to allow testing of thread
safety. The code is not mature enough yet to be integrated onto the
larger LDAS-DEV system. Expect to test it there early next week.
 

Tested createRDS jobs on LDAS-DEV this week on one hour of S2 data. This
was to validate recent code changes to that part of the frameAPI. Also
tested out a new waveBurst DSO for the LSC after initial tests discovered
incorrect use of unique ids in the code. A problem with creating RDS
frames on the CIT system when using frames near the subdirectory boundary
was discovered this week by Greg Mendell. This bug has now been reproduced
and isolated in the frameAPI to the C++ layer.
 

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

* All RDS & SFT data on /frame10 & /frame20 at LHO has been archived to
  tape via SAM.
 

* Started retrieving second trend data from HPSS and putting in into
  SAM-QFS.  I'm working on ways to make this more efficient because the
  current method will take months to complete.
 

* Have been talking with CDS people at both LHO & LLO about upgrading
  the framebuilders so that they will work well in the new fibre channel
  environment.  LHO backed out of a planned upgrade on Monday and are now
  waiting for 2 weeks while Dave Barker is on vacation.  I'm talking to
  Chethan about doing the upgrade at LLO so we can proceed with plans to
  set up the L700 and new FC switch there.
 

* Continuing to rearchive all trend data in SAM-QFS that was on 9940A format
  tapes to 9940B format.
 

* Re-archived all E9 full frames to 9940B format tapes.
 

* Worked on plan for new filesystem/archive configuration at sites.
 
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Installed and running memtest on the eight nodes for ldas-test.
 

* Swapped out computers for m27, also installed rh7.3 on the new hardware.
 

* Installed ldas-9.0 on pcbuild and pcmetatest and condor.
 

* Fixed problems with cfdef for MIT.
 

* Worked on confirming a bad port on the switch on ldas-cit.
 

* Finished up configuring the nodes in the ldas-cit system.
 

* Cleaning up cabling for the cit beowulf cluster.
 
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Brought 208 out of the 210 nodes in the LDAS-CIT cluster on-line with
  both processors available for production use by LDAS. This brings the
  available clock cycles to 1.1THz. Initial use by the Burst and Inspiral
  groups has been running between 100-300 processors.  Once Condor and
  associated Grid software is installed the initial split on processor
  allocation will be 210 for LDAS and 210 for Condor.
 

* Refined the use of /dso-test on the LDAS-CIT cluster to allow more
  efficient use of development search codes on the cluster. This involved
  moving the NFS server location to a dedicated Linux box that is independent
  of any LDAS services and switching the cluster search users to a
  different Unix group membership ("ldas" to "users") to avoid
  potential problems.
 

* Upgraded ldas-sw to new faster Sun hardware (from E450 to E280R) and
  from Solaris 8 to Solaris 9.
 

* Worked with Bruce Sears to cleanup several web services on ldas-sw
  associated with the upgrade and a more secure web server configuration.
 

* Started testing a new Linux nightly build machine for LDAS and
  a possible Linux database server upgrade to help improve the
  metadataAPI performance for S3.
 

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

* Shipped the old 48 nodes to MIT.
 

* Still having trouble with IDE RAID: switching to a different kernel
  version helped to avoid periodic freezing of the system. However, so far
  I was unable to replace the failed disk: the system just does not see
  it. Most likely the problem is either in bad 3ware card or cable.
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
 

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

* Worked with LDAS to identify a bug causes createRDS jobs to fail
  when the first frame requested via the "-times" option is the first or
  last frame in a directory.
 

(Ben Johnson)
 

* The condensation pumpout pump in the 5 Ton AC unit is leaky (a puddle
  forms occasionally beside the unit). An HVAC contractor has diagnosed
  the problem and has ordered a replacement pump.
 

* I have been working a great deal with Foundry Networks tech support
  on diagnosing the problems with our Foundry GigE switch. They have
  finally agreed to send a person out here. He should arrive Tuesday
  afternoon, August 5, and will hopefully fix the mysteriously moving bad
  port problem.
 

* Finally got around to fixing the installation on four nodes here.
  They will complete their burntests on August 1.
 

* Burntest on rack4 (nodes 101-140) should be complete on August 1. I
  will begin burntesting the final rack (rack3) on August 1 as well.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
 

Creighton:
This week I finished writing all-sky pulsar search template placement
code, and have begun debugging it.
 

Mendell:
1) Continued work on the stackslide DSO with Mike Landry.  We are making
steady but slow progress towards having the first working version of
this code ready by the August LSC meeting.
 

2) Continued worked with my SURF student Anah Mourant on her pulsar
parameter estimation code for LALapps.  Most of her code is complete and
in a debugging phase.
 

Reilly:
This week I have worked almost exclusively on restructuring the stochastic
DSO.  I have been able to compile the new DSO with the pertinent
functionality moved from LALConditionData to LALApplySearch.
Several issues have come up as I was doing this. These include understanding
how the DSO handles response functions, how are the psd estimates going
to be done within the DSO versus the datacondAPI, how to apply a
frequency mask to the CC statistic and spectrum, data from different instruments,
and many issues related to understanding the logic. I believe that I have come
up with  a reasonable plan for restructuring the DSO which will include the ability
to run using multiple omega frequency distributions and  software injections.
Also, I am continuing discussions with Tania Regimbau on how to make use of the
grid demonstration for the purpose of software injections for the S2 data set.
 

Shawhan:
* Investigated inspiral event candidates found in the S2 playground data
with the online search code, which used a randomly generated bank of
templates covering a wide range of masses.  Discovered that the highest-mass
template used in the online search has a negative calculated duration, due
to fact that it cuts off (i.e. reaches the innermost stable circular orbit)
at a freqency below what we were sensitive to.  Also uncovered a bug in LAL
in the code which calculates the chirp duration; this does not affect the
calculated waveforms, but affects how maxima in the filter output are
identified.  Finally, found an explanation for a class of inspiral triggers
which were recorded with very large chi-squared values, just below the cut.
 

* Helped Evan Ochsner get his modified inspiral search code running on the
CIT LDAS cluster, reprocessing all of the S1 data from LLO.  This is on a
pace to finish in about two more days.  It's nice to finally have substantial
computing power here at Caltech for LIGO searches!
 

Yakushin:
1) Fixed a bug in metadata output format in waveburst.
2) Added a coincidence between mixed clusters in one channel and gw
candidates in another channel.
 

General Computing (Wallace)
 

MIT:
(Larry for Keith)
-Finished up the security audit/check. There are a number of people that need to
update their password and they will be contacted. There were a couple of
machines with minor issues but no critical items.
-Worked a couple of user account issues.
-Continued working a air-conditioning issue.
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Spent most of the time going over LDAP. Still a number of logistical issues to
workout.
-Worked with Tom and Larry in getting the local network problem resolved at the
Observatory. When the replacement equipment arrives (Friday Aug. 1) there may be
some more testing.
-Started working on the security audit for the LIGO CIT machines.
 
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Installed and implemented the gige backbone for the LAN between the
buildings and into the offices.
- Talked with people at esnet and PNNL about a solution to our WAN
bandwidth problem.  Esnet and PNNL think that the problem is with the
host computers not being able to send/receive large enough TCP packets.
  I was referred to several web pages with information about how to
"tune" the TCP buffer size on various different OSs.  I will be trying
this out on one of our Sun computers later this week.  Apparently both
the sending and receiving computers have to be tuned to make a
difference.  The receiving computer is the most important, but both
sides should match their buffer sizes.
- Huge amounts of user support.
 

CIT:
(Mike)
-Repaired some OS problems on Janeen's machine, by updating services packs and
editing the registry.
This has seemed to correct the problems she was having. I also installed
some additional software for her.
-Installed some additional software for Osamu plus installed zone alarm pro.
-Backed up Barry's laptop with a current ghost image before I run a hard disk
replica backup for the first time on his new laptop.
I ran the hard disk backup and it was successful.
-Worked on Lee Cardenas PC that was having problems logging in. It turns out
that the event viewer log was full, which requires an administrator to login and
clear out the logs. Once I did that I was able to get back in and correct
the problem.
-Working on swapping out the conference room VRVS computer. This
included swapping out the video capture card and reinstalling VRVS and
setting up the configuration that required some testing. I need to ghost
this computer, but I am having a problem making a client ghost boot disk
for this PC, which has an integraded Intel nic card that is giving me
problems.
 

(Lisa)
- Rewrote the mailman archiving scripts to obscure e-mail addresses.
- Looking into spam filters.
- Worked on a number of solaris workstations after the directory paths for ldcg
changed.
- More new accounts and a lot of misc. user support.
 

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: Working on the webpage of Amaldi 5 postings. Antonella
Bozzi of EGO and I are coordinating the postings so that they get mirrored
at the EGO-hosted Amaldi 5 website.
Made a template for the LIGO I papers that will start arriving next week.
Worked with Albert on the details.
Finished encoding and archiving the series of the SURF lectures on LIGO by
Alan Weinstein. This has provided a very good opportunity to test my new
setup of both hardware and software for video capturing and encoding. The
system is ready for a more extensive use.
Updated the roster. Posted various updates at the LIGO website.
Looking into an application for reserving a DCC number. There appears to
be a problem with parsing the user-supplied data. I need to look at it in
more detail and see how the script can be amended to correct this problem.
- LSC website: posted an updated version of the S1 Author list.
 

From: Catharine Stebbins <stebbins@caltech.edu>

Observatory website redesign;
1. Designated space exists on the Educational Outreach server for redevelopment of both Hanford and Livingston sites. URLs will be published and design can be viewed on line as work progresses
2.  Am working on 3 versions of new visual design for each site to show for review.
3. Introduced myself via email to Fred Raab and Mike Zucker and am awaiting their response for help with transferring copies of their sites to my server.
 
 

(Larry)
-Finished up the security check at MIT. The report for Keith to approve should
be finished this week. Patch updates and password renewal were the major issues.
-Spending a lot of time going over virus and sypware issues here. Presently, we
are updating a number of PC's.
-Worked a couple of procurements and going over what needs to be purchased
before the end of this fiscal year.
-Working with Shannon on the internal audit here at CIT. So far we have a large
number of people needing to change their passwords.
-Worked a couple of e-mail and user account issues.
-Lisa and I are spending about 1 hour a day going through the different log
files checking for false positives.
-Installed a number of pieces of hardware in the server room. We will be
updating the application server as well as the CISCO router.
 

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

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