LIGO Weekly Report

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)
A site teleconference was held on Thursday, February 12, 2004. The following were discussed:

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>
No report this week (vacation).

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
A strong push was made in scanning documents and adding them to the electronic archives. I attacked the P documents first and over 250 documents were scanned and added to the electronic directories. So far, all P documents for 1994 and earlier are scanned and available in .pdf format as well as years 2000 through the present. Only 1995 through 1999 remain to be scanned. This represents about another 150-200 documents. Hopefully half of the remaining P documents will be scanned by the end of next week.

The ability to scan these many documents in a short while was due to the very fast and easy-to-use scanner outside the ECR. The scans from it were excellent quality and consistent. I checked every page of every document to ensure that each was equal to or better than the original. All pages, where necessary were cropped and cleaned up to reduce any unwanted page excess. Another key to accomplishing this quantity of documents was the added enhancements George has made to the DCC database. I was able to change security, move to new locations, and create both database and web links automatically with a one-button operation. George's process worked excellently and allowed everything to be done more accurately and quickly than the labor intensive process prior to the database changes.
> From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>

02/12/04	Packages	Faxes
In	33	31
Out	10	29

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)
[pel] Univ. of Oregon: The contract for on-site support at LHO is under review. We have received an invoice and are awaiting guidance from the Office of Sponsored Research.
From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

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

Continued development of a proposal for implementing Primavera Project Planner Enterprise.

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

Open Change Requests:


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

I believe that CR-040001 replaces CR-030015 and CR-030015 should be closed. CR-030016 has been placed on the "watch" list. We are preparing a change request for outreach position at Hanford.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

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

The thermal compensation (TC) team, including visitors Mike Smith and Phil Willems,
is working in the optics lab of the LSB (new) building. Two TC lasers and their
associated optics are landed and aligned on portable optics tables, nearly ready for
installation into ITM spool ports. The CO2 lasers will illuminate H1 ITMs with an annulus
or gaussian spot of 10.6um light, depending on which of two masks is employed. Housing units
are being completed and installation is expected next Wednesday. The new subsystem
required a dedicated Epics IOC (computer).

Last Friday, ITM spool-sections were vented for the installation of special TC viewports.
Downtime was minimal (~hours), and gatevalves were re-opened on Monday.
Multiple minor events related to vacuum controls have raised the question as to
how to safeguard the observatory when no one is present, and/or how to minimize
the time in which nobody is present on site . None of these events caused any problems,
but had the potential to do so. The events included a spurious gate closure, an instrument
air alarm, and the loss of control of LN2 to CP1.

Another question impacted by how and when the site is staffed is, what to do about GRB alarms?
Should the alarm require the temporary cessation of activity, commissioning or otherwise?
Should efforts be made to run IFOs automatically in the late evenings (a daunting challenge
in times of commissioning)? And could we reliably reconstruct the state of an IFO (e.g.
calibration, filters, hardware) post hoc for a non-science mode time? For now, we're
ignoring GRB alarms.

The atomic clock at LHO has drifted enough over the last 4 months such that its GPS
comparitors have started alarming, necessitating clock recalibration.

The acoustic mitigation report presented at Monday's commissioning meeting is elogged
with notes here.

4K IFO
Gouy phases and modulation depths were explored in order to appropriately diagonalize
WFS3 and WFS4 response to CM cavity optics and the recycling mirror. A very
detailed WFS update on this topic is given here.

A POB high-gain configuration was tested, yielding up to a 20dB improvement in noise
below 60Hz. The following day, POB, POY and SPOB whitening board modifications
were followed by a calibrated spectrum with an NS-NS range of 3Mpc, similar to that
seen with an S3-like configuration, but with improved low frequency sensitivity.

2K IFO
Characterization of optically-contacted PMC for H2 is underway in the optics lab. Mirror
losses of 200ppm are lower than the PMC installed on H1 (~325ppm/mirror). See the elog
for details.

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

Phase noise data regarding the 24.5 MHz and two spare EOM oscillators has been obtained and posted. Rai will be using these data and the data acquired on Sunday night/Monday morning to determine how much the 24.5 MHz oscillator phase noise actually affects the interferometer's output.

Last night, Valera, Doug, and I completed a first series of ISS noise injections. Unfortunately we ran into hardware difficulties (ISS) that slowed us. However, large 60 Hz upconversions yielded poor IFO noise curves. Therefore, we are not clear on the reliability of our data sets. We will be trying again tonight.

