Weekly Report for Week Ending August 26, 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 30, 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:


Special Announcements:

 


Weekly Report Highlights
 


LSC Issues (Saulson)


Minutes of LSC Council meeting at the LSC meeting, LHO, 18 Aug 2004

1. Applications for membership
   The case for Szabi Marka (Columbia) was put forward by Stan Whitcomb. After
discussion, the Council voted by secret ballot to admit the Columbia group.
   The case for Eric Myers (Vassar) was put forward by Bruce Allen. After discussion,
the Council voted by secret ballot to admit the Vassar group.
   Congratulations to both new members!

2. Integrity Policy
   Gregg Harry presented the revised version of the proposed Statement on Scientific
Integrity. Revisions had been made by him, Brian O'Reilly, and Peter Saulson, to
take into account the criticisms of the wording of the earlier draft, as expressed at
the March meeting of the Council. After two suggestions for minor corrections, the
Council voted to approve the Statement.

3. New MOU review system
   The Council received a briefing on the new plan for review of MOUs annually by an
LSC panel.

4. Thoughts on restructuring the LSC and its relationship to the Lab
   The Council received a briefing on the various discussions that have taken place
about restructuring the LSC and its relationship to the LIGO Laboratory, and discussed
various alternatives.
   Kip Thorne had been charged by the Caltech administration with
bringing back to them a sense of the LSC's thoughts. He summarized what he heard by
saying that he had heard no significant pressure to move LIGO from Caltech to some other
sponsoring institution or collaboration, and had heard some significant support for
continuing with Caltech. He also said he had heard that it was essential to have
representatives of GEO and of LSC institutions on the LIGO Oversight Committee.
   Other issues will probably also come forward, such as ensuring that LSC members with
appropriate expertise be able to play suitable roles in the Advanced LIGO project structure.
   There was no attempt to establish a consensus on a new structure, because
several alternatives are on the table, and many details remain to be worked out. But it
is becoming necessary to converge on a new plan soon. (The next LIGO Operations proposal
must be submitted to the NSF early next year, so its contents need to be in place well
before that.) Small group discussions will continue, including the Lab Directorate.
Preliminary discussions with the Caltech administration will also begin. The Council will
be consulted, most likely via a telephone meeting, when a specific proposal is ready to
be discussed.

*************************************

Minutes of LSC Executive Committee meeting at the LSC meeting, LHO, Monday 16 Aug 2004

Attendance: Bruce Allen, Barry Barish, Patrick Brady, Sam Finn, Joe Giaime,
Albert Lazzarini, Dave Reitze, Keith Riles, Peter Saulson (minutes),
Bernard Schutz, David Shoemaker, Daniel Sigg, Rai Weiss, Stan Whitcomb,
Benno Willke, Alan Wiseman


Paper on Externally Triggered Search for GRB030329
   Keith Riles presented the recommendation of the Burst Review Committee, in favor
of publishing this paper, subject to completion of a few minor editorial fixes and
bookkeeping checks.
   The Exec Comm discussed the paper. No members had any substantive worries about it.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend publication, subject to satisfactory
completion of the reviewers' minor changes, and also to the requirement that the
analysis code be placed in a CVS repository.


GEO plan for night-time data collection
   Bernard Schutz and Benno Willke presented GEO's plans to begin collecting data when
commissioning is not taking place (i.e., most nights.) This is based on the interferometer's
excellent duty cycle, and also its ability to relock itself automatically if it
should lose lock.
   The plan is to leave the interferometer running, with calibration lines injected.
The automatic online calibration program produces calibrated h(t), as well as tests
of the quality of the calibration model's fit to the data. Each morning, a scientist
would examine this, and assign a data quality bit (good or bad) to the previous
night's data.
   Bruce Allen remarked that both the Stochastic and Pulsar groups are interested in using
this data. Sam Finn noted that this will help the LSC to get into the mode of keeping
up with data in real time. It was agreed that it would be necessary to get information
about good data segments into our data segment repository.
   David Shoemaker raised the question of whether LIGO should also be doing something
like this. It isn't clear, though, that LIGO yet has the robustness (especially the
ability to run without well-trained operators) that would enable this to be done without
a great deal of effort.

