|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday November 24, 2003 will be:
(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)
Special Items: NSF
review reprise, Outreach proposal feedback report, status of FY2004
budget exercise (FY2003 carry forward and FY2004 budget planning)
Closeout report:
1. The LIGO Collaboration is making good progress towards achieving the design strain sensitivity specified in their science requirements document. The present S3 science run results are likely to be of interest to the wider astrophysical community.
2. There is good progress on identifying the remaining noise sources that are limiting the strain sensitivity and there is an aggressive plan to remove these sources.
3. The plan to push the sensitivity of the Hanford Observatory interferometers during the installation of the active seismic isolation system at the Livingston Observatory is well conceived and should result in a significant increase in duty cycle and some increase in strain sensitivity. The improvements at Hanford will be applied to Livingston as soon as possible.
4. The R&D program for Advanced LIGO is making good progress. The installation of the active seismic isolation system at the Livingston Observatory will provide a critical test of this key subsystem of the Advanced LIGO plan while making it possible for the Livingston site to maintain lock during times of high ambient seismic noise from human activity. This is a strong confirmation of the advantages of supporting a vigorous R&D program while commissioning and operating the interferometers.
5. The selection process for the high power laser system is likely to provide a laser system meeting the power and stability requirements for Advanced LIGO. It is, however, important to maintain a backup option for this critical system.
6. Either silica or sapphire could be successfully used as the substrate for the test masses at their current performance levels assuming thermal compensation. The Panel supports the selection of sapphire as the test mass substrate material if no intervening results suggest otherwise.
7. Coating mechanical loss remains the largest known mechanism of degradation of Advanced LIGO from design specifications. The planners are to be commended for seeking out wide expertise for solving this demanding problem. Immediate attention should be focused on the two most promising avenues, titania doped tantala and hafnia.
8. The LIGO lab and the LSC have made remarkable progress on the organization of data analysis efforts. The S1 analyses have established a firm foundation for the analysis of future datasets and have fed back important information for further commissioning of the system. Each analysis group should come up with its own simple figure of merit for instrument performance so as not to lose priority relative to the binary neutron star inspiral group.
9. Software flexibility has already led to data management improvements that should improve analysis efficiency, and will allow responses to continued developments in distributed computing.
10. LIGO/LSC should continue streamlining their publication review process to improve timeliness of publication.
11. We urge the LIGO lab and the LSC to participate
more actively in the efforts of the Penn State PFC to bridge the astrophysics
and experimental relativity communities. Regular presentations at
the semi-annual American Astronomical Society meetings would make the astronomical
community generally aware of LIGO’s remarkable experimental progress.
no report
Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)
Administrative
Coverage November 24-26, 2003 (Lindquist)
Several Administrative personnel will be taking vacation days ahead
of the Thanksgiving holidays (me, Gina, Esther). If you need any
thing signed, see Ed Jasnow. For procurements, see Ruth Brambilla.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)
There was no site teleconference held Thursday, November 20, 2003 (NSF
Review in Livingston).
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>
>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>
ACCOMPLISHMENTS (This
report reflects activity for the past month.)
ACTIVITY
| 11/20/03 | Packages | Faxes |
| In | 29 | 31 |
| Out | 13 | 33 |
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>
From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu
(Irena Petrac)
LSC MOUs / Attachment Updates and Progress Reports
SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)
>Irene Baldon
ADVANCED LIGO
(Cost Schedule Control Systems) T. Frey
From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>
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.
IO - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
SUS - No action items pending. Continued review of revised progress data / ETCs.
SEI - No action items pending.
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.
Corresponded with Roster Database users regarding issue with Seiji's name on the LIGO roster.
Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.
We continue to work the FY 2004 budgets. The carry forward continues
to dwindle while the needs expand. Will be meeting with David and
Dennis tomorrow (Friday).
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>
Summary of S3 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)
High winds impacted IFO duty cycles this week,
as several days of wind gusting above 50-70mph
negated locking, dragging daily duty cycles down
to a few percent. Additional problems were caused
by earthquakes and an abnormally high microseism.
As if that wasn't enough, we had the
tumbleweed balers out to clean up the growing
fire hazard.