LHO New Faraday:
Part continued to arrive from CVI and New Focus this week. As previously indicated, these new Faraday parts will be kept in the Optics lab's glass cabinets.

Last week we had a calibration meeting. Attendees were Gabriela Gonzalez
from LSU, Martin Hewitson from GEO, Xavier Siemens from UWM, Mike Landry
from LHO and myself. The main topic for discussion was the
implementation of a time-domain calibration for LIGO. Mike Landry stayed
some extra days and we worked on finalizing S2 and S3 calibrations.

1) Working with Peter King to establish a communication interface between
the Laser Power supply and the Chiller. Currently we do not have an
effective mechanism of communicating with the Chiller, that results in an
inefficient operation of the Laser. With the proposed improvement we will be
able to control the Chiller Set point according to the Laser Power supply
demand.

2) Working with Szabi Marka to setup an Atmic Clock monitoring controller
system.

(Igor Yakushin:)
1) Attended face to face burst meeting at Gainesville, Florida ( http:www.phys.ufl.edu/LIGO/f2fatuf/ )

1) Presented the results of waveburst version 3 simulations on S2 playground data for various waveforms: sine-gaussian optimal orientation, sine-gaussian all sky, black hole merger all sky, gaussian optimal orientation. Created and presented three flavors of burst MDC frames for all burst ETGs to compare their efficiencies. For details see http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/F2FBURST.020504/ (standard burst group id and password).
2) Running waveburst production and simulations for the whole S2 in preparation for LSC meeting.

1) Participated in the Burst group f2f-meeting in Gainesville, Florida. My presentation can be downloaded at http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~franzen/burstf2f.pdf

2) Started a new WaveMon S2 H1 and H2 data processing run at the alvar DMT machine. This must be finished and analyzed before the LSC meeting in March so only playground data is included. I am having some problems with alvar which have already crashed once since I started yesterday. John Zweizig authorized me to take over the system administration of this machine and investigate what is going on. The Caltech DMT machines are having similar problems which seems to be correlated with trying to fetch archive data that are not on spinning media.

The Laser Safety computer evidently lost both of its comm ports due to a possible lightning strike. Both comm ports died, but the computer was still functioning. I replaced the dead ports with two USB to serial adapters. However, unknown to me at the time, the Kantech software relies on a dos process to communicate with the various controllers. Since it is unaware of USB, it did not work. I had to cannibalize another computer to get this going. So, with the other computer that I had (luckily identical hardware) I was able to swap out the drives and get it going. At that point the Kantec software was able to communicate with some controllers on the two comm ports, but some controllers appeared to be dead. I do not know enough about the system to troubleshoot past this point. Also, I think that it is in Excel's hands now since the actual controllers need to be looked at. Unfortunately I learned that this computer will be stuck at windows 98 indefinitely due to its reliance on dos to communicate with the controllers. This is not good....

I ordered and installed a Dell Gigabit switch for a portion of my servers. Unfortunately this switch has been giving me problems since Tuesday evening. Once reset, the switch works fine for a period of time, and then starts intermittently dropping packets. I have been on the phone with Dell to troubleshoot this switch twice. I am still working with them, but I think this switch will have to be replaced. However the support guy at dell keeps having me tweak the configuration.

The gigabit network has been dropping out for any where from 5 to 60 minutes at a time with no apparent reason. I am not sure if it is BellSouth or LSU. However, it is NOT the PIX. We have been having problems with the PIX, but I have eliminated this as the current problem. This time, it is independent of our network hardware. I have connectivity up to the Bellsouth line when it drops out. Hopefully this will not get worse, since it is a moderate annoyance at this point. If it does get worse it will start causing more severe problems. I have tried to call LSU several times through normal routes, however I called Boyd Bourque directly a few minutes ago and will discuss the problem with him since he is the one that set up our router on the LSU side.

I lost a power supply on the Linux file server Tuesday night. I have ASA sending me a replacement and I also ordered a spare from them for $125. This machine has backups on it and if it is unavailable then we cannot restore them if we need to. The machine has three redundant power supplies, so it will still run now as is, but I will feel better when the replacement gets here. I have it powered down right now except for when the backups run overnight.

Solsoft no longer supports the workstation version of their software, so they have upgraded me to the full server/client version. I checked to find out if we were running the current version since I will be using it on the Cisco 3550 this week. The maintenance agreement is current, so we did not have to shell out extra money to upgrade, or I would have stayed with the version that we had. This will give me revision control on the software which will be a bonus. The workstation did not support revision control or roll backs beyond one level.

Sometime between late tonight and this weekend I will remove the PIX from out network. A period of downtime around one hour can be expected, and I will try to do it late one night when everyone is gone. This will improve the reliability of our network connection since the PIX has locked up several times in the last year. It has required a power cycle to get going again when it does lock up. I will contact Cisco about warranty service on it once it is removed. The PIX will be used for NAT routing, etc. but will no longer route 100% of our inbound and outbound traffic. It is limited to 300 Mbit, whereas the new router is good more or less to 1 Gbit. The new router runs Cisco IOS, so it will do minimal access list based firewalling which should be sufficient for our network, and is more or less all we are doing on the PIX.

This was a busy week for the HEPI installation effort. Oddvar Spjeld, Jonathan Kern, Katrina Carter, Ken Mason, Myron MacInnis, Joe Lacour, Gary Traylor, Harry Overmier and Rich Abbott all made substantial contributions toward a solid presentation by Oddvar, Rich and Dennis in the HEPI installation readiness review on Wednesday.

The team is working out a few remaining details on the load cell mounting and assembly fixtures, as we await delivery of the housings and boots.

Excel began work fitting pipe in the X end, with Joe Hanson overseeing. In other words, installation has really begun.

Katrina, Excel and Rich have been fighting some unusually stubborn technical glitches in the valve calibration stand. Only one issue remains: the differential pressure sensor (which is NOT used in HEPI itself) is degraded by the fluid. At least three fixes are being simultaneously pursued.

Rich Abbott, Dave Grimmett, and Josh Hayden (LSU undergrad) have been making progress on the HEPI electronics assembly.

- worked with Ken Mason to revise the HEPI Assembly and Installation
Procedure
- prepared the Mechanical Fabrication and Assembly Procedure
presentation
- HEPI Readiness Review meeting on Wednesday Feb-11
- designing mounting brackets for the four way actuator valves
- finite element analysis on the HAM crossbeam for various lifting
points
- analysis concurs with measured results at LASTI
- working on analysis for the BSC crossbeam as well
- working with Joe Lacour on the new lifting plate design

We have been informed that the high power fiber optic has arrived in the US. I spoke with Laser Midwest. The fiber will arrive either tomorrow afternoon or Monday. ELS wishes LLO's HPLF personnel to test the fiber prior to their technician's visit. We are in the process of obtaining ELS's written permission stating that HPLF is to install the fiber without a trained ELS technician to avoid any misunderstandings later.

Basic infrastructure and safety systems in the lab are nearly complete.
Thank you, Allen.

The laser safety system and building security system are again working as of this afternoon. [Thanks to Shannon, Rich, and Excel (JG)]
I am working with Rich Abbott with HEPI logistics.
I have been monitoring the X-end HEPI construction work and am very pleased
with individual and facility safety standards.
Found no safety concerns during the weekly site tour.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

Seismic Upgrade Project

see also:

the LASTI report for experimental progress in controls
the CDS report for electronics and software developments
the LLO report for installation

Dennis Coyne reporting

·Piping installation has begun and has progressed well in the X-end station

A design of the manifold at the BSC chamber has been completed and fabrication is nearly completed.
The first set of mechanical components (housings and brackets for a complete chamber) should arrive in two shipments from Southbridge sheet metal by mid next week
All helical machined springs will arrive at LLO by 2/20. A first set of 8 (for the first chamber) should arrive early next week.
An installation readiness review was held 2/11. The scope was limited to the mechanical installation procedures. Documents are available here (until filed into the electronic DCC).

Ken Mailand

Pump Station

The 7 LLO pump station sub-assemblies are complete, one is air tight 6 have some leakage around the large filter flat seal, this can be fixed by smoothing the rough painted edge of the filter can.

The design work and shop drawings for the reservoirs used at the vertex and end stations is 50% complete, I'm working with LLO on the configuration, all parts will be in the shop for fabrication next week.

The fluid biological growth test is showing nothing after 59 weeks. [12 weeks dark environment]

[11 weeks with the following materials added] aluminum, copper, brass,

and iron into the fluid to represent the materials in the system, and moved it to the light.

CDS

see also 10/8 weekly CDS meeting minutes in the commissioning archives:

CDS Software

no report

CDS Hardware

Ben Abbott

a. The second big Conec order has arrived, with one type of connector outstanding. Eight of these will be sent overnight, with the remainder expected in a few weeks.

b. I have the 8-Channel Valve Driver Board from PCB Express, they look fine. I got word that the parts are in to stuff it as well, I will check these over, then send the lot on to Screaming Circuits.

c. Phoenix has stuffed the Power distribution boards, and they look fine.

d. The front panels for the ICS Interface Chassis, the XY220 Interface Chassis, the Rack panels, their panel blanks for 9-pin, 15-pin, 50-pin and a special blank to allow timing, ethernet, and reflective memory through, and front panels for the 8ch Valve driver chassis, have all been sent to Front Panel Express. They should be back next week.

e. The ISS PD that Rich sent me seems to be quite robust now. The only test I'd like to still perform is to connect two of the PD heads up to see how their current draw heats up the box. For this, I will have to wait for the PDs from GPD that will arrive next week.

Jay Heefner reporting

Thermal Compensation:

- Both linux PCs with EPICS, databases and medm have been shipped to LHO for installation. They can be used as standalone machines or connected to the CDS network.

LLO End Station EMI Retrofit:

- Al panels for the VME crates and racks have been received.

- Cables are due next week.

Low Noise DACs:

- Initial testing of the first production unit shows that the noise is roughly the same as the prototype and no glitches have been observed. FDI has shipped 5 more units and they are very confident that the glitching problem has been completely solved. We will continue to test and issue a test report some time next week. One unit has also been shipped to LHO for testing.

2nd ETM PD:

- The 10KHz butterworth low pass filter boards have been received, stuffed and tested. They will be sent to LHO with instructions on how to install them on the QPD Whitening/Interface boards.

Sander Liu

Components and PCBs for the EO link were on order and should be in by early next week.

PSL

Peter King

I have been trying to circularise the output of the 10-W laser without

much success. The output of the laser was pseudo-modematched into a

pre-modecleaner but further characterisation of the beam is required before

proceeding.

The board layout for the next version of my high power photodetector is

nearly completed.The temperature control tracks need to be routed.

Drawings for the housing have been sketched out.

OMC

Peter King

I have been gathering information for fabrication of the output

modecleaner.Prices for super-polished substrates ... etc and other optical

hardware bits and pieces.A rendered 3D AutoCAD model of the GEO output

modecleaner was created.

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)

The (21) pieces of the new twisted, shielded, teflon cables are under test.

We are taking ring down and beat frequency measurements

as well as the RGA of the chamber every day.

Please see Dr. Zhang's report.

Absorption Test Measurement prototype in progress

A newtest scanfor STABILITY for the Lyon, France

(314 mm Dia. X 131mm thick.) Sapphire mirror has been just completd.

The power supply for the 60 watts laser from Quantronix has been changed / installed with

new parts.

Please see Dr. Zhang's report.is coming up.

Scatterometer system in standby

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38

Cavity #3

The cavity is locked and we are taking ring down and beat frequency measurements every

day as well as the RGA for the chamber.

Cavity #2 Test cavity optical set up in standby

PSL LAB.

The (4) PMC bodiesstill under vacuum and RGA is in progress.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

LASTI (Ottaway)

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

E2E weekly meeting
-----------------------------------
We discussed about
(i) How to include day or night time seismic noises from LLO site into
    SimLIGO and study possible saturation effects related to lock loss
    problems.
(ii) FFT results on differential heating (see below for details).
     One possiblity could be generating phasemaps from various states
     of differential heating and giving feedback to the thermal
compensation
     team about heated state of each arm and how much heating would be
     necessary.

Differential heating in arms
-------------------------------
(Biplab) FFT results show that "differential" heating in 2 LIGO arms
changes the demodulation angle of WFS signal. The number is about 15
deg
if it's assumed that starting from cold state only one of the arms get
heated while the other remains cold.
[Change in demodulation angle by about 30 deg due to heating was
previously
observed at LHO].
The change in demodulation angle due to "common" or same heating in 2
arms
is much less - only about a degree.
Looking into differences at the field amplitude level to find out
cause.
Also, with the Matlab tool developed, trying to settle the issue of
the relationship between number of modes needed vs. the accuracy level
needed to
study such cases.

LinLIGO
------------
(Matt) Continued work on LinLIGO. Included new optical model, made CM
servo
more realistic, added plotting features.

Field evolution in Dual Recycling Michelson cavity :
-----------------------------------------------------
(Hiro) resumed an analytic calculation of the fields in Dual Recycling
Michelson cavity using linear approximation.
It will be completed soon. (Did before with Miyakawa, but not finished)

Code development and maintenance
----------------------------------
(Hiro) Modeler code :
The StateSpace model has been revised to use an adaptive method to
improve the accuracy.
One can attain a relative accuracy of 10^-12 using double precision,
but, in order to attain better accuracy, one needs to go to use quad
precision.
All changes have been committed in CVS, and a new version 1.9.0 will be
released soon.
From this version on, g++ 3.3.1 is required as minimal.

(Melody)
C++ FUNC:
Writing a technical document to describe the FUNC_xxx's use of dynamic
linking and shared libraries.

Hiro and Melody have worked to implement an expression template support
for the matrix class used in modeler code.
Melody examined performance issues with MEMatrix class using expression
templates and is looking at the attaching Sourceforge's MET expression
template facility with MEMatrix.

(Ed Maros)
Started review of documentation issues when trying
to compile e2e on canopus or halfdome.

Software Systems (Blackburn)
At the request of the LSC, the LDAS release has been postponed for one
week.
This is to allow changes that have been proposed in the upperlimits
groups
to solidify and become integrated with the LDAS and LAL releases.

We are using this delay in the release schedule to make further
enhancements
in the functionality of the 1.0.0 release of LDAS. The createRDS
command will
be enhanced to support verification of the checksums on all input
frames at
the time of the creation of the RDS frames. This will be controlled via
a
resource variable and state can be changes with the controlMonitorAPI.
In
addition, the diskCacheAPI will have improved logging of changes in the
content of the archive as well as migration of some additional parsing
from
the TCL layer into the C++ layer to further improve performance. These
new
features should be fully integrated into the release code base by
Friday, in
time to allow one last weekend long test cycle.

Several issues have been discovered in the BLT widget package's support
for
histograming of floating point data. The package was designed with the
assumtion that only integers would be histogrammed. We have made several
minor changes to the controlMonitorAPI's client to correct for this
limited
perspective on histogrames.

With the LDAS code base fairly stable in anticipation of the release, we
have focused on cleaning up documentation and problem reports this week.
A description of the major changes in this release has been prepared and
will be attached to the announcement of the release.

* Received and installed one 3510 drive and 2 T3 drives to replace bad
drives.
* Tested that restoring SAM-QFS metadata into a directory updates the
directory's mtime.
* Resumed HPSS migration.
* Called Sun with our "SCSI timeout" errors on a 3510.
* Temporarily up'ed the number of files that prestage stages ahead to
5000
at LHO so that reads of S2 L1 RDS data that are on tape in readdir
order
could proceed efficiently.
* Working on getting SAM-QFS license for test dataserver.

* Updated the Publishing program and made it more generalized.
* Added documentation for its running.
* Published S2 Burst data here at CIT.
* Modified Condor setting for sessions, to prevent killing of jobs for
which the session has expired.

* Setting ldas-pcdev2 but ran into problems. Stuart suggested using the
old
ldas-grid machine. Will have it up and running soon.
* The old ldas-pcdev1, is now to become a test bed for fedora. It will
be
located in the Milliken conference room
* Water problems again. Or I should say false alarm problem. 215 had a
water
detection alarm problem again. HVAC is working on the problem
* And about false alarms. I am resetting the media scan to once every
week. It
is working just great. But I have noticed the we get error message
(CRC
errors) that do not corresponds to a drive failure soon.

* Running several tests on Red Hat Fedora to see if it is a viable
operating system for our Linux clusters once Red Hat 9 is no longer
supported.
* Working with Sun to solve a problem of QFS not starting
on Solaris 9 machines with the latest kernel patch.

* Converted 2nd T3 using to an 8 disk Raid 5
plus 1 hot spare configuration.
* Data copied off of pc raid 2 so that board
can finally be swapped out of that unit.

* Replaced failed disk u1d3@t3-8 with spare from t3-25. Still waiting
for replacement to t3-25's disk from Sun Microsystems (Arlo Ruiz).
* Performing dataserver <-> gateway ping tests at both sites, to
diagnose the samfs freezes at LHO.
* DAQ data glitch test stand is finally set up. My work with the data
glitch diagnosis should be wrapping up soon.

This week I have been working mostly on a problem posed by Lars
Bildsten, on the possibility of detecting periodic (every few thousand
years) bursts of gravitational waves from accreting neutron stars. If
spinup due to accretion drives them into a state that is unstable to
r-modes, they will begin emitting gravitational waves, and also
experience a thermal runaway that drives them further into the
unstable region. They will eventually shed their accreted angular
momentum (in weeks or months), stabilize, cool, and begin gradually
spinning up again. For certain limit cycle parameters, these periodic
long-duration bursts may be detectable by continuous-wave analysis
methods.
I have also been developing improved Condor scripts for running pulsar
search codes on grid systems with manageable overhead costs. At
present I am learning Python as a scripting language to automate the
script generation.

Mendell:
A major milestone in the StackSlide pipeline was reached this week. The
code now writes its results in xml format. The xml output was
successfully read into guild and Matlab. The StackSlide code now creates
entries for the process, process_params, search_summary, and
search_summvars database tables defined in LAL. It also creates entries
for two tables currently defined locally in the StackSlide code itself:
searchsummary_stackslidesfts and sngl_stackslideperiodic. A report was
given to the CW group today (02/12/04) with notes saved in CW mail
archive.

* Released updates to several LIGOtools packages, including:
   - Fixes to work with new format for LDAS frame cache file
   - Modified frextract and frgetvect to handle complex data
   - Enhanced dataflow package so that DTT can remotely access RDS
datasets
       in the LIGO data archive, and getFrames can remotely retrieve RDS
       data plus second- and minute-trend data
   - Enhanced version of segwizard and 'segments' Tcl library
* Looked into discrepancies between veto triggers generated with
different
   versions of glitchMon
* Working on finishing bookkeeping of datasets and injection times from
   the S3 run

Yakushin:
1) Attended face to face burst meeting at Gainesville, Florida (
http://www.phys.ufl.edu/LIGO/f2fatuf/ )
   Presented the results of waveburst version 3 simulations on S2
playground data for various waveforms:
   sine-gaussian optimal orientation, sine-gaussian all sky, black hole
merger all sky, gaussian optimal orientation.
   Created and presented three flavors of burst MDC frames for all
burst ETGs to compare their efficiencies.
   For details see
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/F2FBURST.020504/ (standard burst
group id and password).
2) Running waveburst production and simulations for the whole S2 in
preparation for LSC meeting.

Lazzarini:
Spent the first part of the week an an NSF review of the grid iVDGL
project in Washington DC. I presented the LIGO/LSC work relating to the
data distribution that has been set up using the gird based tools; the
network of different CPU clusters that are starting to be managed as a
single virtual organization (VO) -- the LIGO data grid and it
participation in iVDGL activities. Presentation was well received and
underscored the difference in requirements/experience with grid tools
for our type of computing vs. HEP needs. The review panel thought the
cross-disciplinary nature of the project was crucial to its validity
and long term success.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
-Troubleshooting gc fileserver crash
-Patched several critical windows desktops
-Investigating MimeDefang for use with new mailserver

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-This week has been the week of nonstop problems and very little sleep.
-The Laser Safety computer evidently lost both of its comm ports due to
a possible lightning strike. Both comm ports died, but the computer
was still functioning. I replaced the dead ports with two USB to
serial adapters. However, unknown to me at the time, the Kantech
software relies on a DOS process to communicate with the various
controllers. Since it is unaware of USB, it did not work. I had to
cannibalize another computer to get this going. So, with the other
computer that I had (luckily identical hardware) I was able to swap out
the drives and get it going. At that point the Kantec software was
able to communicate with some controllers on the two comm ports, but
some controllers appeared to be dead. I do not know enough about the
system to troubleshoot past this point. Also, I think that it is in
Excel's hands now since the actual controllers need to be looked at.
Unfortunately I learned that this computer will be stuck at windows 98
indefinitely due to its reliance on DOS to communicate with the
controllers. This is not good....
-Ordered and installed a Dell Gigabit switch for a portion of my
servers. Unfortunately this switch has been giving me problems since
Tuesday evening. Once reset, the switch works fine for a period of
time, and then starts intermittently dropping packets. I have been on
the phone with Dell to troubleshoot this switch twice. I am still
working with them, but I think this switch will have to be replaced.
However the support guy at dell keeps having me tweak the configuration.
-The gigabit network has been dropping out for any where from 5 to 60
minutes at a time with no apparent reason. I am not sure if it is
BellSouth or LSU. However, it is NOT the PIX. We have been having
problems with the PIX, but I have eliminated this as the current
problem. This time, it is independent of our network hardware. I have
connectivity up to the Bellsouth line when it drops out. Hopefully
this will not get worse, since it is a moderate annoyance at this
point. If it does get worse it will start causing more severe
problems. I have tried to call LSU several times through normal
routes, however I called Boyd Bourque directly a few minutes ago and
will discuss the problem with him since he is the one that set up our
router on the LSU side.
-Lost a power supply on the Linux file server Tuesday night. I have
ASA sending me a replacement and I also ordered a spare from them for
$125. This machine has backups on it and if it is unavailable then we
cannot restore them if we need to. The machine has three redundant
power supplies, so it will still run now as is, but I will feel better
when the replacement gets here. I have it powered down right now
except for when the backups run overnight.
-Solsoft no longer supports the workstation version of their software,
so they have upgraded me to the full server/client version. I checked
to find out if we were running the current version since I will be
using it on the Cisco 3550 this week. The maintenance agreement is
current, so we did not have to shell out extra money to upgrade, or I
would have stayed with the version that we had. This will give me
revision control on the software which will be a bonus. The
workstation did not support revision control or roll backs beyond one
level.
-Sometime between late tonight and this weekend I will remove the PIX
from out network. A period of downtime around one hour can be
expected, and I will try to do it late one night when everyone is gone.
This will improve the reliability of our network connection since the
PIX has locked up several times in the last year. It has required a
power cycle to get going again when it does lock up. I will contact
Cisco about warranty service on it once it is removed. The PIX will be
used for NAT routing, etc. but will no longer route 100% of our inbound
and outbound traffic. It is limited to 300 Mbit, whereas the new
router is good more or less to 1 Gbit. The new router runs Cisco IOS,
so it will do minimal access list based firewalling which should be
sufficient for our network, and is more or less all we are doing on the
PIX.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Worked on some labview install issues and ordered more upgrades to the
software.
- Put Acrobat 6.0 and Office 2003 in our network standard software
config area for everyone to install.
- Took care of some e-mail issues; ldas e-mail originating from a cron
job
is causing error messages on the mail server, added a new e-mail alias,
deleted some e-mail accounts that are no longer being used, and helped a
few people use pine to delete virus e-mail from their e-mail file on the
server.
- Working with the vendor to upgrade the maintenance contract for my
backup software.
- Threw out some really old software and manuals to make room on my
shelves for new stuff.
- Started planning the needs to upgrade our mail server and web server
as well as what is needed to get a DNS server running.
- Misc. user support.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Worked on the pdmworks server by upgrading to service pack 2.1.
-Loaded a computer for Ruth Brambila. This was a joint venture with ATC.
Ruth now has an updated computer.
-Loaded a loaner laptop for Barry Barish to take on travel. This
included
loading the OS and all GC software.
-Loaded a laptop for Dave Grimmett to take on travel. This included
loading
OS and GC software plus loading DXP software.
-Ghost backups this week were performed on Cindy's pc, laptop and Fred
Mann's PC.
- I worked with Sander Liu showing him how to map network drives to get
him
into certain directories on the LIGO network.
-Worked on Barry Barish's laptop. The Norton live update was not
working. I
had to uninstall this software then reinstall. Once I did that it
started
working again. I also had to call IBM tech support to place an onsite
service order. This is due to Barry's laptop freezing up when swapping
power from AC to Battery or a sudden movement with the laptop will
freeze
it up also. IBM says that the motherboard might not have been installed
correctly and will probably need to be replaced.
-I updated the Ansys license server with a new license that will allow
workbench to run with 5 users concurrently.
-Worked on an Ansys/Workbench client issue. This was very time consuming
but rather easy to fix once I figure out the problem. There were files
created with dates set to the future, which caused the license server to
push out illegal operations messages. This would not permit
Ansys/Workstation to run. I had to find these files and delete them.
After
that everything worked just fine once again.

(Lisa)
- Spent more time upgrading wireless access points.
- Discovered a problem with the apache start scripts. Webservers with
php
compiled in need to have the start script modified.
- Got back to work on building a replacement server for acrux.

(Veronica)
- LIGO web: Prepared a high-resolution image for National Science Museum
of Japan.
Working on compressing of video footage from NSB. I need to find out why
compressing with a standard set of codecs, which works flawlessly with
our
home-grown footage, causes problems with the footage from a different
source.
Updated and installed a new page for summer undergrad projects. Posting
updates as they arrive. Updated the Internal Bulletin Board list of
active
accounts. Updating Aspen 2004 conference website.
- LSC website: Working on the new webpage for LIGO results. Fixing a
minor
bug in preparation for the publishing of the page.
Looking into php/mySQL documentation for upgrades to some web
applications.
Updates to the LSC March Meeting website.
- CaJAGWR website: Updates to the seminars schedule.

(Larry)
-Worked a number of minor procurement issues. Assisted a couple of
other groups
with their procurements.
-Assisted Mike with a number of PC related issues. A few issues
concerning this
last round of spam/virus attacks but so far no major damage.
So far most of the users have been keeping an eye on their system and
have been
careful with their e-mail and related files.
A couple of PC hardware issues. Still working on a laptop/notebook that
is
continually having problems.
-Working with Shannon on a couple of network items. The changing of his
h/w
configuration and a few other related items.
-Reviewing the setup for the NSB conference. Going over lessons learned
and what
we can test out to improve things for the future. Definitely, need a
dedicated
computer for the podium.
-Resolved a couple of different server issues. Both involved rebooting
the
servers to clear out services that would not die or clean up correctly.
-Worked on a couple of the E2E machines. They needed some regular
maintenance
and still need a couple of configuration changes.
-Working on the logistics for the installation of the fire suppression
system
being installed in the computer room.
-Regular assistance with accounts and cleaning up of file systems.

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO and supporting R&D

Seismic Isolation

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

Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure

SEI Structure Design/Fab contract:

ASI is applying fewer hours than expected, but progress made to date is still on plan. They have added another design person to the task, part of a planned rampup.

LIGO sent ASI data addressing the two outstanding Action Items, Payload Mass Properties and Stiffness Matrix, sufficient to proceed with design, by 6 Feb. Further clarification is in work.

The Configuration Intermediate Design Review for the BSC and HAM structure will be held on 17 Feb.

ASI has informed us that a mid-year evaluation of their rate structure has resulted in increases in Direct Labor Benefit/Indirect Rate, Overhead Expense Rate and G&A. These increases are retroactive to the start of this contract, and appear to result in an increase of 5% in what has been billed to date. This is being discussed for better understanding.

Actuator Testing and Redesign:

Still awaiting responses to our requests for quotations. Alternate sources are being developed.

Position Sensor Probe Development:

Empty oven scans of Oven B at the 40 M lab with the repaired SRS RGA have been disappointing, showing the flag hydrocarbon contributions at 5E-8 and 2E-9 tl/s, separated by 8 days of pumping. The first was after a 48 hour bake at 200C for the oven, 250C for the RGA and 100C for the turbo inlet. These readings compare with typical scans of less than 1E-10 tl/s with the LHO oven.

Seismometer Procurement:

This task is on hold pending management approval for SEI structure prototype fabrication.

Galling/Dusting Test:

Dust particles from testing the aluminum plates have been harvested and scanned to .pdf files at resolutions of 600 and 1200 dpi. In general, the bad performers look very bad indeed (especially at 16X!). In addition to previous reports, the holes made with the forming tap (as compared to the cutting taps, which were the balance of the 10 taps tested in aluminum) produced the most particles, and electropolished screws looked as bad as the standard stainless screws with these holes. Threads made with the forming tap have rougher-looking crests which are "v" shaped instead of flat, as in cut threads.

The cleaning and baking of Stainless Steel plates is in process.

Suspension

From: "Mark Barton" <mbarton@ligo.caltech.edu>

This week I analyzed three more asymmetrical pendulum scenarios to
check for possible problematic new cross-couplings. Results are at <http:
//www.ligo.caltech.edu/~mbarton/SUSmodels/results/justin/>. The main
interesting conclusion is that correcting orientation errors due to
spring and wire asymmetries with counterweights is significantly worse
than other methods as far as cross-coupling is concerned, although
probably not to a fatal extent.

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

Advanced LIGO Suspensions - Caltech Quad

Vault - PDMWorks
MPL and I plan to give a talk on the vault and the SolidWorks tools next week at Caltech.

Quad Tasks
A version now exists and will be distributed on Monday

Document sto DCC
Several CAD and suspension related documents were sent to the DCC

40kg Test mass Prototype
Support structure being assembled

FEM
Quad structure analysis continuing
Comparison between ALGOR, IDEAS and ANSYS underway

Design Meeting
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/%7Ectorrie/QUAD_ETM/quad_etm%20setup.html

Core Optics

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

I have been spending effort monitoring and analyzing issues pertaining
to the sapphire/FS downselect, and the plausibility of using non-wedged
RC optics.

Weekly Report for Week Ending February 12, 2004

Special Announcements:

LSC Issues (Saulson)

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)