Weekly Report for Week Ending December 11, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  December 15, 2003 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)
The meeting Monday, December 15, 2003 will be a Staffing Committee meeting.  There will be no Executive Committee meeting scheduled.

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

There was no site teleconference scheduled on Thursday, December 11, 2003.
The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through December 4, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• Provided assistance to General Computing (L. Wallace) with the disposal of  twelve (12) assorted Computers, four (4) Monitors, one (1) Tape Library, and one (1)  Electronic Cabinet.  These items were declared not economically repairable.
• Provided assistance to the DCC (L. Turner) with the disposal of a copier MITA DC 3060, Serial Number NM37052880. This machine was stripped of usable parts to repair the third floor copier.
• Providing assistance to Caltech Property by assisting with the PMA  Property Audit.

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

Web pages for the DCC give simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database. Take a look. . .

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Continued to work with George.  The new version of the DCC database program has been installed on all DCC machines after thorough testing.  We now have the capaibility to enter, transfer, and update--both internally and publically--each document in real time.  This has enabled a labor intensive procedure, especially for transferring electronic documents, to be greatly consolidated and automated.  George has created some remarkable user-intuitive features that will be a pleasure to use.

• Met with Norm Franks from AFS to consider the DCC's storage needs.  His company manufactures high density file systems, similar to what is currently installed in the DCC.  I showed him a couple of proposed floorplans where additional shelving might be added.  Working with these plans, we configured shelving that would add 50% more to what we currently have.  The accordion shelving units that we've used for the past 8 years provides 600 lateral feet of filing space.  The proposed new units would add another 340 linear feet.  A formal quotation is expected from AFS this morning, but rough estimates placed the cost at about $11,000 including shipping, delivery, and installation.

• Several MOU's were processed and posted.

• The electronic documents are completely processed and current to date.

• Worked on the upcoming LIGO holiday party.  We have over 70 people signed up as of this morning.

ACTIVITY
Packaged and shipped PAC 15 binders to Hanford for Meeting

12/11/03	Packages	Faxes
In	22	38
Out	19	28

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 # 2 to George Stokes.  Completed change order # 17 to MCI.  Completed change order # 1 to Southbridge Sheet Metal.  Completed change order # 4 to the LaCour blanket order 1053188. Completed change order # 3 to Southern Enterprises.  Completed and routed change order # 142 to Triad for signatures.
• Placed and reconciled pcard orders.  Followed up on delivery schedules for the 10 rush orders shipping to MIT for Mike Smith.  Followed up on credit card orders placed for Ken Mailand.
• Obtained data and prepared spreadsheet for Ed Jasnow pertaining to contracted personnel.
• Resolved issues on one time standard purchase orders.

• Continuing to manage and update contracts
• Generating requisitions to extend maintenance agreements on copiers
• Ordering toner cartridges for copiers and fax machines
• Assisting accounts payable with invoice corrections
• Working with Florence on possible correction to Northrop Grumman invoices

• Completed report for the Visitor Account as of November 2003.  All funds from the award for the period from July 15, 2000 through June 30, 2003, which was on a No Cost Extension through June 30, 2004, have been spent.  New charges for visitors should be made to the new account LIGO.VISIT/1 NSFLIGO.VISITO.
• Attended a workshop on Discoverer on Monday afternoon from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
• Submitted 2 Cost Transfers to correct misclassifications of expenditures within the FY04 Award.
• Requested Expenditure Type correction for travel expenditure in the Visitor Program which was charged to Travel-Domestic Allocable rather than Travel-Participant Support, thereby resulting in unwarranted Indirect Cost charges.
• Provided requested information to Garilynn Billingsley.
• Provided analysis of the FY03 expenditures for Livingston Facilities and met with Ed Jasnow and Allen Sibley to review amounts for FY04 budget.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

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

LSC MOUs / Attachment Updates and Program Reports

• Lightwave: Released a  no-cost contract modification to extend the performance period through Sept. 30, 2004 to Purchasing. The continued level of technical servicing of the LIGO high-power lasers is under discussion.
• Univ. of Oregon: The proposal for FY'04 funding, in support of Univ. of Oregon's continuing on-site support activity at Hanford, has been under consideration by LIGO for some time now. Note: Univ. of Oregon's FY'04 effort is under way since August 30, 2003.

No report this week (became a grandad again).

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon

Processed the paper work for seven (7) new/revised trips.  Additionally, there are nine (9) trips completed and waiting the necessary paper work to be completed; and 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 and LIGO/Hanford personnel in acquainting them with travel procedures, etc.  I will continued to close out existing LHO trips and/or assisting where necessary.  I continue to process and reconcile travel started on Ryan Tischler's P-Card while I was on vacation.Completed twenty-six (26) Expense Reports and there are thirty-two (32) 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 five (5) reports more than 30 days old.Reconciled one-hundred-three (103) 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.I continued to cover the Project Office, Barry Barish's and Donna Tomlinson's Office when called upon.Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for December 8, 2003.  Arranged seventeen (17) new or revised teleconferences and four (4) new reservation on the LIGO Calendar.

Processed the usual invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of December 1.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 detailsPreparation for submission of Final Report for award PHY-980158 (Advanced R&D)LIGO space renovation report to PMA.  Submit requests now!!!

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

Out of the office on 12/5 and 12/8.
 

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.
Recap notes from my attendance at the Primavera's User Conference are at http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/p3conf03/p3conf03_recap.htm.  I will leave this up and available for the next 4 weeks.

Phone conference with Carol regarding status of SUS schedule changes and input.  Also discussed IO, PSL, SEI, and COC.

The following is a summary of status by sub system:
COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.  Followed-up with Garilyn Billingsley regarding changes to the schedule.
http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/COC_AdvLIGO/COC_index.html
PSL -  No action items pending.  Comments pending per changes made to schedule by Carol.
http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/PSL_AdvLIGO/PSL_index.html
AOS - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.

IO -  Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.  Corresponded with David Reitze regarding changes and progress data.

http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/IO_AdvLIGO/IO_index.html
SUS - No action items pending.  Attended meeting on Tuesday with SUS group to discuss data input.  Executed meeting with Janeen, Dennis and Carol to go through the SUS cost estimate and adjust for current scope considerations.
http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/SUS_AdvLIGO/SUS_index.html
SEI - Schedule changes are pending per our meeting of November 12.  Followed-up with Larry Jones regarding changes to the schedule.
http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/SEI_AdvLIGO/SEI_index.html
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.

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

Issued two new revisions to the Authorship list.  Made database structure changes to accommodate the some new requirements.

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

Met with Florence Kaufman to discuss current process for data collection of actual costs.

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

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

The NSF caught up with the fact that we have yet to submit a final report for the Advanced R&D Grant (PHY-980158) when FastLane pointed the Knarly finger at LIGO and held up our FY 2004 funding.  We are working on it.  We may request some additional information from selected R&D task managers.

Reviews of the FY 2004 Operating budgets continue.

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>

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

• Safety audits of LIGO on-campus labs have been started by an audit team comprised of the LIGO Laser Safety Officer (campus), LIGO QA and Safety representative and the Associate Director, Radiation Safety Officer and Health Physicist of the Caltech Safety Office.
• With the exception of the 40M lab, the lab audits should be completed during the next week.
• The audit of the 40M is anticipated for early next year.

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

More conjecture about the microseism as an impediment to locking is given here.  Also in the same entry, a description is given of the clear correlation of lock losses and trucks passing on the bumpy route 10.  A follow-up report notes that, even if such truck passings don't unlock an ifo, up-conversion into the gw band is observed.  Seismic and wind impacts on locking are shown here.

After a testing phase, a GRB alarm is now running in the control room.  The diamond-shaped GRB widget now goes red on the site overview screen when notification of a GRB event is received.  The idea is to ensure that the IFOs remain in science mode if possible (e.g. no breaks for calibrations or injections, etc) for at least the hour following a GRB, in case there is some long-term GW activity associated with the burst.

Roughly 290 burst and inspiral waveforms were injected into H1 and H2.

The two day PAC15 meeting is underway at Hanford, 11-12 Dec.

DAQ

DAQ mysteries such as fb3 restarts and h1adcuex problems were observed.  Investigations into the low-bit flips (seen in data such as the 2k state vector and the 4k MC sensor channels) are ongoing: the DAQ controller cpu was vindicated.

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

• The extreme low-frequency noise (below 60 Hz) was found to be dominated by angle-->length coupling from the ITM alignment controls. Fine-balancing the ITM coil output matrices to remove this coupling gave a factor of three reduction in strain noise from 20 to 60 Hz.
• An anomalous result, stumbled across in the process of balancing the ITMx coils, eventually unraveled a much deeper standing mystery. We have been plagued by a stationary 1/f² noise floor around 100 Hz since (at least) the beginning of summer. It turns out three of four relays on the ITMX driver nominally charged with selecting the low-noise "RUN" mode were not responding to their command. Those three noisy ITMx coils accounted for most of the strain noise between 70 and 150 Hz. A strain improvement of about a factor of two at 100 Hz was achieved by goosing the relay drive.
• A frustrating push to rework the WFS3/WFS4 control allocation using new model results eventually uncovered a partially blown Pentek ADC, which may have been wreaking all kinds of havoc for some time. It's been replaced; we now expect better luck applying WFS3 and WFS4 to control the recycling cavity, as originally envisioned.
• We have tracked intermittent bursts of 10-30 Hz seismic activity at both end stations to malfunctions or tolerance issues in HVAC fans and chiller cycling. Although we can see the signatures of these vibrations in the low-frequency strain noise, we have yet to establish a positive link between these events and lock loss (mainly because so many other things also cause lock loss...)
• Due to parameter drifts we don't yet understand, the microseismic feedforward has apparently on occasion introduced spurious motion of several fringes amplitude at frequencies above its intended active band. In retrospect, we're pretty sure this buzz brought the interferometer down at least three nights when we could find no other problem. We added margin so it's less likely to happen again (plus, we know what to look for now).
• Continued investigation of sudden lock-losses NOT attributable to seismic or alignment issues remains inconclusive. Mode cleaner dropouts recently have become highly variable in rate, ranging from a few per hour to none in 7 hours.
• An unplanned interaction between the QPD beam centering and WFS1 may have contributed to much of the alignment instability observed over recent weeks. The problem has been temporarily resolved by just letting WFS1 "win."
• These efforts and a microseism window finally permitted enough locking to get some of our PEM injections done. A quick analysis of the results may uncover other glaring interactions, and maybe some can be fixed quickly.

• ROBO-SCIMON - Locked statistics automation and elogger,
• ROBO-PLOTTER - Daily Summary plot automation,
• ROBO-SCIFOM - Figure of merit and seismic noise capture and elogger,
• ROBO-BOOTLOGGER - Reboot logger

• One SciMon shift since last week.
• Continued the veto study of S2 WaveBurst events. I am now also trying to include L1 glitchMon triggers in addition to L1 WaveMon triggers in order to further increase the veto efficiency.
• Continued to produce H1 S2 WaveMon triggers.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

Seismic Upgrade Project

Jonathan Kern reporting

• The shop manufacturing the machined parts for the hydraulic actuator is on target to deliver the balance of sets for 84 actuators this week.  4 actuators have been assembled and leak checked and 4 more are in assembly. These will be delivered to LLO next week for final assembly and shipment to MIT for installation on the BSC. Images of the first new welded actuator can be found here: http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~jkern/Actuator_progress_20031201/
• 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.
• Mike, Rus, Allen, Rich A and Dennis began a critical look at the installation schedule and staffing requirements.
• HAM piers are completed and 4 will be shipped to MIT next week as well.
• Springs are on track and 8 will be shipped to MIT before the 19th.
• The two shops, manufacturing the HEPI housing and boot have fallen behind on production and it appears that the earliest we'll have parts to assemble for fit-check will be early January.
• A vendor has been selected to fabricate the pump station carts and assemble them.  Ken Mailand released drawings this afternoon and we'll begin fabrication immediately.
• Ordered computer, daq cards and cables for the valve calibration pump cart. Working on directing long-distance the assembly of the cart in Lafayette.
• Completed the piping Installation RFQ and statement of work. Ed Jasnow is reviewing it.
• Marcel gave a familiarization to a few LLO staff members who will be involved in assembling and installing HEPI.

Ken Mailand

• The pump station manifold welding / machining operations are in progress may be completed by 12-16.. The motor mount plate and the manifold mounting brackets are in the shop and should be complete by 12-17.
• The main frame and valve mounting plates and bracket drawings are complete and at LLO for fabrication.
• The 7 granite bases have been ordered and will be delivered to LLO in two weeks.
• The accumulators have been ordered and should be delivered to LLO the week of 12-8.
• The pumps are complete and in shipment to CIT for inspection and a modification to mount a 3 axis accelerometer bracket.
• An approach to the reservoir design making it a small <5 gal. capacity and possibly mounting to the distribution manifold will be complete 12-12, and fabricated at LLO.
• The fluid biological growth test is showing nothing after 37+12+4 weeks. [12 weeks dark environment] [4 weeks with the following materials added and placed in light] I have added aluminum, copper, brass, and iron to the fluid to represent the materials in the system, and moved it to the light.

CDS

DMT

With much invaluable assistance from Dan Kozak, Stuart Anderson and Al Wilson, I was able to bring up a cluster of 4 Linux nodes for use in offline detector characterization using the DMT. The cluster has access to the Caltech data archive and has all the necessary software for running DMT applications and monitors.

Several modifications to the DMT software were necessary to allow coexistence of the Linux code with the Solaris code in the same directory tree. I have also been making changes to the DMT software to facilitate its use in offline batch environment for e.g. trigger generation.

CDS Software

12/4 report:

• Continued work on HEPI software. All EPICS and front end software functional for corner station. Testing in progress. Code written such that it will work for end stations and MIT as well. Latest work has been installing the GDS modules. Test points are working and ready to test excitations. Final piece to be done is FIR filtering. Still do not have specs for this, which is becoming very worrisome ie could blow away the present code design. Really need this info ASAP.
• Also, spoke with Rich this week, and we will change the corner station design slightly. Instead of a split backplane VME crate, we will go with two separate VME crates. The number of cables coming into the crate was overloading the available space for feedthrus on the new RFI crates, plus the number of cables in the VME crate air plenum would reduce our airflow to below minimum requirements for the VME modules. This has no effect on the software or number of VME modules required.
• Alex continues work on the new DAQ/GDS code for LLO, which provides space for HEPI on the new network. Framebuilders and TP manager are operational. AWG still needs work.
• Hongyu has made a couple of minor requested changes to dataviewer. She is now working on some DAQ diagnostics software.
• Still need to get with M. Evans on some details on the new ASC software. This code development has not yet begun.

• Continued work on HEPI software. After discussions with Joe Giame (LSU) and Heisheng Hua and Brian Lantz (Stanford), now have specs for the FIR filtering section. This has been installed in the software and seems to be working fine. Stanford is rerunning their models and will get FIR filter coefficients to me soon. Last pieces of code are to read in pump station status and output settings to the STS2 units. We may want to test the new software on the MIT system in early January prior to installation at LLO. As for VME hardware, the ICS110B ADC modules arrived this week. Delivery of VME processors has been delayed until early January.
• Software updates for the DAQ network upgrade after S3 continues. Framebuilder, DAQ controller, TP manager and AWG are all running. Update of the ADCU software is in progress. After that, LSC and suspension control software will need to be modified.

CDS Hardware

Working exclusively on HEPI.  Ben has largely finished the assessment of the cabling and RFI feed through issues.  He anticipates being ready for the next task early next week.  I have sent out the first boards to the board house and ordered a bunch of parts.  I am working full bore on finishing more of the circuit boards.  Things are going well in general.  Flavio is working on the pump speed controller to repackage it and incorporate a new isolation amplifier.

Tasks completed so far include:

• Ordered all chassis parts and have started to receive them
• Ordered front panels for seismic interface chassis
• Ordered differential receiver boards for seismic interface chassis
• Am about 75% complete on the AA/Whitening board for the seismic interface chassis
• Ordered all parts for differential receiver board in seismic interface chassis
• Rear panel for VME crate RFI feed through has been designed and is ready to go to the panel house
• Excel has progressed well in completing the pump controller boxes and is almost complete

Much of the legwork to date allows rapid conclusion of the remaining tasks.  It takes a lot of time to research the proper parts, but once they are found and available the designs can progress much faster.

Jay Heefner reporting

Suspension: Week before last, discovered an oscillation in the bypass path for the sus pd whitening interface board. It is caused by the choice of resistor values in the circuit. It is cured by putting a 10pF cap in the feedback path of the circuit, per the datasheet. A DCN will be issued to upgrade all boards in the system.

RFI Upgrade: Week before last, received a quote for the EMI racks that we recently tested. It is significantly lower than any quote received to date. Since the performance is essentially the same as the best rack tested, we (Rusyl Wooley) will order Knurr racks. A request for a revised quote (with relatively minor changes) has been made.

Thermal Compensation: Alex and I succeeded in getting EPICS to run on a linux pc with a Measurement Computing PCI-DAS-1002 IO card. The card has 8 differential analog inputs, 2 analog outputs, 16 binary inputs and 8 binary outputs. One card should support the controls required for each of the systems to installed at LHO.

Lower Noise Anti-Image Boards: Looking at design alternatives for an anti-image board to be used with our new low noise DACs.

Sander Liu

Working on the optical link for the GPS clock distribution system. (Note this will be needed for HEPI since we are imposing the new RFI standards and we need a different means of connection of the clock signal than the current 4-oin lemo connector.)

PSL

Week before last: I have been troubleshooting my high voltage amplifier that is to beused in the beam pointing control experiment.  A number of things were tested out on the circuit.  The monitor port is truly a monitor port now, without some excess noise that was experienced with the previous version. A broadband peak around 85 kHz was traced to a faulty regulator.  The high voltage offset was trimmed down to 100 uV and it was found that the offset trimming circuit added some noise to the output of the high voltage stage. This was remedied.  The output voltage noise is less than a factor of 2 off from a noise model.

Further to last weeks' high voltage amplifier troubleshooting, theamplifier was tested with a dummy load of 0.7 uF.  This mimics a PZT in the steering mirror mount.  The output current limit had to be increased in order to maintain a bandwidth of 500 Hz but the limitation seems to be the slew rate of the amplifier.  The output voltage noise of the amplifier remained the same.  Initially part of the problems were due ringing in the output of the function generator used in testing.  Full power testing also revealed a slew rate problem with the OP-37 based monitor.

A relatively minor change will be made to the laser enclosure in the PSL Lab to activate the panic button.  This is one of the outcomes of the recent lab safety inspection.

Active Thermal Compensation

Mike Smith

CO2 Telescope Projector:

Several re-designs of the thermal compensation optical bench were made to accommodate the availability of vendor components.  Parts are arriving at MIT for two thermal compensation optical bench assemblies. The parabolic mirrors from Edmund are delayed until 1/9/04. The CO2 laser periscope from Thorlabs will not arrive until 12/18/03. Most of the mechanical parts being made by CIT will arrive on 12/15; one bracket may be delayed until 12/16.  Phone and e-mail discussions are being held with Daniel S., Doug C., Ken M., Dave O., and Mike S. to finalize the installation configuration of the thermal compensation bench and periscope steering mirror at LHO 4K. Mike Smith has made travel arrangements to be at MIT during the week of 12/15 to assemble the CO2 laser mask projector. He will return to MIT the week of 1/12/04 for alignment and testing of the projector.

Optical Contamination Cavities

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)

Contamination Cavity # 1

• The new sample still under test, the solder for the OSEM assembly.  RGA, Ring down(RD) and beat frequency(BF) measurements are being taken everyday.  This sample is "clean" because the ring down as well as the beat frequency have not changed. No mirror absorption has been detected from these samples.
• Absorption Test Measurement prototype in progress. The new 30 watts laser from Quantronix. is finally ready. The mode is OK and power desired is on.  We'll start laser alignment into the scatterometer enclosure. 
• Scatterometer system in progress. We have the new base to house the larger Sapphire mirror in placed. New base plate to hold the original Fused Silica ITM is in place. 
• Complete scanning of the HR surface of a new 3" FS mirror coated by CSIRO has been completed. The transmission indicates that the coating is not very uniform – shows a low spatial frequency variation across the diameter. Results have been reported to CSIRO so that they can think about how to correct (e.g. go to planetary stage).

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38

Cavity #3

• We have changed a new set of mirrors that have been cleaned [72 ppm mirrors from ATF(AdvancedThin Films)}. The cavity is locked. We are taking ring down, beat frequency and RGA measurement everyday. This chamber is ready for the next sample( cabling) from Larry Jones.

Cavity #2

• Test cavity optical set up in progress

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Osamu, Seiji, and Shihori have been working on tuning the filters for length control of the Fabry-Perot-Michelson to achieve low-noise operation.
• They did a careful calibration (documentation in progress) and a displacement noise spectrum. To reduce the noise, they are working on implementing whitening and dewhitening filters in hardware, with appropriate software compensation.
• They succeeded in reducing the noise above 2KHz (to around 1e-16 m/rtHz) using the hardware LSC whitening filter, after adjusting offsets and gains.
• They had trouble employing the dewhitening to the coil drivers; there was a large 100 Hz oscillation. They traced it to the MC servo cross-over (between MCL and VCO). They reduced the MCL gain, but MC locking became less stable; they suspect VCO saturation.
• But, with the modified MCL/VCO gains, the noise in the 30-300 Hz region is now 2x better than before.
• Another problem with the hardware dewhiting filter is that the board is RevB2; should be B5. This has been fixed; now, the dewhitening filter transfer function is according to design.
• There's also some 4kHz oscillation in the coil driver. All under investigation.
• The symmetric port beam seems to be clipping at an in-vac Brewster prism mirror. This might improve once we properly mode-match into the IFO (not yet done).
• IFO auto-locking scripts have been developed and tested.
• QPDs and cameras have been installed and aligned at the ends (TRX and TRY). Still need to install the remaining optics in POX and POY, and complete the sym port (SP) beamline, including electro-optic shutter.
• Next big step is to implement 166 MHz RF sidebands and demod boards at 166, 133, and 199 MHz.
• And, tune mode-matching into the main IFO.
• Osamu is documenting all the IFO locking, tuning, and calibration procedures that he and Seiji are developing.

• Our main "online" computer, op140m, crashed last week, bringing all commissioning to a halt.
• Lisa Bogue came to our rescue, and with Jay, they took the opportunity to finally bring up our Sun E450's and completely re-arrange the computers in our control room. Bob, Steve, and Osamu all helped rearrange and recable all the computers there.
• One E450 is now the new op140m, and has all the controls software (targets, dataviewer, dtt, etc). One of the old Blade 100's now has 2 screens in "cinematic" mode.
• Finally, dataviewer and dtt now seem to run reliably on the E450. These essential commissioning tools were all but useless when running on our Blade 100's; they now seem to work!
• Lisa is rearranging all the data and accounts in our martian network, cleaning up a very sloppy and barely functional system.
• Many thanks to Lisa and Jay for getting our control room back in shape!!

• From Jay: ASC aux crate testing is ~90% complete.
• Ben has installed balancing pots on the last three Universal Dewhitening boards needed for the IFO. These and others that he had done previously, are now installed on: ITMX, ITMY, BS, PRM, SRM, ETMX, ETMY, and MC2. These optics are now finished on this issue except the four newly installed ones (ITMX, ITMY, PRM and SRM) which need to have their digital gains balanced by Osamu.
• Jay continues to develop plans to form double demod signals (at the sum and difference of 33 and 166 MHz) for LSC. He suggests first using the sums and differences, then move to genuine double demod in a second step.
• So, we'll form 133 MHz and 199 MHz by phase-locking the signal generators, then bring those signals over to the LSC crate demod boards.
• Bob is running RF heliac cables for these new RF signals.
• Osamu is preparing to install the 166 MHz EOM on the PSL table.
• The STACIS system still is down, awaiting some attention.

• The PSL ISS system is disabled until Flavio investigates the dynamic range problem.
• Osamu is working on completing technical notes on the performance of the PSL post-re-layout.

• Shihori continues to work on improving the input matrix for ITMY and the remaining suspended optics.

• Fumiko continues to work on understanding the oplev signals, to establish the calibrated rms motion of the sensed optics and distinguish it from oplev sensing noise.

• A mistake in the bake oven RGA calibration was found, and it is now realized that some of Bob's bake ovens are dirtier than was thought. Bob is working with Larry Jones and Steve to diagnose and correct the problem.
• He is in the process of rebuilding bake oven C, and has found a large deposity of gunk close to the turbopump manifold. Under investigation.
• He's also been baking the other ovens to recondition them.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

This week we shipped the Sapphire masses back to REO for recoating, and we finished re-installing the fused-silica masses.  We are now in the process of aligning the South Arm Cavity (SAC). NAC was not removed and does not need realignment.

In other news, Dave Crooks has been helping us analyze our data on thermal noise in silica-tantala coatings on the fused-silica mirrors. Based on the most recent estimates of coating loss angle from ringdown measurements, our observed thermal noise falls below the minimum predicted noise level by about 30%. This difference is greater than the uncertainties in both the prediction and the measurement. Many thanks to Gregg Harry for pointing out that the initially-reported coating phi of 10^-4, the initial reported result from the ringdown experiments and the one we used in our initial analysis, was in error. The corrected value, as reported in Penn, et al., Class. Quantum Grav. 20, 2917 (2003), is 5.2x10^-4.

LASTI (Ottoway)

No report

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

Nothing to report.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

• Updated the LDAS database tables to support an internal column which captures the insertion time of all rows. This is handled strickly byDB2 and required no modifications to the metaDataAPI. This new columnwill allow generation of time series and histograms of numerical datastored in any table between any user specified time range.
• Demonstrated that the a Beowulf cluster can have multiple LDAS systemrunning in front of it, sharing the nodes in a none interfering way. This opens up a new way of using LDAS when the search codes tend to be minimally MPI based and use very few nodes per job, but need the I/O, signal conditioning and database features of LDAS, but not bigparallel computing. Repeated the full suite of LDAS system tests early this week. The webpage has been updated with resent results based on the version of LDAS under development.
• Demonstrated that LDAS can use ip numbered addresses as well as thepreferred hostname configuration of ip address without any
• modifications.
• Developed new testing scripts to exercise the different complex frame query options.
• Continued rework on frame query option clean up. Most of the issues were resolved by unification of all frame queries for a single jobinto a single thread. However, a new format which is not correctlyhandled has been revealed by system testing and requires more work.
• Implemented thread-safe recursive class that collects metadata onframe files and subdirectories. The same class will update a globalhash map with new data in the diskCacheAPI. This is part of the performance migration of TCL functionality into C++.
• Contacted the LAM (MPI library) development team concerning a verystrange bug we have seen. They agree with us that it is a strangebug, but don't understand it any better than us. We will try totrap around this bug to better understand it and hopefully get apatch in for it.
• Tracked down the reasons behind the performance differences betweenthe VIRGO frcheck utility and the LDAS frverify utility when performingframe file checksums. The VIRGO utility was roughly twice as fast asthe LDAS version. The main reasons for this were

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
 

• Continued pulling LHO E1-6 data into SAM-QFS from HPSS.  We're on E6 now.
• Started untarring and renaming E1/E2 data and archiving it to tape in SAM. LHO-E1 is done.
• Wrote first version of "prestage", a script that tries to identify patterns in the staging of data from tape to disk in SAM-QFS and then stages the next data that the user is likely to need.
• Got /archive mounted as shared QFS disk on saiph, replacing NFS mount.
• Called in broken 2Gb FC HBA (no resolution on that yet).
• Exported L1 RDS tapes at observatories for mailing to the other observatory.

• Working towards installing NIS on the CIT cluster.
• Finished the publishing of S2 L3 data here at CIT.
• Created the file /var/adm/wtmp on ldas-cit, and this stopped the flood of Globus ftpd messages in /var/adm/messages. Will replicate this across the sites.

• Setup dmt0-3 machines. These are ldasbox type of machines that John Z. will manage for use by DMT.
• Found a problem with badblocks running on the datacache's as a cron job.  Besides taking forever to complete a scan it seems to end its life as a zombie.
• Sun called regarding the memory that the shipped to us for dataserver in the dev system. It seems that it was shipped in two boxes. And I shipped it back in only one. This caused much confusion for Sun.

• Reconfigured 2 old LDAS E450 machines from being DB2 servers to being test/development machines (ldas-suntest4 and ldas-suntest5) with a stand-a-lone installation of LDAS.
• Backed up /dso-test directory at Caltech to SAM-QFS.
• Updated a few packages in the Solaris version of /ldcg: ddd, cvs, and coreutils.
• Help configure new 4 node Linux DMT cluster at Caltech to have access to the main data archive and pre-built binary packages from ldas-sw.

• ide-raid #6 ordered.
• Reviewed power requirements for lab.

• Archiving DMT Sepctrum Archiver trends at both sites in tarball format at both sites. This is done daily at 11:30 local time to archive the previous day's trends.
• Raw data tapes for 12/1 -> 12/8 sent to Caltech. S3 RDS data tapes sent to LLO on 12/10.
• Top drive in L700 got stuck in "Cartridge In" state on the evening of 12/9. This was fixed on the morning of 12/10 by following the usual recipe. This required taking the library offline for 30 minutes. I also took this time to clean all 4 tape drives.
• I have been working with Dave Barker and Vern Sandberg to analyze/solve the data corruption problem at LHO. Most of my effort has been in learning the Frame Library (the Benoit Mours version) and making custom utilities to search though our data.

(Greg Mendell)The first version of the StackSlide driver code to run under Condor and the Grid has been completed.  The code currently has been run on test data only.  Our next step is get set up to run the code on a Condor cluster.  The stackslide algorithm (which will be the same LAL code for the Condor/Grid and LDAS versions) needs to be refined and debugged, using test data and the injections into the S2/E10/S3 data.  This of course, will be an ongoing process over the next few weeks.(Peter Shawhan)

• More veto studies for the S2 inspiral analysis
• Worked on software to get higher access speed when reading from the /archive filesystem on saiph
• Hardware signal injections
• Reviewed pulsar group GWDAW presentations
• Preparing talks for GWDAW

• Working on line removal algorithm in waveburst.
• Produced and tested sine-gaussian burst MDC frames.

• Submitted S1 burst paper to gr-qc:  http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0312056
• Worked on understanding the Burrows-Ott supernova waveforms and making them available to LDAS.

• Worked on repairing old Ultra10 hardware
• Spec'd out new thinkpad for scientist
• Looked into lab pc problems
• Trying to get users to clear junk off the file-system
• Ordered replacement computer parts
• Requested more IP addresses for lab

• The latest news on the Gigabit connection to the observatory is that Bell South will be ready by Dec 18th.  LSU will be ready by Dec 22nd. This means that the Gigabit will not happen till I return from vacation on Jan 7th.  At some point after that we should be ready to go live.  LSU is going to provide us with the new router and also the interface cards for our firewall.
• Did a fresh windows install on a machine to put in the shipping and receiving area.  The usual windows/office/norton/etc.  Beware of  Service Pack 4.  After a fresh install of Windows, SP4 crashed the OS.  Had to start over again.
• Have unplugged a machine on the network which I believe is infected with a virus.  Have not had a chance to check and see which one yet, but I was getting alerts from one of the IDSs.
• Coordinated with Rich to send our old E3000 to sun to receive a trade in credit towards a 280R purchase.  The "machine formerly known as Sirius" is no longer with us.  It was basically unused for the last year anyway.  The machine is terribly slow now and I am surprised Sun was willing to give us any kind of trade in value.
• Trying to work with the software.caltech.edu folks and improve the reliability of the software downloads.  They seem to not be very interested in the fact that it is nearly impossible for us to download site licensed software at the observatory.
• Patched several linux boxes with the kernel/rsync/etc. security patches.
• Once again I had to track down some invoices from Dell.  This is always a headache.
• Mounted the LDAS shares on touro at Igor's request.  People are complaining that decatur is too slow.  However, touro is not necessarily supposed to be used for analysis work in this manner.  This is something that should be looked at in the future.  Decatur desperately needs to be upgraded to Solaris 9 after the run, but more importantly, the hardware is showing its age.  Ideally decatur needs to be upgraded to an SF880, but that is around $40k if I remember correctly.  I do not like the idea of hard mounting the LDAS nfs shares to multiple GC machines and some sort of better solution needs to be found.

• Disabled "Fast Load" option for the tape robot.

• Working evening operator shifts this week, so less time spent on system administration.
• Upgraded the standard software on a couple of shared PCs.
• Purchased some software and more AP-2000 wireless access points.
• Set up a break out room for the PAC meeting and added 35 more IP addresses to my DHCP server.
• Typical user support.

• Loaded a PC for DCC. I had to do a major hardware upgrade to this computer, that I used to swap out with. This included swapping over the most of the hardware from their old computer to the new PC which is a much faster computer. This required me loading additional software besides General Computing Software.
• Network switch went down up on the third floor of West Bridge. I ended up having to pull that switch out and swap over users ethernet connections to additional switches/hubs until I had enough active ports to get everyone backup and running.
• Upgraded all our Solid Works users from 2001+ to 2003 with pdmworks client installed.
• I finished up loading all DCC computers with updated software. All these computers are now running 2000 pro and have office xp loaded with all service packs installed.
• Loaded a dual bootable laptop for the loaner pool.
• Loaded a laptop for Mike Smith, with GC software & autocad to take on travel.
• Burned all NTSRV end of month ghost backups to DVD.
• Worked on all NTSRV's upgrading firewall software and windows updates.
• This week I had a lot of user support that included printing, networking and software issues.

• LIGO website: Finished and, after some troubleshooting, installed the Aspen 2004 website. Posting updates for the Aspen as they arrive. Updated several other webpages throughout the LIGO website. Updated the roster. Updated the page for the upcoming LIGO seminars. Addressed a DCC-related issue.
• LSC website: Posting MOUs as they are being supplied by the DCC. Looking into a database of the progress reports and the scripts for their submission. It needs some further troubeshooting. Updating other LSC-related webpages.

• Worked on spam, sp@m and more S.P.A.M
• Did some small cleanup work in the 40m.
• Did a couple of file restores.
• Did root backups on the servers.
• Updated the mathematica license on sirius.

• (BS) Systems Work:                                    (5.0 days)
• Ilog upgrade to implement new search features.

• Worked a number of issues with the DCC group. Everything from assisting in testing the s/w changes to cleaning out and moving documents.
• Worked out a couple of procurement issues. We have a number of laptops to purchase as replacements in the loaner pool and upgrades for users with existing laptops. Each new procurement and upgrade is being looked at on a case by case basis in order to keep costs in-line.
• Spent time working on equipment and space issues. This is an ever going process but this last week and it looks like over the next few weeks we will be spending more time on these issues.
• Worked on a couple of E2E projects. One of the new servers has a bad disk drive and the mouse connection on the video switch has gone bad. Both will be getting replaced in the near future. Presently, installing a new version of the OS on one of the servers and will be upgrading a couple of the workstations.
• Installed another video card in a SUN box in the remote control room. We will be setting the second machine up again. The room has been getting quite a bit of use as of late.
• Worked on a couple of network problems. Setup a new edge switch to replace the bad one on the third floor. So far the new switch has passed all of the testing and should be installed soon.
• Assisted a number of users with various PC problems. One problem is that when people are patching their Windows OS they notice the driver listed on the same page and are installing them also. So far we have not had anything but problems with the updated drivers and have had to replace them. So please, avoid changing your working drivers if possible.
• Worked with Mike on cleaning up a couple of areas.
• \Modified a number of user accounts, DNS table changes, e-mail filtering, file restorations ... and the rest of the normal daily activities.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Seismic Isolation

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