LIGO Weekly Report

There may be a short conventional ExComm meeting after the staffing committee session if there are items requiring attention.

Special Announcements:

LSC Issues (Saulson)

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

Attach. B for 08-15-03 to 02-15-04 / LIGO review / Barish
Attach. D for 02-15-03 to 08-15-03 / signed-off

Attach. B for 08-15-03 to 02-15-04 / in sign-off by PI
Attach. C for 02-15-03 to 08-15-03 / signed-off

Attach. C for 02-15-04 to 08-15-04 / LIGO review / Barish
Attach. D for 02-15-03 to 08-15-03 / signed-off

D for 02-15-04 to 08-15-04 / LIGO review / Barish
Attach. Z for 08-15-03 to 02-15-04 / in sign-off by PI

Attach. A for 08-15-02 to 02-15-03 / in LIGO review / Barish
Attach. Z for 02-15-03 to 08-15-03 / in sign-off by PI

Draft-MOU for collaboration on AURIGA-LIGO coincidence data analysis / in VIRGO review

Draft-Attach. covering arrangements for the first coincidence run / in VIRGO review

Univ. of Washington (proposed collaboration/managing angular instabilities in Fabry-Perot cavities):

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)
A site teleconference was not held on Thursday, February 26, 2004.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through the last update (February 19, 2004) may be found at ACTION LIST.

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
During the past week, I worked 91 hours, accomplishing the following tasks:

The DCC offices were closed while furniture was moved out, equipment and computers unhooked, and floors cleaned and waxed. Furniture was returned with a new layout that appears to have opened up the space and made it more conducive to work processes. The ECR was jammed full of boxes filled with documents nearly 8 to 10 years old. Nearly three-fourths of the boxes have been emptied by processing those documents not yet in the database and tossing anything that was a duplicate.

The new scanner was delivered and installed in my office Monday afternoon. Its high speed of 90 pages per minute was thoroughly tested. In two days, I scanned with OCR a total of 5,236 pages. The scanner was key in eliminating extremely large and bulky documents. The scanned documents were burned on to CD's saving nearly 6 feet of shelf space.

Jim continued to make progress in scanning all the account charges files on the other large scanner. He has made it through August 1998. I've completed book marking and quality checking all of 1994 through 1996 and am nearly finished with 1997. As soon as CD's are burned over 10 boxes will be tossed and the documents shredded.

In spite of being shut down for a couple of days, 152 documents were processed and added to the database. The breakdown by categories was:

Nearly 80 MOU attachments and progress reports were processed. All are available electronically and Veronica is in the process of posting them on the LSC web page.

Worked with George on a proposal for revamping the current DCC web search tool. We are incorporating the more sophisticated search capabilities that I currently have on the DCC application so that outside users will have a complete range of options using all the metadata collected for each document. The proposal was sent to Phil and Gary for review and approval.

Participated in a meeting with several members of the new TMT project staff on campus. Veronica and Larry discussed the web/database/server architecture. I explained the current processes employed in the project for maintaining documents, including the electronic libraries while a large array of questions were fielded from the TMT staff.

Began to assist Ed Jasnow is incorporating final changes into the contracts for Research and Development for Coating of Advanced LIGO Core Optics. Their were new inputs and changes from both the Australian and French companies. This needs to be finished by Friday morning.

Continued to work on an article about Barry's trip to Antarctica for the newsletter. This will be finalized in the next week.

Began to update tracking forms and presentation submittal sheets for the March LSC meeting. Began to organize my time at the AIIM conference in New York, to attend as many classes as possible and to check in with several vendors catering to document management needs.

02/26/04	Packages	Faxes
In	30	36
Out	12	37

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
CR-040002	Added personnel--Hanford	P. Lindquist	February 13, 2004

I believe that CR-040001 replaces CR-030015 and CR-030015 should be closed. CR-030016 has been placed on the "watch" list. I have prepared a change request for added personnel at Hanford (CR-040002). Awaiting direction concerning how these should be handled.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

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

4K IFO
The thermal compensation team installed enclosed TC CO2 lasers in the spool section downstream
of the ITMs, and aligned and tested them. With a side-band locked PRM, thermal compensation
was applied. A factor of ~3 more heating was required than expected to achieve optimal
heating in the PRM - the cause of which is still being investigated. See elogs, including these
that give JPGs of the thermally-imaged spots projected across the LVEA and back to a card:
annulus and central spot masks.

Similar to the measurement recently performed at LLO, the oscilator phase noise of the 4k
was measured. This accounts for the long-standing bump in the high frequency noise spectrum.
Details are available here. An updated noise budget was posted later in the week.

WFS work for the week included these characterizations of WFS2-5 sensitivity as a function
of IFO heating. Later, common WFS degrees of freedom were closed with unity gain frequencies
of 2.2Hz.

2K IFO
B. Bland demonstrated the false economy of cheap lenses, swapping a quality CVI lens
into the WFS2 beam path and restoring the beam profile to a nice round shape.

PMC mirror losses reported several weeks ago were confirmed, after adjusting modematching.