New plan for review of MOUs
   The Executive Committee discussed a proposed new system for reviewing MOUs of
LSC member groups. In this revised system, all MOUs would be reviewed together at an
annual meeting of a board consisting mainly of chairs of Technical Working Groups and
Analysis Groups (along with a few other experts on topics that don't fit into those
categories, e.g. commissioning.)
   The expected advantages of the new system are:
*The LSC and the Lab would get a better picture of the whole effort of the LSC, be
able to spot gaps, and could ensure that we have both the right plan and that we are
making good progress.
*This will use the expertise of the LSC and enable the LSC to take responsibility
for its work.
*PIs will get feedback on what is or is not going well.
* This system will allow more timely recognition of situations when planned work
is not being accomplished. Some sort of probation could result or, in extreme cases,
loss of LSC membership.
   It was agreed that such a system was a good idea. Given the intensity of the
review effort, an annual review seems to make more sense than one every six months.
   (It remains an open question how to handle work with Advanced LIGO deliverables.
Almost certainly, more frequent progress reporting is necessary.)
   The plan is to bring this into operation in time for the Feb 15 renewal cycle.
A transition to the annual cycle might occur after a second run-through in August.
   The exact timing, as well as many other details, will be worked out by a
committee consisting of Albert Lazzarini, Dave Reitze, Alan Wiseman, and Joe Giaime.


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Petrac)

No report



SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was scheduled for Thursday, August 26, 2004.  The following issues were discussed:


The list of assigned actions updated through August 26, 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>


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


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 has been entered into FastLane.  I think that it is basically ready to go except for scrubbing the publications list.

A Final Report for the old LIGO Visitors grant has been submitted via FastLane.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

There are no open change requests currently in the system.

The Advanced LIGO SEI group proposed to the LIGO Excomm on 23 August that the budget be increased for the ASI contract, adding on the order of $750K in funds to cover a growth in expected expenses with a slight decrease in contract scope.  This will be discussed again next week.

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 post-LSC Detector Investigation Camp.  Twenty-five sessions by 17 different presenters were held on analysis tools, data access and detector artifacts.  Thanks to Christine Barker, Richard McCarthy, Dave Barker and Terry Santini for help making the camp successful.

Acting NSF director Arden Bement visited LHO on Tuesday.

Recall that stick-slip events associated with thermal cycling of the LN2 dewar outside the LVEA are thought to be responsible for a significant number of S2 and S3 IFO unlocks.  Insulation of the LN2 dewar appears to have knocked down glitch rates.  Next we hope to see that we get the expected increase in duty cycle during science-mode running.

RF spectra and 60Hz noise were measured in the end-stations and corner station.  Some follow-up showed that the basic conclusions of the original measurement are correct, however at a lower level: the ETMY is the largest offender of 60Hz and harmonics.  Strangely the latter measurements showed worse noise when the spectrum analyzer was powered with batteries (as per the earlier measurement).  LLO end-stations, newly equipped with RFI mitigation, are at least an order of magnitude quieter at 60Hz and harmonics that those of LHO.

4K IFO
-----------
Minimizing angle to length coupling with test mass diagonalization resulted in improvements for cavity optics; a factor of ten and five less coupling was achieved for ITM and ETM masses, respectively.  This yielded improved low-frequency performance in displacement spectra.

One more noise source to think about: point scattering.  It was suggested that twinkling seen on camera views of beamsplitter (BS) and fold mirror (FM) masses were simply motion of the uncontrolled optics relative to the standing wave of a locked interferometer.  What remains to be seen is the calculation for the intensity noise as this light couples in differentially into the arms, and potentially upconverts.

Looking at AS_Q with RayleighMonitor, one finds periods in which the power spectrum is too steady.  Currently a mystery.

As the TCSX crosshair and beam centering servo point did not overlap, the latter was used to overlap the two and investigate TCS get performance; less TCS power is now required to maximize SPOB.  The current TCS and SPOB status is summarized here.  A differential TCS servo was later added.

2K IFO
------------
The new Faraday installed in the 2k was assessed, and it seems bang on.  The 2k MC however has developed a penchant to lock on the wrong polarazation.

DAQ
------------
Fast VMIC processors were tested.


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


no report  


Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)


CDS

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

CDS Software

no report

 

CDS Hardware

Jay Heefner reporting

 

Fiber Optic Timing Link (Sander)

=========================

- The prototype is installed and running on the 40M Y end. It appears to work, but synchronization needs to be measured.

- Sander is starting to think about the link that will be required for the timing system redesign.

 

Timing System Redesign (Flavio)

==========================

- Progress has been slowed by ISS work. There is a very rough requirements list  that will be refined into a requirements document over the next two weeks.

 

Anti-Image Filters (Jay)

============================

- We are still waiting for 2.2nF caps to complete the remaining boards. We can substitute other components if the sites require the boards immediately.

 

40 Meter (Jay, Ben)

=============================

- Working on optical lever servos.

- Need more extender boards.

- Working on various problems associated with daq and timing system.

 

ISS (Flavio)

============================

- All H/W, cables and cross connects installed in 40M.

- Need database and screen updates.

- Testing will start today.

 

EMI Upgrade (Mohana, Jay)

============================

- Revised ASC and LSC drawings sent to LLO.

- Need to add MC WFS to ASC drawings. Should be complete by today.

- Need to order more cables.

 

LSC PD ((Ben))

============================

- Prototype board is being stuffed. Testing will begin this week.

 

TNI (Jay)

=============================

- 2 arm cavity servo amps delivered

- working on EPICS interface and automation.

 

HEPI LASTI (Jay, Rolf)

=============================

- Install VME controls at LASTI in Sept.

 

Elect. Shop (Todd)

=============================

- Working on LHO spares, satellite amps, LOS Coil drivers, 80MHz VCO, 100 ea. 2 ft 4-pin LEMO cables.

- Don's last day will be sept 21.

PSL

PeterKing

A pre-modecleaner is under construction to replace the one on loan to Stanford.

 

Dave Grimmett repaired an old VCO.  A problem was found with a solder bridge underneath one of the RF attenuators.  During the course of firing it up again, another problem was fixed with the modulation input.

OMC

Mike Smith

I finally have some results with a Zemax model of the unfolded 4-mirror OMC based on Keita's original design, which has an out-of-plane of incidence input cylindrical mirror with radius 76.3 (which I will re-label as Rx); an out-of-plane exit mirror, Rx = 76.3; two in-plane mirrors Ry (re-labeled) = 101.7. The unfolded geometry is as follows: the beam enters through (my) Rx, and forms a beam waist 1 unit beyond, which is midway between the entrance and output mirror faces; the beam travels 1 unit and reflects from Rx; it travels 1 unit and reflects from Ry; it travels 2 units and reflects from Ry; it travels 1 unit and reflects from Rx; it travels 1 unit to reach the center of the cavity and completes one round trip. The input beam waist at the center of the cavity, between the input and output mirrors should be replicated after making one round trip. I propagated a physical optics Gaussian input beam from outside the cavity, and adjusted the x and y beam waists of the input beam to compensate for the astigmatism caused by the first input mirror. The results are as follows:

 

all dimensions are in millimeters

input beam waists (at the center of the cavity): wx = 0.096, wy = 0.099

input beam position error: dzx = +1.7, dzy = -2.2

output beam waists (at the center of the cavity after 1 RT) : wx = 0.097, wy = 0.099

output beam position error: dzx = +5.7, dzy = --10

 

The astigmatic input beam that was required to correct the astigmatism of the OMC is:

 

wx = .088, wy = 0.099

 

Such a beam would have to be constructed with an external astigmatic telescope.

I am in the process of modeling the alternative design, in which the input beam enters through the Ry = 101.7 mirror with the curvature 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. Mike Smith will finish an optical layout soon to resolve a question re.the possibility of astigmatism in the system.

TCS

Ken Mailand

 

i have been working on a layout for the laser chiller, and ordering purchase parts for a test, for Phil Willems.

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.  No Change

Absorption Test Measurement prototype   in standby!

Scatterometer system  in standby!
Received the (2) new sets of posts for the support of Sapphire holder.
These new posts will give the sapphire mirror surface more space and make laser alignment
more precisely of the two beams He-Ne and ND:YAG.

The Quantronix 60 watt laser  NO CHANGE


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
Taken to the shop to weld the leg support in place.

 


 

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)



Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


Since our last report, we have been constructing new servo electronics that can be computer controlled, in preparation for a measurement of non-Gaussian noise. The servos are essentially complete now, lacking only a way to switch the boosts on and off. Akira is working on a box with manual switches to test the servos, while Jay is working on the computer that will both sense the state of the instrument and perform the switching automatically.


LASTI (Ottaway)


Triple Installation and Shakesdown (Reported by Laurent):

Most of the HEPI system has been installed now, the 8 actuators and 8 PS are installed, the pier boxes interface are installed and the cables have been made and installed. The seismic interface and valve driver are ready to be powered in the rack and connected. The next step, and I hope I can finish that today or tomorrow will be to power the electronics (we missed fuse block) and build the termination block to merge with triple system. Then I'll be ready to test the sensors measurement. as soon as we will be ok with the sensors we will be able to take the valve off the BSC to install on the HAM (hope we can do that monday or tuesday).


software and data (Reported by Laurent):

I added Calum's model to the software (which I realized was not compatible with old version of matlab). I have been able to compare my data taken in noisy environment with the model and it match pretty well for some dof. However I also realized one of the sensor (top2 OSEM) seems to work strangely in perpendicular excitation (impossible for example to have a good longitudinal -> roll transfer function). I think it is because this OSEM is going out of range in this case of motion. We will probably check it visually next time we have the opportunity to access the triple.

Adaptive Feedforward System (Rich M) Work continued on the adaptive feedforward system with a isolation up to 15 Hz. This was achieved by putting a geophone on the floor, directly under the HAM chamber


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


 Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Thermal lensing and as-built mirrors
------------------------------------------------------------
(Hiro) A talk was given at the LSC meeting last week and also in this  week's
 e2e Physics meeting (http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~hiro/G040328-01.pdf).
 The application of this interpretation to commissioning is under investigation, including the distinction between the BS curvature effect and the effect due to difference of two ITM absorptions.

FFT study: mirror maps and WFS
----------------------------------
(Biplab) The manual correction of equivalent angles for asymmetries in mirror maps calculated from the Wavefront sensor (WFS) signals is not in all cases becoming very effective below a level of a few 10^-8 radians. The possibility that the WFS matrix may have been calculated either (i) outside the linear region, or (ii) in a region overshadowed by intrinsic offsets originating from mirror map asymmetries under various orientations, was investigated. WFS matrices calculated by perturbations of plus & minus 10^-7 before averaging and similarly for 5 X 10^-8 rad look to be in good agreement with each other suggesting that such values of perturbation are still in linear region.

FFT code
----------------------
(Hiro) FFT code has been modified so that input files can be much easier to maintain. This makes it easy to calculate ASC/LSC signals, because those signals need many runs with different parameters.

e2e code maintenance
---------------------------------
(Hiro) When compiled on decatur@ligo-la, a problem was found in building modeler. It turned out that gcc 3.4.1 on decatur applies more strict C++ syntax and MEMatrix template class needs to be modified to conform to the standard more strictly. Fixing is almost done. ModalModel class has been revised to be a first class C++ class from a mixture of C functions and C++ classes. This change is expected to speed up some and will be more thread-safe. This class has all the modal model matrixes documented in the latest e2e time domain modal model document.

Alfi
----------
(Melody)
Finished modifying the ALFI bookkeeping objects to allow displaying the FUNC_X data variables in a friendlier user interface.  Currently modifying the dialog to incorporate the new way of displaying the parameter setting variables and values.

Evaluated 2 Java debuggers (jswat and jdebugtool) to aid in figuring out some exceptions that was being caught by the application.   I decided to use jswat which is an open-source software for its performance.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Yakushin
1) Making pictures and tables for S2 burst paper.
2) Testing sample S3 MDC frames before starting full scale production.
3) Writing LIGO note about S2 MDC frames to refer to it in S2 burst  paper.

Lazzarini:
Working on H1H2 analysis and H1L1 re-analysis to cull outliers from  sliding PSD estimator;
Working on calibration review committee activities

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)
We are preparing for the 1.2.0 release of LDAS. Two significant Problem Reports attached to this release remain outstanding. In addition we are awaiting confirmation from the Burst Group on the current form of the sngl_burst table SQL schema. We had to make several modifications to the original design and would like thier blessing before adopting it for the release.

The effort to generalize the definition of time intervals in the disk- CacheAPI continues. This is a big overhaul of the code and hopefully will make the 1.3.0 release of LDAS.

The circumstances surrounding last weeks coredump in the diskCacheAPI are still unexplained. It is strongly felt that this is due to a thread safety issue in the C++ code but the occurence is very raw and not enough insight was gained from the LDAS logs and the core file to pursue a fix.

Updated the "sinstall" script rules and ldas documentation to capture recent changes to packages in LDCG: gdb, gd, python, imagemagick, gnuplot, gsl, mozilla, cvs, apache, and cvsgraph.

Corrected mistakes in documentation for openssl and removed several broken links on our webpages.

Discovered that the memory leak for the dataConditionAPI on the LDAS-TEST system was 4 to 5 times larger than on LDAS-DEV. The LDAS-DEV system has pentium hardware that support hyperthreading and the code is compiled on such architectures. However, the LDAS-TEST system doesn't have hyper- threading and this is thought to be somehow involved in the differences in memory leak size. A short test to compare size of memory leaks when hyperthreading was disabled on the LDAS-DEV system brought the difference down to only 40 percent.

Added totals to the statistics for the x and y axis of histogram plots in the controlMonitorAPI's gui. Added these statistics to print out for all histograms including job command and dso filters, database and time graphs.

Worked on a generic thread wakeup function to wake up all tardy threads. This currently only being used by the lightWeightAPI and testing is under way on the LDAS-DEV system.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ --

-------------------- Weekly from August 19th 
-----------------------------

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)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
* 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).
* I started with LLO: of the 458620 LLO files, we've transferred 410798   as of this writing (89%).
* I've also LHO second trends transferring--we've transferred 288168 of   526258 files as of this writing (54%).
* HPSS has failed totally several times this week.  The crash of DCE over the weekend has caused the SFS backups to beginning failing again. I've submitted this to Mike Gleicher, but haven't heard back from him. In the meantime, I'm just moving the SFS backups into a different filesystem by hand to prevent that from causing HPSS to crash again.
* Have been working on getting a quote from STK for silo maintenance.
* Have been working with Sun on the problem where shared clients (in this case alterf) ask for files, but they never get staged.

(Hari Pulapaka)
* Working on transferring C01_LX data to CIT.
* Added new users to CIT cluster, wrote a utility to add users.
* Working on upgrading condor on the cit cluster.

(Al Wilson)
* Node8 in the test system failed its burn-in test. Contacted ASA to send the whole (case and all) back to them for repair.
*Systems compromised. It seem that the LIGO might be a target. Sent the better part of a day or two to confirm that the LDAS systems here at CIT are secure and that there were no breach of security. Glad to report that we can sleep soundly.  As a pro-active measure we will be changing access passwords.
* Bosco, has its new CD rom installed. It is currently being loaded with a fresh install of RH.

(Stuart Anderson)
* Continuing to report and test several SAM-QFS 4.1 bugs so that they   will be fixed for the 4.2 release.
* Merging most of the GNATS tables on ldas-sw to a single account  database.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
* Working on first dead cluster box.
* Preparing benchmark numbers for pcraid#7.
* Working on adding grid users to cluster.
* Working on testing new gridftp server.

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
* Replace failed harddrive in 3510.
* Database replication test between LLO and CIT has been running for 2.5 weeks successfully replicating triggers produced by slope DSO. Over 6.5*10^6 rows have been inserted into sngl_burst table at LLO and replicated to CIT. The replication was able to keep up with the trigger production in real time.

Hanford
-------
(Ben Johnson)
* Setup temporary GC linux box so users could use gsissh + the necessary Globus tools for the Det. Char. Bootcamp. This has been removed, but the "/etc" on that host archived for the future Linux@ldas-jobs.gc-network setup.
*Shoehorned gsissh/Globus on Sol8 GC boxes (not working on fortress unfortunately). Users can now log into ldas-grid using their GC accounts by copying over their cert and key then sourcing some config files in my GC user directory.
* Replaced ldas-pcdev1 box with the old beowulf Dell machine due to   harddrive failure. The "new" box appears to be working.
* Upgraded the rls server on ldas-gridmon and ldas
* Replaced bad 3510 disk.  The second one ever to be replaced on that   machine.
* Added second and minute and /dmt/... directories to MOUNT_PT. The detchar bootcamp showed many users the wonders of getting data from LDAS via guild.
* The linux-based web page monitor in the control room has died (i.e. failed to reboot after "reboot" was issued). Various attempts at resurrection have failed.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:
(Keith)
-Investigated hacked account
-Working on upgrading gc proposal
-Upgraded 2 more Ultra 10 boxes to Solaris 9

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Fixed a problem with NIS+ & LDAS where a client would not return the FQDN for ldas-grid.ligo-la.caltech.edu.  Evidently this problem has been weeded out most places, but at LLO, Natalia was the first person to try and connect to ldas-grid with the grid enabled ssh.
-Installed a computer in the auditorium to handle future multimedia needs.  I will have to install some acoustic foam in the rack to keep the noise down.  I have ordered the foam...  It claims to have a noise reduction coefficient of .85.
-Created a /apps/LAL_zotov directory.  Natalia is planning on maintaining a copy of the LAL, etc. software in this directory.  She wishes to keep up with nightly builds, etc.
-Had an opportunity to test the restoration functions of the new backup software.  After digging for a while, we determined that the problems that one of the users here was having were related to a change of their .cshrc. It is still puzzling how the file was modified, however we were able to restore her old cshrc from a file on tape that was dated Feb 14th.  The restore utility allows fine grained selection of which version of the files you wish to restore.
-Usual rounds of support issues...

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Network usage can be seen at
http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~christin/mrtg/ 198.129.208.1_198.129.78.122.html
- This week has been quiet.  Most staff members that were involved with all the meetings are taking time off to recover.  A few visitors stayed on this week to do some commissioning work.
-  I think most everything at all the meetings went well.  There were some problems with the wireless network dropping out in the auditorium and on the first day of the LSC there was a problem with the NAT router not being configured for enough IP addresses.  With the attendance at these meetings growing, there was a problem in that the properly equipped meeting rooms are too small and the larger meeting rooms are lacking network, power and phones.  We also didn't have enough larger meeting rooms.
-  The detector camp had some logistics problems as far as trying to get everyone logged into the GC network with the proper configuration to run the data analysis tools and to gain access to the LDAS Grid.  I think in the end most everything was accomplished at least for the demonstrations if not for each individual.
- At the start of the detector camp another one of the disks containing the user home directories started going bad.  It was reporting bad sectors and read errors.  Access to the disk was excruciatingly slow and finally it generated so many error messages it crashed the file server. I had a spare disk ready, but trying to tar files from the bad to disk to new disk was taking way too long, so I restored files from my tape backup then just copied any files that had been changed on the old disk but not on the new disk.  It took two days to get everything moved and restored to normal, mostly because I had to keep the old disk on line as long as possible and allow users to continue using it and the server for the detector camp.
- The rest of this week has been spent cleaning up after the meetings. The equipment borrowed from CIT Ligo was packed and shipped out.  The NAT router will be shipped back to LLO later this week.  The temporary wiring for the wireless antennas is coming down until a permanent solution can be designed.
-  Other Misc. user support.


CIT:
(Lisa)
- Resolved a printing problem on sirius that was affecting those using samba to print.
- Ligo had bad blocks on its boot disk causing it not to boot.  I took another box and restored from tape backup to get ligo back up.
- Jumpstarted an ultra10 and a blade100. The blade100 will be built as a new dns server.
- Spent an hour trying to find an infected pc whose mac address is not in any of our tables.
- Helped Mike out on a virus problem on m32.
- I'm still working on trying to get more of the incoming spam  discarded.

Mail Stats 08/19 - 08/25/04
Messages Accepted:      17594   
Spam Rejected:          10436
Viruses Rejected:       1158
False Positives:        9
Total Mail Thru:        39624
% spam blocked:         27%

(Veronica)
- LSC website: Posted the bulk of the talks of the August meeting as  they arrive. Updates of other pages (author list, papers for review).
- LIGO website: Mike and I set up and webcast'ed the last LIGO seminar. Both VRVS and the webcam worked well. Updated the Seminars webpage. Continued tutoring Sharon on html and web updates.
- GNATS administration/ user support.
- CaJAGWR support.

(Mike)
-Worked on all NTSRV's updating security and searching for system errors and intrusion attempts through event viewer.
-Barry Barish: I backed up his laptop and updated his office installation. I also installed X-terminator to eliminate spyware, adware, malware and key loggers.
-Linda Turner: OfficePC picked up a virus that requires me to reload her workstation from scratch. I have started working on this.
-I worked on setting up a video-conference in SCR. This required setting up VRVS equipment, updating software, setting up an additional web-cam and reconnecting both network switches. All video and networking equipment was disconnected in SCR. After connecting equipment, I ran multiple tests to confirm that everything is working correctly.
-Started re-loading a PC that got infected with a virus, up in the 3rd floor control room, on W/B.
-Other misc. user/phone support.

(Larry)
-Went through a number of orders. Most of the orders have arrived and are being distributed and/or assembled.
-Spent a number of hours cleaning up the computer room after the fire suppression installation. There are a few more tests that have to be run. One will include a discharge of the gas which will require us to turn some of the computer equipment off. Hopefully, we will be able to keep all of the core equipment running during the test.
-Chased down a couple of h/w and s/w issues on different servers. Fortunately, the units we are having problems with are scheduled to be replaced in the next few months.
-Assisted Mike and Lisa in chasing down some infected machines.
-Worked a number of user accounts and still working on getting old accounts cleaned off.
-Regular user support.


Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


 

Systems and Management

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

 

Progress Period from 08.20 to 08.26

 

Out of the Office on 8.20 and 8.23

·         ·         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

§         §         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.

§         §         Executed telecom with Carol W. and Phil L. regarding ongoing efforts for revising AdL project data.  Agreed that Tuesday's at 2pm will be our weekly meeting.

§         §         Started work on LASTI schedule changes as provided by Carol.  Discussed these changes with Janeen to make sure the SUS team is accommodated and continued modifications accordingly.

§         §         Executed a telecom with Janeen, Helena, and Caroline regarding Ribbon and Fiber Development, and Schedule.

§         §         Prepared follow-up information to discuss with Janeen. (Relation of COC Large Pathfinder to Final Bonding Development)  Started schedule changes to SUS plan.

§         §         Started to prepare comprehensive FY2005 data as requested by Carol W.

·         ·         ROSTER DATABASE:

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

§         §         Updated and posted the approved version of the LSC S2 Authorship List

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

·         ·         COST BOOK DATABASE:

§         §         Discussed briefly with Garilyn B. the opportunity of having COC be the pilot project for implementing activity (cost sheet) based accounting. 

§         §         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:

The LIGO Executive Committee has agreed

#  DHS in principle – a look at the overall budget implications, and ways to limit other costs, R&D in particular #

 with the AdLIGO Management Team's proposal for dealing with the increased cost of the ASI contract effort. This proposes that we continue with BSC prototype fabrication, but not to start the HAM unit design until BSC prototype fabrication costs are confirmed controlled. Competitive bidding will be applied to all parts. Also, the thermal straps and pod creaking redesign have been dropped, and the LIGO Project will take over the UHV cleaning and reassembly of the BSC prototype. Studies are continuing to confirm that funding exists to carry out this decision prior to approving the start of BSC prototype fabrication.

Budgetary needs are being developed for FY05.

Actuators:

Kyle Ryan is nearly complete with the Thermal Vacuum test of the large actuator at LHO. Preliminary results are within the range expected.

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

Displacement Sensors:

ADE is proceeding with fabricating and testing the 14 displacement sensors for the BSC prototype structure.

Accu-Glass is proceeding with fabricating and testing the 3 feedthrough flanges for the BSC chamber at LASTI, with 16 feedthrough fittings each.

Seismometers:

Nothing new

Galling/Dusting Test:

Nothing new.

Suspension

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


AdLIGO Suspension
Hosted a set of meetings with Caroline Cantley, Helena Armandula and Thomas Frey about the ribbon process design and the optic ribbon attachment design. We will hold another scope meeting with Sheila Rowan on Friday.

Coordinated with Carol on the LASTI Planning meeting being held on Sept 1st.

Calum and I visited Valley Precision in Burbank. They provided a quote for the quad blade RFQ that did not meet the specifications but seemed to have interesting capabilities.Our tour of the facility and meeting with the V.P. of Manufacturing and the Sales Manager proved worthwhile. We will keep them in mind for future procurements as they have a varied list of services.

Calum and I coordinated with Brian Lantz and Norna Robertson for a visit to Stanford on September 15th. We will discuss the possibility of the Caltech mode cleaner triple going to Stanford for testing with the ETM Tech Demo. We will also be discussing the quad structure design and requirements with Brian and Corwin.

Researching for Dave Hoyland from the Univ. of Birmingham the operational temperature range inside the vacuum chamber for advanced LIGO.
 

Core Optics

 

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

Silica / sapphire silicate bonds

I exposed some previously bonded (in 2002) 1/2"dia. sapphire/silica substrates to ~34 degrees C heat for 1 hr.
Immediately after removing the substrates from the oven, the bond's interface showed stress. The amount of stress was very similar to the stress observed on bonds between SF2 and fused silica substrates when exposed to the same temperature for the same amount of time.
When the bonded substrates were removed from the oven and reached room temperature, the stress at the substrate's interface disappeared.

Test results reported in T030046-00-D http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/T/T030046-00.pdf showed than when sapphire/fused silica bonds were exposed to 41 degrees C and brought to room temperature, some of the stress still remained.
Sapphire/silica bonds exposed to greater temperatures, (60 -80 degrees C) showed very noticeable permanent stress.

We may conclude that stress induced on sapphire / silica bonds by baking under 35 degrees C is reversible, however, noise issues associated with this effect need to be assessed.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>


Juri

I used my Mathematica  notebook to compute the electromagnetic field across the mirrors of the Mexican Hat cavity where an initially launched  fundamental mode is reflected back and forth between the misaligned mirrors until a steady-state field distribution is obtained. Now I am changing the program in order to obtain an animation with the dynamics of the field inside the cavity as the beam bounces between the mirrors. I am analyzing the results to extract information about the characteristic time of the cavity and on the minimum number of rebounds to obtain a steady state.

 

Simone

Trying to improve the ohmic contact of the electrode with the undoped silicon bar to produce electropolishing on silicon.  Checked the behavior of Silicon under the light of a commercial laser [ < 5mW 650-680 nm], to try to overcome the problems due to the high resistivity [330 K Ohm / cm] of the intrinsic Si.

Ordered some pieces at machine shop to allign easily the flexjoint into the Q machine.

Received silicon flex joints from Tom Pike at Imperial College.

Received mechanical components to start testing the silicon flex joints.

 

Francesco

I have finally realised what I was doing wrong with ANSYS and now it seems to work. I performed a pre-stressed modal analysis with varying loads. For the flex joint modes we are interested in the frequency now seem to be of the order of tens of KHz.

 

Maddalena

I'm just arrived from the LSC meeting in Hanford and I started to mount and cable the stepping motor driver for the 7 meter rigid cavity.

I'm continuing to write the article on the subject of my master Thesis.

I'm continuing to take Transfer function Measurement with lower gain in order to study the anomalies of the system at lower frequencies.

 

Barbara:

I've finished to mount the lens to match the injection beam to the cavity and I'm starting to align the cavity.

Just using the micrometric screws, the input beams and the reflected once are pretty close, I will start to use the PZT to finish the alignment.

Obviously in the meantime I'm writing my thesis


 

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