Weekly Report for Week Ending September 4, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  September 8, 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)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)
A site teleconference was held on Thursday, September 4.  The following items were discussed:

A review of the Financial Tracking Report revealed that we have spent $27.3 million through the end of August.  This is 3% more than the same period last year.  Projecting expenditures through December to allow for the remainder of FY03 charges to come through, we should have about $6 million to carry over into FY04.

It was agreed to fund the MIT contract the amount of $600,000 to carry them through the first two months of FY04.

The glass vestibule for the LHO Laboratory has been completed and the final invoices will be paid for Chervenell.

The Office of Purchasing Services has issued a memorandum defining the schedule for the closing of the fiscal year.  In order for charges to be counted in FY03, purchase requisitions must be processed by September 19, and P-card transactions must be submitted to the bank by the merchant by September 15.

Hanford reported that they had over 1200 visitors in 500 cars for "Mars Madness."   Traffic was dense, parking was difficult, and three cars got stuck in the gravel. It was agreed that a contingency plan of action needs to be developed for those times when high volumes of traffic are anticipated on the site.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through September 4, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

Referencing the situation concerning the four (4) Power Supply Trailers located at the LIGO Livingston Facility.  I was contacted by the General Services Administration (GSA) indicating that the U.S. State Department would take possession of this equipment.  GSA was made aware of  LIGO's situation, as of 30 Sept 03, this storage facility will no longer belong to LIGO.

>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
One DCN processed and distributed.. 

09/04/03	Packages	Faxes
In	17	15
Out	4	15

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>Completing orders placed previously and following up on acknowledgements and certifications.  Updating Access files in Purchasing with LIGO subcontracts.  Closing out subcontracts and transferring funds as requested.From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>

•  No report.

• Monthly reports for Operations and Construction for August 2003 have been posted on the network.
• Participated in a teleconference with Ed Jasnow, Allen Sibley and Wally Bird of Excel, to try to resolve issues related to Excel invoices.  The meeting was productive with follow up activities that were to be undertaken by each of the parties.
• Had a meeting with Irena Petrac regarding information we are still waiting for from the University of Oregon regarding billings to the Visitor Program.
• Reviewed Annual Report and provided comments.
• Provided Fred Raab with a spread sheet showing monthly expenditures for all Hanford tasks for the 12 month period from September 2002 through August 2003.
• Responded to a request from Project Accounting for a funding realignment required to Operations accounts.
• Forwarded again a memo from the Property Services Department, related to proper methods to be used in purchasing 'computer clusters' to LIGO personnel who would likely be involved in computer purchases.  Use of the appropriate procedures in purchasing computer clusters:
• "Ensures that overhead will not be applied to cluster components, 
• Allows Property Services to track a cluster as one item of equipment, and
• Eliminates the need to establish a fabrication account."
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

AdLIGO SEI Mechanical Structure: Source evaluation material was received from all three Phase I incumbents. Proposal evaluation in support of the Phase II selection is under way.University of Florida: AdLIGO IO proposal for FY'04 effort is under evaluation by D. Shoemaker.AdLIGO Optics Coating R&D: Fact finding and negotiations with the two selected proposers (CSIRO and SMA-VIRGO) are under way.

• The glass vestibule for the LHO Laboratory Building is complete, which ends construction of the building.
• Plans are being made to raise the Weber Bar display at LHO onto a pedestal ten inches high.
• We are still awaiting approval from the NSF for the contract for the EPI housing.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• No report this week.

• No report this week (vacation).

• Various Payroll and HR related issues for Cindy while she is on vacation, visits and seminars, Annual Report submission tests.

ADVANCED LIGO (Cost Schedule Control Systems) T. Frey
From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>
Out of the office on Friday the 29th and Monday the 1st.
 

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.
Continue working on draft text of implementation.

Clink on links to view the Draft Work-plan and Estimate.

Continue testing of Primavera Enterprise version 3.5.1.  See the links below for information / technology demonstrations:

Primavision - http://primavision.drmcnatty.com:8080/phoenixwl/login_p3ec  Login using Username:  admin and Password:  admin.

Progress Reporter - http://www.projwebsite.com/GroupServerP3e/en/  Login using Username:  admin and Password:  admin.

Static HTML Example - http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/SUS_WebProj/ (AdL Suspensions Only)  NOTE:  This is after importing and before any data corrections.

Static HTML Example - http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/DAQ_WebProj/ (AdL DAQ Only)  NOTE:  This is after making adjustments to the WBS so that it displays as expected.

Will attend the Users conference in November at Orlando, Florida.  See http://www.primavera.com/events/conference.html

Prepared data in response to a NSF question regarding labor contribution by collaborators.

Prepared data in response to a NSF question regarding the FTE count of foreign institutions for LIGO1.

Prepared data in response to a David S. request regarding the FTE count at MIT..

The following is a summary of status by sub system:
COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.

PSL -  No action items pending.  Followed up with Peter and Benno has provided data.  Peter has yet to review.

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.

• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 09.12.03.
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.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 08.29.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 09.12.03.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 08.29.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 09.12.03.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 08.29.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 09.12.03.

ROSTER DATABASE:
BK is continuing work on action items.

Continued input of changes / corrections regarding supervisors and departments.

COST BOOK DATABASE:
Reconciling cost account listing from cost book and schedule loading.

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

We are working on two proposals and work plans:

• FY 2004 Annual Report and Request for FY 2004 Funds,
• Outreach Proposal Revision.

As reported last week, we had a teleconference with a number of the people involved in the Outreach Proposal on Monday, August 25, 2003.  Actions were assigned to review and adjust budgets and text.  I have incoporated top level suggestions into a rather simplistic budget model and provided copies to M. Zucker last week.  Mike is to meet with LA SUBR to discuss their possible reductions.  Nothing new to report this week.  The next teleconference is scheduled for Monday September 8.

The following change requests are open.

CR-030015	FY 2003 Livingston Observatory Detector Maintenance Expenses (Increment)	R. Wooley	July 14, 2003
CR-030016	Hanford Facilities 2.2--Divide the Large Equipment Access to Facilitate Movement of Large Items (currently assigned to FY 2004 liens list)	J. Worden	July 31, 2003

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

• No report (vacation).

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

• Nothing significant to report this week.

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

Friday night saw over 1000 visitors to the lab.  In concert with the Tri-Cities Astronomy Club, LHO opened its grounds to visitors who toured the lab, listened to public lectures, and took in views of Mars' southern polar ice cap and basalt flood plains (yes, much like Hanford) through the some twenty optical telescopes.

Locking on both interferometers remains sporadic; some good days of rapid relocking, followed by a day of long mean-times-to-lock, or difficulties completing the common mode (full up) script.  The commissioning emphasis remains on subsystems such as WFS, and not reliability, as we try to achieve invasive S3 goals prior to the Oct 1 freeze.

2K IFO
CM locking has been obtained, despite a ill-centered spot on the BS.  This has allowed more WFS work, including closing the loop on WFS3 and 4.  Error signals are driven to zero, but this does not help arm powers or spob, and even hurts them a little.

People are gearing up for more acoustic mitigation, as next week a second meat locker will be installed, this one over ISCT10, the 2k AS port.

4K IFO

A displacement spectrum was obtained for the 4k, now with acoustic mitigation in place.  A description and sample plot is given here .  Note the curve is about 20% too optimistic, owing to a SUS gain tweak that was unaccounted for.  This same displacement curve is shown again , this time opposite the curve prior to installation of the meat locker and new periscope. Comparing the curves, we see a factor of ~7 reduction in noise between 70-100Hz, and a factor of a few reduction between 500-800Hz.  Some novel features arise, however, including narrow and oddly-spaced peaks above 60Hz, the source of which is unkown at this time.

Microphone-based tests of the acoustic mitigation setup are shown and described here .

Lead filters added to the DARM and CARM paths haved added 15-20 degrees of phase at the unity gain frequency (the phase margin had been a lowly 30 degrees or less).  This appears to have stabilized locks on the 4k out to 30m to a few hours.

DAQ
New front end code (asc, lsc, dsc) was installed on 4k processors.  Enhancements include increased speed, and the production of overflow stats for ADC and DAC channels.

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

no report

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Installation (Vass, Miyakawa, Smith, everyone):
• Steve and Bob installed the last of the optical windows, and established camera views for the BS and the FI.
• Ben made final control cables for both in-vac PZT steering mirrors, and the system is now in, in closed loop, and apparently operational.
• Mike and Steve installed mirrors to pick off the light reflected from both arms (POX and POY), and aligned these output beams.
• Mike and Steve re-established the alignment of the main IFO, including the SP and AP beams and the two Initial Pointing beams (at the BS and at ETMX).
• 40 M IFO PRE-ALIGNMENT (Smith): All IFO mirrors are aligned. Bright port and Dark port beams are directed out the viewports onto the ISC table. The POXprime and POYprime pickoff beams are directed out the viewport onto the ISC tables. The POB prime beam cannot be picked off because of interference with the BS SOS structure; a modification to the structure will be required in the future. The PZT IFO steering mirrors were adjusted to mid range. Optlev beams for the BS, ITMs and ETMs are aligned and active. The initial pointing position and angle beams are directed out the viewports, awaiting installation of the QPD readouts. Video camera viewing of the Faraday isolator input is aligned and operating.
• All the picomotor controls of the shutter flags and the MMT have been tested. However, the shutter flags need to be adjusted to ensure that the beam passes through their apertures. This will hopefully be done today.
• Conor and Fumiko have checked out all of the oplevs. They re-arranged three of the oplev beam paths to bounce the beam off of the back, AR-coated side of the test mass. This increased the light power returning to the QPD substantially, to well over 100 uW in most cases.
• Final installation and alignment is just about complete. The MC is flashing as it goes through resonance (we are not attempting to lock the MC in air), and the flashes have been seen at the ITMs and ETMs. We have seen Michelson fringes at the SP and the AP ports. Cause for celebration, including champagne.
• However, we are plagued by several persistent problems. The beam appears to be moving occasionally, by significant amounts; it is consistent with some pathology in the PZT mirrors that steer from the MC to the IFO.
• Also, ITMX keeps acting up. Jay can calm it down by flipping the sign of the gain on the side osem damping loop (!!). Very strange.
• There are periods when both these problems give way to stability. During those times, we are doing the final leveling and alignment tweaks.
• AJW wrote up a detailed checkout procedure for all installed in-vac components, alignment, suspended optics, and oplevs.
• Tomorrow (Friday), we'll do a final checkout, seal everything up, and then monitor the situation throughout the weekend. If things are stable, we'll proceed with the pumpdown on Monday.
• Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor)
• As noted above, the DSC for ITMX is acting very strange.
• The PZT interface board for the ASC PZT mirrors arrived on Tuesday. Ben stuffed the boards, milled some front panels for them from the aluminum panels already on the controllers, and set them in place. With the help of Steve, Ben swapped the cables from their temporary FLKM blocks, to the new patch panels, and realigned the PZTs one by one.
• The EPICS servers running in the linux box (c1epics) were running multiple "IOCs", and were not communicating to the EDCU, so EPICS channels were not available to DAQs or dataviewer. Jay and Alex are working on a fix which combines all channels onto one IOC, and will test it tomorrow.
• Jay and Alex will get the EPICS timeserver going on the EDCU, and test it tomorrow.
• Ben has been helping Aidan with his photon actuator experiment. Aidan finished testing a filter that Ben made for him, and he found that it has the shape that he wanted, so he is now attempting to put it into a control circuit. He is having problems getting his 5W or 0.5W lasers to work with Mohana's driver board, but Ben will help iron that out.
• Ben is in the process of testing some ISS PD boards that he and Flavio will take to Livingston on Monday.
• Shihori is learning about the digital suspension controllers, and is taking DTT spectra as an aid to optimizing gains and diagnosing problems. Lisa and Shihori are learning how to diagonalize suspensions.
• Lisa G is trying to diagnose problems with the long-neglected STACIS system.
• Lisa G has been constructing lots of nice MEDM screens to help us keep track of all the 40m systems.
• Modeling (Miyakawa, Kawamura, Eichenfield):
• Seiji continues to develop a model of the 40m and AdvLIGO with Finesse, and comparing with Twiddle calculations.
• Computing (Ivanov, Bork, Goggin, Wallace, Bogue, Pedraza):
• We are able to run medm on our wireless laptop PCs on the martian network, mounting the our online software disk (containing all the .adl files) via samba. Unfortunately, various display pathologies appear on the medm screens, making some of them useless.
• However, we continue to have intermittent wireless and network problems. Lisa Bogue has been helping.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor):
Bob is continuing to service last-minute installation needs.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

Since our last report we have
1) redirected the output beams of both arm cavities, removing their
collimating lenses and installing ND 2.0 filters to suppress
backscattered light noise;
2)implemented a fast, frequency-correcting Pockels cell in the mode
cleaner servo to suppress laser frequency noise above 10 kHz;
3) increased the modulation depth on the arm-cavity sidebands to
suppress the relative contribution of the photodiode electronic noise.
 

Thanks to the new output-beam configuration, we can no longer detect
any coupling between motion of the output table and the error signal
due to backscattered light. Thanks to the new laser-frequency
stabilization servo, we have suppressed the noise floor above 10 kHz by
up to a factor of ten. Increasing the modulation depth further reduced
the noise floor, but not by as much as we had expected.
 

In the sensitivity plot below, the dark blue line is our expected
coating thermal noise, red is the expected substrate thermal noise, and
pale blue is our estimate of suspension thermal noise. Blue data is
SAC's sensitivity, green is NAC's, and red is the difference between
the two (common-mode rejection implemented).

 
Our current sensitivity is, with common-mode rejection active,
approximately 1e-18 m/rHz over two decades of frequency, from 1 kHz up
to 100 kHz. We suspect that the limiting noise source is still
electronic noise in the photodiode, and we are currently measuring that
noise level to see if it agrees with our current noise floor.  The
unusually high noise level in NAC below 100 Hz was temporary and did
not appear in SAC.  We are also currently investigating the source of
that.  While the noise below 100 Hz seems to fluctuate, above 100 Hz it
appears quite stationary.
 

LASTI (Ottoway)

HEPI Pump Station (Mittleman, McInnes,Mason)
The resistors supplied by Ken Mailand at Caltech have been installed
into the pump room. Testing will begin next week. The supply and return
lines for adding hydraulic actuators to the two HAM's has also been
connected to the pump station. The pump station is back on line
supplying fluid to the BSC chamber.
 

The parts required to convert the MEPI pre-isolator to a HEPI
pre-isolator have been ordered. This changeover is expected to begin on
9/15.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E Weekly Physics Meeting
----------------------------
Matt presented the outline and objective of the ASC system as
implemented
in the new SimLIGO release 030902.
 

Summary of the new SimLIGO release, 030902
---------------------------------------------
(Matt)
 #### LIGO ASC
 

 Science Objective of the ASC
  - reduce seismic/control induced alignment motion to prevent
    sideband (and carrier) power fluctuation from deteriorating
    sensitivity or altering DARM -> AS_Q gain by more than 1%
  - initial target, alignment fluctuations < 50 urad and power
    fluctuations < 10 %
 

 Objective of my work on the SimLIGO ASC
  - understand the alignment sensing system
  - design a robust control system that meets the science objective
  - transfer that understanding and design to the commissioning team
 

 Challenges
  - non-diagonal sensing matrix (worse than anticipated with SB on SB)
  - non-constant sensing matrix (mode overlap and power fluctuations)
  - significant and variable radiation pressure effects
  - IFO inertia
  - simulation of burnt-out coils =)
 

 #### SimLIGO ASC
 

 Interferometer Simulation
  - includes radiation pressure
  - includes non-resonant sideband on resonant sideband contribution
 

 Overall Design
  - Two forms of alignment control
    - global:
      {WFS, QPD} -> input matrix -> servo filters -> mirrors
      http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~sigg/power_angle/newASC.pdf
    - local: optlevs -> mirrors
 

 Input Matrix
  - transforms sensor signals into angular position estimates for
    all mirrors (in micro-radians)
  - a "selective" inverse of the sensing matrix
  - optimized for robustness against variations in the sensing matrix
  - current matrix:
    WFS1 and dQPD -> dETM and dITM
    WFS3 and cQPD -> cETM and cITM
    WFS2a -> RM
    WFS2b -> BS
 

 Servo Filters
  - compensate for mechanical system
  - can be different each mirror (i.e., OL on or off?)
  - current servos
    dETM and dITM : UGF ~ 5 Hz, disabled optical levers
    cETM and cITM : UGF ~ 5 Hz, disabled optical levers
    RM : crosses optical lever below 0.1 Hz
    BS : crosses optical lever below 0.1 Hz
 

 Radiation Pressure (a.k.a., Optical Spring) Compensations
  - no explicit compensation
  - robust servo design
    - large gain margins
    - UGF away from resonance frequency
  - will add explicit compensation soon to allow for
    more sophisticated servo design (needed at the sites)
 

 #### How SimLIGO ASC helps LIGO ASC
 

 The LIGO ASC system is currently in a state of flux.  A
 good deal of work is going into designing and commissioning
 a functional system, but there have been a number of stumbling
 blocks along the way.  SimLIGO offers a low cost and rapidly
 changeable testbed for ASC systems.  The work on SimLIGO, if
 performed in conjunction with the efforts at the site, should
 help to speed the development of a robust ASC system which
 will improve interferometer sensitivity and duty cycle.
 

FFT
------
(Hiro)
In the last couple of months, there was a discrepancy regarding the
estimations of the shot noise limited sensitivity,
SRD (Kent's and Lyon/Regehr formula), e2e and FFT. Bill and Hiro
examined the formula and came to the following
conclusion. The formula in Brett Bachner's thesis is sqrt(2) off from
the one of Lyon/Regehr. With this taken into account,
SRD, e2e and FFT results agreed within a few 10%, mostly coming from
the values used for the recycling gain, the input
power and subtle differences of the transmittance.
 

The uncertainty of filling up the unmeasured region (outside of 15cm
diameter, it is impossible to predict reliably, the best
is an educated guess) and the tilt removal (FFT has LSC, but not ASC,
and pre-treatment is needed to mimic the ASC) is of the
order of 10% when estimating the effect of the actual phasemap.
 

The conclusion is, with the input power of 5W, recycling gain of 40-45,
and the phasemap with roughness around
lambda/1200, the shot noise estimation in the SRD curve is pretty much
the real as-built LIGO should expect to
have, within a few 10% uncertainty.
 

WFS loops
------------
(Biplab) Studied stability of the WFS loops that Luca has implemented
in H1.
  At Unity Gain Frequency of 0.1 Hz for all loops, the WFS system is
  quite stable but instability increases in general, if gains are
increased
  in all or in a few of those loops.
 

Mechanical simulation
------------------------
(Virginio)
 - Working on the translation of the old mse programs to work with the
new
  version  of the mse library.
 - LIGO1 suspension has been translated and is going under a deeper
   debugging. Some objects necessary to complete the simulation in the
   frequency domain  must to be  implemented
   (position actuator, and  beam object).
 

 - The quadruple pendulum model is under translation. The code to
simulate
  the triangular blades with internal modes is under debugging.
 

Code development and maintenance
---------------------------------
(Hiro) New packages released:
 SimLIGO 030902 and e2e-1.8.1 have been released and are available for
 download from the e2e home page and via CVS update.
 e2e-1.8.1 has been updated to support the new SimLIGO release,
 including the radiation pressure. It also has several non-trivial bug
 fixes, and all e2e users need to update the simulation engine to the
latest.
 

(Melody)
        - Continuing e2e source code modification to dynamically create
        C++ source from FUNC_xxx equation modules, which would be compiled,
        combined to a shared library, and used during runtime execution.
 
        - Built a new release of the e2e simulation software, version 1.8.1.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
None of the fixes last week eliminated the core dumps in the frameAPI.
It
has been shown that by reducing the job rate on the LDAS-TEST system to
the
level that can be handled without optimization and inlining, that the
LDAS
system almost completely stops core dumping. This leads me to conclude
that
the bugs are not from the optimization and inlining levels. Rather, the
current
code performance has exposed bugs in the LDAS code base that only start
to
become apparent at higher job concurrency rates
 

Began a rather involved task to evaluate (and possibly) migrate away
from
the standard template library supplied by GNU over to the SGI STL
library
in the public domain known as STLPort. The SGI library has been built
and
passes its unit tests. We are making the necessary changes to allow
LDCG/
C++ libraries to be rebuilt using this library. Once this is completed,
a
rebuild of LDAS will be tested against his library. This precipitated
out
of the continuing problems solving the core dumps in the frameAPI and
the
need to distinguish between bugs we wrote and bugs in other packages
under
LDAS which heavily use C++ code.
 

One thing the large number of core dumps generated each night (order 10
to
20) has revealed is a bug in our corewatch code used to detect core
dumps
and make these core files available for evaluation under debuggers. This
bug has now been fixed.
 

We have migrated to the newest BWidget TCL/TK widget package (version
1.6)
exclusively for the next release of LDAS. This change only effects the
client side of this API.
 

Continued to close out open problem reports as we prepare for next
month's
release of LDAS (version 0.8.0) just before the science run begins.
 

Added the ability for data products in a dataPipeline command to be
directed
to a user specified location on the file system. This was requested to
allow
the SFT generated by the periodic group to become visible for later post
analysis within LDAS as they are generated, without the need to move
them
first.
 

Completed most of our system level tests this week. This revealed a new
bug
in the putStandAlone command which was isolated to the eventMonitorAPI's
TCL code. This is being fixed and tested this week.
 

Hardware Systems (Anderson is out this week. Provided by Wilson)
Shannon (LLO)
Most of this week has been spent working with Al Wilson on upgrading the
VPN at CIT and LLO in an attempt to fix a bug that Igor discovered.  I
hope to have this finished and tested by the end of the week.
 

Keith (MIT)
received SATA pcraid units
mounted units into racks
repairing failed pcraid unit #3A
receiving cable tray pieces for ldas lab
measuring SATA pcraid power levels
 

Greg (LHO)
The generation of the intersite S2 PEM RDS has finished at Caltech. The
data is located under /ide1/pemRDS/S2/ on ldas-archive at CIT. Dan Kozak
is currently putting the data onto tape, and will send the tapes to LHO
so that Robert Schofield can do the PEM S2 analysis.
Working with LDAS to identify bugs in RDS generation and test the latest
createRDS scripts. Currently the createRDS process leaves gaps in the
data when the input data crosses directories. LDAS will fix the problem
before S3.
Working with LDAS to plan for the upcoming mini-runs, E10, and S3.
 

Ben (LHO)
fb3 is being upgraded to Sol9/SAN4.2/QFS4.x this week (starting
September 3).
node46 has passed a 7 day burntest, I will incorporate it into LDAS
September 4.
Replaced drive 8 on the StorEdge 3510 here, September 3. It
reconstructed successfully (there were no global spares configured at
the
time so it had to be performed manually).
Copied DMT trends from /frame11 to /frame10 September 3. Began
archiving trends September 4 (dual archive set "dmt_trends" HL005[0-7])
Firmware and pld code was updated on the 3510. FW Rev.=1000; pld
Rev.=1000
 

Hari (CIT)
Working on installing Condor on the remaining 208 nodes in the cluster.
Installed LDR on my PC so I can work on it and get familiar with the
LDR utility.
Installed gsi-opnssh on ldas-grid, so that users can use their DOE
certificates to log into it.
 

Dan (CIT)
Testing new (2.9a) version of hsi on ldas-archive to see if it's new
features will make retrieving LIGO data from HPSS more efficient.
Started retrieving E7 data from HPSS
Continuing to go thru and evaluate tapes that have failed to label
properly
Migration of data from 9940A to 9940B continues
Read test data from SAM-QFS tape written at LLO
Began copying S2 L1 RDS data into SAM-QFS (4 tape copies, so that the
data can be sent to the observatories)
Worked on planning and prep for new file system configurations at the
observatories
Got new QFS license for LHO frame builder
Had STK replace power supply on one of our 9940B drives
Got STK silo working again after it failed, possibly due to a
bad/misaligned slot
Helped Ben Johnson set up archiving of DMT trends at LHO
 

Al (CIT)
Setting up the first desktop machines with RH9.0
Added Grid mods to the CIT system. These included hosts table, password
, and user adds.
Working with Shannon on getting the VPN repairs made.
Contacted ASA about getting a new motherboard.
Replaced hard drive in m27 to a 40g drive
Disposed of the old beowulf cluster for test
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Creighton:
This week I have been implementing in LAL certain Numerical Recipes
routines to invert matrices and compute eigenvalues and eigenvectors.
These are required in order to lay out a multidimensional template
bank with a flat (constant) parameter metric, as is the case for a
directed pulsar search with spindown.
 

Mendell:
1) Significant progress has been made in the stack-slide code; the first
working versions of the code has been written (that just does stacking,
no sliding yet).  As always, there are some bugs to sort out.
 

2) Members of the PULG group expressed interest in using my SURF
student's calculations on parameter estimation.  I've been checking
those calculations for errors, and plan to extending the work to make it
compatible for use with existing LAL code.
 

Reilly:
Most of my time has been spent  debugging the stochastic
DSO.  Now that the DSO is parallelized it runs 6.8 to several
hundred times faster than the original. This difference is dependent
upon how many computations are done in the wrapperAPI. In
the original DSO more computations cost equally more and now
more computations add almost insignificantly to the total analysis
time.  I have also started working on adding the ability to do 50%
overlapping windows, frequency masking and high pass filtering.
Also, I am in the process of moving the stochastic web archive
cvs repository and email list over to Caltech.
 

Shawhan:
* Updated conlog to keep track of the names of all filters (previously
it had only kept track of filter names in the LSC servo).  This was in
response to the discovery by Rai that some SUS filter coefficients had
been
changed during the S2 run, with unintended results.
 

* Coordinating efforts to fill in information currently missing from
the detector geometry structure in LIGO frame files, and discussing
whether to start using TWO structures for Hanford frames (differing
only in arm lengths).
 

Weinstein:
- working on burst s1 burst paper final(?) tweaks
- preparing document about burst waveforms to be considered for S2
 

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Troubleshot / swapped out drives from mailserver to another sunbox
-Ordering replacement nvram for 'ligo'
-Spec'd out / ordered desktop for postdoc
-Investigating bluetooth wireless
-Patched more Solaris gc machines
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Working on setting up a SATA raid for storage on GC.  This will be a
small raid (~480 GB) and will serve as temporary and backup storage as I
shuffle some files around.
-Still finding remnants of the welchia worm.
-Turned off the virus notification of the mail server since it was
sending out hundreds of complaints a day as Sobig.F makes it rounds on
the internet still.
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Making arrangements for pcard training.  Making sure I have the latest
software, arranging a space, computers, network, etc.
- Continuing to work with Caltech ITS in order to get access to the site
licensed software.  Our computers can now get to the
software.caltech.edu web page, but when trying to actually download and
install software, our IP addresses are blocked.  Still waiting for word
from Caltech on a resolution.
- Some user support and purchasing of supplies.
 

CIT:
(Mike)
-Setup the VRVS computer up in SCR and ran a few tests to insure that
the
VRVS system is working. This system is back up and ready for the next
LIGO
seminar via VRVS.
-Over at Wilson Back House, they were having printing problems that I
took
care of. I also showed them how to troubleshoot their updated printer
and
not to hesitate to call me if they have problems.
-worked on the 3rd floor W/B 4500 printer that had a 49 error on the
control panel and it was also listing a fuser kit had to be replaced.
After
researching HP's tech support website I found that I had to reseat the
jet
direct card plus reseat the formatter board then did a cold reboot that
fix
the problem. I also had to swap out the fuser assembly.
-Load a newer computer for Ruth Brambila to swap out her
old computer. I had to get ATC involved with this, in order for Ruth to
join the Business domain. I also loaded some additional peripherals and
copied over her old data to her updated computer.
-Loaded three computers with General Computing Software. These computers
are to be used to swap out, some of our window users that have older
computers.
-Ran updated ghost images on all NTSRV's for end of the month
backups. I am now burning these images to DVD.
-Ran security and OS updates on all NTSRV's plus I looked through
security
logs looking for unknown intrusions and system errors, which came up
clean.
 

(Lisa)
- Fixed an automount problem in 40mars.
- Chased down an infected laptop.
- Looked into the problem of solaris 9 not being able to send e-mail
out via
cronjobs.  Sol9 uses sendmail 8.12.x which uses a mail submission agent
for this
type of task.  The MSA gets its configuration from a file other than the
sendmail.cf.  I built new configuration files for use on the solaris 9
workstations.
- Upgraded the firmware on all of the printers.
- Did monthly backups.  Wrote new backup scripts for that.
- Put together a list of the software packages that need to be
installed on the
sandboxes.  This needs to be reviewed.
- Spent some more time looking into cups (printer service) but I have
not got it
going yet.
- Account maintenance and misc. user support.
 

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: Updates to various pages. A list of belated Amaldi
presentations was posted. Adding the talks to the LSC meeting database
as
they keep arriving. Updated the roster. Installing security patches to
the
laptops that I currently have.
Making my way through a webbase tutorial.
- LSC website: An update of the talks to be presented as well as past
talks.
- Project Science: Generated a distribution list for mass mailing
announcements and helped Sydney install and use it. Provided other user
support. Updated the webpage for the upcoming workshop.
- CaJAGWR website: Usual upkeep.
 

(Larry)
-Worked with DCC on a variety off issues. There have been some
discussions on
how making sure people are using the correct versions of s/w for
document
submissions. Linda is going to do more work on the issue.
-Placed a number of orders for new laptops, workstations, software and
other
misc. items. In the process of updating the SUN maintenance contract.
We are
waiting for the new quote.
-Worked on the repair of the ligo web server. It has some disk
communication
problems but that should be resolved when the new server is installed.
-Worked on a number of PC's, updating s/w and related issues.
-Spent time with the ATC people on a couple of PC's that are not working
properly. The plan is now to move those units to another network which
will give
the ATC group more control over those units.
-Spending time with the exit interviews. A number of accounts are being
extended
so the students will be able to continue to work on their reports over
the next
month.
-Setup a couple of PC's.
-Working on a couple of documentation issues. We have a number of web
pages that
need to be updated and the security plan needs to be revised.
-Finished up a number of the regular types of requests concerning
accounts and
e-mail aliases.
-Working with Keith and Shannon on getting more information concerning
SATA raid
systems before we make another purchase of on for GC, next week.
 

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

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