DAQ
ATM network crashes were problematic on the weekend. Initial suspicion was cast on the Red
Hat 9.0 Linux IOC's.

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

---------------------------------------------------------------------
L1 commissioning (summary by MZ)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This week was mostly devoted to the upgrade of the
DAQ software and reflective memory, and installation of the
new processors to manage the HEPI isolation system now under
construction. Rolf Bork and Alex Ivanov from Caltech
did an outstanding
job restoring full functionality under the new system
and documenting the changes, with only minor bugs and
a few address changes. The commissioning team, aided by
Pradeep Sarin from MIT, managed to restore the interferometer
to operation and exercise controls and diagnostics.
We were hampered by high microseismic activity; an artifact
of the rebuild is that our microseismic feedforward
system had to be disabled to make room. However as of
early this morning a full common-mode low noise lock has
been achieved, verifying that the new software and hardware
is performing well.

Education and Public Outreach (B. Wooley)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit today from the Youth Challenge Program. 38 students learned about
light, toured the facility and made ice cream.

Safety (R. Riesen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Found no safety concerns on weekly site safety tour.

Performed IR scans on PSL table throughout the past week and found no
errant beams.

Ensuring safety items are being addressed for the HPLF, working with M.
Zucker, Rupal Amin and the Excel group.

Spot checking the Excel people working on site and am satisfied with their
safety awareness and practices.

HEPI fabrication and installation (MZ for Abbott)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Piping installation is outpacing the schedule; Excel has nearly
finished the tubing runs in the X end and. Waiting for last minute
parts to finish the ends and connect to the pump in the MER, they
moved on to the Y end. The tube runs are neat and logical and minimize
intrusion into interferometer access space, exceeding
our expectations.

The first four actuator pods are nearly complete in the assembly
bay. A problem with the load cell assembly was resolved by J. Kern
remembering an alternate assembly order.

The first pump station is in position in the X end. The other six
pumps are under pressure test in the assembly bay.

Electronics, connector and cabling production is on pace. As noted
above, the HEPI software and digital infrastructure is complete
and passed operating tests in "offline" mode (simulated outputs
and inputs).

We are expecting special BSC lift fixtures any day, and currently
see no obstacles
to pushing on with the actuator installation at the X end on
schedule.

L1 commissioning (O'Reilly)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Attempted on several occasions to "exercise" the interferometer in
order to test whether the DAQ changes by Rolf and Alex had broken
anything. The Friday night test revealed several problems which
were fixed over the weekend. It was not possible to get to a low
noise state with the ifo due to inclement weather conditions and
some hardware problems. As far as we know the hardware problems have
been fixed, but the removal of the micro-seismic feedforward (to make
room for the HEPI code) has made it even more difficult to lock.

#MZ note: Brian, Pradeep and Alex eventually succeeded in
fully qualifying the interferometer in low-noise mode, around 4AM
this morning.

LDAS (I. Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS admin:
1) Got a replacement T3 disk from SUN.
2) Remounted IDE RAIDS with NFS version 2 on dataserver to improve performance.
3) Removed 2Gb network card from the old E450 metaserver to prepare its transfer to DMT.
4) Set up waveburst final S2 triggers archiving to tape at LLO (Ben did the same at LHO).
5) Removed S3MDC from /samrds.

Data analysis:
1) Continue running and processing S2 simulations.
2) Together with Sergey continue writing complete waveburst documentation.
3) Generated spectrograms for the 4 waveburst events that passed r-statistics at various steps of waveburst pipeline:
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/EVENTS/4_events.html

General Computing (S. Roddy)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Not too much this week due to the Mardi Gras holiday.

Started "officially" moving some of the home directories to the RAID
server. Still not getting very good NFS performance, but the benefits
outweigh the slower speed. Working on a script to automate this since
it takes anywhere from 1-4 hours per user. I have 8 of the heaviest
disk space users moved over so far and another ~200 users to go.

There were a couple of glitches on the internet connection again. None
lasted more than 8 minutes. Still not sure where the problem is, but
LSU assures me they are looking into it. It could be on our end, but I
am fairly certain I have eliminated most possibilities.

Had to make several changes to the firewall to fix NTP and also Kerberos
authentication. Both were broken due to the difficulties of firewalls
and UDP connections. TCP is trivial to firewall but UDP can be more
challenging due to it being stateless.

Current information on the router can be found at
http://teche.ligo-la.caltech.edu/mrtg/LLO-Router/130.39.245.1_1.html

Burst analysis (K. Yoshiki Franzen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) In order to speed up the WaveMon S2 Playground H1 and H2 data
processing I requested an account on the Caltech LIGO GC dmt machines.
After this being approved I set up the scripts and started to run. In
theory this would have increased my processing speed 3 times, but in
practice these machines all crashes after a few hours when running jobs.
J. Zweizig and S. Anderson are looking into this problem which is
similar to the problem we are having with alvar dmt machine here at LLO.

2) Continued the WaveMon S2 Playground H1 and H2 data processing run at
the alvar DMT machine, which is having some serious problems. Sometimes
it crashes several times per day without any apparent reason, at other
times it runs like a clock for several days in a row. The reason for
this is not yet known.

3) Continued my study of L1 and H1 WaveMon triggers produced adjacent to
four interesting S2 burst events. See web page
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~franzen/restricted/WBveto4.html for more
details on new results.

HPLF and L1 commissioning (R. Amin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
HPLF: Rich, Jodie (Excel), and I have laid plans for the emergency
access, forced door access, and subsequent physical laser restart
procedures for the HPLF. These plans parallel the PSL and run identical
to the SOP. Since Excel has wires already running to the build Cantec
(sp?), control of the shutters will not be a problem. Those reading this
entry should also note that the laser, once tripped, will not begin
lasing until someone physically enters the lab and activates the device.

Furthermore, IPG has been contacted with respect to the safety features
of the laser being purchased. They informed me that there are three
failsafes onboard the laser. All three prevent the laser pump diodes
from activating or will rapidly shut down the pump diodes removing the
necessity for a physical shutter as was the case for the previous laser.

2k Faraday Rotator: With exception of the rotator and the polarizers,
parts for the new 2k FI have been sent to Gainesville for modifications
and preassembly. We are determining how to best peer through the clear
aperture of the Faraday usnig the view ports at hand. This peak will
allow observatory crews to center the beam through the Faraday without
the need for guess work.

Commissioning: Having seen the amount of phase noise introduced by the
24.5 MHz frequency generator, Rana has asked me to measure the level of
AM noise coming directly from this generator and its AM stabilization
box. This morning I managed to obtain several data sets both from the
RF output on the frequency generator and the stabilzer's EOM feed. I
have yet to obtain data from the frequency distribution box's ASC port.

During the past few days, I have been aiding Peter King in the PSL.
Last week we cleaned the large chiller's micron filter as well as tried
to determine the culprit of the large noise level emanating from large
chiller. Since we could not observed any pieces of compressor hardware
impacting the chiller frame, we concluded that the rattling may be
originating inside the refrigerant (large) tank. We wish to quantify
amount of noise coming the chiller prior to reinstallation.

Earlier this week, I assisted Brian O'Reilly in determining why the mode
cleaner had failed to lock. Peter King, Mike Z, and I later found the
problem lies in the methods that EPICs uses to write commands to
hardware. Amending this problem by toggling the boost slider allowed
the mode cleaner to acquire lock without problems.

CDS support (Ash Khan)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Worked with Alex and Rolf on the DAQ upgrade, Hepi integration, Frame
broadcaster and general issues regarding the new latout of the DAQ system.

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

DETECTOR SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

Seismic Upgrade Project

for details see:

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

Dennis Coyne reporting:

Some highlights:

All EPI parts received except for flex-lines. Oddvar has ordered enough flex-lines for X-end installation, with 3-week time delay.
Spring/ vert Actuator/ EPI assembly going together (Harry) and looks OK so far.
Piping in X end: complete from cart to BSC manifolds. Valve plates should arrive Tuesday Piping installation contractor has moved onto the Y-end station (though not quite completed with the X-end yet).
1st set of electronics complete and tested. Satellite box design being done at CIT.
Pump cart to be sent to MIT soon, with final electronics. DP sensors already there.
Test cables in house and QA inspected; will authorize the balance from vender.
A BSC crossbeam lift fixture has been designed and built; Analysis on the best method to lift continues in parallel.
Valve test stand: The tets stand works and Katrina is now calibrating valves (~45 min each).

·Pump stations (Ken Mailand): 1st pump station nearly ready to test in loop in/out of drum, with pressure noise measurement.

Reservoir & nearby plumbing network design being finished up and going to Southern soon for quotation.
Pradeep: will go to LLO for two weeks, in a week, and will install his alt version of DTT for use in sys-id.
Rich Mittleman's inductive sensor tester is on the way to LLO to support installation.

Ken Mailand

Two of the seven pump stations have are air tight over a one week period

holding 110 psi. Five of the pump stations have a varying slow leak rate

I will examine each one next week to locate the leaks.

The reservoir design has been finished and the quotes received the

drawings are in the shop and a first article to be used on the X end

station should be done next week the others a few days later.

The electrical break was approved as a tube sleeve and clamp assembly,

separating the fluid tube ends approx .15" I have completed a test

rig simulating the installation, and will set it up and test the assembly

next week.

One pump station is setup to 'run' when time permits, it will cycle fluid

from the 55 gal. supply drum.

CDS

see also the weekly CDS meeting minutes in the commissioning archives:

Rolf Bork reporting

Alex and I have spent the last two weeks at LLO performing new hardware and software installs and testing:

DAQ Network: The DAQ network has been changed out and is operational. A description of the changes is included in T040030-00-C, submitted to DCC today. This was the doc sent ahead to LLO a few weeks ago. I need to update it per as installed (early next week), but it covers most items. There are a few remaining software tasks, that we hope to have complete by the time the system is installed at LHO (March 15):

- Having problems getting AWG to write to the ICS115 DAC outputs (keep getting synchronization errors).

- Software for front ends still needs to be updated for automatic DAQ reconfiguration on demand.

- Need to add capability of running ICS115 DACs from ADCUs.

HEPI: Four HEPI VME crates are operational in the MSR. Predeep ran preliminary tests on it last night and it appears to function according to requirements. We swept the new polyphase FIR filters last Friday, and there is an entry in the LLO elog. Today, we'll get all the MEDM screens into epiGen and finish adding the tidal inputs to the end station controls.

Ben Abbott reporting

HEPI hardware:

I have finished the L4C interface box schematic re-design. I am nearly finished with the PCB changes now, and will then concentrate on packaging.
The 8-Channel Valve Driver Board have come back from Screaming Circuits. I am having the last remaining connectors on, and they can be tested very soon.
The front panels from Front Panel Express have come back, and they look fine.

d.The XY220 interface, the XY212 Interface, and ICS Interface boards are being stuffed, and attached to their respective panels ready for shipping to Livingston.

The photodiodes have arrived, and some will be manufactured shortly in order to complete the ISS PD robustness tests.

Jay Heefner reporting

Frequency Devices Low Noise DAC

We have now received all 14 of the modules that have been ordered. Initial tests on a single unit show no signs of glitches.
The measured output noise for the module appears to be close to the 100nV/rtHz requirement when a single 1024 Hz, low amplitude tone is used. Larger amplitude 1024 Hz tones cause the noise to rise to ~150nVrtHz. When a single tone at a non-integral sub-harmonic of the sample frequency is used, peaks in the output spectrum begin to appear. The amplitude of these peaks is related to the amplitude of the sine wave and frequency of the peaks is related to a combination of the sample frequency and the frequency of the tone. They are probably due to phase truncation errors, but a complete explanation of their origin has not been determined. This needs further investigation and explanation.
The output noise measured using a random noise source varies from 100nVrtHz for low amplitude level to as high as 445nV/rtHz for higher amplitude levels. A conservative estimate of the output noise of the module as it relates to use in LIGO would use the higher number.
The output referred noise of the module using the on-board DC-DC converters and the external linear supplies are very similar with the major difference being the “moving” peaks that are seen in the DC-DC converter case. For applications where low output noise is required, the linear power supply option should be used.
The initial testing of the production units will be documented in T040019-00-C, to be issued shortly.

RFI Retrofit

Cables and connectors continue to arrive for the the LLO end station retrofit.

Sander Liu

In the process of testing the EO Link boards.

Thermal Compensation

OMC

PeterKing

I have sketched out a drawing for the suspension of the output

modecleaner.Also I have been working on figuring out the tolerancing for

the output modecleaner itself.

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

New alignmentcompleted and mode match fixed.

We encounter another situation with the variable attenuator(diffractive grating) wheel.

the damage threshold for this attenuator is only 250w/cm2.

Our laser beam intensity for a 0.5mm beam diameter is ~ 16KW/cm2.

therefore, we decided to use a half-wave plate and a broadband polarizing beamsplitter cube

(both with a damage threshold of 1MW/cm2) as a power attenuator.

we have inprogress to test a 1.00" inch fused silica mirror for absorption.

Scatterometer system in standby

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38No Change.

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 10 watt ND:YAG laser is still in progress under new alignment of the polarizer plates in order to improve power output,

so far we got 8.25 watt of power. Mode matching is very critical.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

LASTI (Ottaway)

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
E2E weekly meeting
-----------------------
Matt, Virginio, Hiro and Biplab discussed about simulation results
for WFS and various important issues mainly related to how exactly
the Gouy phase telescopes are used and demodulation angles are
taken into account to get WFS signals at sites and how changes in
sidebands due to heating may affect reflected port signals.

SimLIGO noise hunting
--------------------------
(Matt) Mysterious noise source which dominates around
100 Hz appears to be coming from the MICH loop, but exact cause is not
yet known. Whether this is a "real" effect (which may or may not be
present at the sites), or a bug has yet to be seen.

Effect of Thermal heating on WFS
----------------------------------
(Biplab) Using FFT code, calculated WFS3 and 4 signals at the reflected
port
for various common modes of misalignments under different heated states
of the interferometer. Analysis is going on. Presented results
for WFS2 in last Friday's Thermal Compensation Meeting.

Mechanical Simulation
---------------------------
(Virginio)
Worked mainly on the debugging and the improvement of the state
space model
of the LIGO suspension, which includes a simplified 3D model for the
violin
modes. Here is the progress:
- Introducing the stiffness of the wires to simulate the splitting of
the
   violin modes.
- Adding some missing inputs to the model, i.e. the 5 mirror
actuators.
- Added a viscous dissipation mechanism to the DOF.
- Added in the maple library some routines to the calculation of the
transfer
   function from the state space formalism . It seems that for some
unknown
   reasons, maple 9.01 gives better numerical results than matlab.
Anyway,
   maple is also 100 times slower than matlab.

Code for Dual-recycled Michelson
-----------------------------------
(Hiro) Working on the completion of the fast simulation of the dual
recycling cavity. Matlab code is written and is being compared with the
e2e calculation using primitives for the validation purpose.

Code development and maintenance
----------------------------------
(Matt) Matrix Expression Templates: considering new approach to
expression
templates which will optimize speed, though possibly at the cost of
some flexibility (and certainly at the cost of a great deal of coding).

(Melody) Converted a SimLIGO box file using the new FUNC_X primitives to
illustrate to the group the changes which need to be done and the
performance improvement.

Added some enhancements to the FUNC_X code based on a meeting with
Matt and Hiro.

Incorporated Sourceforge's MET expression template facility with
MEMatrix.
Work still needs to be done to improve the performance of the matrices.

Writing a technical document to describe the FUNC_xxx's use of dynamic
linking and shared libraries.

Alfi
-----------
(Melody)
Fixed a bug which occured when a primitive setting contained a
#include.

In preparation for the conversion to FUNC_X, I'm looking into making
the
user's editor (specifically vi or emacs) the default primitive settings
editor.

Software Systems (Maros reporting)
This week the official release of 1.0.0 of LDAS was announced. All the
resource files and database tables were updated to bring them up to the
1.0.0 spec. All the sites were upgraded and validated before announcing
the successful installation of LDAS 1.0.0.

After the official release of 1.0.0, efforts focus on closing problem
reports in the Problem Tracking system:
   * diskcacheAPI
        1. A warning to the sysadmin should be generated that partial
           paths used in ::EXCLUDE_THESE_DIRS_FROM_UPDATES are ignored.
        2. Huge memory usage caused by API storing all identified frame
           files under all available subdirectories in MOUNT_PT list.
   * managerAPI
        1. Verify that all APIs are of the same version.
        2. Made filterparams more tolerant in its syntax by allowing
           spaces and some other constructs that user's have used in
           the past.
   * mpiAPI
        1. Properly report error condition when a request for more than
           the maximum number of nodes. Previously this would cause a
           timeout error.
        2. Added code to automatically retry on mpirun 'Success' and
           'set stdio' errors.

The latest tagged release of LAL/LALwrapper (test-2004-02-23) was
compiled, tested and installed on all development and production
systems. This includes the sites.

In our commitment to using current tools, several packages are in the
process of being upgraded. These include: gcc 3.3.3, cURL 7.11.0,
coreutils 5.2.0, binutils 2.14, gcc 3.3.3, STLport 4.6.1, lam 7.0.4,
xerces 2.4.0, BWidget 1.7.0 and tth 3.33. Before these versions of the
tools are adopted, both LDAS and LAL/LALwrapper need to be verified
against them.

Kent and Edward visited the PyGlobus team at LBL. Both the PyGlobus and
TclGlobus efforts have the same model for how to design the interface
layers and are excited at the joint effort to get a uniform solution
out to the community for use. Each team left with a list of tasks.(AL
note: this is a CIT ITR2003 task we are ramping up to perform).

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
* Received replacement 3510 controller from Sun and installed it in
"spare" 3510. Still doing some work to understand what happens to
various configuration options when you replace one controller in dual
controller 3510.
* Closed out some old PRs (SAM-QFS dumps should be bzip2 rather than
gzip,
how to specify read-only option for SAM-QFS mounts).
* Mostly focused on getting data out of HPSS and into SAM-QFS. All full
frames have been copied or were already in SAM-QFS, but some still
need
to be verified and/or untar'd. Those that have been verified have
been
deleted from HPSS (LHO E4,E5,E6 and M1 & M2). Trend frames are being
copied out of HPSS as we speak.

(Hari Pulapaka)
* Worked on upgrading Condor in the entire cluster, including the
checkpoint server.
* Installed grid-ftp on ldas-grid.
(Al Wilson)
* Dealt with various system issues for Ldasbox1,4 Datacache 3,5 and
sundev1
nothing too serious but never the less.
* Added xauth to the Caltech linux systems. Also added it to the master
rpm
list.
* Shipped out the bad motherboards and memory, to ASA I am still
waiting for
the replacement motherboard for node128 and the new system.

(Stuart Anderson)
* Obtained solution from Sun to run SAM-QFS on the most recent Solaris
kernel.
* Received spare JetCore management module for LDAS-DEV Foundry
Ethernet swtich.
* Worked on coordinating Condor configuration changes to the large
cluster at Caltech. Condor is now able to use all 420 processors
in the cluster.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
* Helping Shourov move data on pcraids.
* Upgraded firmware on old pcraids.
* Installed latest xauth on all LDAS linux boxes.

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
* Got a replacement T3 disk from SUN.
* Remounted IDE RAIDS with NFS version 2 on dataserver to improve
performance.
* Removed 2Gb network card from the old E450 metaserver to prepare its
transfer to DMT.
* Set up waveburst final S2 triggers archiving to tape at LLO (Ben did
the same at LHO).
* Removed S3MDC from /samrds.

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
* My LDAS sys admin work this week has focused on testing the v1.0.0
release of LDAS with the createrds process, and setting up archiving
and
reducing of 1000 seconds of data every 100,000 seconds during the
postS3
period.

(Ben Johnson)
* Created new archiver sets burst (@LHO) and postS3 (@LHO + @LLO)
* Replaced motherboard on tekoa IDE-RAID and upgraded the 3ware
firmware on both IDE-RAIDS. Both RAID units at LHO now have all their
upgrades completed.
* Fixed (killed) a stuck sam-stagerd at LHO. This was preventing any
staging from occuring, and was the most likely cause of the frameAPI
restarts at LHO.
* Installed "One Percent" script at both observatories. This should
copy 1,000 out of every 100,000 seconds of data from /frames to
/samraw.
* Worked with Christine Barker on fixing IDE-RAID -> GC nfs sharing
issues.
* Continuing work on data integrity issues with Dave Barker and Vern
Sandberg.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini -- covers past two weeks; most
recent first)

Creighton: :
Finished material for Einstein@home proposal, which was submitted
Wednesday afternoon. Also finished Python script for generating lower
half of the coherent pulsar search Condor DAG.

I prepared material for a grant propsal for the
Einstein@home project. I also continued writing a Python script to
automate Condor DAG generation for pulsar area searches.

Mendell:
The current focus is on validating and benchmarking the stackslide
code. A significant bug was identified and fixed this week where the
leap seconds field in the ephemeris data structure was not getting set
properly. The code was benchmarked on my laptop, and benchmarking on
the UWM cluster should beging today.

The stackslide code currenly outputs events corresponding to a peak in
power above threshold. It also measures the width of these peaks.
During the last week we have added the option to veto peaks wider than n
bins and keep only the loudest events every m bins. Monte Carlo studies
will be needed to verify any veto we set has an acceptable false
dismissal rate. There is still lots of work to do validating and
benchmarking the code. We really hope in the next week to have
benchmarks that will tell us how long it will take to complete a search,
including Monte Carlo studies. We will then know what preliminary
results we should be able to produce by the March LSC meeting.

Shawhan:
* Tracked down the origin of the discrepancy between injected and
measured
phases of simulated pulsars injected during the S3 run.
* Worked on the proposal to the NSF for funding for the "Einstein@home"
project. Like SETI@home, this consists of making available a "screen
saver" which takes advantage of otherwise idle CPU time on computers
around the country and around the world.
* Worked on the draft of the paper for the S2 binary neutron star
inspiral analysis.
* Tracked down some problems with building the current version of LAL
on Solaris machines at LLO; came up with a workaround.

* Released new version of LIGOtools 'dataflow' package.
* Set up remote access to all frame data from past runs in the archives
at Caltech and at the observatories.
* Worked on a report about Matlab for the LSC Data Analysis Software
Working Group.
* Re-worked conlog query utilities to fix an obscure bug.

Sutton;
This past week I've disseminated a proposal for simulations for the
LIGO-TAMA analysis to the Bursts group and to TAMA. I've also run
simulations for zenith-injected sine-Gaussian and Gaussian waveforms in
TFClusters for this analysis. Currently I'm modifying the
SenseMonitor's "Calibrate" class for general use for FOM DMT monitors,
by request of Keith Riles.

I've spent most of the past week planning simulations for bursts
analyses, especially the LIGO-TAMA coincidence search:
I've made SNR-based estimates of the range to which various types of
signals could be detected by the bursts pipeline. The Zwerger-Muller
and Dimmelmeier-Font-Muller supernova waveforms will be detectable to
at best about 1kpc (optimal position and orientation); this is
consistent with Marka's external trigger analysis of GRB030329. The
Lazarus BH merger waveforms are visible to 1-10Mpc, which is consistent
with what WaveBurst has measured. Since full-scale simulations require
time and effort, I argue that we should put our resources into those
signals that we could make the strongest statements about (ie, we
should not spend a lot of time looking for supernovae in S2).

I'm also editing the lengthy email discussion from LIGO-TAMA group for
dissemination to the broader Bursts group, and composing the list of
simulations to be done for LIGO-TAMA.

Sylvestre:
o Finished the S2 Playground analysis for TFClusters, from 130 Hz to 1
kHz. Meet the burst ground requirement of a 10 microhertz false rate
before the r-statistics, with good detection efficiencies, both for
short
and for long (~1s) events. Results are available at
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~jsylvest/S2/Report/Report.html
o Work in progress on running the TFClusters triple-coincidence events
through the r-statistics and interpreting the results.

o Finished tuning TFCLUSTERS for the 400 Hz - 1 kHz band; ran large
simulations with coherent injections of sine-gaussians at all sites.
o Developed and tuned an adaptive time and frequency window for triple
coincidence, in order to preserve our detection efficiency to bursts of
various lengths, while maintaining a good rejection efficiency for the
coincidence of noise events.
o Debugged and ran Laura's r-statistic code on the CIT Condor system,
using the matlab compiler.
o Worked on documenting the S2 TFClusters analysis.

Weinstein
- Looking at individual burst events.
- Beginning process of LSC review of inspiral results.
- Review of LDAS for the new LSC DASWG.

