Weekly Report for Week Ending October 29, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  November 3, 2003 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)
 

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

CHECK THE LLO COMMISSIONING DISCUSSION FOR A MUCH EARNED BREAKTHROUGH.

AND THE TNI MAY BE SHOWING US A CLEAR THERMAL NOISE SIGNAL. SEE THE TNI REPORT BELOW
 

LSC Issues (Saulson)

no report

Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, October 30, 2003.  The following were among the issues discussed:

Hanford LSC Meeting - The Weber Bar is mounted.  Plaques still to be hung.

S3 - We discussed readiness at the sites for the S3 run.  An electrical problem has been discovered and repaired.  Livingston is still scrambling, but back on the road to S2 sensitivity.

Convenience Checks - Ed Jasnow and the P-Card folks will be at Livingston the first week in December to set up Convenience Checking.

Budgets  - FY 2003 costs are coming in at a higher rate than last year.  We cannot tell whether this means that the same costs are coming in faster, or the total will be higher.  Therefore, our estimate of $6 million for the carry-forward may be too optimistic. A budget surplus does not appear to exist.  David and Dennis have an action to review R&D scope.

Statements of Work have been prepared and are to be mailed to potential bidders for time and material contracts.  Given the evidence that it is going to be difficult to fit inside the budget constraints, all time and material contracts must include a ceiling price and a commitment to manage with careful control of scope changes.

Property - Ed Chargois and Livingston sold all of the excess property.
The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through October 30, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• No report this week (Ed was in an auto accident; he's ok.)

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

ACCOMPLISHMENTS (This report reflects activity for the past month.)

• With the approval of the Phase II Statement of Work for George, met with him and discussed the sequence of tasks and some target dates.  Automating the process of handling electronic submittals will be first priority with testing on the initial design changes set for next Monday and Tuesday.
• Initiated a change order to George's P.O. to cover Phase II work.
• Finalized with Ed Jasnow the contracts for the Research and Development for Coating of Advanced LIGO Core Optics with SMA-VIRGO and CSIRO.
• Continued preparation for the November LSC meeting at LHO.
• Began a review of a long list of contracts from Dorothy to determine if we have close-out files on them or if they still need to be formally closed.
• The dcc/OUT directory is 100% current with no documents in queue.

ACTIVITY

• Processed and distributed 2 DCN's
• Updated mail distribution lists in room 18. Organized, sorted and filed documentation..

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>

• Completed change order #6 to add funds and extend the order to Air Products.  Completed change order #25 to Butler.  Working on the recurring payment for the lease to Essex that is rush.  Working on one time purchase orders for the sites.
• Placed and reconciled pcard orders.
• Updated Access database with details of subcontracts.

• Discussed with Garilynn the Crystal Systems contract.  A requisition was issued and order placed to purchase One Sapphire Rod.  Also the contract is being reviewed.
• Reviewing the Northrop Grumman contract and planning to have a meeting with them soon to discuss all costs.
• Setting up new files to accommodate contracts and reviewing them in the process.
• Processing a payment requests per Ryan.
• Working with Sun Microsystems to clear up some past invoices to assure payment.

• Worked on financial reports for October 2003.
• Updated FTE charts through September.
• Prepared comparison of FY03 expenditures to FY04 budgets.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

• No report this week (vacation).

• The two contracts for the Advanced LIGO optical coating effort are now being reviewed by Gary Sanders and Sandy Pool.
• The NSF has approved the contract with Allied Spacesystems, Inc., for the internal seismic isolation system.  Award is being delayed pending Advanced LIGO budget decisions.
• The RFQ for the LLO electrical contract is now being prepared.  A list of recipients has been generated.  Additionally, advertisements announcing the RFQ will be put in th local newspapers.
• A statement of work is being prepared for the piping effort in the LLO LVEA in support of the EPI effort.  This will be a time & material contract.  At the completion of the SOW, an RFQ will be issued for this work.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for nineteen (19) new/revised trips and there are fifteen (15) trips completed but awaiting the necessary paper work.  In addition there are nine (9) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and/or paper work completed.  I continue to work closely with Terry Gunter in acquainting her with travel procedures, etc.  I will continued to close out existing trips and/or assisting where necessary.
• Completed six (6) Expense Reports and there are thirty-one (31) 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 these can be closed in a timely manner.  Presently there are four (4) reports more than 30 days old.
• Reconciled fifty-eight (58) 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.  Still dealing with a multitude of problems associated with the compromise of my P-Card last month.
• I continue to process and reconcile travel started on Ryan Tischler's P-Card while I was on vacation.  Dealt with a multitude of time consuming problems in arranging for an Apartment Lease and Direct Payment of rents for two (2) Italian Visitors.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for October 27, 2003.  Inventoried Millikan supplies and placed November supplies order.  Arranged two (2) new teleconference and 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 during the period October 13 through24.
• 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 continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

• PAC15 details and arrangements, NSF Annual Review details and arrangements, Outreach Review details and arrangements, Seminar details and arrangements!
• Photo project
• Issues with Matriculation of New LIGOites.

ADVANCED LIGO (Cost Schedule Control Systems) T. Frey
From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>
 
 

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: (From Local Primavera Dealer)
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

Phone conferences with Carol regarding preparation for the COC update, PSL update, IO update, and SEI update.
Prepared travel request for attendance at meetings at Livingston as requested by Carol Wilkinson.
http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/Travel/baton_rouge_LLO_112003.htm

The following is a summary of status by sub system:
COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.  Prepared revised update schedule for COC with progress through 09.26.02.  Executed meeting with Garilynn and Carol.  Started input of additional changes.
http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/COC_AdvLIGO/COC_index.html
PSL -  No action items pending.  Followed up with Peter and Benno has provided data.  Peter has yet to review.  Will be attending meeting at Livingston pending schedule of meeting.
AOS - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
IO -  Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.

SUS - No action items pending. Worked with Janeen and Calum preparing revised progress data / ETCs.

SEI - No action items pending. Working with Larry to update SEI with progress through 09.26.02.

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 10.17.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 10.31.03.

ROSTER DATABASE:
Continued input of changes / corrections regarding supervisors and departments.

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

See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

A draft Final Report for Cooperative Agreement NSF PHY-9210038, the cooperative agreement that covered construction, installation and commissioning, and initial operations of the sites, has been distributed for internal review.

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
CR-030017	Livingston Computing (WBS 3.5) WAN Upgrade	A. Lazzarini	October 17, 2003

CR-030017 proposes to upgrade the LIGO Laboratory Wide Area Network (WAN) at Livingston from 2xT1 (3.088 Mbps) to Gigbit Ethernet (1000  Mbps) at a cost of approximately $217K through 2006.  This change request was discussed and approved during the Executive Committee Meeting on Monday, October 27, 2003.  Minutes have been prepared for distribution (LIGO-M030197-00-P).

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)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Interferometer commissioning and S3 preparation
--------------------------------------------------------------------
After an exhausting and nerve wracking three weeks we finally isolated
the source of the excess interferometer noise during the wee hours of
Wednesday morning. A connector accepting our main RF feed coaxial cable
had apparently suffered a freak accident some time back.
This somehow left it just making sufficient
contact to keep the interferometer working "normally" on the
face of it, but caused nonlinear generation of excess noise in the sensing chain.
Because of the nonlinearity, this noise only manifested itself when the
full interferometer was running, rendering it invisible to normal
troubleshooting protocols. The bizarre confluence of improbable
events needed to produce this fault and then to have it
evade us for so long in this way truly boggles the imagination.
 

See http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=10/28/2003&anchor_to_scroll_to=2003:10:28:04:24:08-rana
for details.
 

After fixing the RF feed (a fairly trivial operation) the L1 sensitivity
improved markedly for the first time since 16 October. It
is not yet quite up to the (spectacular) H1 or
H2 standard, but it's in the ballpark and getting better.
 

Among the other big successes of the hours-old "post-fubar era", the WFS system
is now operating with most degrees of freedom under control (WFS1, 3, and 4 plus
the ETM quadrant sensors) and markedly improves the stability of
the interferometer alignment. Tonight it is hoped WFS2a will also
get a check. Nighttime locking and duty cycle look good.  A horrendous
60 Hz line interference problem was traced to an overstressed
power supply and fixed.
 

In addition to continued debugging and tuning to exploit the
new noise floor and added interferometer features, we are finallly
getting into our daunting pre-run punchlist, only hours before S3 (a
process originally planned for the whole month of October). We hope
to have enough of it done by the official starting gun that finishing
up during the run will not be too disruptive.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL FOR A TENACIOUS EFFORT! ALL'S WELL THAT END'S WELL! - GHS
 
 

Safety/security (Riesen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Completed weekly IR scan on the PSL and the 4 IOT/ISC tables, Found no
errant beams.
 

All IOT/ISC table enclosures are properly locked and the auto laser
warning light system is fully operational.
 

Found no safety concerns on the weekly site tour.
 

All non controlled doors on site are closed and locked.
 

The site entrance side gate will be closed 24/7 starting tomorrow at
noon (during S3) and will be opened only upon request and authorization
from the control room.
 

Working daily with Ed Chargois on GSA equipment that has been bought and
will be removed from the off site warehouse hopefully by the end of next
week.
 

Continuing work on LLO SOPs.
 

L1 PSL (King)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The power amplifier diode temperature was abnormally high at about 30.0
degrees C, this was reduced to 28.3 degrees by dropping the setpoint of the
chiller from 20 to 18 degrees C.  After running for a period of time the
temperature suddenly increased back to 30 degrees.  Examining the water
revealed bits of what looked like copper sulphate.  The cooling hoses and
chiller was subsequently flushed and the amplifier cooling tubes cleaned.
The chiller setpoint was then restored back to 20 degrees and the laser
temperature seems to have stabilized out to within 0.2 degrees over a day.
 

The power monitor, L1:PSL-126MOPA_AMPMON, was re-calibrated against a power
meter.  By the end of the same morning the calibration had drifted even
though the laser power had not.  Although the output of the photodiode
within the laser did not change (approximately -280 mV), the signal as
measured in the wiring harness did (from approximately 220 mV to 60 mV).
I suspect the problem lies with the 8-bit ADC within the laser power
supply but am not certain.
 
 

General Computing (Roddy)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
After spending several days working the bugs out of the new file server
provided by ASA, I have begun setting up the directory structure and
shares on it.  I have decided to go with ReiserFS on the file systems
since it gives more useable space as compared to ext3.  Also, in some
benchmarks it performed better than ext3.  I have not benchmarked NFS
speeds yet.  Now that I have all of the bugs worked out, I will continue
to test it for a couple of days before I put it in service.
 

Still had some email server troubles until Sunday.  I checked the mail
server over the weekend before leaving home at 10:30 am and when I
returned at 2:30 it had stopped accepting messages.  I have been able to
clear up most of the error messages that I believe were contributing to
the problems.  Also, it appears that a change in the firewal
configuration helped.  It is still not exaclty clear what is causing the
mail server to start rejecting messages even though several people have
looked into it.  However, it has not happened again since Sunday after
the additional firewall change.
 

Received a quote from Sun for another 280R to replace our exisiting web
server.  This includes trading in the tired E3000 that was a
hand-me-down from CIT.  It saves an additional 12% off the list price of
the 280R due to the trade in.
 

Received a quote from Sun for a calendar server and an email server.
Will look into this when I am done with LDAP.
 

Set up a couple of workstations in the new building.
 

Installed an atomic clock client on the laser safety computer to stop
the time from bcoming skewed and locking doors at inappropriate times.
 

Setting up a mirror of both the SunFreeware site and gnu.org.  I will be
rebuilding the GC apps when the file server is complete, so I will need
many of these items in the process.
 
 

LLO Seismic retrofit (Kern)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Submitted the last of the DCNs for manufacture of fabricated components
(23 parts drawings) this week. Proper generation of a final bill of
materials is still in the works but we've completed 'by the book'
documentation of all build to print components. Updated the retrofit
schedule based upon latest communications with the shops. Things are
still nip-n-tuck, but I'm increasingly confident that all of the parts
will be on hand for a January start date.  HEPI is making just-in-time
deliveries a fine art. Reworking a Request for Quotation for the piping
contract. A small misunderstanding about schedule occurred with the
machine shop machining the parts for the actuators, a few e-mails and
phone calls resolved the issue.  Received a replacement power supply
(#3) for our new PDMWorks server. Successfully installed the new power
supply and got PDMWorks server up and running on the new machine.  I
copied the vault from the old machine to the server, renamed it and
installed PDMWorks server.  I substituted our vault for the default
installed one and the jobs, and users all appear normal. Received the
brazed valves for the bypass tree from Swagelok and they are up to
Swagelok standards, beautifully done.  I will send one to Dennis and Ken
for approval.
 
 

CDS software (Khan)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Developing the PSL-ISS Autotracker software, it would track the low
frequency fluctuations on the ISS photodiode through a PID controller, using
an error signal from the LF Actdrive and the set point from the INPDMon of
the ISS system
 

LDAS (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Configured and ran burntest on the new dataserver;
2) Migrating old databases from Solaris to RH9 Linux. Currently all but
one LLO databases are migrated to the new metaserver. LLO_2 would
require some extra manual work because of blobs. Working on LHO, MIT,
CIT systems now.
3) Sent E10 raw data to CIT.
 

LDAS data analysis
1) Studying waveburst sensitivity using software injections of
sine-gaussians.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Commissioning (Miyakawa, Kawamura):
• Michelson, X-arm, Y-arm all locked (one at a time).

Using one LSC RFPD (at the asymmetric port), Osamu, Seiji, Jay and Ben have succeeded in locking these 3 degrees of freedom, one at a time, robustly. The high-finesse arms typically take 20 seconds to acquire lock, and have remained in lock for over an hour at a time.
• They observed a strong oscillation at ~ 330 Hz, attributed to the dewhitening filter. They bypassed the hardware dewhitening filter and the software compensation filter, in order to make it easier to lock. They measured the OLTF, and designed appropriate filters to achieve robust lock, with UGF around 300 Hz. The violin resonances ar 451 Hz are seen, as well as its first harmonic (approximate) at 880 Hz. The AA filter also seems to produce an oscillation near the UGF, presumably due to insufficient phase margin near the UGF.
• To lock the y arm, they used the same filters, and only a sign flip in the gain (consistent with the sign flip needed for damping - the magnets must be reversed for ETMY compared with ETMX).
• They estimated the cavity reflectivity; it was ~ 50%. Osamu refocused the retuning beam on the PD, and it went up to 85%.
• The 50% reflectivity implies that the loss per mirror is 90 ppm instead of the 37 ppm design (and a finesse of 1200 instead of 1270, and a PRC gain of 6 instead of 14). And indeed, a lot of dust cattering can be seen on all mirror surfaces when viewed with an IR viewer through the viewport (the ccd camerase are too saturated to see this). We need to vent and clean each mirror.
• All of the above is with poor mode matching into the arms. In order to tune the mode matching telescope, Osamu is trying to maximize the arm transmitted light. He saw large (5-10%) intensity fluctuations in the arm transmitted light, which is likely due to (a) aperture limits in the transmitted light beamline; (b) angular fluctuations from the MC; (c) real intensity fluctuations from the MC (~ 1-2%).
• He then re-commissioned the MC ASC (WFS) system to stabilize the MC transmitted light. He installed a control matrix to feed back onto MC2 and MC3, and a simple feedback filter. It now works very well, stabilizing the intensity fluctuations in the ~ 1 Hz region quite effectively.
• Remaining MC transmitted light intensity fluctuations are all at lower frequency, and Osamu has determined that they originate in the PSL. MOPA or PMC? Under investigation.
• Meanwhile, Flavio will commission the ISS, sensing the light transmitted through the MC, which should fix the problem, whatever the source.
• The mode cleaner now locks quickly and robustly, even in low noise mode (with dewhitening filter on), now that Osamu has applied a limiter in the MCL feedback path.
• Osamu balanced the MC2 coil outputs in the digital filters, so now the MC dewhitening (and software compensation) can be turned on and off without disturbing the MC lock.
• Fumiko is in the process of aligning the optical, photodetector, and electronics chains for the POX and POY beams. After that: SP, POB, TRX, TRY.
• LSC Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor)
• Ben has reverse engineered the Common Mode Servo board so that Todd could reconcile the fully stuffed board that he had with the marked up schematics and pictures given to him from LLO.
• Ben then redrew the schematics for the CM servo board, and made a test procedure for Todd. The new schematics are going to be sent to Livingston for review.
• Ben tested a spare CM servo board for Livingston using the new test procedure.
• Ben made a milled prototype of the LSC PD tester board that could not be used as the milled board had many shorts on it. He has sent a board to PCB express, and will test that when it arrives.
• Ben checked the QPD wiring in the vertex, and concluded that it is all there ready for the ASC auxillary code to come from Mohana, when we can test the wiring using tester boards and actual QPDs. Should happen in the next week.
• Ben ordered 50 Ohm SMA terminators for our frequency distribution box.
• Jay reports that ASC code from Rolf is in progress, and will be a prototype for a new system at the sites.
• We have a long list of new signals (ISS, ASC QPDs, etc) that need to go into master.config.
• Digital suspension controllers (Sakata, Goggin, B. Abbott, Heefner)
• Shihori continues to develop and document an iterative procedure to better diagonalize the input matrix, to distinguish POS/PIT/YAW. She has improved the ITMX input matrix, and is now applying the procedure to ITMY.
• Optical levers (Kawazoe, Heefner, Abbott):
• Fumiko has taken oplev response calibration data and is analyzing it. She will work with Jay to begin to commission the oplev servos.
• Optical sensing (Smith):
• All parts for optical sensing are in hand except for one 67% BS, on back order.
• We have finally received one last q-switch E/O shutter from Fast Pulse which we have been waiting for for at least 6 months.
• Ben ordered some cable connectors for the EO shutters that should be in next week.
• We have heard that the sites are moving away from the EO shutters, and switching to fast mechanical shutters and simpler methods for limiting the power to the photodiodes. Our MC EO shutter works well; we wonder why these changes are necessary, or desirable at the 40m, where time constants are shorter than at the sites.
• Steve ordered power supplies and cables for the ccd cameras that view the sensing beams.
• Computing:
• Alex Ivanov plans to commission one of our new Sun Ultra E450's to run GDS software (dtt, dmt, dataviewer).
• Modeling (Miyakawa, Kawamura):
• Seiji is continuing to study error signals with Finesse while sweeping through (l+,l-,ls) space. He is finding it difficult to use matlab to do this by interfacing with Finesse. Hiro suggests modifying Finesse instead; Seiji is trying to contact Andreas Freise.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Vass):
• Ben and Flavio are diagnosing the staus of our STACIS system.
• Steve is straightening up the lab and reducing earthquake hazards (like using the shelf above the PSL table to store spare optics).

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

This week the TNI lived up to its name and gave us our first look at
thermal noise.  The plot above shows the measured total displacement
noise (differential between the two cavities) along with a sum of the
expected coating thermal noise plus a constant electronic noise.  As it
turns out, the TNI schedule was forecasting that we would achieve this
milestone this very week!

VERY IMPRESSIVE AND ENCOURAGING. CHECKING THIS RESULT IS NEXT. CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TNI TEAM! - GHS
 

We spent some time examining the calibration of the instrument and
determined that the electronic noise that currently limits us is at
4.7e-19 m/rHz, with some structure above 20 kHz.  Shot noise is well
below this level.
 

We also took a careful look at the thermal noise theory, accounting for
all the various factors of root-2 that appear in a differential
measurement.  Our new noise curve is fairly clean between 500 Hz and 20
kHz and is well accounted for by a combination of coating thermal noise
and the measured electronic noise.  Bulk thermal noise is lower.  To
draw the coating thermal noise curve on our data, we used the measured
value of phi_{parallel} = 1e-4 (obtained from ringdown measurements) for
both phi_{parallel} and phi_{perpendicular}.

LASTI (Ottaway)

HEPI Design and Installation (McInnes, Mason)
The first in vacuum geophone has been completed. Myron assembled the L4C
geophone into a vacuum nipple inside of an argon filled glove box. The
unit successfully passed an RGA scan.
 

Southbridge Sheet Metal and Arland Tool are on schedule to deliver the
housings and boots by 1/5/03. Lavallee Machine who is fabricating
smaller componants has not recieved final drawings.
 

HEPI Ham Control (Ottaway, Mittleman)
The x,y,z,ry,rz loops have been simultaneously locked with a noticeable
reduction of the error point signals. At present we are do not have the
top of the table instrumented as we are waiting fof the vacuum compatible
geophones (see above).
 

LASTI Design (Ottaway)
 

Have nearly completed a complete comparison of the two cavity vs single
cavity LASTI design. This should be available on Monday so that we can get
feedback at LSC meeting.
 

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
 

Weekly Physics meeting
-------------------------
Matt was at LLOand called in to describe work on WFS there. The current WFS loop configuration
at LLO is same as what he developed in SimLIGO and is different from the H1
implementation. Virginio showed mechanical simulation of "blade" and its
transfer functions. Hiro, Matt, Biplab discussed modifications in FFT
and E2E code that may be necessary especially for Advanced LIGO studies.
 

FFT program
-------------
(Hiro) The original FFT program developed by B.Bochner (then) at MIT has been
 improved in several ways:
  (1) Mirrors can have different refractive indices to mimic different
      thermal lensing status (say, ITMx and ITMy are different)
  (2) pox, poy and pob are calculated and stored in output files as well
      as in the summary file.
  (3) The code can be compiled using g77 and produces correct results on
      linux.
  (4) Code was optimized, and it runs 5 times faster on linux box (3GHx
      Xeon) compared with SUN box (800M SPARC).
      ( SUN's fortran compiler, f77, is smarter than g77).
  (5) Output codes have been modified so that summary report can be
      modified easily to include more modes or fields.
  (6) The FFT source code is now maintained in LDAS CVS, FFTSim.
 

 Future plan is to adopt fftw, and to port to c++. This is a step toward
 implementing fft-ish field calculation in e2e.
 

(Biplab)
  - Wrote Matlab code that can take FFT outputs of beam profiles and
    calculate LSC and ASC signals at near and far fields.
  - Testing the newly modified FFT code and the matlab code with e2e results.
 

Linear Noise Model
--------------------------------
(Matt) Continued work on linear noise model.  Worked on LLO ASC system.
         Wrote/updated scripting tools (ezlockin, ezgain).
 

Code development and maintenance
------------------------------------
(Melody)
        - Dynamically compiled and linked FUNC capabilities:  Working
        on creating only one source code for each equation and passing in
        the macro definition (database) into the object.
Alfi
--------
(Bruce)
        - Fixed more window resize issues.
        - Remerged bundler code back into Alfi.
        - New bundler code testing.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
The new software release of LDAS for the science run was fully tested
and pushed onto the central LDAS software server on Tuesday of this
week. It fixed all known issues with the diskCacheAPI from the prior
release of LDAS and had a last minute fix for an issue discovered at
LHO which could not be simulated here at Caltech. A couple of other
APIs had minor fixed as well. This 0.9.0 release looks pretty good.
This software has been moved to the sites and awaits hardware changes
before being started there. We expect to having it running everywhere
today (Thurday). This release also demonstrated the ability to create
the S3 Reduced Data Set (RDS Frames) at faster that 2X realtime.
 

There was an issue discovered with the FrDump6 utility shipped with
LDAS on Tuesday this week. It was core dumping on current frames. A
last minute fix prevents the coredumping so it made it into the release,
but there are a few other issues associated with it that will be worked
on this week. If necessary we will provide a patched version of this
utility next week. It is not used in a running LDAS system so it
will not impact the science run.
 

We are currently busy migrating the DB2 databases and servers over to
Linux platforms on all the non-Caltech LDAS systems. This has been a
difficult challenge, but the procedures for accomplishing this were
developed and tested only mid week. This is expected to complete in
time for the start of the science run tomorrow morning. We are also
working closely with the DMT developers to assure that the DMT is in
lock-step with the migration over to the new databases specifically
for this science run.
 

We have discovered a new issue with the threaded metaDataAPI pushing
data into the DB2 database faster than its services can handle. A few
days of testing DB2 configuration parameters has identified a set of
parameter values that resolve this in our test example. However, the
challenges of the science run may require us to re-tune the database.
The upshot of this is that the metaDataAPI is nolonger the primary
bottleneck in insertion under heavy load now that we have the new
threading implemented!
 

A new release of LAL and LALwrapper are expected to come out today -
just in time for the science run. We will probably have to shorten
our nominal 24 hour test requirement prior to pushing a LAL/LALwrapper
release to the sites in order to make the start of the science run.
It unfortunately cannot be avoided given the late hour of the release.
(Not available as of the time of this writing).
 

We have made a startling discovery while using the new STLPort Standard
Template Library. Using it instead of the standard template library
provided by GCC, we see about 20X improvement in the performance of
the FrameAPI under Linux and a 3-5X improvement under Solaris. We have
just today begun testing this Library under a heavily threaded LDAS
enviroment so these improvements are preliminary, but if this holds
up we could be looking at nearly an order of magnitude improvement
in the performance of LDAS in the next release!
 

Guild, and the LIGOtools 'dataflow' package, had to be modified slightly
to handle changes in the frame cache and LIGO_LW formatting in the new
release of LDAS.
 

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

* Exported tapes with E10 full frames at observatories for shipping to CIT,
  and with RDS to other observatory.  LLO full frames received and staged
  at CIT with no problems.
* Fixed badly broken HPSS.
* Continued HPSS migration to SAM-QFS.
* Exported tapes with S2 L1/3 RDS at CIT and shipped to observatories.
* Worked on getting SAM-FS licenses for new dataserver boxes at CIT/LHO/LLO,
  with partial success (got temp licenses, still working on getting
  permanent licenses.
* Got new dataservers configured and operational at CIT/LHO/LLO.
 

(Hari Pulapaka)
 

* Worked only getting data transferred for E10 using LDR.
* Published data at LLO and LHO into LDR. All the data generated at the
  sites was published into the LDR on friday night.
* Pulled data into ldas-cit-g using LDR. The last of the L3 rds data
  generated at the sites arrived at ldas-cit on Monday after a weekend
  without any of transfer owing to the shutdown of the machines at LHO.
* Wrote a new storage module for LDR to be used at ldas-cit with
  improvements in the way the files are stored.
* Had to re-configure LDR at LLO as the gateway box had changed. Spent
  quite some time debugging the problems that aroused because of it.
  Including adding the changes to firewall policy, modifying inetd.conf
  and /etc/services.
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Installing new motherboards in the ldas datacache systems.
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Worked on getting LDAS-0.9.0 installed and running on all of the Lab LDAS
  systems for S3 analysis. It is now operational at all locations and ready
  for S3.
* Finished Solaris installation and configuration on new V880 SAM-QFS
  server at Caltech--now in production use.
* Helped configure and install the new Solaris LDAS gateway machine at MIT.
* Switched all the production Lab LDAS systems over to use Linux database.
* Applied OpenSSH security patches on Solaris LDAS computers at CIT.
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
 

* Received both motherboards for pc raid units.
* Ran sendmail updates on E450 (prior to swap).
* Patches all solaris machines with OpenSSH patch.
* Setup 22 more cluster nodes for use with the MIT LDAS cluster.
* Put 280R and metaserver on-line.
* Swapping motherboards on pcraid3.
* Tweaked script to run commands on cluster nodes.
 

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
* Configured and ran burntest on the new dataserver;
* Migrating old databases from Solaris to RH9 Linux. Currently all but
  one LLO databases are migrated to the new metaserver. LLO_2 would
  require some extra manual work because of blobs. Working on LHO, MIT,
  CIT systems now.
* Sent E10 raw data to CIT.
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
* Sent tapes with E10 full frame data to CIT.  Sent tapes with E10 L1
  rds data to LLO.  This data is on disk and tape at LHO under
  /samraw/LHO/full/E10 and /samrds/LHO/rds/E10/L1. (Leve 2 and 3 rds
  frames are under /samrds/LHO/rds/E10/L2 and /samrds/LHO/rds/E10/L3.)
* Assisted ldas in debugging the diskcacheAPI.
* Set up final configuration of LDAS servers for S3.
* LDAS is now ready for S3 at LHO.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Creighton:
* Tracked down a glitch in signal simulation routines that was causing
  low-level harmonic structure in pulsar injections: the
  (double-precision) signal phase model was only being interpolated at
  single-precision to find the phase at any time sample.
 

Lazzarini:
Worked with Kaice during and after the MIT stochastic face to face meeting to
generate first-pass preliminary S2 results for the 3 interferometer pairs.
These have been posted to the stochastic e-log notebook.
No surprises.
 

Mendell:
The week has mostly been spent getting LDAS ready for S3 at LHO. I have
also started generating SFTs for E10 and investigating the injected
pulsar signals; the hope is to do some sort of online investigation of
the injected signals during S3, but scripts need to be written. Also,
Mike Landry and I plan to spend much more time on stack slide between
now and the LSC meeting, now that S3 preparations are finished.
 

Reilly:
Thursday and Friday were the days of  the Stochastic F2F.
At the f2f we computed the "final" answer for the first 10000
values of the ccstatistic.  Later after over coming copious database
issues with the help of Peter Shawhan, I was finally able to extract all
data points and eventually get them almost time ordered. Albert used
excel for the final time ordering based on segment number. I have been
working on further implementation and testing of the new DSO. At the f2f we
discussed a plan for testing both the dso and the data analysis pipeline.
I also spent a lot of time configuring my laptop so that I will be able to
use it for analysis while I am in Taiwan. Also I was able to run some
matlab scripts Tania prepared which created the E10 coherence plots
for H1H2.
 

Shawhan:
* More signal injection studies.  Took a close look at the output from
the pulsar simulation code, and discovered significant structure in the
amplitude spectral density at frequencies other than the pulsar frequency.
This may point to a numerical precision problem in the simulation.
 

* Working on finalizing the veto conditions for the S2 inspiral analysis.
 

* Helped Kaice extract stochastic analysis results from the LDAS database.
 

Yakushin:
1) Studying waveburst sensitivity using software injections of
sine-gaussians.
 

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Troubleshooting sporadic lock-ups on webserver / printserver
 (no messages, no panics, no cores, hw seems to check out fine)
 (connections lost (serial, console, network) - can't get to OK prompt)
-Patched several windows machines
-Trying to free disk space on main fileserver
-Installing Cisco wireless access point to see if it handles non-orinoco
 mini-pci cards (Phillips / Intel etc) without rebooting the AP
-Setup PC so visiting postdoc could swap files from laptop
 

Hanford:
(Larry for Christine)
-Purchased a number of items for wireless expansion.
-Working a number of logistical issues for the LSC mtg. coming up.
 
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-After spending several days working the bugs out of the new file server
provided by ASA, I have begun setting up the directory structure and
shares on it.  I have decided to go with ReiserFS on the file systems
since it gives more useable space as compared to ext3.  Also, in some
benchmarks it performed better than ext3.  I have not benchmarked NFS
speeds yet.  Now that I have all of the bugs worked out, I will continue
to test it for a couple of days before I put it in service.
 

-Still had some e-mail server troubles until Sunday.  I checked the mail
server over the weekend before leaving home at 10:30 am and when I
returned at 2:30 it had stopped accepting messages.  I have been able to
clear up most of the error messages that I believe were contributing to
the problems.  Also, it appears that a change in the firewall
configuration helped.  It is still not exactly clear what is causing the
mail server to start rejecting messages even though several people have
looked into it.  However, it has not happened again since Sunday after
the additional firewall change.
-Received a quote from Sun for another 280R to replace our existing web
server.  This includes trading in the tired E3000 that was a
hand-me-down from CIT.  It saves an additional 12% off the list price of
the 280R due to the trade in.
 

-Received a quote from Sun for a calendar server and an e-mail server.
-Will look into this when I am done with LDAP.
-Set up a couple of workstations in the new building.
 

-Installed an atomic clock client on the laser safety computer to stop
the time from becoming skewed and locking doors at inappropriate times.
 

-Setting up a mirror of both the SunFreeware site and gnu.org.  I will be
rebuilding the GC apps when the file server is complete, so I will need
many of these items in the process.
 
 

(Mike)
 

-Worked with Cindy Akutagawa, showing her how to work with her new
assigned laptop.
-Worked with Angelo Gladding showing him how to load a GC workstation;
plus showing him how to get updated ghost images through the network to
our ghost backup server.
-Ghosted Cindy Akutagawa, Fumiko Kawazoe, and three visitors
workstations this week.
-Work on loading a workstation for Fumiko Kawazoe; she is on a win98
workstation. I am loading a 2000 pro computer with updated software for
her.
 

-Installed additional hardware on Calum Torrie & Ken Mailands computers.
This included installing additional monitors & video cards, to give them a
panoramic view.
I am having a problem running solid works running this new video card; it
seems that there is an incompatibility issue with this new video card. I
will have to do some more research on this.
-Worked on Janeen, Calum, and visitors workstations fixing an ANSYS
problem. After going to ANSYS website I found that Microsoft's service
pack 4 for 2000 pro, is not compatible with ANSYS. Recommendation is to
uninstall service pack 4, which I did. ANSYS is up and running again.
-This week there was a lot of user support that I took care of, that
included networking, e-mail, software and many printing problems etc. etc.
 

(Veronica)
 

- LIGO website: Captured/digitized analog video footage provided by Bill
Kells. The footage is a series of 9 clips. I captured it as separate
clips, as requested by GariLynn, and as a single clip for archiving.
Compressed them for streaming for 2 bandwidths and installed at the media
server. Burned the raw source files onto a DVD for Bill. Compressed a 2nd
batch for downloading and burned onto CDs for Bill and GariLynn to
distribute. Wrote the scripts for web sharing of the videos and helped
GariLynn install them at the Core Optics webpage. Working on editing the
clips for Bill's upcoming presentations.
Posted various updates at the LIGO website. Updated the roster database.
Working with Karl Gebhardt on the VRVS setup for his Friday LIGO seminar.
I will also videotape it per Riccardo's request.
Looking into the configuration of castor. Tried to install password
protection files for Ryan but it seems the server configuration needs to
be checked.
- LSC website: Posting daily updates to the upcoming meeting website.
- CaJAGWR website: Posted updates to the roster. User support.
 

(Lisa)
-Testing out new mail filtering program.
-Modified LSC web services.
-Attending LISA (computer) conference.
 

(Larry)
-Made a number of purchases for different groups. Reviewing the contract with
Matlab.
-Built a number of PC's and started setting up the sandbox units for the E2E
group.
-Began a build of a new server for the 40M.
-Reworked a couple of accounts and cleaned up a couple of old accounts. Started
moving old dead accounts to another location to free up space for the active
accounts.
-Worked a couple of small e-mail issues.
-Spent a little more time on VRVS but this has been put on the back burner for a
few days. It still needs some work to get the quality we want/need.
-The work to get the WAN for Livingston continues. Mike Z. and others are
getting paperwork through the system.
-Worked a number of logistical issues for the upcoming meetings.
-Attending the LISA conference.

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