Weekly Report for Week Ending
June 26, 2003
The LIGO Executive Committee
Agenda for Monday June 30, 2003 will be:
There will be no meeting of the LIGO Executive
Committee on Monday, June 30, 2003.
CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD
SESSION AS NEEDED
- There are no open change request to be discussed at this time.
Special Announcements:
Weekly
Report Highlights
LSC Issues (Saulson)
No report this week.
LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory
Administration (Lindquist)
LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)
There was no site teleconference held on Thursday, June 26, 2003.
The list of current actions revised to reflect the
status of open actions assigned through May 29, 2003 may be found at ACTION
LIST.
PROPERTY
MANAGEMENT (Chargois)
From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Nothing significant to report. Participating in Caltech's
Campus Property Inventory.
DOCUMENT
CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)
>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
- Prepared and assembled several documents
about the Hanford Site for use by Perkins Coie in Washington.
- Processed a large number of electronic documents.
- Reviewed Mechanical Drawings Guidelines for
Dennis Coyne, and made several comments for consideration.
- Reminder
to LIGO staff: Please make sure that as a minimum, each document
submitted has a LIGO number, author's name, and date. Many documents
are missing one of more of these essential pieces of information!
> From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>
ACTIVITY
- Cleveland says that he
has nothing to report because he has been off the last few weeks.
- However, he has been very,
very busy ===>
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>
- Working on change orders to Coastal Bridge, Excel Group, Chervenell,
Waveprecision. Completed the 8 change orders to Triad.
- Working on the order for the 16 additional computer systems for Stewart
from ASA. Placed and reconciled p-card orders. Completed receipt reimbursements.
Completed internal modifications as requested.
From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>
From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Prepared and submitted Fabrication Account Requests and related
PTA. Set Up Requests for the 2 new accounts for the Atomic Clocks.
The following accounts have been set up and are ready for use LIGO.HANCA 2.8.3
NSFLIGO.FY02CA for Hanford and LIGO.LIVCA 3.8.3 NSFLIGO.FY02CA for Livingston.
- Prepared Cost Transfers, 40 Cost Transfers have been submitted thus
far in June. Caltech's Project Accounting staff has done a very good
job in processing these transfers very quickly.
- Requested that encumbrances no longer required in the Construction
Award either be closed or transferred to Operations. My thanks to Dot,
Gina, Ruth and Esther for getting this done.
- Working with the Technical Support staff to resolve problems on a
couple of remaining problems with Purchase Orders.
- Reminder the Construction Award ends June 30, 2003., make sure that
all invoices are submitted as soon as possible.
- Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport
SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac,
Jasnow)
From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)
- LIGO I Authorship List: The LSC Roster data base is being updated
in support of generating an authorship list format appropriate for publications
of LIGO I papers.
- TAMA MOU: Attachment No. 9, establishing a collaborative research
for optics thermal noise characterization is in advance review.
From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>
CONSTRUCTION:
We are down to the final few pennies on the construction cooperative
agreement. All of the last few items, the LLO storage building, the
LHO sun shades, glass vestibule, and carpet, and the LDAS computers have all
come in on time. The agreement officially ends on June 30.
OPERATIONS:
Arrangements have been made to conduct P-card training at the
sites for those people who do not yet have cards. Current plans call
for training at LLO in August and ast LHO in September. Additionally,
a purchasing class may be held at LHO in September.
SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)
>Irene Baldon
- No report.
- I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities
and also to assist them wherever possible.
>Dorothy Lloyd
- Processed the usual invoices for payment. Tracked and followed
up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther
the week of June 16.
- 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.
- Worked with Gina and Ruth in transferring funds and closing out POs
charged against construction accounts. [Dot's report kind of sounds like
"business as usual!" However, this is the last week of the Construction
Cooperative Agreement, and she, as well as others, have been very busy moving
costs to the proper accounts so that we can close out Construction. This
has been a big effort. The latest report indicates that we are withing $20K
of the target costs. -pel]
- Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out
in the DCC.
>From: Ryan Tischler <rtischle@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Completed financial info relating to the NSF Review of Advanced
LIGO.
- Working on plans for a LIGO Summer Party w/C.Akutagawa & L.Turner.
- Matriculation of SURFers arriving this week.
- Addressed press related matters.
Advanced LIGO (Frey)
From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>
For list of documents that are being used to develop Adv. LIGO Cost and
Schedule, see http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/Cost_MTG_082002/
Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)
- The following is a summary of status by sub system:
- COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
Responded to queries regarding upcoming procurements and long lead
items.
- PSL - No action items pending.
- AOS - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
- IO - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
- SUS - No action items pending. Responded to query
regarding upcoming procurements.
- SEI - No action items pending. Met with Larry J.
and answered questions about the cost estimate. Responded to
query regarding upcoming procurements.
- 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.
Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
- Continue input of changes and comments from Mike Zucker.
Cost Book Tool.
- ROSTER DATABASE:
- BK is continuing work on action items.
- Input of supervisor, dept., and specialty codes will continue
on June 30th.
- Continued modifying the authorship queries to format data
per Albert's specifications.
- Continued ongoing co-ordination with Irena P. on the authorship
data entry.
- Added fields and modified forms to accommodate special
needs for authorship list.
- Followed-up with Larry W. and confirmed that all needed
aliases are set up.
- COST BOOK DATABASE:
- BK is continuing work on action items.
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.
Reports (Lindquist)
We have prepared a draft Construction Project Quarterly Report for the
end of February and have submitted it to G. Sanders for review.
I have distributed a proposed outline and writing assignments for contributions
for the Operations Annual Report and Work Plan for FY 2004. I am requesting
input by Friday, July 25, 2003 (sooner if possible).
During the executive committee meeting held on June 23, 2003, we discussed
the fact that once the Construction effort is closed, we must submit a final
report for Cooperative Agreement PHY-9210038. This can be handled simply
as just an obligation to be completed or as an opportunity to brag about very
significant accomplishments. So far a preferred approach has not been
settled.
Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)
We reviewed the following change requests during the executive
committee meeting on June 23, 2003:
| CR-030008 |
Furniture for the auditorium lobby, interaction
area underneath the skylight atrium in the OSB, and on the second
floor interaction area of the new laboratory/office building. (ON
HOLD pending additional cost data.) |
M. Coles |
April 29, 2003 |
| CR-030011 |
Seismic External Pre-Isolation at LIGO Livingston
Observatory |
D. Coyne |
May 16, 2003 |
CR-03--13
|
Atomic Clock Timing System
|
Marks, Sigg
|
June 9, 2003
|
Change Requests CR-030011 and CR-030013 were both approved. New
quotes for the furniture proposed by CR-030008 substantially reduce the cost
estimate to an amount less than the threshold, and approval is not required.
Minutes are being prepared.
Human Resources (Akutagawa)
From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.
Quality/Safety (Tyler)
>From: Bill Tyler <tyler@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Nothing significant to report.
LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)
Summary of Commissioning Activities
at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)
This week was relatively quiet, with vertex and arm gate valves still closed
after recent vents. It is possible that Corey Gray may have found the
source of our problematic "LVEA bumps", responsible for many lock loss events
during S2. Working near LN2 tank No. 2, Corey was present during a
particularly loud
burst. IFOs were not locked at the time, and further studies are
required to make a definitive identification, but accelerometers are being
mounted to the tank to aid in this process.
2K IFO
An MMT alignment was performed at low power (100mW) for safety; Nathan
summarizes here.
4K IFO
Richard McCarthy, Josh Myers and Justin Garofoli swapped out Sorensen switching
power supplies for linear ones by Kepco. A key component of the RFI
mitigation plan, Richard has summarized the installation here.
Furthermore the racks were bifurcated into digital and analog ones, necessitating
new cabling.
DAQ
SOS epics crates on both the 2k and the 4k became the unstable
as of Tuesday, possibly as a result of moving to fast ethernet.
The control room received an upgrade of four Sun Blade 2000s.
LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Zucker)
Commissioning:
We are substantially back on track with locking the interferometer in its
low-noise configuration, and have recovered the S2 noise performance.
Last week's lingering problems with the common-mode control were traced to
another hidden electronics fault, probably stemming from the same rack power
failure incident a few weeks ago. A workaround was found once the problem
was isolated.
Full WFS alignment operation has been recovered, but the effect on the interferometer's
noise is not understood, and there still appear to be hidden degrees of freedom
which lead to unreliable performance. We are concentrating for the moment
on monitoring and understanding the WFS sensing matrix and its variations,
and temporarily deferring further work on the control algorithms.
Rana Adhikari has completed a comprehensive analysis of the S2-era
L1 noise power spectrum: See here
Among many interesting findings, anomalous couplings between the PRC (Power
Recycling Cavity) and MICH (Michelson) control signals and the antisymmetric
strain channel appear to explain much of the noise below 120 Hz. One
conjecture is that these couplings may be added side effects of the known
errors in the as-built Michelson asymmetry and recycling cavity length. The
length errors have already been implicated in degraded shot noise performance,
due to inefficient sideband coupling.
Added to nascent concern about sharing some of LHO's bad luck with unprotected
suspension wires, this may argue for a quick vent to reposition core optics
and install SOS light saber shields. We will make a determination early next
week whether to pursue or defer this task; the window is rapidly closing
for getting this done before S3 if we decide it is needed.
We would prefer to have a measurement of the sideband coupling under more
realistic thermal conditions, i.e. high circulating power, before deciding
on final optic positions. A careful PSL power budget seems to indicate we
might be able to reach a factor of two higher power with the existing laser,
but it's not clear if this will give us a sufficiently authoritative thermal
lensing constraint. Higher power still will require changing out the
laser, which will introduce a further delay. Stay tuned.
Outreach (B. Wooley)
Today, Thursday we are hosting a LaSig Conference (LA School Improvement
Grant Committee). There are ~125 people here, all day conference, using
auditorium and adjacent lunch area.
Also today, educational outreach (spectrometery) - EBR library club, ~ 40
children ranging in ages 3rd to 7th grade.
Site construction actiivity:
Completion of the last 10 meters of trench for the new lightning protection/ground
is still on hold due to muddy soil condition. The storage building construction
is on track, with 50% of the sheathing and much of the electrical and HVAC
in place. Front gate construction is nearly complete and electrical wiring
has been installed. The LDAS repowering and HVAC rework went off perfectly
and Igor is happy. Reworking of the facility pneumatic lines is going
smoothly; installation of a cutover valve to use the PSI compressor as backup
went as planned, so interruption to the LVEA air system was minimal.
Cabinetry installation in the new laboratory should be completed by the end
of the week. Installation of the DI water plant begins Thursday. The
security system for the new building is enabled and no major squawks have
been revealed. Much clerical activity tending to student visitors,
replacing lost cards and issuing new ones.
LLO seismic retrofit:
Bellows testing is complete. 17-7ph stainless alloy yields at approx
3x the pressure of 304l (~500psi vs. ~175psi). Preliminary report in the
DCC as T030124-00-D, more to follow. Following meetings with Ed and Irena
vendors have been identified and purchase requisitions and cost justifications
are in the process for Machined Actuator Parts, Actuator Welded Assembly
& Test, Helical Machined Springs, EPI Piers, EPI Foot, eddy current sensors,
geophones, valves, bellows and load cells. Also engineering estimates
of projected procurement costs for LLO/LASTI installation are being drafted.
It was decided to combine the EPI Housing and Housing Stiffeners & Braces
into a single package so Ken is consolidating relevant drawings/assembly
specs into a procurement package.
Oddvar Spjeld, an ME Senior at LSU and SolidWorks expert, has joined
the HEPI effort. Please join us in welcoming him to the team.
LDAS admin (Igor Yakushin):
1) New equipment is 99.9% installed. Rusyl and the guys from Excel did a
great job
2) Installed DB2 on the central metaserver.
3) Tried to set up replication between the central metaserver and sites:
there is a connectivity problem. Possible suspects: a) VPN configuration
at CIT (there is no such problem between LLO's and LHO's metaservers), b)
central metaserver is running on Linux while sites are running on Solaris,
perhaps, that might create problems.
General Computing (Shannon Roddy)
Continuing to try and solve the bug with the Solaris Management Console on
Solaris. Not making much headway on this even with Sun's help.
Set up some more computers for the SURF students.
Made some changes to the firewall to allow Excel to access one of our computers
since they will be maintaining the software.
Began setting up the new web server (280R), a Blade 2000 and a Blade 150.
Spent many hours tracking down a rogue DHCP server. This was causing
havoc since there were two machines giving out overlapping pools of addresses
to DHCP clients. it took quite a while to find it since I had only
a MAC address to go on.
Working with Dana to get the hard drives wiped on some machines that we will
be getting rid of. These are some ancient machines and half of them
are missing parts or do not work at all.
Investigating several vendors of anti virus software for Sendmail/Solaris
since Microsoft bought out our vendor and is now dropping all support for
it. Getting price quotes, product info, etc.
Spent lots of time going through boxes of stuff that has accumulated over
the years and needs sorting/tossing etc. This is an ideal time to sort
through this stuff since it has been moved to a lab and is being put in new
cabinets, etc.
Working with ASA and other vendors to get some quotes for a multi-terabyte
file server.
E2E Modeling (T. Findley and S. Yoshida)
With help from H. Yamamoto, we made an e2e SOS (Small Optics Suspension)
box for general use. This box takes input files that represent the
suspension point motion for x, y and ztheta (beam line motion, perpendicular
to beam line, and rotation around the vertical axis). We used the table
top motion as the input file. This version also allows us to change
the local damping gain by changing the OSEM gain in the Controller box.
We made a Matlab program to analyze the output in time and frequency domain.
We are running the SOS box with several different gain values. On completion
of more runs, we will analyze the outputs.
Detector/Technical Support
(Coyne)
see also the Revision Technical Review Board (RTRB) status
here
[note from D. Coyne: still needs updating]
External Pre-Isolator (EPI) Project
see also the LASTI report for experimental progress
on the HEPI prototype
Jonathan
Kern
Bellows testing is complete. 17-7ph stainless
alloy yields at approx 3x
the pressure of 304L (~500psi vs. ~175psi). Preliminary report in
the DCC as T030124-00-D, more to follow. Following meetings with Ed and Irena
vendors have been identified and purchase requisitions and cost justifications
are in the process for Machined Actuator Parts, Actuator Welded Assembly
& Test, Helical Machined Springs, EPI Piers, EPI Foot, eddy current sensors,
geophones, valves, bellows and load cells. Revised engineering estimates
of projected procurement costs for LLO/LASTI installation are being tracked
as quotes are received and orders placed.
It was decided to combine the EPI Housing and Housing Stiffeners & Braces
into a single package so Ken Mason is consolidating relevant drawings/assembly
specs into a procurement package.
Rolf
Bork
Spent last week at LASTI/MIT:
- Updated DAQ/GDS software
- Reinstalled ADCU hardware (borrowed for HEPI)
- Installed second net on DAQ to connect AWG/HEPI.
- Started design work for eventual move of HEPI controls from DSpace
to LIGO style controls; working with Stefan to provide software for MIT HEPI
test system. The VME software is ready to try; EPICS and sequencers should
be ready today; Stefan is working the filter code for PC.
Sander
Liu
Shipped one Global Diagnostic anti-aliasing filter chassis
to LASTI
CDS
see also:
CDS Hardware
Rich Abbott reporting
1. Finished work with Mohana on the interface
board to adapt the present Dspace interface to the VME system
2. Temporarily finished work on the RFPD pending
further requirements development
3. Doing planning activities related to the HEPI
retrofit at LLO and LASTI. Have prepared a rough schedule and list
of materials. Have consulted with Rolf to ensure we are on the same
wavelength.
Jay Heefner
reporting
RFI upgrade: Continued to receive and follow
up on quotes from rack and crate vendors. We have now received quotes from
Knurr and Equipto for the marshalling cabinets.
Direct
Digital Down Conversion: The SURF students (Ian and Callaway) continue
to make excellent progress. They have now successfully demonstrated digital
down conversion of signals up to 207MHz. A quick test of the DAC output referred
noise showed that it was <300nV/rtHz. This is about what was expected.
We have yet to measure the input referred noise of the ADC. The time delay
through the entire system, ADC, Stratix FPGA and DAC was measured to be 160nsec.
PSL
PeterKing
The wiring for some high voltage power supplies in the
PSL Lab rack was re-organized.
To cover another NPRO swapping scenario, the last spare
NPRO laser that I have was shipped out to LLO because there were some initial
indications that the NPRO shipped a couple of weeks ago had deteriorated.
The "sick" NPRO has subsequently decided to behave itself.
Dan Feehan contacted me about our service contract with
Lightwave Electronics as there was a question as to how many power amplifier
pump diodes we should have.
Errant Beam Baffles
Mike Smith, Ken Mailand
Working and assembly drawings for the entire set of
errant beam baffles for LLO and LHO are almost complete. New beam dumps for
MMT2 are being fabricated; material has been ordered for the baffles. Assembly
drawings are being checked for agreement with the beam heights at the various
SOS and LOS mirrors. A possible error was discovered. The installed hole
height in the 4K MC2 baffle may be 7.6 mm lower than the center of the MC2
mirror; this may cause clipping, or require re-alignment of the MC cavity
beam line. The beams will pass thru the hole in the baffle and clear the
1ppm diameter, but are not centered by ~.30"
Optical Metrology
Phase Measurement
GariLynn Billingsley
We have received a quote from Veeco for upgrade and
repair of the WYKO6000 Fizeau interferometer. The purchase order has
been submitted, Veeco is willing to delay receipt of the instrument until
replacement parts are in hand. We hope this will minimize down-time.
BRDF Meter
Mike Smith
Parts are being received.
Optical Contamination Cavities
Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang
OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)
Contamination Cavity # 1
A 10mm Capacitance position sensor (given By: Rich Abbott) sample
still under test. The chamber is pumping down and cavity is locked
and we are taking ring down and beat frequency every day. As specified
before, this simple is clean! we did not noticed mirror contamination nor
absorption. Please see Dr. Zhang graphs for absorption, ring down and
thermal lensing. There are two more samples, anodized aluminum and
PEEK (plastic material) spools available given by Helena. The anodized
aluminum spool will go in first for contamination test this coming Monday.
Absorption Test Measurement prototype in STANDBY ( New Hi-power
laser coming up)
Scatterometer System
We have received a new ETM mirror from LHO S/N 2ITM04-C. (The original
specs from the manufacture are AR Reflectance= 600 ppm and Transmission =
3%)
We took AR reflection measurement at one point and found out that the reflectance
is very High ~ 4500 ppm. most likely the AR coating is gone.
We have scanned the whole mirror surface area and found that the reflection(%)
is about 5% closed to the center of the mirror and the reflection(%)
decreases as the beam goes away from the center.
We took TRANSMISSION measurement at one point for the HR surface and measured
to be 3.11 %. Right now we are scanning the entire HR surface for transmission.
Please see Dr. Zhang's graphs for the AR reflectance.
OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38
Cavity #3
This cavity has 70 ppm mirrors and hung with one end at 1.8 degree higher
that the other end. Cavity is locked and we have 147 mw of power with
a 95% ! visibility. We are taking ring down and beat frequency every day.
As specified before, the cavity ring down is increasing as time goes by.
The mirrors are the cause since we can noticed that the Beat
frequency has increased. Therefore, mirror absorption has increased.
We'll change these mirrors as soon as we'll receive the new ones.
Cavity #2 Test cavity in STANDBY waiting on the new mirrors.
Misc. tasks.. on progress, placing orders and making new design to modify
the RTS scatterometer system.
40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)
No report this week.
Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)
No report this week.
LASTI (Zucker)
No report this week?
Data Analysis and Computing
(Lazzarini)
Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
SURF
Five SURF students will work for the simulation related projects this year.
1. Xiao Xu : Analyze the SimLIGO noise curve to quantify the difference
between the nominal (with all known noise sources included) and best case
(noise sources are suppressed as much as possibly, including the 16
bit digitization by increasing bits)
2. Jeff Jauregui : Build e2e primitives to generate GW source signals
and inject that to IFO cavity as phase changes due to the GW wave. This is
an extension of the work by Kathy Cooksey, 2001 SURF student.
3. Raghuveer Dodda : Prepare phase maps of as built LIGO mirror for
the FFT program. The phase map data sets will be used also for e2e so that
mirror aberration effects can be included in e2e.
4. Keiko Kokeyama : Using the formula for field evolution derived by
Osamu and Hiro for the dual recycling summation cavity, a code will be written
in Matlab (1) to write the first implementation of the code, (2) to validate
the approximation, and (3) to understand the region where approximation is
good, like the cavity finess, allowable time steps, cavity length, etc.
5. Yuriko Yanagi : Based on the box file sets created by a SURF student
a few years ago, a simulation setup for the dual recycling configuration
will be created.
Mentors are Hiro, Biplab and Osamu. Hiro and Biplab are mainly taking care
of topics 1 to 3 and Osamu takes care of 4 and 5.
Topics 1 and 3 are of great interest and important for the LIGO I commissioning.
Moriond Workshop Proceeding
(Biplab) The E2E team's contribution to the proceedings of the Moriond workshop
on "Gravitational Waves and Experimental Gravitation" (March,2003)
has been submitted. The article entitled "The LIGO End-to-End Simulation
Program" carries LIGO document number P030038-00-E.
WFS signals
(Biplab) Sent WFS signal table of as-built 4k LIGO to Peter Fritschel.
Sent another converted Table to Daniel on his request to generate one in
the same unit and normalization as in '98 paper by Peter Fritschel et al.
Also interacted with Luca who would compare this table with signals from
actual WFS set-up in H1.
SOS modeling
(Hiro) Sany Yoshida and his student, Tiffany, are making a simulation
setup of SOS. Hiro has worked with them to make it functioning. They are
investigating the result.
Code development and maintenance
(Melody) Working on using a compiler to process the equations in FUNC_xxx
modules during runtime. Several issues need to be resolved for this
task. One is to figure out how to modify the E2E build scripts and
routines to use dynamically linked libraries. And the other is
to figure out how to 'compile' on demand. Currently looking for
an API for dynamic compiling.
Last week:
Simulation and Modeling (Hiro Yamamoto)
Lock Acquisition and Noise Study
Matt Evans gave a LIGO seminar summarizing the study of the lock acquisition
near hot state and of the noise learned from the SimLIGO run.
The PowerPoint document is available at www.ligo.caltech.edu/~mevans/files/CIT-030613.ppt.
There are two kind of issues planned to be studied during summer by Hiro
and SURF students.
(1) Difference between nominal noise by SimLIGO (close to real data) and
the best performance by SimLIGO
(2) Difference between the best performance by SimLIGO and the best performance
using analytic calculation by DHS using Kent's formula.
(3) Effect of bilinear couplings and other issues discussed before by Stan
(4) Fingerprint signal patterns (injecting noise at some point, like one
OESM, find where the noise shows up)
Mechanical Structure Simulation
Virginio is analyzing seismic noise injection in SimLIGO using seismometer/accelerometer
time series grabbed from S1 data.
Virginio is also working on definition of a simplified model of the mechanical
simulation engine for e2e to improve/replace the MSE library by G.Cella,
which showed several problems when Virginio tried to apply for LIGO modeling.
This simplification should be able to solve the major MSE bugs and improvement
issues such as simulation of stacks, excitation of violin modes with actuators,
thermal noise estimation.
G.Cella is coming to Caltech from July 14 to 31. During this trip, he is
going to go to Hanford for one week to work tightly together with Virginio.
WFS
Following the request from Daniel and Peter F, Biplab provided the WFS sensing
matrix information calculated using e2e with appropriate sidebands
included.
New Optics Model
Hiro got the new optics model from Matt. Hiro and Matt discussed several
issues regarding this new model, including the implementation of the loss
in medium.
Modeler Code
Melody is working to replace an expression parser part of the e2e code by
a compiled-on-demand dynamic library. This will be accomplished by
two steps. First, automatically create temporary c/c++ codes for each FUNC
code and request C/C++ compiler to create dynamically linkable library. The
best is to do this during the run time, but the first attempt may use a preprocessor
written by some appropriate script language before the actual run. The second
is to link that library dynamically at the run time. This is a high
priority because the FUNC is the major bottle net when running SimLIGO. Future
strategy was discussed among Melody, Matt and Hiro.
Alfi5
Bruce worked on reimplementing Trim Connections (PR 405), and to speed up
this process. He also worked on problems using Alfi on Macintosh
(PR 399).
LIGO Data Analysis System
Software Systems (Blackburn)
The 64 bit migration of LDAS for Solaris servers has been dropped from the
scheduled task list for the next LDAS release. The current GCC 3.3 is not
ready to easily support 64 bit applications in C++ as is seen from all the
postings on the newsgroups recently. We will wait for a better GCC after
the next release.
Problems with optimization have returned to the code even though two weeks
ago we had a full 3 days of running without issue. We have found 3 critical
patches to the current release of GCC which were necessary to resolve some
of the most pronounced issues with optimization, but the compiler seems to
produce wildly varying results when optimizing code.
We completed a run through all the generated S2 RDS frames using a couple
of burst group DSOs. This identified two or three bad frames for the run.
Philip Charlton is now investigating the source of these bad frames to determine
if the original Raw Frames had an issue or if they need to be regenerated
for other reasons.
It was discovered that the -communicateOutput option to the dataPipeline
was stripped out of the last release. It has been returned to the code
in CVS for inclusion in the next release. This option allows for more efficient
communication of data products from the slave processes in the wrapperAPI
when sending them to the wrapperAPI's master process.
Work continued this week on the development of new threaded libraries for
use in the metaDataAPi and the diskCacheAPI. neither of these
are ready for testing on the development system yet, but some minor testing
has begun and already identified issues in the new threaded code which will
be correcte this week for the metaDataAPI.
Installed DB2 8.1 with FixPak 2 on a RH 9 box. The metaDataAPI still
exhibits the same problems experienced previously (core dumps). LDCG and
ldas on the Solaris the suntest1 box were reverted back to 32 bit binaries
and LDAS is now running successfully with DB2 8.1. The putMetaData and
dataPipeline jobs without any problems on suntest1.
Converted LDAS test scripts to use S2 data instead of E9 data.
Continued updating testing documentation on the web.
Went through CVS and found all the differences for the resource files between
0.6.0 and 0.7.0. The list is being reviewed by Mary and Phil before it is
turned into a FAQ for posting on the web. This will facilitate UWM's upgrade
to LDAS relase 0.7.0.
(Philip Charlton)
Isaac Salzman found that two S2 RDS files appear to be corrupted:
- /ide1/LHO/rds/S2/H-RDS_R_L1-7303/H-RDS_R_L1-730384160-16.gwf
- /ide2/LLO/rds/S2/L-RDS_R_L1-7341/L-RDS_R_L1-734183616-16.gwf
I looked at these with FrDump6 and FrVerify and
they appear to be truncated. I've removed them from the archive and will
be regenerating them shortly.
The new version of LDAS appears to have some changes to the disk
cache information returned by the getFrameCache user command. This breaks
the createrdsGUI and I'm making changes to fix it.
The switch to the new Xerces library in LDAS caused the XML files
produced by LDAS to have a slightly different format. This broke part of
the metaio library for parsing these XML files in the ligotools package.
I have fixed this. Peter Shawhan has ditributed the fix in a recent version
of ligotools.
The memory leak in the datacon API appears to have gone
away. This may be due to the change in operating system (RH7.3 to RH9) or
change in compiler to gcc-3.3. I will keep checking for memory leaks in the
datacon and see if it comes back.
Last week:
Over the weekend we were able to run a version of
LDAS for the first time in about 18 months that was optimized and had function
inlining. This was because of fixes to the GCC compiler, version 3.3, that
recently came out. There were a few issues seen with code core dumping
in the metaDataAPI and the event-MonitorAPI because of bugs
in our code in the the dbAccess library, as well as in the frameAPI.
The dbAccess library issues were tracked down and fixed by Masha Barnes
early this week. While the issues in the frameAPI are still outstanding.
We are seeing that the time required to complete the test suite jobs has
been roughly cut in half due to this optimization. A significant improvement
in performance!
The issues we have been having with DB2 under Redhat
Linux version 9 have continued. However, a search of the IBM Scholar's Program
website revealed a new set of packaged distribution for the 8.1 version of
DB2. These were down-loaded
late yesterday and are now in the process of being installed to determine
if they fix any of the issues with either licensing or with the dbEasy
iODBC connectivity interface. We also have "fixpaks" for the DB2 which
may include fixes as well (although these fixpaks are not part of the IBM
Scholar Program's web site).
Work has begun on getting LDAS to run in a 64 bit
environment (such as Solaris). To date, we have always run in 32 bit
mode on Solaris. This has turned up a long list of issues starting with this
release of GCC 3.3 and including /ldcg code as
well as our code. We are now able to compile everything. But the 64 bit code
doesn't run as of yet. More coding bugs related to 64 bit environments obviously
await us.
A small effort has also gone into the rework of the
metaDataAPI and the diskCacheAPI to support a truely threaded
application. There is not enough results to report significant accomplishments
among these tasks yet.
We have been developing and testing LDAS this week
on the LDAS-DEV system without the Beowulf Cluster. The nodes are ungoing
system administration configuration studies. However, we have been making
modification to the mpiAPI to
better support the distribution of the wrapperAPI's master process
onto the Beowulf Cluster and we will be testing these changes as soon as
the nodes are available again.
The Redhat 9 proc file system under went significant
changes for this particular release. This has made it impossible for LDAS
to correctely report things like memory and cpu usage. We have made some
progress based on reading source code into the structure of the new proc
file system, but since it is not documented anywhere, it has been a slow
process.
(Peter Shawhan)
Modifications were made to guild and to several utilities in LIGOtools to
work properly with the 0.7.0 release of LDAS.
Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
(Dan Kozak)
- Continued re-archiving data to 9940B density
tapes.
- Upgraded all LLO T3s to pSOS 1.18.02
Upgraded LLO gateway/dataserver/metaserver
to S9MU3
Upgraded LLO gateway/dataserver to SAM-QFS 4.0.26M
- Upgraded remaining (3) P-B T3s in Booth to pSOS 1.18.02
Upgraded ldas-archive to S9MU3
Upgraded ldas-archive to SAM-QFS 4.0.26M
- Rack mounted Jupiter FC switch in Booth.
- Replaced 2 loaner 2Gb FC HBAs with ones we've purchased in ldas-archive.
- Replaced one bad 3510 controller in Booth with
one from 3510 in Millikan. Configured all P-B 3510s to be accessible
via Ethernet. Set up the dual controller 3510 with one 2 disk mirror
LUN, 2 hot spares and 1 RAID 5 LUN. Continuing to work with 3510s
to determine optimal configuration for our disk cache.
(Al Wilson)
- Rewired CIT - TEST systems.
- Continued setting up CIT beowulf nodes.
- Sending to sites Systemimager (image and exe's).
(Stuart Anderson)
- Finished racking all 210 new Beowulf nodes
at Caltech with help from Paul, Mike and others, and cabled up the power
cords.
- Started memory testing all of the new nodes.
- Moved LDAS-CIT servers over to a large GigE
switch to support the new 210 node cluster. LDAS-CIT is currently running
with 16 of the new nodes with copper GigE connections and more nodes will
be added incrementally over the next two weeks.
- Upgraded the LDAS-TEST beowulf and datacon
to dual-Xeon servers with GigE connections.
- Applied Solaris 9 Maintenance Update 3 patch
set to the Solaris servers in LDAS-CIT to obtain multi-TB device support.
- Move the IDE-RAID servers with S2 RDS frames
from fiber to copper GigE.
MIT
(Keith Bayer)
- Continuing with LDR and data transfers.
- Working with Al to tweak cfengine for MIT.
- Rebuilding RH9 on failed internal (o/s) IDE
harddrive on pcraid (box #2).
- Extra power circuits to ldas lab completed.
- Connected pcraid (box #3) with fiber to switch
and assigned reasonable IP addresses to box 2/3.
Hanford
(Ben Johnson)
- 60 new beowulf nodes have passed memtest86,
after running for at least 85 hours. The other 80 will be finished by this
coming Monday, June 30.
- LDAS has been moved over to the new GigE switch.
All cabling for the new cluster is in place ready to be plugged into the
new switch.
- Troubles with t3-4 have hopefully ended after
making the disk array a Seagate-only array. See LDAS gnats PR#2004.
- Installed dual FC card into metaserver, it
is now connected to the 3510 array. So far, the disks cannot be seen.
Livingston
(Igor Yakushin)
LDAS Admin:
1) New equipment is 99.9% installed. Rusyl and the guys from Excel did a
great job.
2) Installed DB2 on the central metaserver.
3) Tried to set up replication between the central metaserver and sites:
there is a connectivity problem. Possible suspects: a) VPN configuration
at CIT (there is no such problem between LLO's and LHO's metaservers),
b) central metaserver is running on Linux while sites are running on Solaris,
perhaps, that might create problems.
Last week:
Caltech
(Dan Kozak)
- Incorporated 2 new 9940B drives into SAM-QFS
configuration. We're now running 6 drives, all 9940Bs.
- Re-archiving data to 9940B density continues.
- Working with STK to discover cause of last
weekend's silo outage.
- Dealing with fallout from silo outage--files
marked damaged and tapes marked in use. I'm refining procedures for
dealing with these occurrences for use at the sites.
- Working with Sun to determine cause of occasional
16K blocksize tapes in SAM-QFS. We've been unable to duplicate the
problem since it was noticed.
(Al Wilson)
- Set up two SURF students machines. NIS+ and
Linux installs.
- After adding the new nodes to the LDAS-DEV
system. It was discovered that the initial install of RH9 will not work with
LDAS. This means that a new clone master will have to be built and
the machines in LDAS-CIT will have to be redone as well.
- It looks like we have a new candidate for the
cloning master. It was installed on node2 on dev and tested overnight just
fine I have cloned the other dev node with this same build.
(Stuart Anderson)
- Powered up and connected 9 new Sun RAID units
at Caltech. They will be switched in as the new larger (10+TB) and faster
internal disk cache for the SAM-QFS archive at Caltech after a few weeks
of testing.
- Closed out the 2Gbit/sec Fiber Channel switch
Beta program with Qlogic with a final meeting.
- Received a fixed Beowulf node from ASA (memory
and power supply replaced), and started a new 72hr memory test.
- The new Leibert AC unit for the 210 node Beowulf
cluster was certified and turned on today.
- Attended LDR (Leight-weight Data Replication)
tool meeting at UWM to discuss how best to replicate Reduced Data Set (RDS)
data products during S2.
- Attended Periodic Source Upper Limit Group
meeting at UWM to discuss S2 analysis plans.
- Accepted delivery of power cords and network
cables for the 210 node Beowulf cluster.
- Worked with Larry Wallace to order Copper Gigabit
Ethernet line cards for the LDAS-DEV network switch to upgrade this development
system to the same network configuration as will be used for the new large
LDAS Beowulf clusters.
MIT
(Keith Bayer)
- Power work to ldas lab almost complete.
- Finishing S2 triple coin data transfer with LDR.
Livingston
(Igor Yakushin)
- 3 T3 disks failed during recent week. Two in
the unused T3 and one in the metaserver's T3. Replaced the one in the metaserver's
T3 with the new disk. Ordered two more replacement disks.
- Finished copying LHO's AS_Q only RDS to LLO.
- The 4th tape drive was installed into L700.
- Replication: experimenting with ASNLOAD in
an attempt not to deal with millions of spill files during the initial replication
cycle.
- Copied LLO_S2 and LHO_S2 to MIT's metaserver.
- With Phil's help trying to figure out why some
jobs periodically fail at LLO with the connection time out between nodes
and datacon. It looks like the jobs were failing only on node40 and node11.
Removed them from the list of active nodes.
Hanford
(Greg Mendell)
(Ben Johnson)
- Requested Seagate FC drive for t3-4 from Sun
Microsystems. This should be the last step in curing that T3's performance
problems.
- All 140 beowulf nodes are in their racks and
all (save nodes 136-140) have been connected to the new Foundry switch. The
last five nodes will be connected when we free up more cables this Friday
(June 20).
- 98 nodes have been tested with memcheck86 so
far. Two nodes failed to boot, but the other 96 passed.
Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Katsavounidis:
1) Performed a comparison between burst hardware
and software injections in S2: report available at http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/Inject/S2injections.html
2) Applied the S1-style coincidence analysis to the
S2 playground, for the TFCLUSTERS and POWER burst searches (filterparam as
in the on-line burst production), to get an idea of where we stand. Results
available at: http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/PlaygroundFirstPass/index.html
3) Continued work on r-statistic test: applied the
formalism to a set of software injections (sine gaussians and gaussians)
- report in preparation.
4) Worked with our UROP student (Mayur Desai)
on trigger mining at H1 and H2. For a snapshot of the S2 glitch investigation,
see: http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/ldas/dc/
5) Posted segment-by-segment snapshots of the burstiness/glitchiness
of the S2 data at the URL:
http://lancelot.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/Playground/index.html
Shawhan
- Hosted a "face-to-face" meeting of the inspiral
analysis group here at Caltech over the weekend. We made plans for
the S2 analysis, as well as working through comments from LSC members about
the S1 upper limit paper.
- Helped make final changes to the inspiral upper
limit paper before getting it out to the reviewers and Executive Committee.
- Went through the current draft of the periodic
upper limit paper and sent comments to the working group.
- Consulted with fellow periodic reviewers (Fred
and Sathya) and wrote up the reviewer report for the Executive Committee's
use.
- Working with Evan Ochsner on writing code to
lay the foundation for developing methods to veto "garbage" events in the
inspiral search.
Lazzarini:
Spent a lot of time creating an author's list using
the RevTex utility to do this. It is nearing final form -- it is a
race to see whether the authors list or the papers will make it out the gate
first ....
Last week:
Reilly, K.:
This week I was able to get the main functionality
of the stochastic code in LAL wrapper to compile in LAL. I had to re-compile
the standalone wrappAPI in order to do this, because of the new version
of ldas, etc. I am continuing work on getting the LAL wrapper code
to call thes new LAL functions. I generated PSDs Coherence, etc for
the S2 data one 600 second intervals at fine resolution. Unfortunately I
may need to redo this on 60 second intervals. On the way to generating
these data products a couple of problems in ldas were discovered. I
am still working through the GW course notes. (And of course I learned about
footnote symbols in latex.)
Shawhan:
- Went through the periodic upper limits paper.
- Made changes to several utilities in LIGOtools.
- Working with SURF student Evan Ochsner on a project to develop better
vetoes for "garbage" events in the inspiral analysis.
Weinstein:
- Prepared new draft of S1 burst paper, implementing
numerous suggestions & comments, and some figure fixing.
- Worked to understand comparison between LIGO
and IGEC burst limits.
Yakushin:
Running waveburst on S2 data for H1 and H2.
General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
- Rebuilt windows 2K desktop
- Spec'd ordered Dell desktop
- Ordered USB 2.0 PCI cards for external Sony DVD burner
- Added more urops to gc network
Livingston:
(Shannon)
- Continuing to try and solve the bug with the Solaris Management Console
on Solaris. Not making much headway on this even with Sun's help.
- Set up some more computers for the SURF students.
- Made some changes to the firewall to allow Excel to access one of our
computers since they will be maintaining the software.
- Began setting up the new web server (280R), a Blade 2000 and a Blade
150.
- Spent many hours tracking down a rogue DHCP server. This was
causing havoc since there were two machines giving out overlapping pools
of addresses to DHCP clients. it took quite a while to find it since
I had only a MAC address to go on.
- Working with Dana to get the hard drives wiped on some machines that
we will be getting rid of. These are some ancient machines and half
of them are missing parts or do not work at all.
- Investigating several vendors of anti virus software for Sendmail/Solaris
since Microsoft bought out our vendor and is now dropping all support for
it. Getting price quotes, product info, etc.
- Spent lots of time going through boxes of stuff that has accumulated
over the years and needs sorting/tossing etc. This is an ideal time
to sort through this stuff since it has been moved to a lab and is being
put in new cabinets, etc.
- Working with ASA and other vendors to get some quotes for a multi-terabyte
file server.
Hanford:
(Christine)
- Lots of user support for SURFs and staff.
- More new user account set up for off site students and staff.
- Started putting all the new gige network equipment together.
Hope to have it rack mounted and ready to go by the end of this week.
Barring any unforeseen problems, I'm planning to swap over to the gige network
early next week. I had to order some additional cables that won't arrive
until Monday.
- Met with Jim Schroeder from esnet to schedule the swap over to the
OC3 network. The swap is tentatively scheduled for Monday, 6/30, starting
at 1 p.m. PT. We only have one network connection, so the old network
will be disconnected in order to connect the new network. We will have
no network during this time. If all goes well the network down time
should be less than an hour.
CIT:
(Mike)
- Picked up 15 computers from the LDAS group that are going to be used
to swap out the older computers on the project.
- Worked on putting together nine computers for Jay Heefner by upgrading
hardware. These computers were our older workstations that I swapped out
with updated computers. These have all been transferred over to Wilson
House for testing purposes. I also had to get ghost images of old data
and then did a disk wipe to have these computers ready for LINUX installations.
- Helped Flavio load a laptop that is he is using for the LIGO project.
- This week I had more than usual user support that consisted of networking,
email, software and printing issues that I corrected for users.
- Worked on Phoenix's computer for the power supply burned up. These
also seem to have fried the motherboard. I ended up having to replace this
computer, which included reinstalling windows to detect the new hardware.
Plus I also had to reinstall most of software.
- Worked at Synchrotron, helping out with unpacking servers and sorting
out equipment getting them ready for installation.
(Lisa)
- Began looking at other spam/virus mail filters that are out.
- Helped Falvio with a wireless network problem that required many
hours on the phone with Dell.
- Made new accounts for surf students.
- Built a blade100 using jumpstart to replace one with a bad power supply.
- Setup syslog archiving of modem pool messages on dhcp125.
- Started the long process of determining which accounts are candidates
to be removed from the system.
- Continual monitoring the spam filtered mail, checking for false positives.
- Setup and assisting with the SURF students and visitors.
- Changed the backup schemes for the PC server systems.
(Veronica)
- LIGO website: videotaped a 2-hr lecture by Alan Weinstein for
SURF students. Worked with Caltech Digital Media Ctr on the options
of video capture and compression. We will need an upgraded version of compression
software to be put on the dedicated video processing machine, to be able
to handle large raw files of various formats with minimal initial compression.
Working with Caltech Media Relations office on video footage for a PBS documentary
on LIGO. Updated various pages. Travel-related postings at the Internal
Bulletin pointing to Caltech links have moved and had to be retraced and
repointed. Installed the latest newsletter. Provided user support.
- LSC website: posted updates and new additions (LSC documents)
per requests by Peter Saulson.
- Project Science website: set up, tested, and installed a backend
database and a frontend form for online registration for an upcoming workshop.
Prepared and installed static webpages. This had to be done in a short time.
Updated one of the existing supporting databases.
- CaJAGWR website: organizational and user support.
(Larry)
- Spent a lot of time dealing with IBM again. Still have some work to
do with them. This round of support from them for the IBM notebook has taken
up more time and resources than normal.
- Worked on a number of procurements. Most were purchases for other groups.
Along the same line I worked with Dot to get the Amerion billing started.
Christine will be monitoring the billing for Hanford. Tracked a number
of past purchases. Most of the items have finally arrived and there are few
that should ship next week.
- Went through a cleanup on the computer storage room. Surplused a number
of items and working on setting up a small testing area.
- The air-conditioning to the computer room has been fixed. We can now
get the room down to a lower working temperature but there still is not enough
cooling to add much more in the way of equipment.
- Helped a number of the SURF students and visitors with their accounts,
computer setups and related items. Still waiting for a number of them to
confirm that they have read and will abide by the GC computer policy. The
form Livingston
- uses may have to be implemented at CIT in order to get people to send
in their confirmations in a timely manner.
- Did a little work on the VRVS setup. Still a few more bugs to work
out.
- Helped out the DCC on a couple of items.
- Fixed a couple of printer issues. Some of the printers are just plain
worn out from the usage.
Last week:
MIT:
(Keith)
- Testing out Sony DVD burner for large data read/writes. (Each
LIGO location now has a DVD burner)
- Investigating wireless trouble with IBM T40 thinkpad
- Rebuilding PC desktop with failed hdd
Livingston:
(Shannon)
- The vast majority of this week has been spent trying to fix a major
problem with my main fileserver here at LLO. Sun has basically been
stumped over this one. All of the fixes they have suggested have not
worked. I have the command line portion fixed after Keith Bayer found
a news group posting related to a portion of the problem that I was having.
The fix involved getting a specific patch from Sun.
- The usual work related to SURF students arriving has been going on
since I returned from the conference. Computer requests, account
requests, general computer usage questions, policy agreements, etc.
- Setting up a new computer for Rusyl. When I am finished his old
computer will be turned into a SURF workstation.
Hanford:
(Christine)
- Lots of user support and new user/e-mail accounts for the latest
influx of summer students and visitors.
- The GigE network equipment has shipped and should arrive here
next week.
- Still no definite date for moving to the OC3 esnet network.
Still planned for sometime next week, depending on the outcome of the esnet
move to their OC12 network Monday night, 6/23/03. There will be a network
outage to LHO when esnet swaps their network, around 8-9 p.m. on Monday night.
CIT:
(Lisa)
- NSF Review support.
- Finished tweaking the Solaris 9 jumpstart server. It is configured
to work for all of our workstation builds but not special servers.
There is about 5 minutes worth of configuration that still must be done manually.
- SURF student support.
- Created a new mailman list for ligotools. This brought to light
a problem with the search engine for the archives that I will need to get
fixed.
- Worked on more wireless access problems with winXP.
(Mike)
- Worked with Larry and Lisa setting up the NSF review.
- Updated IP list on sysadmin IP database.
- Worked on loading 8 computers for surf students with General Computing
Software and multiple Engineering packages.
- Swapped out some old computer equipment, with updated computers in
8 cubicles.
- Worked on setting up local computer accounts/email for surf students.
- Ghosted multiple old computers to get users data on to our ghost backup
server. Once I ghosted these computers I then wipe the hard disk clean to
have ready for Wilson House who is setting up a private testing network.
These computers are to be assigned to Jay Heefner.
- Move a lot of equipment around from one area to another sorting out
what is what and surplusing older equipment. This is all being coordinated
with Ed Chargois & Larry Wallace.
- Worked on Ken Mailand's computer troubleshooting a real media issue
that he is having on his local workstation. I reloaded the OS on top of his
old installation plus reloaded all applications and did not get nowhere with
this. I still have the same problem; this is looking like a complete rebuild.
(Veronica)
- LIGO website: finished an inventory of Win servers for selective backup,
per a request by Larry. More than usual user support; helped Calum
Torrie set up VNC for the Suspension Group's weekly teleconference meetings.
Processed a high-resolution image for a Danish popular science journal for
an article on LIGO. Posted various updates to the LIGO website. Updated
the roster. Working on the DCC database. Encoding test batches of different
formats/sizes. Developing a workable algorithm for capturing and encoding
digital video footage, and see if I can balance the file size with quality
of the captured footage. I may need to upgrade compression software, since
my current version cannot handle files larger than 2GB. Trying different
capturing schemes. Setting up to videotape a seminar by Alan Weinstein
for SURF students on the physics of LIGO.
- Advanced LIGO: posted the presentations made at the review. Provided
tech support during the meeting.
- Project Science: user support. Working on a website for the next workshop.
- CaJAGWR website: processing the video of the last talk.
- LSC website: Peter Saulson has provided an extensive list of changes
that he would like to make to the LSC website. I am posting the updates and
making changes per his requests.
(Larry)
- This has been a pretty busy week for everyone. The NSF review took
time but most things went well. Now with the visitors and SURF students arriving,
the group is busy assisting them with their setups.
- Helped Mike work out a number of issues on a IBM laptop. I spent over
6 hours on the phone with IBM to get a couple of the issues worked out on
this new laptop. This last experience with IBM service and sales was not
a good one. I did find a technician that informed the newer laptops
do have a problem with their internal wireless when there are multiple access
points and or multiple wireless networks in the same area. Just something
to look out for.
- Made a number of purchases and distributed a number of items that have
arrived. Reconciliation went well for once.
- The group is starting to look for another e-mail filtering program.
Microsoft has purchased RAV and it looks like they are going take away the
multiplatform support.
- Worked with a number of people on different
conference setups. The NSF group wants to do some more
testing with VRVS to see if they can smooth out the setup process.
Advanced
LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)
Seismic Isolation
No report
Suspension
From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>
ETM Layout
1) Adjustment
Betsy, Janeen, Doug and I have started discussions
on how alignment is done in LIGO I. Several of the concepts used to
align the LIGO I structures could be implemented on the quadruple pendulum
suspension. Overall yaw, longitudinal and transverse could be done using
the "pushers". When a reaction chain is present it is believed that it would
still be necessary to apply individual yaw adjustment to each chain, however
we are looking at how much of this mechanism could be removed.
2) Table Cloth and Upper Mass
Mike Lloyd and I have a layout of a possible upper mass and table cloth arrangement.
We have several revisions of the assembly that incorporate various ideas.
3) Eddy Current Damper for the Suspension.
A prototype lightweight 2x2 array has now been finished by workshop. I hope
to test the assembly, alignment and damping later this week.
Based on this 2x2 array a lightweight 4x4 array has been designed. At present
I believe the thinking is to use 2 such arrays in the vertical direction
on each chain.
4) Modelling
Norna and I are continuing to update the parameter
list and check the various outputs as the design progresses. At present we
have 2 baseline designs. One for silica and one for sapphire.
The sapphire chain has 4 stages as follows (22-22-40-40) kg.
5) Catcher
Russell Jones and I have started to create an assembly of a catcher based
on the one used in GEO 600. It is hoped that with use of related dimensions
and equations that we can extrapolate to a quad catcher. It is our thinking
at present that the majority of the mechanisms involved in a catcher/fixture
could be removed once the final stages are installed.
6) FEA of the structure
Janeen and I are trying to tie up several outstanding
action items before moving forward with this. Caroline Cantley has put together a summary of what she believes
needs to be done in order to move forward here. The analysis will be based
on work done by Dennis Coyne in T03044-01 and a related e-mail.
7)Others
We also plan to look at the upmost stage of
a suspension including the blade adjuster and the blade guard.
Pre-stabilized Laser
No report.
Input Optics
No report.
Core Optics
From: Helena Armandula
<ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>
Advanced LIGO Coating Development
Responses to the coating vendors went out on Friday, as promised. One or
two more questions were sent to us after the teleconference, an indication
that it was a good idea to have an open forum for questions and answers.
Auxiliary Optics
From: Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>
PHOTON DRIVE R&D
Tom Essinger-Hileman is learning MatLab and how to calculate Gaussian beam propagation
and optical ray tracing using the ABCD matrix formulation; he has begun to
lay out the 40m photon drive experiment using ACAD. Parts have been ordered
and many have been received for the apparatus. Steve Vass is looking into
the possibility of placing an optical table at the end of the MC chamber
for mounting the apparatus; this will require placing one or two steering
mirrors on the MC2 optical table inside the chamber.
Aidan Crook has begun learning MatLab
and Simulink. He is being helped by Mark Barton
and Virginio for modeling the quad pendulum,
including addition of violin modes. Osamu is providing help on designing
a third servo loop around the mode cleaner to enable length control with
the photon actuation beam.
Interferometer Sensing and Controls
No report
Data Acquisition, Diagnostics, Network & Supervisory Control
No report
Other Laboratory R&D (DeSalvo)
Anamaria Effler
An undergrad from Caltech, moved to Pisa where she will spend a SURF and
she is starting re-installing the old TAMA SAS prototype with Alessandro.
The old prototype will be used as a development platform for precision GG
subtraction accelerometers and other instrumentation.
Mike Hall
Back in Caltech for a few weeks, he will finalize the cryogenic thermal
conductivity of sapphire fibers and write the corresponding paper.
Chiara Vanni will be working with him. If the samples from Pisa will
be available in time they will measure the conductivity along the thre main
axis. Will also try a better measurement of the MoRuB thermal conductivity
and capacitance.
Eric
Made further progress in search for a bulk Mo based glass, now have background
patterns pushing 90% amorphous. Think by switching to casting box and
improving thermal contact can get the rest of the way.
Gregg
Cast a few more strips of each sample. X rayed 3 spots (two ends and
middle) of each strip. Getting inconsistent results. Some regions
in various samples are crystalline, when they should be completely amorphous.
Looking into cause of problem and possible solutions.
Allyson
I've continued to take SEM pictures of all the indentations and am currently
measuring and graphing them. The results seem inconclusive still. The calibration
test came back for the caltech vickers machine showing a fairly accurate reading.
This probably means the inconsistancy is in the samples themselves. I'm afraid
this is just more bad news.
Enrico
Working on Bench simulation of a LF Gravitational Wave Interferometric Detector.
Hareem
Still reading on thermal noise. Looking into projects for the PhD thesis.
Learnt basics of Bench and Enrico's changes to it from Enrico.
For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu