Weekly Report for Week Ending December 4, 2003


 Exec. Comm. Agenda
Highlights
LSC
Administration
Hanford Observatory
Livingston Observatory
MIT
Caltech
Detector
40 Meter
TNI
LASTI
Data Analysis
Adv. LIGO Development
Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  December 8, 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)
  5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
  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


Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was held Thursday, December 4, 2003.  The following ussues were discussed:

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

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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


DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

> From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>

ACTIVITY


12/04/03 Packages Faxes
In 43 40
Out 26 45

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.


COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Kaufman, Salone)

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

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

From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu> From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>
SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)
LSC MOUs / Attachment Updates and Progress Reports

ACIGA:

Carleton: MSURG: Penn State: From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

>Dorothy Lloyd >From: Ryan Tischler <rtischle@ligo.caltech.edu>

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.

Advanced LIGO Request
Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes. Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
Cost Book Tool.
Development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guidebook continues.

 
 

Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.


Budgets (Lindquist)

We continue to work the FY 2004 budgets.  The next meeting is with Gary on Monday.


Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)

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


Human Resources (Akutagawa)

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


Quality/Safety (Tyler)

>From: Bill Tyler <tyler@ligo.caltech.edu>



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


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

The holiday weekend was good for both IFOs, allowing lengthy continuous
science mode stretches of 26 hours (H1) and 22 hours (H2).  The H2 duty
cycle was up during the last week, 74% compared to a S3 cumulative figure
of 58%.  H1 held at its cumulative 63%.  H1 and H2 ranges are typical (2.5
and 0.9Mpc, respectively).

Pulsar hardware injections, on since the beginning of the run, were turned off
in stages.  The loudest pulsar was shut off on Wed Nov 26th, while the rest
were shut down on Dec 1.  Some weaker pulsars are expected to be restarted
on Dec 22 for the duration of the run.  Energetic burst and inspiral waveforms
were injected on Wednesday.

Comparisons between GPS and atomic clocks show a small, steady drift of
about 50ns/day between the two.  This is thought to be acceptably small,
attributable to the atomic clock, within it's tolerance, and eminently
correctable.

Cumulative science-mode segments are now available online with a latency
of only a few minutes.

At opportune times, PEM injections were made in the LVEA.  As part of these
investigations, the current ambient noise level at 50Hz was estimated to
produce displacement noise at roughly the SRD.  More injections occured in
the outbuildings, with the conclusion, 'please don't drop hammers in the Y-end
station'.   The IFO was tellingly sensitive to impulses in EY, compared to
other outbuildings.

4K IFO
The microseism was blamed for much of the downtime of the interferometers
this past week.  However, a closer look does necessarily support the anecdotes.
AS_Q fluctuations were investigated, here and here.

It was suggested that the stability in the 2k range compared to that of the 4k
is due to its spectrum being dominated by (stationary) lines, in the region of
interest.

2K IFO
Early last week it was observed that the AS3I_CORR signal was dominated by
motion at 1Hz.  Some ASC loop shaping was attempted to knock this down,
but as this did not help AS3I situation, AS3 was removed from AS_Q, and
now we are running on AS2 only.

DAQ
Slow channels from the EDCU had spurious values at times; this is being
investigated.
 


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


---------------------------------------------------------------------
S3
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Continued problems maintaining lock in L1. The dominant losses of duty
factor have been logging (as usual), thunderstorm activity and
exceptionally high microseism.
 

However, we are also experiencing stability problems with our WFS
system. Due to the compressed commissioning time before the run, we did
not arrive at a suitable angular control configuration for our recycling
cavity. Without these degrees of freedom under wavefront control,
sensing for the other degrees of freedom falls victim to interference
from their fluctuations. The current theory is that this might explain
our sporadic mysterious "phase wander" in the otherwise robust WFS1
sensor, which is controlling differential arm cavity alignment. We are
discussing a proposal to rig new controls for the recycling mirror and
differential ITM alignment, even though this investment
will absorb some (scarce and precious) locking time. An intensive
analysis offline by Rana Adhikari and Gregg Harry indicates there
may be a clean solution that eluded us before.
 

Poorly-understood impulsive events also appear to be unlocking the
machine even in the absence of seismic or alignment anomalies. We
believe we have evidence of high-speed bursts in the mode cleaner or PSL
controls (or the laser itself), but because they are intermittent we have
not been able to catch them in the act and isolate them. With the
interferometer proper shut down, we have observed spontaneous unlocking
of the mode cleaner as frequently as several times per hour. We are
concentrating all available resources on this problem.
 
 

Safety/security (Rich Riesen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
No significant entries for this week.
 

LDAS (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Debugging scripts for burst MDC frame production. Testing the frames
using waveburst.
 

2) Working on line removal algorithm for waveburst.
 
 

General Computing (Roddy)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Implemented a new backup system for our main file server and our web
server.  The machines back up to our RAID server and keeps several
versions on spinning media.  This will later be implemented to back up
to tape also.  This process seems to be working really well.
 

Working with Allen and Excel to plan the changes to the computer user's
room so that we can move the GC servers out of  the communications room.
 

Trying to get a problem fixed with ITS at Caltech with the
software.caltech.edu download site.  Downloads almost always fail from
this site.  I have tried to get it set up so that I do not have to use
the VPN to download software.  They claim that that has been done,
however I still cannot download from Livingston.  When I use the VPN the
download is allowed, however it almost always fails.  I have had to use
some other means to get the software most of the time.
 

Applied several security patches to some Linux boxes on the network.
This is to fix the root exploit that was announced for the Linux kernel.
 

Still working with LSU on the GigE network upgrade and also waiting on a
response from them on the UDP packet problems between Hanford and
Livingston.
 

Working with RuthAnne at Caltech on setting up several ITS/VPN accounts.
 

Most of Monday was spent working with the Pcard software.  Seems that my
version of the Oracle software that was provided by Caltech is corrupt.
Either that, or it will not install with the latest service pack
installed on Windows 2000.  It took quite a while to get a copy from
oracle.com that would work with the Pcard software from Caltech.
However, the freely downloadable Oracle clients (version 8.x.x) seem to
work.  It is a newer version than what Caltech provided us with.  Also
looking into the mac client that Caltech has.  There are two people with
a Mac at Livingston with a Pcard.
 
 
 

LLO Seismic Retrofit and L1 Detector TLC (Rich Abbott)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Working on HEPI electronics with Ben and Flavio.  The first boards will
go to the board house tomorrow as part of the big build.  Ordered 50
chassis yesterday for the electronics to live in.  The priority is to
complete the components for the hydraulic pump and support electronics
first and then to complete the remainder of the electronics as a
simultaneous massive block.  Excel has done a good job on the pump
controller box and has responded to some changes as they arose during
the design.  I anticipate they will be done within two weeks.
 

LLO Seismic Retrofit (Ben Abbott)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I am working with Rich on the HEPI system.  I am working out the
cabling issues involved in making HEPI conform with the new RFI
protocols.  Some interesting points include using media converters on
the ethernet signals so that the ethernet can be brought into the rack
and crates on an optical fiber then changed back to copper inside the
VME crate, and the use of a custom designed back panel with RFI
feedthroughs into the crates.
 
 

LLO Seismic retrofit (Kern)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Welded assembly of the first article actuator was completed and successfully
leak checked last week. 3 more are being assembled.  The shop manufacturing
the balance of parts for the remaining 84 sets is on track to deliver them
in ~2 weeks. Working on completing the final bill of materials for HEPI, and
ordering much miscellaneous hardware and minor purchased parts.  Ordered
thru-hole load cells and displays for the springs. Ordered our custom 4-way
valve for the bypass tree. Working with Ken Mailand on the pump station and
manifolds, and we've asked a few local shops for estimates to fabricate the
pump station frames. Striving to complete the Mechanical Installation RFQ
for piping installation.  Mike, Rus, Allen and Rich A began a critical look
at the installation schedule and staffing requirements.
 

E2E Input Optics Modeling (T. Findley, N. Jamal, K. Rogillo, and S. Yoshida)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We had a productive week. H. Yamamoto installed the most recent version of
e2e. This enables us to calculate optical power coupling to higher order modes
with much higher accuracy. T. Findley calculated the power coupling to higher
order modes due to motions of MMT optics. When a realistic mechanical
disturbance was given to the suspension points of all MMT suspensions, the
calcualtion showed that the MMT3 output beam could have as high as 0.5% of
intermittent coupling to higher order modes (typically for ~1 sec, two or
three times in 10 sec). K. Rogillio continued the analysis of HAM table top
motions. Nafis Jamal joined our group. He made an e2e box to analytically
calculate optical power coupling to higher order modes for given translational
and/or rotational misalignment of the incident beam to an optical cavity. This
box will be used to verify the above-mentioned numerical results obtained by
T. Findley's calculation.


Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)


no report


40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)




Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


Since our last report, we have discovered that our Sapphire mirrors do
not meet design spec. The coatings were applied to the wrong sides of
the mirrors. The AR coatings were applied to the concave sides, and the
HR coatings to the flat, wedged back sides, making it impossible to form
a resonant cavity with these mirrors. We contacted the vendor (REO), and
they have agreed to correct the problem. As of this writing, however, we
do not have an estimate of how long this will take.
 

We removed the two Sapphire optics already installed and began
reinstalling the fused-silica masses, so that we can perform additional
measurements on them while the Sapphire optics are being recoated.


LASTI (Ottaway)


no report


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


--------------------------------------------------------------
 

SIMULATION AND MODELING (Bhawal)
 

Weekly Physics meeting
------------------------
Luca, Matt, Biplab discussed about status of interferometers at LHO
and noise curves and Matt's linear noise model.
 

Linear Noise Model
------------------------
(Matt)
 Incorporated new conlog and filter file readers into LinLIGO to
 completely reproduce the state of digital system, as well as the digital
 settings that are applied to hardware filters.  Next release of LinLIGO,
 due in two weeks, will include full H1 model with CM servo.
 

FFT, E2E & FFT's Matlab interface
-----------------------------------
(Biplab)
  Submitted a technical note on "E2E and FFT: How to compare results"
  to DCC with LIGO document no. T030284-00-E.
 

  WFS signals have been calculated for various heated states of interferometer
  using FFT and the matlab interface code. A bug in the newly modified FFT
  code is fixed and differences with E2E in the final hot state have been
  sorted out.
 

Code development and maintenance
----------------------------------
(Melody)
C++ FUNC:
 Work is underway to provide more functionality for the C++ based FUNC.
 Incorportated Matt's hashCode routines to find and validate the FUNC's
 corresponding shared library object.  Implemented the shared object's
 retrieval of the values from the macro database.
 
 Currently working on linking the libAdlibMM.a archive to the shared library
 and using the system's configuration options in the compile and linking
 process.
 
 

LIGO DATA ANALYSIS SYSTEM SOFTWARE (Blackburn)
 

The frame query option used to identify uniquely the data set
of interest in an LDAS job is being reworked to resolve some of
the ambiguities seen in user requests during the science run.
All queries that have presented problems to users could be
restated in the frame query option to remove the ambiguies and
acheive the desired data set for input to the jobs. This is
aimed at making sure the dataset requested is always right.
The rework is expected to effect code changes in both the
frameAPI and the diskCacheAPI.
 

The controlMonitorAPI is being enhanced to allow graphical
visualization of integer and floating point data in the LDAS
database as timeseries and as histograms. The draft code has
been demonstrated and reviewed by the group. I expect this to
be a tremendously useful tool for monitoring scientific results
which are stored in the database. This functionality required
a minor change in the database table design which is transparent
to LDAS and the search codes.
 

We were able to compile the TCL/TK interpreter with optimizations
this week on the LDAS-DEV (development)) system. This significantly
improved the performance of the single threaded diskCacheAPI (about
a factor of two). But it also allowed us to identify that the major
bottleneck for data pipeline jobs is due to this single threaded
implementation of the diskCacheAPI. The original design carried a
multi-threaded version of the diskCacheAPI, but time constraints
required us to implement this first as a single threaded application
to support the science runs. We have begun the rework necessary to
migrate functionality into C++ to enable multi-threaded support,
but the pressure to get the 1.0.0 release of LDAS out ASAP may
preclude having this in that next release of the software.
 

After running for one week with the STLPort Standard Template
Library, it now looks like we have only a small memory leak, if
any, in the frameAPI. We we conduct code reviews of the frameAPI
and frameCPP use of the String class to see if there is some clean
up we have overlooked, but the potential leak is very small and not
considered to be a show stopper for the next release. We have also
made changes to the software configuration scripts to support the
use of STLPort with and without its internal debugging features.
We also determined that the lseek() function calls which impact
the I/O rates in the frameAPI are still present with the STLPort
code and are currently investigating a solution that is based on
a derived class over the iostream class to manage more metadata
and remove the excess lseek() calls.
 

Developed a system level test to compare the differences between
a stochastic analysis using RAW / RDS / NDAS frames. The RAW and
RDS frames gave identical results. The NDAS frames gave slightly
different results which required further investigations. It was
determined that the input data into the stochastic DSO agreed at
the level of floating point presision and the deviation was due
to sensitivities in the DSO to these small variations. The data-
base N-Tuples test has been updated to work with the newest LAL
release and now passes again. A new waveburst DSO test has been
added to the nightly LDAS system tests.
 

The generation and replication of RDS frames at the observatories,
Caltech and Tier II centers continues to run smoothly. A power
outage at LLO two weekends ago require some hands on effort to
get everything going again. Also the HPSS group at CACR opened
a door on the tape storage silo which triggered a previously un-
seen failure in SAM/QFS that interupted RDS generation and
replication at Caltech for about half a day. RDS frames feel to
about 6 hours behind schedule as a result of this failure, but
once it was traced and the associated Sun Servers were rebooted,
RDS generation and replication quickly caught up.
 

LIGO DATA ANALYSIS SYSTEM HARDWARE (Anderson)
 

Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
 

* Got HPSS running again (and again and again), finished pulling E7 data
  into SAM-QFS, started getting older engineering run data.
 

* Continue to try to understand the workings of SAM's releaser.
 

* Did lots of attribute maintenance in /archive.
 

* Did lots of work on scripts to automate transfer of data between the
  observatories and CIT via SAM-QFS tape.
 

* Received more L0 data from observatories--so far every file that should
  be on the tapes is and can be successfully staged and FrCheck'd.
 

* Working on a procedure to manage tape 'MEDIA ERROR' conditions in SAM.
  Have dealt with (by hand) several occurences of files failing to stage
  because the tape they're on is marked 'MEDIA ERROR'.
 

* Helped with recovery after LLO power outage (mainly checking QFS
  filesystem).
 
 

(Hari Pulapaka)
 

* Installed Ganglia on CIT cluster.
 

* Monitored LDR at CIT, LLO, LHO and MIT. There were some problems, had
  to restart LDR and its associated programs a couple of times.
 

* Added accounts for Rejean Dupuis under the group account lsc-uk, so
  that he can use the Condor pool.
 

* Updated the condor_dagman program on ldas-grid.
 
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Replace video card and monitor on m71. This was done to cure digital
  sparkles and not the memory over run problem. It might cure it due to
  a new driver being loaded for X.
 
* Set up BB to monitor IDE raid drives. This will check the health and well
  being of these systems.
 
* Change print queue servers on desktop machines.
 
* Added users for monitoring jobs on LDAS.
 
 

Hanford
-------
 

(Ben Johnson)
 

* minute and second trend data is now being archived at both
  observatories, as well as the DMT trends (_not_ archiving the spectrum
  archiver directories though).
 

* Working with Daniel Sigg on smoothing out the user experience of
  using dtt/dmt/etc. with data on samfs filesystems.
 

* t3-26 is now ready to be used as a backup filesystem. It is mounted
  as /backups on oldmetaserver (the Sun E450). Working on getting the old
  backup script working with our current configuration.
 

* fixed big brother temperature script. It now reports all temperatures
  on the V880 and the 280R servers.
 
 

DATA ANALYSIS ACTIVITIES (Lazzarini)
 

(Greg Mendell)
 

1) Mike Landry and I have started writing a version of our StackSlide
code to run under Condor and the Grid.
 

2) Used dtt, the knownpulsardemod DSO and the stackslide DSO to
investigate the injected pulsars in the S3 data.  I made plots using dtt
of the power spectrum and coherence for AS_Q and ETMX_EXC_DAQ for H1 and
H2.  A band width of .005 Hz, Hanning windows with 50% overlap, and 10
averages were used in all cases. The xml files that can reproduce these
plots in dtt are in /opt/CDS/g/dtt/gmendell on the LHO cds network.  All
the pulsars looked pretty much as we expected, with nothing seen that
would have an effect on the other analyses.  However, to be conservative
and address any unexpected concerns that might come up, the PULG group
has switched off all the injected pulsars for now.  These will remain
off for the next three weeks, to allow comparisons between periods of
injections and no injections to directly verify that the effects of the
injects are exactly as we expect.
 

(Igor Yakushin)
 

1) Debugging scripts for burst MDC frame production. Testing the frames
using waveburst.
 

2) Working on line removal algorithm for waveburst.
 

(Peter Shawhan)
 

1) More veto studies for the S2 inspiral analysis
 

2) Reviewing the Externally Triggered Burst Search
 

3) Hardware signal injection studies
 

4) Set up software to update S3 segment lists every 5 minutes, and added
links to the main S3 web page
 
 

GENERAL COMPUTING (Wallace)
 

MIT:
(Keith)
Nothing to report
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Implemented a new backup system for our main file server and our web
 server.  The machines back up to our RAID server and keeps several
 versions on spinning media.  This will later be implemented to back up
 to tape also.  This process seems to be working really well.
-Working with Allen and Excel to plan the changes to the computer user's
 room so that we can move the GC servers out of  the communications
 room.
-Trying to get a problem fixed with ITS at Caltech with the
 software.caltech.edu download site.  Downloads almost always fail from
 this site.  I have tried to get it set up so that I do not have to use
 the VPN to download software.  They claim that that has been done,
 however I still cannot download from Livingston.  When I use the VPN
 the download is allowed, however it almost always fails.  I have had to
 use some other means to get the software most of the time.
-Applied several security patches to some Linux boxes on the network.
 This is to fix the root exploit that was announced for the Linux
 kernel.
-Still working with LSU on the GigE network upgrade and also waiting on
 a response from them on the UDP packet problems between Hanford and
 Livingston.
-Working with RuthAnne at Caltech on setting up several ITS/VPN accounts.
-Most of Monday was spent working with the Pcard software.  Seems that
 my version of the Oracle software that was provided by Caltech is
 corrupt.  Either that, or it will not install with the latest service
 pack installed on Windows 2000.  It took quite a while to get a copy
 from oracle.com that would work with the Pcard software from Caltech.
 However, the freely downloadable Oracle clients (version 8.x.x) seem to
 work.  It is a newer version than what Caltech provided us with.  Also
 looking into the mac client that Caltech has.  There are two people
 with a Mac at Livingston with a Pcard.
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Worked with Lisa and Larry to get rid of spam e-mail being sent to
  people at ligo-wa through their ligo e-mail addresses.
- Put together an FY04 expenses report for Fred and myself.
- Purchased the latest version of Exceed software and the rest of the
  wireless AP upgrades.
- Setup network hubs in one of the conference rooms for the PAC meeting.
- Last week I setup the new color printer and generated installation
  instructions.
- Troubleshooting a problem with one of the old wireless access
  points.
- General user support.
 

CIT:
(Mike)
-Loaded another laptop for Ken Mailand with engineering software.
 The other laptop I loaned him was to slow, for the type of work
 he has to do.
-Worked up on Millikan 6th floor, regarding a printing problem.
 After spending many hours fixing this printer, the control panel
 flashes new error message (needs maintenance kit installed.) I
 called High Performance for this.
-Cleaned up Calum Torrie's computer, for it was infected with a virus.
-Updated all our Ansys 7.1 users with current Ansys & windows patches.
-Swapped out a network switch up in Gary Sanders/Cindy/Ryan's office.
 This was to add additional network ports for that area.
-Loaded additional software on Linda Turner's laptop.
-Loaded a VRVS computer for ECR. This included installing additional
hardware & software. This is still in testing mode.
-Loaded a laptop for Ben Abbott to take on travel. This laptop
 needed additional engineering software loaded besides General
 Computing software. Plus I this laptop needed to be loaded with XP
 pro.
-Ran end of month ghost backups on all NTSRV's.
- Reloaded three laptops for the loaner pool.
-(PICTOR)This server was having some problems crashing (blue screen)
 due to OS errors. After rebooting I looked at the system logs and
 notice multiple error messages (D1410D failed to start Event ID:7000)
 I did a registry search for this and found the D1410D keys, which I
 deleted. I rebooted and everything seems to be running ok. The error
 messages are gone and this server is back up and running again.
 

(Lisa)
- Worked on a nis+ problem with the mail aliases.  There seems to be
  a problem with getting the nis+ logs checkpointed, but more testing
  needs to be done on this.
- Spent quite a lot of time in the 40meter.  Got the first 450 running
  for them. Moved all of their critical data from the failing disk to
  the 450.  Redesigned all of the nfs mounts.  Propagated changes through
  5 machines.  Worked on a hardware problem with their gateway server.
  The onboard ethernet was unable to acquire sync with the switch.  I
  swapped out the existing hardware for another u30.
- Looked at an nfs problem between ran and halfdome.
- Did monthly backups.
- Before thanksgiving, I was in hanford working on a new mailserver for
  them.
 

(Veronica)
- LIGO: Working on the Aspen 2004 Winter conference webpages. Posted
  various updates to the LIGO website.
  Working with George Stokes and the rest of the computer group on the
  upgrade of the DCC database.
  Prepared a high-resolution image of Kip Thorne for a science publisher.
  Encoded videos of the presentations made at the last NSF review, burned
  them on a CD for distribution and prepared for streaming. It was later
  decided that they not be posted, but it provided another good opportunity
  to run and smooth out the capturing/encoding process.
- LSC website: Posting a bulk of recently arrived MOUs and some late
  presentations from the November meeting, as well as updates to the
  website.
- CaJAGWR website: Taped and encoded the video of the last seminar. The
  video is ready to be posted for streaming. Updated the website and
  provided some user support.
 

(Bruce Sears)
* Systems Work:                       (5.0 days)
   - Ilog upgrade to implement entry editing features.
 

(Larry)
-Spent time working on a number of procurement issues. The s/w
 licensing has been renewed for Matlab, the Trisync s/w has been
 upgraded to 5 seats, the ligo.org domain name has been reserved
 for the next 5 years. Working on a number of different laptop
 purchases.
-Repaired a couple of printers. There are a couple of printers
 that are worn out and will be replaced within the next few months.
-In the process of rebuilding a couple of PC's.
-Worked out a number of e-mail issues. Lisa and I have been
 spending a number of hours each day, resolving false positives
 and adding systems to be blocked.
-Helped out the DCC with a couple of issues. There are a few
 logistical items to be looked at as they standardize things in
 the group.
-The regular help in setting up accounts and resolving different
 user issues.
 


Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)



 

Advanced LIGO and supporting R&D

Seismic Isolation

From: Larry Jones <ljones@ligo.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure (Larry Jones)

Structure Development Contract:

The contract kick-off meeting was held on Dec 2 at LLO, starting with a facility tour for the ASI visitors and wrapping up with a discussion of ASI's implementation plan and design requirements. ASI plans to start with tasks on pod preliminary design and spring/flexure parametric design, since these areas are critical to the rest of the configuration. They plan to add intermediate design reviews for these tasks (Pod on 12/24, Spring/Flexure on 1/12) as well as one for the HAM/BSC Configuration (2/17).

Actuator Testing and Redesign:

The RGA scans of the small actuator's wound bobbin and magnet/frame assembly did not necessarily show them as unacceptable. It turns out that the background scans of the empty oven are essentially the same value, and this magnitude of outgassing does not meet the highly stringent levels assumed for Advanced LIGO operation. Calculation errors had been made previously, which confused this comparison

Suspension

From: JaneenRomie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>


Nov 20 - Dec 3rd

ADLIGO Suspensions
Supported the NSF review in Livingston.
Working with Russell Jones, Mark Barton and CalumTorrie on getting more data points for the MC modal testing. The values we measured compare favorably with the fea work in IDEAS and ANSYS. Now, we have a matrix of measurements and fea results for different MC configurations such that we can further explore ways to stiffen up the structure. Mike in the machine shop is making up a set of stiffening plates that should be ready to test on Friday. A write up of the results should be ready soon.

From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>

Visit

Russell Jones visited Caltech from Glasgow for 2 weeks in November. During this time we worked on the following subjects.

Blade Eddy Current Damper
- drawings and assembly to DC for use if necessary

Coil drawings and ordering for the controls prototype
- Russell and I have made a revision to one of the drawings. This will have to be updated for the UK quotes.

Catcher PDS for the PDR, including considering aspects of the MC and ETM
- Russell mentioned the possibility of fixing up the GEO catcher? I am sure we could help if required?

During his visit Russell and I worked on the above and also on the following: -

Learned ANSYS by considering an MC and applying knowledge specifically to the RM upper blade wrt its internal mode.
- This section also included some experimental work.

Worked on the experimental and FEA analysis of the MC structure

Played with and assembled stages of the MC suspension

Analysis of the MC, RM and ETM suspension. Considering clamping, lumped mass, stiffening members and bare versus fully assembled structures?

I am sure Russell will summarise his visit as well as hopefully write up several sections to incorporate all of the useful work he was involved in during his visit. Obviously a lot of this work was done in conjunction with others and therefore there will be support from myself and others to aid with this request for reports.
 

Structure Analysis Experimental (on the existing MC) and FEA with Ansys

Ongoing. Full report to follow.

Recycling Mirror

Mike Perreur Lloyd, Alastair Grant and I are working on various aspects related to the RM suspension. This is in an attempt to tidy up various section we have been working on.

Blade Test Facility and RAL visit to Glasgow

I have been working with Ian Wilmut from RAL to discuss several concepts he has proposed related to the RAL blade test facility. Caroline, Justin, Ian and I also set up a schedule to aid with Ian's visit to Glasgow. Ian, myself and others have been discussing various aspects of this work throughout this week.


Core Optics

From: ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu(Helena Armandula)


 

Advanced LIGO SUS
After an intricate procedure, I obtained a letter of permission from
DuPont to make 3 purchases of 100 ml of Teflon AF in the next 2 years.
The objective is to have the material tested.
Received SF2 glass substrates; they need to be polished flat before
running silicate bonding tests.

Advanced LIGO Coating Development
Received some coated substrates from CSIRO. This was a trial run to
evaluate their coatings, which we are in the process of characterizing.

From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>

We are working with the folks at Stanford on calibration methods for the Absorption Scanner.  The laser has been delivered and is installed, but is not running in TEMoo mode. Liyuan is working with the company to re-align.  All infrastructure/mechanical modification is in place.

The 250mm sapphire from Glasgow has been received at Lyon, a fixture is being made to hold it for the absorption measurement. Mackowski is estimating 400 hours to finish the measurement.  The "pink" sapphire has shipped from Caltech, no word on whether it has been received.  Since it is the same size as the sapphire that was previously measured a new fixture will not be needed.

The 40m lab has allowed us to use one of their spare fused silica 311SV TMs for annealing tests.  It is on its way to Steve Penn.  There has also been a piece identified at Virgo that we might be able to use.

From: Bill Kells <kells@ligo.caltech.edu>

Mostly last week: took post thanksgiving shifts at LHO.

Then, just back, have been fielding issues on:

1. Best measurement strategies for OTF studies of LIGO I optics (eg. removed ITMx)

2. Calculations of effects of various arm cavity losses (eg anomalous scatter) on
AdLperformance.


Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>

PHOTON DRIVE R&D
Awaiting replacement of the 500 mW laser.


Other Laboratory R&D

From: RiccardoDeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>

Maddalena:
In this week I finished to prepare the control circuit for the seismic attenuation system.  Me and Riccardo have analyzed  some measurement about maraging spring changing the k value of the system.
In the cryolab I run the ChiaraVanni sequence about MoRuB thermal conductivity and I began to analyze this data.

Barbara:
In this week we choose the lens for the mexican hat  test optical apparatus to reduce the laser astigmatism and I designed the support for the laser.  Also I 'm studying  the theoretical part of  resonance cavity.

Francesco Costagliola
Working on report.

EnricoCampagna
Working on report.

Riccardo
Evaluating Newtonian Noise reduction techniques.


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