Yakushin:
1) Continue running and processing S2 simulations.
2) Together with Sergey continue writing complete waveburst
documentation.
3) Generated spectrograms for the 4 waveburst events that passed
r-statistics at various steps of waveburst pipeline:
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/EVENTS/4_events.html

1) Continue running waveburst simulations on S2.
2) Looking at the 4 events on playground data that was found by
waveburst and passed r-statistics test.
3) Writing complete waveburst documentation.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Specing out hardware for mailserver upgrade
-Clearing space on gc fileserver
-Helping install matlab on client machines

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Not too much this week due to the Mardi Gras holiday.
-Started "officially" moving some of the home directories to the RAID
server. Still not getting very good NFS performance, but the benefits
outweigh the slower speed. Working on a script to automate this since
it takes anywhere from 1-4 hours per user. I have 8 of the heaviest
disk space users moved over so far and another ~200 users to go.
-There were a couple of glitches on the internet connection again. None
lasted more than 8 minutes. Still not sure where the problem is, but
LSU assures me they are looking into it. It could be on our end, but I
am fairly certain I have eliminated most possibilities.
-More virus & OS updates, etc. as usual.
-Had to make several changes to the firewall to fix NTP and also
Kerberos authentication. Both were broken due to the difficulties of
firewalls and UDP connections. TCP is trivial to firewall but UDP can
be more challenging due to it being stateless.

Bandwidth usage:
http://teche.ligo-la.caltech.edu/mrtg/LLO-Router/130.39.245.1_1-week.png

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Graphs of network usage can now be seen at
http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~christin/mrtg/ 198.129.208.1_198.129.78.122.html.
- Purchasing new Sun servers and workstations.
- Purchasing some more software upgrades.
- Starting a site-wide inventory of computer equipment and software.
- Blocked some new IP addresses at our firewall because virus containing
e-mails were originating from these addresses.
- Some time spent on CDS software support.
- Misc. user support.

CIT:
(Lisa)
- I did some heavy mailserver work this week. The replacement for
acrux can go
into production. It has some major architectural changes but this
shouldn't
affect most people. I also did a substantial set of upgrades on becrux
(sendmail, imap/pop, spam filters). Both becrux and the new acrux
support
smtp-auth relaying. The new version of canit, our spam filter, has
many new
features including a bayesian filter. I will be making a lot of tweaks
over the
next few weeks to see if I can make a bigger dent in the spam coming
through.
- Did some nfs mount support for Jay.

(Veronica)
- LSC website: A lot of time was allocated to MOU posting. Keep posting
them as they keep arriving en masse.
- CaJAGWR: Posted updates to the seminars list and provided some user
support.
- LIGO website: Andrew Pickles, the Associate Director the the 30m
Telescope Project, expressed interest in the setup and operation of DCC.
He indicated they are looking to build a similar system. We set up a
meeting with him and his team of programmers, with Larry, Linda, and
myself on the LIGO side, where we presented an overview of the DCC in
its
current state, the web integration, security, and operation, as well as
proposed changes.
Posting updates to pages throughout the website.
Prepared four DVDs of CaJAGWR and Astro seminars for Kip Thorne.
That required recapture the sources as mpegs.

(Mike)
-Worked on Dennis Coyne's engineering workstation, by updating his solid
works installation to 2004 and I also included installing the PDMWorks
client & updating windows OS/security patches.
-Worked on Barry Barish's IBM laptop, that is still giving him
problems. I
have given this laptop to IBM onsite tech support for them to
troubleshoot
and correct this problem.
They have pretty much have replaced every part that could possibly be
replaced. This should work when we get this back from IBM.
-Received our 4 loaner laptops from Livingston. I went through and
cleaned
this laptops up and updated the windows patches & virus scan software.
-Did some searching on the Internet for some additional spyware/adware
tools. I found a few tools that I have loaded on my computer, which I am
currently testing .
-Cleaned up our backup/ghost server that was maxed out in disk space.
The
old data I pulled from the server I backed up to DVD.
-Worked on updating 3 additional loaner laptops that had been loaned
out to
users and returned back to me with many problems. This was mostly OS
issues
with some hardware issues. These laptops are back in the loaner pool.
-Loaded (zone alarm) firewall software for Cindy, Cleveland and Bill
Kells.
I have many more users to load this software on. The professional
version
has a cookie control and popup blocker that are some great tools that
are
included in this package.
-This week I had more than usual onsite/phone support that included
printing, software, e-mail and some networking issues.

(Larry)
-Purchased a number of hardware and software items. A number of
additional
licenses for Zonealarm has been purchased. Mike is installing this
program on to
a number of computers.
-Working on a number of items in relationship to the modifications
planned for
the BridgeAnnex server room.
-Assisted DCC with a number of items including the modifications to
their
offices.
-A great deal of time has been spent with PC assistance. It appears we
have a
problem coming up with the Acrobat s/w pkg. A number of machines are
having
problems with the distiller. It may be caused by a Windows update since
we are
not finding any virus issues associated with it. We will continue
looking.
-Setup a couple more specialty web accounts and locations. Assisted a
few others
in the setup of their files they are putting on the web.
-Setup a webcam with a audio connection. The first tests worked out
well. The
big drawback is that we can only get it to work with InternetExplorer.
We will
be running more tests with a second Webcam audio setup and still
checking to see
how we can get it to work with other Web browsers.
-Went through a number of property items. Most of the tasks were
working with Ed
in locating equipment and matching up documentation.
-Regular user support of adding accounts, modifying environments and
setting up
specialty items.

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. A re-plan is currently in process, to evaluate the impact of the recent slippage.

The BSC configuration design is well into the second iteration. Except for Stage 2 of the BSC all of the primary structure is within requirements. The second iteration of the BSC Finite Element Model has been completed, and Stage 2 stiffness is being improved.

ASI reported problems with accessing instrument pods for servicing within HAM chambers, along the beam line. Proposed methods of gaining access have been discussed by LIGO planning and site personnel, and preferences have been established to guide ASI in their design.

The Design Review meeting (for BSC & HAM structures combined) was originally planned for March 16, but will now be late. Due to the amount of detail involved, it is likely that a full day will be required for reviewing each of the two structures. ASI is considering separating those and focusing on the BSC to minimize the delay in the BSC structure, which is LIGO's priority.

Actuator Testing and Redesign:

Four proposals were received on 20 Feb in response to the Actuator RFP. These are in the process of being evaluated.

Position Sensor Probe Development:

The RGA scan of the Teflon coax cables representing 20 units of position sensors measured 1.1E-12 tl/s for the 5 flag hydrocarbon AMUs, after subtracting for the RGA head background reading. This reading, which includes oven outgassing, is not quite to the 5.5E-13 level allocated for this item in T040001-00 (proposed levels for various components in Advanced LIGO).

Seismometer Procurement:

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

Galling/Dusting Test:

Testing has started on the Stainless Steel plates.

Suspension

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

Mike Perreur-Lloyd is heading back to the UK today after visiting and working with us for the last month. Again, his visit was quite fruitful. We really appreciate him coming and working with us.

From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdvLIGO SUS - Ribbon / Fiber Development

Established a criteria by which to evaluate Ribbons and Fibers for a down selection.

Pre-stabilized Laser

From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdvLIGO PSL
===========
My version of the laser costing has been completed. Updated parts
include signal monitors and the instrumentation for them. I am assuming
that we would want to have 16-bit monitoring of all the signals. With the
large number of pump diodes and their controls, the PSL rack is going to be
very crowded. Now for costing other items like the various servos.Although
I don't expect this to change much from the last version.

Core Optics

From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdvLIGO Coating Development

We decided to evaluate HfO2 by coating 2 fused silica substrates with 30 (1/4 wave) layers of HfO2 / SiO2. This will allow us to compare more efficiently this coating material with our standard 30 (1/4 wave) Ta2O5 / SiO2 coatings.

Auxiliary Optics

See report from Mike Smith in Commissioning of the Thermal Compensation system

Interferometer Sensing and Controls

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

Last week attended GWADW in Aspen. Amplified by that stimulation I've been
sorting through the fall out of that a bit: How the necessary
Servo control loops modify the Quantum aspects of the
interferometer noise (in general they add a squeeze of their
own, if there are no other noise contributions).

Other Laboratory R&D

From: mantovan@ligo.caltech.edu

Riccardo

inAspen, made waves with gravity and given two talks:

"Mining for gravitational waves" and "Bodies in motion"

They can be found in:

ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/G-040036-00-R.ppt

and

ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/G-040036-00-R

folder with movies

Virginio

Submitted the paper on the theory of MGAS blades to the internal referees.

It can be found in

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~vsanni/ftp/P040004-00.pdf

Maddalena

I’m continuing to take the Transfer Function of the seismic attenuation system by exciting the support with a swept sine mode.

These transfer function are made for different stiffness values of the spring, by using the control circuit, to lower the resonant frequency below 100 mHz.

I also investigate the behavior of the system response in function of the excitation amplitude and I’m working on a LabVIEW program (for the thermal compensation at very low frequency) that could permit to control better, by a feedback, the blade position to keep it at the minimum frequency equilibrium point.

Barbara

We have ordered the Mechanical components of the interferometer and we are looking for the feed through connectors to drive the piezoelectric and all the electrical components inside the vacuum.

We have started to bake a test blade to verify its lift capabilities before production and in the next days we will test it with a weight equal to 1/4 of the cavity.

Also building the wood tools to assemble the blade and the apparatus to suspend the weight on the blade.

I'm writing the note about the status of this project.

Meeting 24th February (Erika ,Riccardo,Barbara)

Erika will present this experiment at the LSC meeting showing the theoretical motivation, the solutions (and problems) to build the MH mirror, the mechanical and optical design.

About the mechanical part Riccardo suggests to implement immediately the LDVT and actuator for the control of the suspension system and make it a SURF project.Similarly for the thermal stabilization.

Juri

I am studying the papers by E. D'Ambrosioet alt. about Mexican-hat mirrors and mesa beams in order to understand if angular instability will be an important topic in the flat-topped beam cavity we are building and if this kind of studies will be important for Adv-LIGO.

AnaMaria

Up to now I've been making measurements on the Cu-Be spring and now I am installing an LVDT on it. I will then take measurements and do the same for the maraging one.

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

Weekly Report for Week Ending February 26, 2004

Special Announcements: