Weekly Report for Week Ending August 19, 2004


 Exec. Comm. Agenda

Highlights

LSC

Administration

Hanford Observatory

Livingston Observatory

MIT

Caltech

Detector

40 Meter

TNI

LASTI

Data Analysis

Adv. LIGO Development

Past Weekly Reports


The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  August 23, 2004 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)  

  1. Announcements
  2. LSC Issues (Saulson)
  3. Comments on Weekly Report
  4. Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
  5.  LIGO Lab Operations
      • Administration (Lindquist)
      • Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker)
      • Commissioning (Fritschel), Detector (Coyne)
      • Campus Research Facilities
        1. 40 Meter (Weinstein)
        2. TNI, ( Libbrecht)
        3. LASTI  (Shoemaker)
      • Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
  6. Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Shoemaker)
  7. CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED


Special Items:   Contract options to deal with increased ASI costs


Special Announcements:

 


Weekly Report Highlights

Major improvement in the low frequency noise on H1—see the Hanford report

First lock of the dual recycled Michelson on the 40 m  -- see their report.


LSC Issues (Saulson)


no report


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


 

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Petrac)

(LSC Research Plans through Feb. 2005 and Prog. Reports through Aug. 2004)

ACIGA


Balearic


Carleton


Caltech-CEGG


Florida


GEO


LSU


Northwestern


SLU


Syracuse


Trinity


Columbia / New applicant


Vassar

 



(LSC Research Plans through Aug. 2004 and Prog. Reports through Feb. 2004)

ACIGA


Florida


LSU


National Astronomical Observatory-China (NAO-C)


Northwestern


Orsay Group (aka Groupe Virgo)


VIRGO

 



SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

There was no site teleconference scheduled for Thursday, August 12, 2004 due to the LSC meeting at Hanford.  The list of assigned actions updated through July 22, 2004 may be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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


DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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


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

WE 08/19/04

Packages

Faxes

In

22

32

Out

4

16


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

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


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


>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>


>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>


Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Florence)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

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


>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>


SUPPORT (Baldon, Kammerling, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon


>Sharon Kammerling


>Dorothy Lloyd


ADVANCED LIGO (Cost Schedule Control Systems) T. Frey

>From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>

See Advanced R&D Section.

PROPOSAL and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Schedule of proposals and reports planned for the remainder of the calendar year.


We have essentially completed the Annual Report with the exception of a few missing pieces.  Overall there is a lot of good stuff reported.  Most of the FastLane entries have been entered.  I think that it is basically ready to go except for resolution of the few missing pieces and scrubbing the publications list.

We have prepared a Final Report for the old LIGO Visitors grant and .pdf copies have been distributed for review.  Publications need scrubbing here also.

I am moving on to other issues like setting up budgets for FY 2007 - 2011.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

There are no open change requests currently in the system.

[from Larry Jones] The Advanced LIGO SEI group plans to propose to the LIGO Excomm on 23 Aug that the budget be increased for the ASI contract, adding $445K in funds in anticipation of a total contract cost of $2423K [Larry's Numbers]. This is to cover a growth in expected expenses with a slight decrease in contract scope.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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


Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

No report this week.

 

.


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



 Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (Landry)

LHO hosted the August LSC meeting this week.  The event was highly successful thanks to the efforts of Terry Gunter, Daniell Yager, Linda Turner, Terry Santini & Co., Richard McCarthy, Christine Barker, Larry Wallace, John Worden and Mike Pedraza.

4K IFO
ASPDs, particularly AS1 and AS4, had previously been shown to have more 49MHz signal than desirable.  The 2-omega traps were suspected and thus received retuning. An additional notch was added in the respective feedback paths and then the ASPDs were returned to the table.  ASPD transfer functions were later obtained with an AM laser.

High bandwidth MICH and PRC loops were then restored to the IFO.  Previous attempts had this had not resulted in expected gains, owing to additional noise sources in the spectrum.  This time, concurrent optimization and optical lever filter fixes yielded the best ever 4k spectrum with a binary inspiral range of ~7.4Mpc.  A noise budget for this spectrum was worked out.  Thermal noise has yet to be added, but right now the limiting sources are thought to be optical lever damping at low frequencies, actuation electronics and MICH control at intermediate ones, and shot noise at high frequencies.

Next, a list of 4k problems will be tackled.  Efforts are sometimes hampered by short lock durations.  Ideally, typical evening running would be stable enough to make GRB watches (post-commissioning, in the early morning hours).

Dick G and the SURF Machine: a 12MHz RF photodiode was added to the REFL port, intended to observe an error signal formed from RFAM sidebands at 37MHz beating against the PRM 24.5MHz resonant sidebands.  A second (of four) SURF experiment employs fibre-transported PSL light beat against POY.

2K IFO
The MC REFL light level is unexpectedly different, post-vent.

Another REFL periscope installed, tapping off a pair of REFL diagnostic beams for later use.

The 2k has posted decent ranges, one .9Mpc and the other 1.6Mpc.  We have to reproduce and investigate the latter measurement however, some skepticism is in order.

Outreach (Dale Ingram)
Draft summaries of four recent LHO outreach activities are now viewable:

Corey Gray's summer science camp presentation (http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~dingram/coreygray_0804.pdf)
(See Corey's own report at http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~cgray/SKC_summer_camp_04.html)
WSU T&L 571 for teachers @ LHO (http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~dingram/571_newsletter0804.pdf)
LHO and TCAC Perseid Meteor Shower viewing (http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~dingram/perseids_081104.pdf)
Greg Baker (Geneva High School) & Steve Penn collaboration (http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~dingram/baker_penn_0804.pdf)
A big thank-you to Peter Saulson for giving an excellent Public Lecture on gravitational waves in Richland on 8/18/04.

 


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


Many were at the LSC meeting this week, where our thumbs-up HEPI report from last week was answered by spectacular H1 sensitivity progress (check it out!), a huge improvement in GEO noise, and a first lock on the 40m dual recycled michelson, not to mention excellent S2 and S2/S3 analysis results. Not a bad week for GW experiments all round!

Back at the ranch, the big push is on the EMC retrofit in the corner station. As of Thursday Rusyl reports that all the power supplies are moved as well as all the VME crates and boards and nearly all the analog electronics (all of SUS, ASC and most of PEM and LSC).  HEPI is back up and enough of the fibers are in to start waking up the VME processors. We ran short on some 50-pin cables, some Ethernet wires were forgotten, some fibers came up too short, and one of the balanced-power units was undersized, but by and large the project is close to the (optimistic) baseline schedule. We currently expect to be able to wake up suspensions and damp optics Monday and start functional checkout of major systems the following week. The eerie quiet now found in the LVEA is said to be unnerving.

HEPI and IFO engineering (Abbott)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1.  Began moving HAM4 to align the chamber with the desired optical alignment obtained using HEPI as an alignment tool.  The process is a bit slow right now as Gary is sick and I really need his eyes and hands to do the job well.  We are planning on relieving the clearances on all the horizontal actuators on HAM4 while we are doing the re-alignment.
2.  Working with Oddvar on HEPI documentation.  We are incorporating flow charts right now that show how the microprocessor code functions for the various iterations of the pump servo code.
3.  Helping Rusyl on the RFI retrofit task by doing various odds and ends as he needs them.  Mainly small stuff like ordering cables and testing cables.
4.  Completed an analysis with Joe Hanson on the HEPI actuators removed from service due to hydraulic offsets unrelated to the control valve.  There are no indications of any parasitic leak path internal to the actuators in question.  The pin valves that form a large part of our suspicion base have been exhaustively checked and seem to seal very well.  They will hold air pressure for hours when differentially pressurized using shop air.  Conclusion is that we can't find any difference between the actuators we removed and other members of the herd of spares.  They all seem fine.


Safety & security (Riesen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Found no new safety concerns on weekly site tour.

Scheduled PM on Tenet sweeper and scrubber completed

The repair on the LVEA crane is scheduled for tomorrow (Fri. 8-20-04)

Replaced all 6 LVEA drain covers with 1 perforated plates.  Safety concerns rectified


Livingston Facilities (Sibley)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The broken fan actuator in the south end has been disassembled and the broken parts have been ordered. The technician from Howden Buffalo (old Joy Fan) will be here tomorrow (fri) to teach us and our HVAC contractor, Star Services, how to adjust the fan pitch control. New bearings are being cleaned for installation. If all goes well we should be back on line tomorrow.


General computing (Roddy)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
* Current bandwidth usage can be seen at
http://teche.ligo-la.caltech.edu/mrtg/LLO-Router/130.39.245.1_1.html
* Archived bandwidth usage can be seen at
http://teche.ligo-la.caltech.edu/mrtg/archive/ under the dated folder for the week of interest.
* Working with Solsoft to try and get a demo license for their enterprise version of the firewall software.  This has some excellent reporting and auditing features that would be useful here (and at other locations). We may be able to work a deal with them so that we get it at a much reduced rate or free if we do a writeup on the software.  I will of course have to clear this through everyone before I agree to it.  I will send out an email to everyone explaining the situation and the desire for the upgrade.
* Revisiting the computer installation in the auditorium.  I had purchased a computer a whle back to handle the multimedia needs of the auditorium. I am planning on installing it in the auditorium in the next few days.  This should help things out greatly in there for the next conference.
* Typical round of software installation/support issues, mainly for a new employee.
* Investigating the possible usefulness of a piece of software for netork monitoring here.  in particular tools like flowscan...
http://www.caida.org/tools/utilities/flowscan/index.xml


Data analysis (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS admin:
Getting more and more users for Condor@LLO. Especially from people attending the bootcamp.

Data analysis:
Made a presentation at LSC about waveburst version 5 performance on S2 MDC frames, LIGO-G040389-00-Z.


Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)



 CDS

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

CDS Software

no report

CDS Hardware

no report

PSL

PeterKing

Dave Grimmett fixed up the 35.5 MHz RF photodetector.  The OPA547F power op-amp, photodiode and 74CH04 were replaced.  As a result the magnitude response is markedly better.  Since my only pre-modecleaner is on loan at Stanford, I hope to re-cycle another one together later this week.

 

I'm having a few teething problems with my new high voltage amplifier circuit to do with finding a suitable high voltage trimmer capacitor. Along with trying to cram all the components in a small Pomona box.

Output Mode Cleaner

Mike Smith

I have propagated Gaussian beams through a model of the 4-mirror OMC, and am still trying to analyze the amount of astigmatism present in the design. There appears to be a lot of astigmatism in the round-trip pass through the cavity, but I don't have any quantitative results yet. I have also modeled the cavity analytically, and I obtain the same x and y beam waists that K. Kawabe calculated with the 76.3 and 101.7 mm radius mirrors. However, I believe that a stable cavity solution also exists using a 152.6 mm radius mirror (instead of the 101.7 radius), which gives a 96% match of the x and y beam waists; the 101.7mm radius mirror only gives an 80% beam waist match. I believe that the original layout, in which the beam enters the Ry mirror with the curvature of the mirror out of the plane of incidence is preferred, because it will result in much less distortion of the input beam than if the curvature of the mirror is in the plane of incidence.

 

Ken Mailand

The main cavity spacer and the PZT holder bracket drawing are at the CES shop, along with the 'invar 36' material, to make it.

Optical Contamination Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)

The chamber has two samples, white Ceramabond, and disks of TRA-BOND #2254

color light brown epoxy.  Cavity is locked.

We continue taking measurements everyday.

 

Absorption Test Measurement prototype   in standby!

The two sapphire pieces already tested are sent back to Stanford.

 

Scatterometer system  in standby!

 

The Quantronix 60 watt laser 

The running of the cooling system on the laser is done periodically.

 

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38        NO CHANGE!

Cavity #3

Chamber is pumping with (6) disks of TRA-BOND #2151 color blue epoxy and

 (4) disks of TRA-BOND #2902 color silver epoxy.  The cavity is locked.

We continue taking daily measurements.  

 

Cavity #2

This chamber has been completely  stripped and is ready to be baked.

New baked chamber is in its way!

 

PSL Laser lab   Laser  in standby

 


 

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)



Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


no report


LASTI (Ottaway)


no report


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


 Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Lock loss study using SimLIGO
------------------------------
(Virginio)
 - Tested new BSC TF in SimLIGO (see informal report for description on
   http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~vsanni/e2e/SeismicNoise/BSCStackTF
 - Injection using PEPI channels and seismometer in SimLIGO with new TF still drops the IFO out of lock. Injecting just displacement noise and removing disp to angle coupling  does not change the result.
- New set of matlab scripts to quickly analyze SimLIGO output available at
  http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~vsanni/e2e/e2eSL2matlab/index.html

Alfi
---------
(Bruce)
        - Design and implementation of ParameterLink objects for  use in opaque boxes, as well as graphical elements to  be used to create and edit them.

(Melody)
 Modifying the ALFI bookkeeping objects to allow displaying the FUNC_X data variables in a friendlier user interface.  The dialog will show the member variables in the table just as any parameter setting variables (instead of having to look for them in the C++ code).

Investigated a NullPointerException Virginio encountered while running the latest version of ALFI.  It turned out that the JGo being distributed was an older version.

Assisted Virginio with some problems he was having with alfi and the vector primitives.

Investigated a NullPointerException when exiting alfi which was started from the e2e webpage.  Found a work around and wrote a PR describing the scenario.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Shawhan:
* Performed checks of coincidence tests, efficiency calculation, and background estimation for the S2 binary neutron star inspiral search. Wrote a completely independent software implementation to do these checks.  Found a very minor bug in the way coincident events are used in the efficiency calculation.  Verified that the time-shift background estimation methods was correct in the original implementation.  Still have to check the total observation time and the overall normalization of the background estimate.

* Organized and attended a two-day face-to-face meeting of the Burst Analysis Group.

* Attended the LSC Meeting

Yakushin:
Data analysis:
Made a presentation at LSC about waveburst version 5 performance on S2 MDC frames, LIGO-G040389-00-Z.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)
Weekly system and integrtion tests identified a bug in the diskCacheAPI this weekend. This API coredumped during the dcmangle test which is used to demonstrate the ability to handle changing mount points for locating frame files. It is thought that this is a thread issue that has been in the code for quite sometime, but is rarely exercised. The weekly system tests also include a new test to validate support for the new complex data channels that have been produced. Other than the issue with the diskCacheAPI, no other issues were idenitified.

The dcmangle script was repeated several times to try and exercise the bug that caused the core dump this weekend. This was unsuccessful (typical of thread issues). In an effort to fix the bug, a careful code review of the API has begun, taking advantage of the lessons learned when a similar issue was encountered in the frameAPI last year.

Work continued on the port of LDAS software to the Solaris compiler. Solaris provides its own version of STLport for that compiler since the open source version doesn't compile on Solaris and the fixes are held only at Sun. Unfortunately, the Solaris provided STLport has a bug in its fstream class which has lead us to the geodesic of customizing our own fstream class as a substitute.

We are currently running long term tests on LDAS-Test to identify possible memory leaks. We will also attempt to isolate new memory leaks using the utility "valgrind" prior to the LDAS release in a couple of weeks.

The controlMonitorAPI now has the ability to monitor the usage of the beowulf cluster on a per user or per dso basis. This will allow ranking the top users and search codes on the beowulf cluster under LDAS.

The missing documentation for the compression libraries, bzip2 and zlib have been added to our how to build LDAS website.

Work continued on restructuring the underlying diskCacheAPI code used to maintain and search through time intervals.

The new sngl_burst_table changes were tested on a tandem LDAS system this week. These tests identified issues with the design proposed by the Burst Group. The co-chairs of the Burst Group were provided feedback as a result of the testing issues and further changes to the table design were made that cleaned up the problem.

Closed out PR 2658 - ldas generated email now have a common informative message.

Closed out PR 2151 - mpiAPI needs faster clean up based on a sudo method.

Closed out PR 2663 - a defined set of users may now create new subdirectories under LDAS for RDS creation as part of the user command.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
LLO

Igor
Getting more and more users for Condor@LLO. Especially from people attending the boot camp.

LHO

Ben
1) Preparing ldas-pcdev1 and ldas-grid for Summer Camp this weekend. Installed the latest RH9 glibc on ldas-pcdev1 to prevent unclean "matlab -nodisplay" exit.
2) Added several users to cluster accounts.
3) Replaced u1f7@t3-13.
4) Upgraded firmware on 3510-10@CIT, in preparation for more "check parity" testing.
5) Assisting Dave Barker get the new SF440 framebuilder up to the necessary QFS/SAN/MU setup.

MIT
Keith
1) upgraded rls server for LDR
2)added MIT specifics toUWM webpage (via cvs) turned off daily updatedb (slocate) cron jobs on cluster  which caused skewed runqueue average stats shown on ganglia page
3) ran ram burntest on new pcraid#7 (passed) running nfs/network benchmarks on pcraid#7

CIT
Al
1) Setup node8 in the test system for burn testing.
2) got the replacement MB for pcdev1. Will install and test ASAP
3) 215 sync had its annual fire check out.....passed.

Dan
1) Continued the transfer of non-run second trends for both LHO and LLO (about 1,000,000 files total) from HPSS to SAM-QFS (and their subsequent deletion from HPSS).
2)I started with LLO: of the 458620 LLO files, we've transferred 384265 as of this writing (84%).
3) I've also LHO second trends transferring--we've transferred 211209 of 526258 files as of this writing (40%).
4) HPSS has been running much better, but we have one directory (L-T-702) that is stuck (can't transfer anything else out of it).  It may be just one file that's the problem, but it will have to wait until other activity is done.
5) Got QFS license for new LHO framebuilder.
6) Ordered replacement 3510 disk for 3510-10 (the test unit at CIT).
7) Have been working on getting a quote from STK for silo maintenance.
8) Am currently trying to fix problem with /archive on ldas-cit (seems to be a SAM-QFS bug relating to UIDs, but I'm not sure yet).

Hari
1) Working on transferring C01_LX data from UWM.
2) Publishing and unpublishing C01_LX data.
3) update rls servers on ldas-cit and ldas-gridmon
4) Updated the lsc web pages to describe the CIT grid better
5) Working on keeping the 1% data flowing from the sites
6) Created 4 new user accounts.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Upgraded 5 gc Ultra 10's to Solaris 9 w/ patches etc
-Troubleshot matlab R14 install on desktop pc
-Installed spy detection software (from Caltech) on several pc's.

Livingston:
(Shannon)
* Current bandwidth usage can be seen at
http://teche.ligo-la.caltech.edu/mrtg/LLO-Router/130.39.245.1_1.html
* Archived bandwidth usage can be seen at
http://teche.ligo-la.caltech.edu/mrtg/archive/ under the dated folder for the week of interest.
* Working with Solsoftto try and get a demo license for their enterprise version of the firewall software.  This has some excellent reporting and auditing features that would be useful here (and at other locations). We may be able to work a deal with them so that we get it at a much reduced rate or free if we do a write-up on the software.  I will of course have to clear this through everyone before I agree to it.  I will send out an e-mail to everyone explaining the situation and the desire for the upgrade.
* Revisiting the computer installation in the auditorium.  I had purchased a computer a while back to handle the multimedia needs of the auditorium.  I am planning on installing it in the auditorium in the next few days.  This should help things out greatly in there for the next conference.
* Typical round of software installation/support issues, mainly for a new employee.
* Investigating the possible usefulness of a piece of software for network monitoring here.  In particular tools like flowscan...
http://www.caida.org/tools/utilities/flowscan/index.xml

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Lots of meeting support.  Thanks to Larry for the pre-empting setup help and to Mike P. for his great help during the meetings.
-  Helped SURF students with Malta license problems and e-mail problems..
-  Helped an at home staff member get her work e-mail at home.
-  Misc. other user support.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Reloaded OS and GC software on 2 loaner laptops that came back from travel. I put these laptops back into the loaner pool.
-I finished up loading 3 visitor workstations with General Computing/Engineering software.
-I setup 2 more visitor workstations up on the 2nd floor of W/B. I now have PC's setup in all visitor cubicles on the 2nd floor.
-Helped out in Hanford, for the LSC conference.
-Other misc. onsite/phone support.

(Veronica)
- LSC website: Most time was spent on the web support of the August meeting. Posted last-minute website updates before the meeting, and as it progressed, posted the presentations as soon as they arrived. Linda reports positive comments about the talks appearing on the web quickly. Assisted the DCC in tracking down files as needed. Posted updates to other webpages of the LSC site.
- LIGO website: Worked with Sharon on helping her with updates to Barry's and her webpages. Posted updates to the seminars webpage. Did a massive update of the roster database and the html frontend. An author list scripting project pending.

(Lisa)
- I've been holding down the fort this week while Mike and Larry were on travel.
- Did some performance tuning on the mailserver.  We had been running out of mimedefang slaves and having to temp fail mail.  Also, I started trying to determine where our queuing load average should be set.
- Build a blade 1500 for the 40m martian network.
- Made changes to the hosts.allow on alterf.  There are some questions about the configuration of this box now that it is replacing saiph.  I expect that it will continue to get changes for the next couple of weeks.
- A number of people have been commenting that more spam is getting through recently.  I spent a few hours tweaking the spam filters to try and block more of this.
- Began writing a system to track mac addresses for all machines, ligo, personal and visitor.
ail Stats 08/12 - 08/18/04
Messages Accepted:      18335   
Spam Rejected:          9462
Viruses Rejected:       1732
False Positives:        13
Total Mail Thru:        29529
% spam blocked:         34% (this number is skewed lower by high virus
activity)

(Larry)
-Assisted Christine in support of the LSC. Fortunately, the setup went well and only had a few minor issues on that. Assisted a few of the attendees with problems on their computers, all of the issues were resolved.
We've learned a fewnew lessons from this conference and confirmed past lessons learned. We definitely need to have someone from CIT at the meetings to assist. The work load takes its toll on the group hosting the conference. A day or two before the conference to a day after should be planned. Trying to do any other major projects other than support should not be considered.
The NAT routing system is the only way to handle the large number of attendees. Using the system Shannon setup at Livingston for the last conference held there also worked well for the mtg. at Hanford.
One issue we are still trying to get a handle on is getting the attendees to provide their MAC address. We have a few ideas we are working on.
-Worked a number of procurement issues. Things are not looking good for the 400GB drives, it is possible that order will be canceled.
-The computer room is still being worked on. It should be wrapped up soon. We did lose a lot of space with the fire suppression system being installed but we will work around it.
-Worked out a couple of E2E issues. Nothing major just resetting of the NIS+ files.
-Went over some of the logistics for the new GigE installation with Dave Barker. Still a number of items and schedules to be worked out.
-Regular user assistance.


Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Systems, Management

Progress Period from 08.13 to 08.19

 

·         ·         See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html for a complete listing of all project related cost and schedule data.

Accomplishments:

·         ·         Sub-system PLANNING activities

§         §         Prepared an "AdL Project Management Information System" document as requested by Carol on 8/13, for a meeting on 8/16.

§         §         http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/AdL_PMIS.htm

§         §         Scheduled WebEx session as requested by Carol.  (Ultimately placed on stand by)

§         §         Executed meeting with Carol, Dennis, David S, and Stan on Monday the 16th.

§         §         Continued work on preparing web space for posting Adv. LIGO reports. ("The Whole Enchilada")

§         §         Continued the input of changes / preparing RFIs / responding to RFIs, as a result of the meetings with Carol and the Subsystem Teams.

§         §         Completed input of progress data, for progress through July 30, 2004.

§         §         Posted updated schedule reports / milestone tables to web space.

§         §         Compiled and sent out progress data requests for the period ending August 31, 2004.

·         ·         ROSTER DATABASE:

§         §         Continued to work with Irena to provide Barry with information regarding FTEs and Institutions.

·         ·         COST BOOK DATABASE:

§         §         Update / Posted list / statistics of accounts and activities as requested by Carol, for Florence. (Added graph of activity over time.) 

§         §         http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/rd2005/Acct_Stats.htm

 

Seismic Isolation

From: Larry Jones <ljones@ligo.caltech.edu>
 
Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure


SEI Structure:

Work continues in investigating options for descoping to contain costs on the ASI contract. ASI has updated and clarified the BSC unit fabrication costs and provided anticipated costs for pod creaking redesign, thermal straps, and other issues which had not been included in previous estimates.

Delivery at LASTI of the BSC structure prototype is now scheduled for 8 March, 2005.

Actuators:

Kyle Ryan is proceeding with preparations for conducting a Thermal Vacuum test of the large actuator at LHO.

PSI is proceeding with fabricating the 6 large and 6 small actuators for the BSC prototype structure.

We've decided to not preclean the magnet wire for the actuators (at least for the LASTI prototype SEI BSC unit), due to the successful outgassing data from the large actuator prototype (which had wire that had not been precleaned), and the high risk involved with existing precleaning methods.

Displacement Sensors:

Nothing new

Seismometers:

Nothing new

Galling/Dusting Test:

Nothing new.

Other:

Nothing new.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>
 

AdLIGO Suspension
We made the decision to award the PO for the quad controls prototype blades to our machine shop on campus, CES. The lead time for these blades is 90 days. Gina Salone from Purchasing provided a PO to Mike Gerfen today. Due date for these blades is Nov 16th.

Calum and I are coordinating visits from various UK suspension team members to support quad work.

Calum and I will visit Stanford in the coming month to discuss possible testing of the mode cleaner triple suspension on the ETF Tech Demo.

Working with Dave Hoyland from the Univ. of Birmingham on determining the operational temperature range inside the vacuum chamber for advanced LIGO. Dave is writing the osem interface control document. I've coordinated a lessons-learned meeting with Dave Hoyland, Stuart Aston and Bob Taylor for next month to transfer LIGO I osem knowledge to the Univ. of Birmingham.

Hosted and participated in two sapphire clocking meetings with various suspension team members and Gari Billingsley. Gari brought up the issue of the need to orient the sapphire optics to the laser beam in rotation. The meetings provided the information that Gari needed for the sapphire downselect. If sapphire is chosen, this topic will be discussed in more depth. Mike P-L is currently working on a mechanical rotational alignment technique that may be used on the quad.

On Friday, Thomas, Caroline, Helena and I will meet to discuss the schedule for the ribbon and ear work.

I have reviewed Larry's oven drawing for the quad structures. Calum and I will meet with Larry tomorrow to go over the details.


Gin Gin
CES will fabricate 12 clamp sets to go with the 12 lower MC blades being sent to Gin Gin next month. I am coordinating with Conor Mow-Lowry on this. He should get the parts near the end of September.
 

Auxiliary Optics

 

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


ADV LIGO

OUTPUT MODE CLEANER

I have propagated Gaussian beams through a model of the 4-mirror OMC, and am still trying to analyze the amount of astigmatism present in the design. There appears to be a lot of astigmatism in the round-trip pass through the cavity, but I don't have any quantitative results yet. I have also modeled the cavity analytically, and I obtain the same x and y beam waists that K. Kawabe calculated with the 76.3 and 101.7 mm radius mirrors. However, I believe that a stable cavity solution also exists using a 152.6 mm radius mirror (instead of the 101.7 radius), which gives a 96% match of the x and y beam waists; the 101.7mm radius mirror only gives an 80% beam waist match. I believe that the original layout, in which the beam enters the Ry mirror with the curvature of the mirror out of the plane of incidence is preferred, because it will result in much less distortion of the input beam than if the curvature of the mirror is in the plane of incidence.


 

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