H1 inspiral ranges continue to be unstable, wandering
between 1.5 and 4 Mpc, while H2 holds
steady near 1Mpc.
4k IFO
An H1 noise budget was assembled, indicating
that local damping was a limiting noise source.
New SUSPOS and SDSEN filters were developed
to reduce this coupling, and indeed, they
were shown to work and this noise source was no longer limiting.
A full description of the
updated noise budget is given here.
The story is quite simple at low and high
frequencies: MICH->ASQ coupling dominates up to 50Hz, and shot noise
is the main contributor
above 200Hz. In between, several sources of similiar strength
add in quadrature.
The 4k PRC loop was tweaked. Curiously, AS2I_CORR wants an offset.
2K IFO
Weekend locking was poor, and this time the winds were not to blame.
Some difficulties were
attributable to electronics, such as the 110B's which periodically
require their crate power to be
cycled. A second electronic hiccup caused ETMX to stay undamped
for eight
hours.
WFS2 was dragging the 2k alignment down, until its Pentek card was swapped.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
S3
--------------------------------------------------------------------
We have had a rough week with L1. Bad microseismic
conditions have been
compounded by a series of technical problems,
including flaky operation
of the WFS system (still not fully understood),
an intermittent
wandering mode cleaner mirror (probably a loose
connection), bugs in the
scripts setting up our DARM and MICH loop gains,
and numerous other
glitches. Ironically, our best locking of the
week coincided with
extremely high winds at LHO, thus racking up
very little coincident
science running for the period.
At this writing we believe that the worst of these
problems are behind
us, and are looking forward hopefully to
a solid run through the
weekend and the upcoming holiday.
NSF Review
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We hosted the annual NSF review of the LIGO Laboratory
at LLO on
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. The
review was an
outstanding success, and we owe thanks to the
many visiting and
resident scientists and engineers who made presentations
and answered
questions for the review panel. We are especially
grateful to
Shannon Roddy, Larry Wallace, Ryan Tischler and
Bonnie Wooley for
first-rate organization, execution and logistics.
Well done
everybody!
Public outreach (Bonnie Wooley)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Went to Spectrum Rehab (mental rehabilitation center) in Livingston
and
did hands on science class and gave a talk about LIGO.
Safety/security (Rich Riesen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The work on the side door (kitchen area) is now complete and is equipped
with a swipe card reader. It is fully functional and on the site's
off
hours schedule. Weekly site safety tour was completed, found no apparent
safety concerns. Continuing assisting GSA in the removal of equipment
from the off site storage area.
Detector science support (O'Reilly)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Worked on Calibration and troubleshooting the Interferometer as part
of the S3 run.
Gave a seminar at University of Florida, Gainesville last Friday on
recent progress at LIGO.
L1 PSL (King)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
A noise problem exists with the laser chiller. The chiller is
definitely louder than before. I called the manufacturer and
they
suggested that a strainer on the input to the chiller could be clogged
up and that could be the most likely cause of the noise problem.
Given
that previously we had some particulate matter in the cooling lines,
it
is a likely scenario.
Detector CDS and S3 Science Support (C. Paramaswariah)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Replaced the failed disk on LLOFb0. Sometime back the storage management
server failed and had to be reinstalled. I am now creating a
new
configuration on the disk.
Investigated the MC1's weird shift behavior. Found the accelerometer
and
some other channels exhibit similar behavior at the same time. More
investigations pending.
Found the problems with the missing Hanford Lockloss display at LLO
is
attributed to the network firewall at LSU. LSU is working on it.
Recreating Daily summary plots with new channels.
Detector commissioning and High Power Laser Facility (Rupal Amin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Commissioning:
I have started looking at the lock loss trends. On large scales, it
appears that all channels fail at the time when the arms break lock.
However, on at least one file 15 Nov., the control signals are observerd
to fail ~ 1 ms before the detector breaks lock. One millisecond roughly
corresponds to the storage time of the arm cavities. This would give
a
decent reason for why the arms loose lock. However, the question as
to
why the control signals start to display rapid oscillations is yet
to be
answered. I am slowly compiling statistics on which signal shows errant
behavior first, and what signs precede it breaking into oscillation.
MC1's problem is still unresolved. The group of three investigators
over
the weekend (Rai, Tom, and myself) has grown to the encompass more
of
the commissioning crew. We cannot clearly say much now, except that
MC1
displays a misbehavior that is uncompensatable using the PZTs, and
a
"glitch" is seen in multiple channels when MC1 misaligns. Several e-logs
were made this week.
HPLF:
The 75 W laser is being unpacked,
the lab cleaned,
property stickers will be seen,
by the light of radiation through the night,
when the SOP is ratified.
Be wary those who crow,
Advanced LIGO IOO,
compensated Faraday's ready for a vent,
in 2005 or the date of consent,
keep the beam stable,
and available,
for the core optics,
forevermore.
At least, until another power failure.
#MZ: keep your day job dude!
We are assembling a budget and design for a new set of 20 mm Faraday
isolators. The larger aperture and birefrigence compensation as well
as
a new position immediately downstream of MMT1 should reduce polarization
breathing as well as the difficult task of regaining good beam
pointing
through the aperture following a vent.
Burst veto analysis (Franzen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I have just finished producing WaveMon triggers for all the L1 S2 data
(locked segments only). I am now trying to compare these to veto
triggers produced with other methods. All these veto triggers will
be
used for vetoing WaveBurst events. I am also about to start to produce
WaveMon triggers from the available L1 S3 data. These veto triggers
indicates time-frequency resolved glitches coincident in the AS_Q and
one or more of 65 other channels. Hopefully, this would provide some
almost real-time data quality feedback for commissioning and operations.
LDAS (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS admin:
Mounted fb0 to gateway and dataserver. Configuring Ben's script to
use
it as a backup for fb2.
LDAS data analysis:
1) On the burst face-to-face meeting last Friday, Sergey and I suggested
to create a set of frames with software injections for all
the burst algorithms to use to be able to compare their performance
under
the same conditions.
I am currently debugging the scripts for generating those frames.
2) Running various simulations in preparation for waveburst presentation
at GWDAW.
Inspiral data analysis (YunYong Wang)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm doing the Inspiral trigger studies with the S2 data in the channels
of L1:LSC-POB_I and L1:LSC-AS_DC channels.The higher frequency butter
filter ( high pass > 60 Hz )seems to be useful for the veto of glitches.
I will continue doing it and hope to get more details.
In the mean time,I'm testing and debugging the program which I hope
to
be used to check the data quality during the S3 run.
General Computing (Roddy)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of the last week has been spent preparing for and then helping
out
with the NSF review. We set up a new NAT router specifically
for use
with the wireless network in the auditorium. Also, we temproarily
moved
a printer into the auditorium area. This will be returned to
the
upstairs office area next week. Helped Allen with seting up the VPN
software and the updates to the Pcard software.
Looking into an issue with large UDP packets between sand at LHO and
delaronde at LLO.
Still working with LSU on coordinating the GigE internet connection.
The
most recent proposed date for this has been Dec. 15th, which is the
day
before I hop on a plane for vacation. We have asked LSU to try
and push
this date to the week before, but I am waiting on a response. Charlie
McMahon is at a conference this week so we probably will not hear
anything till next week.
Bellsouth dropped the ball again today on the ISDN line. We are
working
with them again to get this done.
LLO Seismic retrofit (Kern)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Welded assembly of a first article actuator is expected to be completed
this
week, meanwhile the shop manufacturing the parts is hard at work on
the
remaining 84 sets. Working on completing the final bill of materials
for
HEPI. Following many discussions everyone is on-board to used a 4-way
valve
for the bypass tree and 88 will be ordered this week. Most of
the SEI
members at the review this week had the opportunity to meet and discuss
with
Whitey valve engineers the use of their orbital butt welding process
for
HEPI piping. Marcel is completing a draft piping drawing, for
internal
review and presentation to the Consultancy Board. Oddvar has completed
a
schematic of the valve test manifold's auxiliary tanks, valves and
hoses and
we are working with the shop that manufactured the manifolds to assemble
the
various pieces into a deliverable system.
E2E Input Optics Modeling ((Findley, Rogillio and Yoshida)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the last several weeks, we built and tested an e2e box to simulate
the
Mode Matching Telescopes' motion and the resultant optical mode
contamination. This box takes a time siries of HAM table motion
(translational motion in the X-arm direction, Y-arm direction and
rotational motion around the vertical axis) as input, and computes
each
optic's (SM, MMT1, MMT2, MMT3) position, yaw and pitch motion. Using
these
optics' motion, the box computes the resultant optical mode contamination
into higher order modes after each of the optics. In the weekly report
on
Oct. 3, we reported that the optical mode contamination could be about
1%
for a realsitic HAM table motion. We found that this 1% level fluctuation
was caused by unrealistically large HAM table motion (due to a software
error in the box), and therefore the statement in the Oct. 2 weekly
report
was incorrect. We have also found that the intrapolation that the current
e2e uses for optical phase calculation becomes inaccurate when the
amplitude of optic's yaw motion is on the order of 10^-6 or higher.
no report
Since our last weekly report, we have compared our measured noise floor with an estimate of the expected thermoelastic noise in sapphire. We expect that we will be able to resolve this noise source in sapphire over more than a decade in frequency with our existing sensitivity. Therefore we began preparations for making a sapphire measurement. We vented and opened the TNI chamber, removed the fused silica masses from the south arm cavity and replaced them with two sapphire mirrors. This included replacing the 6-mil suspension wires with 8-mil wires. We suspended both masses, balanced both, did preliminary alignment, and successfully implemented active damping on the output mass.
LASTI Report (Sarin, McInnes, Mason, Allen, Mittleman, Ottaway)
EPI HAM VME Conversion
Pradeep closed the feedback loops on the HEPI-HAM using the VME control
interface. It needed tracking down some missing/reversed cable
connectionsn and getting all the signs right.
Now the loops are stable - the filters are the same as in dSpace.
Not much isolation performance yet - will work on improving the filters
next.
EPI HAM Control loops
Rich got sensor blending to work in the x direction with reasonably
high
bandwidth.
LASTI Pre-isolator retrofit
Six vacuum compatible geophones have been assembled and filled with
neon
gas. Neon was used as it is an easily identifiable gas if any leakage
occurs.
Unfortunately a contamination issue cause a probem with one of the
assemblies. We will report more on this when we understand the problem
further.
Adaptive Thermal compensator
The laser mounting plates and masks have arrived. The remaining machined
parts to mount the acousto-optic modulator are scheduled to arrive
tommorrow.
Solidworks Design
We have upgraded to Solidworks 2004 with PDM Works in order to be
compatible with Livingston for the pre-isolator design and to transfer
drawings easier.
Phase Camera Electronics
Three boards are stuffed and are being taken to Hanford for soldering
Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Weekly Physics meeting
------------------------
Hiro presented some results obtained by Virgo simulation people
on their suspension system and optics.
Virgo Visit
-------------
Hiro visited Virgo from Nov.10th through 15th. The purpose was to
discuss about the modeling of IFO. LIGO has e2e and Virgo has siesta.
The major issue of the simulation of LIGO and adv. LIGO is the need
for an efficient
and fast simulation of fields with complicated beam profile in the
time
domain (imperfect optics, flat-tops, etc.). The siesta software has
an FFT code built in to be used in the time
domain, but it does not have much sophistication with regard to speeding
up the
calculation. Virgo uses this option only for validation of the
modal model code. Their code has mirror map support included in the
time
domain simulation, which was one option we have been considering to
support.
Several common issues between projects for the IFO simulation
have been identified. One agreement was to organize a small workshop
about
the simulation sometime the beginning of next year.
Virgo group is in the process of designing the full IFO locking, using
Matt's logic as a prototype. In the middle of December, Matteo and
Lisa,
who are working on the decking design, will visit LHO and Caltech to
discuss
this issue.
Hiro talked with Andreas Freise to discuss about alignment control and
frequency domain model, Finesse and Twiddle.
40m modeling
----------------
(Hiro) Using twiddle, Hiro is calculating the signals of the 40m dual
recycling system to assist Seiji to understand the error signal behavior.
Linear Noise Model
------------------------
(Matt) Finished optimizing LinLIGO's numerical transfer function class.
Made matlab function for reading conlog files. Created
HashCode class
for E2E FUNC hashing.
FFT, E2E & FFT's Matlab interface
-----------------------------------
(Biplab) FFT's sign differences with E2E at field amplitude level are
traced
to various differences in notation, definition of cavity-length
and resonance
condition, reference point for ports etc - very simple things
which may work
together to create a number of sign ambiguities. No Physics or
Code bug has been found.
FFT's Matlab interface is producing satisfactory decomposition
of FFT's
output beams (represented in a square grid of 128 X 128 pixels)
in
Hermite-Gaussian basis. Also finished validation of the near-field
signals
for Length and alignment control calculated from FFT output beams
by this
Matlab code. Validation for far field alignment signals is in
progress.
Code development and maintenance
----------------------------------
Melody, Matt and Hiro had a meeting to review and finalize the code
structure of the C++ version of FUNC. Method using hashing was proposed
by Matt which simplifies the correspondence between the FUNC
instance and the source code created. The primitive will be finalized
by the end of this year.
(Melody) C++ FUNC:
Work is underway to provide more functionality for the C++ based
FUNC.
Incorportating Matt's hashCode routines to find the FUNC's corresponding
shared library object. Implementing the shared object's
retrieval of the
values from the macro database.
LIGO Data Analysis System
Software Systems (Maros for Blackburn)
The managerAPI has been modified to delay the assignment of a jobid
until the job
has been validated and ready to be placed in the job queue.
Much work has been done in the mpiAPI related to node issues:
1. PR 2218 - a given physical node (but
never node0) can be assigned as both wrapper master and slave on the same
job.
2. PR 2124 - mpi deletes all the nodes
except for node0 on a standalone box
3. PR 2045 - Active jobs interrupted
by adding nodes to a live system
4. PR 2010 - Unable to cleanly remove/add
nodes to a busy LDAS system
5. PR 2005 - resource variable ::N_WRAPPER_MASTERS_ON_INTERNAL
not implemented
Functions for managing resource variables were added to the genericAPI.
Among other things, these functions ensure variables are set in the proper
resource file and are not duplicated amongst the resource files.
A problem with SAMQFS was diagnosed as being the reason why the diskcacheAPI
was not being properly updated. The diskcacheAPI issue was directly related
to SAMQFS not updating some of the metadata for the file system. The condition
is rare, but once it happens, the metadata information is not updated until
a directory listing is performed on the affected directory.
Work continues in the cntlmonAPI and the cmonClient to render database
views of numeric columns. The data is retrieved by submitting a getMetaData
user command and parsing the resulting ILwd into a form appropriate for
cmonClient to render a histogram plot.
The eventmonAPI was modified to prevent a potential race condition if
a user stages more objects than what putStandAlone user command is expecting.
This api was also enhanced to bundle multiple mdd in the C++ layer where
it can happen in a memory efficient manor.
The latest version of xerces-c-2.3.0 and lam-7.0.3 were tested on the
tandem system to verify that they are drop-in replacements to their previous
versions.
System level testing continues to verify the changes that have been
committed to CVS.
Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
* Set up testbed filesystem to try to get to the bottom of the directory
mtime not updating problem at LHO. A somewhat longer process
than it
should have been due to a DOA FC HBA.
* Got HPSS running again, started E7 data flowing into SAM-QFS again.
* Worked on getting releaser behavior under control, found some files
pinned to disk that shouldn't be.
* Continued working on scripts to automate transfer of data between
the
observatories and CIT via SAM-QFS tape.
* Imported this week's LLO tapes, started FrChecking them (ongoing).
(Hari Pulapaka)
* Deleted the metadata for S3 LLO L1 here at CIT and at MIT, also
deleted the LRC mappings for the same.
* Updated rls configuration here at CIT to include psu's hydra in it.
* Monitoring the publishing of S3 L3 data at LLO, LHO and S3 L2 and
L1
data at CIT. Also monitoring the Condor installation for any
problems.
* Updated the LDR installation at CIT, MIT, LLO and LHO.
(Al Wilson)
* Had another memory problem with dataserver in the dev system. Replaced
the
dimm and all is well.
* The gateway machine on dev (sun280R) gig-e card died. No link lights
but the
card active light was on. Replaced and all is well.
* M71 locked up again. I will add the new xfree rpm and see what happens.
MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
* Swapping board on first pcraid.
* Building new cmonClient to turn on nodes 45-88.
* Received V880 CPU's from LHO.
Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
* Mounted fb0 to gateway and dataserver. Configuring Ben's script to
use
it as a backup for fb2.
Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Charlton:
* Have organised re-generation of Livingston Level 1 RDS data because
of
new additions to the LLO channel list, requested by Joe Giaime at the
LSC meeting. We are about half-way done with catching up, should be
up to date by COB Friday.
Mendell:
I have generated SFTs on ~7 days of S3 data at LHO and LLO to
investigate the pulsar injections. Note that the injected pulsar
signals are much much weaker than the calibration lines, and monitoring
from the control room already shows that the injections are what expect
in the broadest terms. I am working with the PULG group to verify
that
the injected signals are what we expect in detail, and that no unseen
anomalies are occurring.
Yakushin:
1) On the burst face-to-face meeting last Friday, Sergey and I suggested
to create a set of frames with software injections for all
the burst algorithms to use to be able to compare their performance
under the same conditions.
I am currently debugging the scripts for generating those frames.
2) Running various simulations in preparation for waveburst presentation
at GWDAW.
Weinstein:
- Gave talk at LSC meeting on burst injections
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ajw/bursts/injectS3/G030599-00.pdf
- continued work on burst injections
General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Tracked down compromised laptop that was probing
networks
-Working to tweak NAT router firewall so we don't
get shutdown again.
-Built 2 replacement PC's for labs
-Helping user backup pc(s)
Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Most of the last week has been spent preparing for and then helping
out
with the NSF review. We set up a new NAT router specifically
for use
with the wireless network in the auditorium. Also, we temporarily
moved
a printer into the auditorium area. This will be returned to
the
upstairs office area next week.
-Helped Allen with setting up the VPN software and the updates to the
Pcard software.
-Looking into an issue with large UDP packets between sand at LHO and
delaronde at LLO.
-Still working with LSU on coordinating the GigE internet connection.
The most recent proposed date for this has been Dec. 15th, which is
the
day before I hop on a plane for vacation. We have asked LSU to
try and
push this date to the week before, but I am waiting on a response.
Charlie McMahon is at a conference this week so we probably will not
hear anything till next week.
-Bellsouth dropped the ball again today on the ISDN line. We
are working
with them again to get this done.
(Larry)
-Worked with Shannon on the NSF setup. Overall things worked out well.
Our
biggest problem we discovered is that the DNS table for the site has
some
mistakes which should be corrected by the Caltech group within the
next few
days.
-Also, thanks to Cleveland and Mike for getting the computer sent out
at the
last minute. The unit was needed and used.
Just as a lesson from both conferences, having and extra computer or
two around
is a good thing. Also, most people are using the memory sticks so all
of the
support computers for the conferences should have at least Windows2000
as their
OS.
-Performed a couple of minor scans on the network and checked out a
few boxes
that had some problems. The PC problems have been resolved and Shannon
is going
to check out some of the suspected problems found from the network
scan. Most of
the problems appear to be false positives from the scan.
-Charlie McMahon seemed pretty positive about getting the network installed
but
if they can't get it in well before Dec. 15th we may have to wait until
after
the first of the year.
Hanford:
(Christine)
- Followed up on two software purchases that haven't arrived as
promised.
- Tried to download MS Office 2003 from the Caltech ITS site, it's
taken
multiple tries during the week to get 68% downloaded. The connection
goes away after a few hours, don't know the cause but this is not
working for large downloads. I've put in a trouble report with
ITS.
- Lisa is on site to upgrade and improve our e-mail server.
(Larry)
-Received some positive feedback from people that had attended the
LSC. Overall
things went well.
The teleconferencing using the webcam went over well. Richard M. and
crew did a
good job on the camera installation and setup for the conference. It
is
something we are going to look into to see if it is economically feasible
to do
at other locations.
The VRVS setups also worked out well, however, we did not use the VNC
capability
like we should have.
-Spent most of the down time helping users setup their computers and
print
services as well as installing applications for different people.
The DCC portion of the support worked as planned with a minor glitch
in some s/w
applications missing a couple of utilities but no show stoppers.
CIT:
(Mike)
-Updated and loaded additional software on a loaner laptop for Ryan
Tischler.
-Burned NTSRV's end of month ghost images to DVD.
-Worked on the printers up on the 6th floor of Millikan & 3rd floor
of W/B.
This included swapping out toner cartridges, drum kits and clearing
out
paper jams & print queues.
-Added additional hardware to Janeen Romie's laptop. This included
a
Orinoco wireless due to here having problems with her internal wireless
card.
-Loaded and updated OS patches on a loaner laptop for Larry Wallace
to ship
out to LLO for NSF review.
-Loaded a loaner laptop for Ken Mailand this consisted of loading GC
software and additional engineering packages. Ken returned this laptop
saying that it would not boot. I took a quick look at this laptop and
I
could not find anything wrong with it.
I am loading a more updated laptop to loan Ken Mailand.
-Worked on updating all of the NTSRV's with security/firewall updates.
-Finished up loading an updated PC for Cleveland Mak and transferred
over
his data, loaded printers/scanner and swapped out his old PC.
-Loaded additional adobe plug-ins on Linda Turner and Cleveland Mak's
computers.
-Fixed a scanner problem for Donna Tomlinson. This turned out to
be a driver problem. I downloaded the current drivers and reinstalled
the
scanner with updated drivers.
-I installed additional software (math type) for one of Riccardo's
students, Maddalena Mantovani up on the 2nd floor of W/B.
-This week again, I had a lot of onsite user support that included
software, hardware & networking issues that I had to take care
of.
(Lisa)
- Spent most of the week preparing for my trip to Hanford to build
them a
new mailserver.
- Helping people who have been upgraded to redhat 9 figure out why
their
e-mail doesn't work.
- Worked on a problem with the certificate based relaying. I
know why the
problem is occurring, but it will require a recompile to fix it.
(Veronica)
- LSC website: Posted the November Meeting presentations as they kept
arriving. Thanks to the teamwork with the DCC, most talks were on the
web
by the end of the meeting. Tech support for the meeting. Posted a bulk
of
MOUs at the same time. Updated other webpages of the LSC website.
- LIGO website: Prepared a high-resolution image for the Astronomy
magazine. Updated various pages. Working on the webpages for the Aspen
GWADW.
- CaJAGWR website: Captured and processed a video of the last talk.
User
support.
- Project Science: User support.
(Larry)
-Spent some time cleaning up a few items remotely. Mostly user accounts
and a
licensing issue. Some e-mail filtering work but very limited.
-Continued working different procurement issues.
(Bruce)
* (BS) Systems Work:
(Past two weeks)
- More work on Ilog upgrade to
implement entry editing features.
- Installation and uninstallation
of new Ilog after problems.
- Debugging HTML/XML conflict
in log files.
- Reinstallation of new Ilog at
Caltech site.
Tail of last period I was involved with reporting
on the LIGO TM scatter/loss results at the LSC.
Since then I have been reviewing and studying the
performance possibilities and design of a LIGO I
OMC (output Mode cleaner). And interesting aspect of
this is that it had been extensively modeled as a facet
of B. Bochner's FFT studies.
From: "Erika D'Ambrosio" <ambrosio@ligo.caltech.edu>
I prepared a Mathematica script for Barbara
to use, for the design
of an optical system which correct the aberration of a laser beam.
Since the solution is a two dimensional space, I picked up a few examples
and discussed them with Barbara to train her on geometrical optics
while teaching her how Mathematica works
too.
If Phil agrees on one of the solutions I thought were sensible, he should
order the lenses for our prototype.
PHOTON DRIVE R&D
Awaiting replacement of the 500 mW laser.
Maddalena
Working the electronic part for the LF MGAS seismic attenuation system.
For the cryogenic sent again data file
to the Quantum Design Company to debug the strange behavior of the PPMS
using the mechanical pump. I also tried to run the ChiaraVanni
and Mike Hall's sequences to compare the results, but there were some problems
because the PPMS software does not recognized some commands (may be there
is a problem with the software).
Enrico
Finally writing the report on the work made
during his stay in Caltech. Discovered that he made a lot of
work and writing it all will take some work.
Alessandro
Debugging and improving the USM machine.Working
on TAMA suspension production run.
Riccardo
Working on various writeups, playing
with Maddalena.
For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu