Weekly Report for Week Ending October 7, 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  October 11, 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)


no report


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Petrac)

(No report--vacation)



SITE TELECONFERENCE (Jasnow)

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, October 07, 2004.  The following issues were among those discussed:


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


PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

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


CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)


HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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


Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Nothing significant to report.

 

.


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


Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (Landry)

Mt. St. Helens remained active early in the week, disrupting locking, as did construction on the Hanford site. Yesterday, seismic noise from the mountain dropped off sharply, but magma is expected to be just below the surface and eruptions remain a possibility, according to the USGS. Periodic explosions do result in reduced noise.

Some commissioning highlights this week:


4K IFO
-----------


2K IFO
------------


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


LLO (Zucker et al)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Some temporary patches remain due to parts shortages, but the full electronics system is back up and running. Enough HEPI systems are in service to make a substantial reduction in the net RMS motion of the interferometer arms. As a result we have started aligning and trying to lock the interferometer again. Rana Adhikari and Vuk Mandic are out from Caltech this week to help push.

In other news, Valera and Andri have been upgrading the main AS port photodiodes to the latest revision.  Rus, Ken and Mike have improved the power distribution to the WFS, LSC and SUS systems, so all but one WFS board (with an unrelated problem) are now functional.


Livingston Outreach (Thacker)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Eskew+Dumez+Ripple contacted concerning incorporating heliostat into building design
Museum/Center books ordered from ASTC
Preparing for Regional GEAR UP conference 01NOV in Biloxi, MS
Designing visitor program(s) for this year: demos; lessons, etc

Safety & security (Zucker for Riesen, Evans)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Rich is away on vacation. Tom Evans responded to four system alarms; after investigation all were resolved as either hardware issues, repaired, or system "forces" (tests) during training of new personnel.

Computing (Roddy)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Spent the last few days completely rewiring the network in the auditorium.  There is now a fiber uplink and a dedicated switch in the auditorium.  Still a few things to do in there (including cleaning up the hundreds of feet of CAT5 removed) but all of the network ports should now work.

Spent the afternoon today at LSU discussing their future networking plans with Sean and Ric.  I had hoped to also meet with Boyd but he was on vacation.  Met the person who does the traffic shaping for the LSU network.  He says he will prepare a list of what is throttled and how so I can provide this to Albert.  They also say that they may up the speeds on the I2 connection since Quest is offering it at a discounted rate, but this may or may not happen.


HEPI (Zucker for Giaime, Shyang, O'Reilly, Mandic, Franzen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Valve failures have tapered off after some replacements on the BS, HAM1 and HAM2 chambers late last week. However we had a failure of a position sensor at Ex; a replacement was on hand at MIT and the system is back up.

Joe Hanson has done forensics on the decaying air pressure accumulators, and it seems evident that these were simply defective and should not have left the factory. The manufacturer has been contacted about their QA.  We are replacing the leakiest ones and monitoring the others to insure they remain within tolerance. (NOTE: they leak air, not fluid. HEPI has had no fluid leaks).

We have found HAM4 tripping its watchdogs occasionally for unknown reasons. It seems to recover OK each time. Current working theory is insufficient gain margin; this is under investigation.

SysID continues on ITMy and the BS; ETMx, ETMy and ITMx are now performing well and routinely isolating. Since Ey was the dominant contributor to full-interferometer locking problems there is already a substantial benefit to lockability even without the rest of the corner station HEPI fully commissioned.

CDS Software (Parameswariah)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
StorEdge 3510 Controller and disk firmware upgraded. Sun rep was here to walk me through the upgrade. The disks were unmounted during the duration of the upgrade and mounted back. A utility check was run on the controller and the logfile was sent to SUN. SUN will confirm if we need a controller replacement and if yes, when we will get it.

Replacing the 2nd 110B on hepi2 seems to have fixed the channel hopping problem. We have not had any reports of channel hopping since then.

Renamed L1:PSL-ISS_MONPD channel to L1:IOO-MC_PWR_IN. Changed the database records and the medm screens to fix this. The EDCU is ok and does not need a change. Rebooted PSL and l1iool1 processors. Returned the PSL to the state it was before the reboot. Both Ref Cavity and PMC Locked. PSL Half wave plate working after the change.

Tested NDS Proxy for its working both from LLO and from Caltech. Alex assistedme to test the nds from Caltech.

Edited the makestartup script to read saverestore.ignore file and remove the channels from the autoburt.req file. Advantage: This now helps to remove those strings that used to put the end double quotes to the next line causing the burt restore to break.

Looking in to disk to disk backup. I have a setup for daily backup of major critical disks.

Data analysis (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS admin:
1) Copied GEO data to LLO to use in joint LIGO-GEO analysis.
2) When working with GEO data, discovered a bug in LSCdataFind that would in most cases miss the first GEO frame for a given time interval. Submitted a bug report which was promptly addressed by Scott.
3) Configured LLO's cluster for matlab use so that Laura could run r-statistics on S3 burst MDC frames.

Data analysis:
1) Produced LIGO-GEO waveburst triggers on S3 playground.
2) Produced more MDC frames (whistles, cusps, and inspiral) on S3 playground per Peter Shawhan request. Testing them with waveburst now.
3) Testing how much better would waveburst do for 1kHz signals if we had not restricted from the beginning the processed band by 1024 Hz.
4) Writing documentation that describes how to run waveburst for the benefit of reviewers and for Siong to be able to run waveburst on LIGO-GEO data.
5) Discussing with Siong and Sergey the possibility of LIGO-GEO online data analysis using waveburst during S4.
6) Preparing for the burst f2f meeting that will take place at MIT this weekend.

HPLF, L1 Commissioning, and AdL Modeling (Franzen)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Have been taking HEPI ITMY and BS sys id data which will be used for control design.

2) Have been studying thermal distortion effects in a 100 W 1064 nm beam passing through a piece of Schott OG-515 glass. The data are to be used for the evaluation of a AdLIGO Adaptive Mode Matching design. See some preliminary results at
http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~franzen/HPLF/adaptiveMM/main.html

3) Evgeny Kamenetskiy, Andrey Shaykin and Viktor Zelenogorsky have joined us at LLO. They will stay for two months studying thermal effects in an AdLIGO Faraday Isolator at high input powers using the HPLF and its 100 W laser. I have showed them the lab and we are making an inventory of additional equipment we will soon need.

4) Further tests of the Melody AdLIGO Mode Cleaner model. Had some Femlab problems which have been solved.

CDS software (Khan)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Implemented RMS Watchdog system for LOS Coli Driver RMS Mon outputs

2) Worked with Chethan on fixing the bug in the NDS Proxy server.

3) Working on Rana's request of automatically updating the watchdog threshold.


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 Link (Sander)

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

- Transmitter and receiver schematics are done.. The distribution chassis schematic is complete.

- Paul has started to help with the layout.

- A review has been scheduled for next week.

 

Timing System Redesign (Flavio)

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

- ISS is still slowing progress on the redesign. Jay and Flavio met last week to discuss some of the requirements and design alternatives.

 

Anti-Image Boards for Low Noise DACs (Jay)

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

- 10 more boards have been ordered. We need approx 8 to complete each site with spares.

 

40 Meter (Ben)

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

- Rana would like the rev B SOS coil drivers installed on all optics. We have 4 boards, but would need to get 8 more to complete all optics and have one spare. We will talk to Alan at the meeting this afternoon.

- Ben is completing the hook up of DAQ channels and fixing gains, etc.

 

LSC PD Redesign (Ben)

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

- Review part III scheduled for Thursday.

 

ISS (Flavio)

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

- Files for the final rev of the board sent out. Boards will be at Screaming Circuits on Friday. 4 boards for LHO should be in next week.

- Shipping cables and documentation to LHO in preparation for installation.

- Ben is cutting down PD stands for use on PSL table.

 

EMI Upgrade

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

No action

 

AdL SUS (Jay)

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

- MC triple at LASTI is exhibiting strange behavior. Jay is talking with Laurent and performing similar measurements on 40M SUS. So far it looks like the whitening is engaged on the triple sensor signals and it hasn't be accounted for in the transfer function.

 

TNI (Jay)

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

- Working with Akira. First attempts at auto-lock met with limited success due to low PD signal levels and noise. Akira is boosting the signals and Jay is modifying the code.

 

TCS Temperature Control (Mohana)

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

- Building up EPICS PC for use at CIT.

- Review next Tuesday.

 

Elect Shop (Todd)

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

- Continued spares productuion for LHO.

- Making 4 pin LEMOs for LASTI

- Waiting for FPDP cable making parts.

DMT

no report

PSL

PeterKing

The state code controlling the AC current adjust actuator was modified slightly.  The DC response of the actuator was checked out.  The documentation from Lightwave Electronics suggested that the response of the actuator was +/- 10V for +/- 0.1A.  For the laser down in the PSL Lab at least, this was not the case and the response was more like +/- 1V for +/- 0.9A.  This was checked out because I did not know what to set the software current limit to so as not to cause an over current condition on the laser power supply fault.  The current was measured using the internal current monitor.

 

The as-built power supply was compared with the schematic from Lightwave and a few differences were noted.  I do not know if the differences are wide spread or not.

 

The state code does appear to work however, although the dynamic range is not quite what I expected given the amount of diode current.  Thus far only the proportional gain has been dabbled with.  Further tuning is required.

TCS quiet chiller

Ken Mailand, Phil Willems

Working on packaging the hardware, purchase, and manufactured parts, for the site installation Chiller Assembly.
A new quiet solenoid valve is due in 10-7-04, and the design review is set for 10-12-04

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 progress!!
The Inner test mass 2ITM04 fused silica mirror is in the scatterometer enclosure.
We are scanning the entire mirror surface  for scattered light and it is in progress now!
We have made several scanning so far at different angle of incidence.

Now we are scanning again after mirror being cleaned by Helena.
The spectralon diffuse reflectance standard of 99% reflectance has arrived and we have
made a custom holder plus we made a rotational holder to check reflectance at more
accurate angle of diflection.


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  in standby
We have received the old chamber with its legs welded in place and now we
need to have it cleaned and bake.   We still waiting on the viewport windows
which have been taken for cleaning and bake.


 


 

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)



Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


no report


LASTI (Ottaway)


Laurent reports :
Triple report

Hardware :
Installation was complete 2 weeks ago, since everything works well. We opened the door to make some minor changes and mainly to study the problem I'll talk about below. We removed the 2 top big screws (part of mass1) that enable you to attach the tablecloth to the pendulum, the difference of weight moved the position of magnets and we had to move the 3 top OSEMs. we also locked and 2 days later unlock the pendulum for the reasons we will see below. We tried to place the seismic screws so that no magnet can be threatened by an OSEM.

software and results.
I am re coding an almost completely new software for the system ID, this time including the possibility to drive a stepped sine and a modal drive.

We spent few days to investigate a strange problem, the data we measured seemed to be wrong with a bad slope in high frequencies and a phase gap a 90 degrees with the model. After having tested almost everything we could (and for example locking the pendulum). It happened that the weird problem was a very simple one : the whitening board for the OSEMs jumper were on so that the board applied a filter with 2 zeros at 3Hz and 2 poles at 30 Hz ( which gave the global aspect of a 1/f slope), I just placed every jumper on off position and now data are much more better with a good slope and good phase. We will also make some improvement on shielding of our cables.

Other LASTI activities:

PSL Upgrades
The PSL wiring upgrade continues

LASTI Infrastructure
We are building infrastructure in the highbay to create the necessary space to assembled the Advanced LIGO Seismic and Suspension systems. This includes the installation of a platform to store the top of the BSC when it is removed so that it does not take up valuable floor space. In this process it is clear that we have a couple of surplus vacuum tanks that we will be removing.


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

Weekly Physics Meeting
---------------------------
Hiro described new features of the released e2e package 2.1.0. Sany Yoshida from Southern Louisianna University discussed some problems and issues related to their simulation effort for combining Input optics simulation with the simulation of the core optics part.

FFTprop
------------------
(Biplab) a matlab package named "FFTprop" is delivered to Luca and Keita at LHO. This package can (i) do FFT propagation of phasecamera image from one point to another through lenses and distances while keeping the resolution same, (ii) do back-calculation - so if the camera image at a certain point is known, it can calculate how the image looks like at some other point on the path it has already passed through. The package (with explanation and example) can be downloaded from
 http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~bbhawal/DOWNLOAD/FFTprop.tar.gz

Advanced LIGO Lock Acquisition
--------------------------------------
(Matt) Worked with Optickle to lock a low-finesse dual-recycled IFO. While I was able to achieve lock on all degrees of freedom, there is still much work to be done to make a viable acquisition scheme for Adv LIGO.

Simulation of 40m interferometer
-------------------------------------
(Monica) Better matching between Twiddle and e2e equilibrium fields values thanks to the implementation of Twiddle inputs. Equilibrium fields values for 40m/advLIGO configuration with Mach-Zehnder have been calculated for a modulation index of 0.1.

New Modeler Release
----------------------------------------
(Hiro)
 A new package of modeler 2.1.0 has been released.
 The major changes are
 (1) A few bug fixes (axis rotation setting, preparation of header record, reflection matrix) were fixed. Fortunately, they did not   affect SimLIGO results.
 (2) More FUNC_X supports, and more robust use of static variables when using dynamic linking
 (3) More conforming to C++ standard. This code can be compiled using 3.4.1.
 (4) 64 bit CPU compliant.

Alfi
----------
(Bruce) Work on the Box Settings Declarations editor.

(Melody) Continuing modifications to display the FUNC_X variables in a friendlier user interface. Currently working on the simple view which parses the C++ code in the MemberDecl primitive setting. Performing code integration with Bruce's changes.

Last week;

Weekly Physics meeting
-------------------------------
Matt gave a status of LLO interferometer and its locking issues. Virginio discussed about his work on injection and ramping-up of seismic noise into SimLIGO to study lock-loss effects. Biplab described some FFT code results in which small longitudinal displacements are generating large signals in WaveFront sensors. Sany Yoshida discussed about a mode-matching problem they are having with their e2e model of the Input optics system.

Commissioning
------------------------------
(Hiro) Discussed about the beam profiles and thermal lensing effects with Keita, Bill and Mike Smith, based on the simulation results using FFT (G040328) and analytic calculations (T040177, G040442). "FFT for Dummies" and a FFT starter kit are being prepared so that Keita and others can run themselves.

Advanced LIGO lock acquisition schemes
-------------------------------------------
(Matt) Worked on Advanced LIGO lock acquisition schemes. To facilitate this work I have generalized the frequency domain model used by LinLIGO (freqIFO) to have a Twiddle like structure (i.e., it is now extensible to any optical configuration).  While this new model ("Optickle") is not yet complete, it is able to compute DC power and demodulated signals in the adiabatic approximation of static mirror positions. It is fast, operates directly in Matlab, and should be sufficient to test low-finesse (i.e., auxiliary beam) locking schemes.

Simulation of 40meter interferometer
----------------------------------------
(Monica) Still working on the validation of the equilibrium fields. Some mismatching came out for the sidebands in the recycling cavities, they seem not to be resonant: under investigation.

FFT Study: Length and Alignment correction
----------------------------------------------
(Biplab) Large Wavefront signals have been observed even for small (~1e-12 meter) longitudinal displacements when mirror phasemaps are included in runs. Probably this is what is not allowing simultaneous correction of lengths and angles (although separately both types of corrections worked). Study of its cause is ongoing.

Outreach
----------------
(Biplab) Assisted Sany and his students Raghu and Tiffany from Southern  Louisianna University for their e2e modeling work.

Code maintenance
---------------------
(Hiro) Modeler code debugging: Several days were spent on debugging modeler code to make it run on homam, 64bit AMD machine. The culprit was a code which looks like double = - unsigned int  *  double; This worked OK on 32 bit gcc on Intel, but did not work on 64 bit AMD gcc. Fixed to safer coding. Another fix was to make it compatible with gcc 3.4.1, which demands more conformance to C++ standard.

Alfi
--------
(Bruce) Finishing initial version of Box Setting and opaque box features.

(Melody) Continuing modifications to display the FUNC_X variables in a friendlier user interface.   Currently working on the simple view which parses the C++ code in the MemberDecl primitive setting. Checked in most of the code changes.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Mendell:
Work continues on investigations for comparison of StackSlide with Hough and Power Flux, using S2 and fake data.  Preliminary S3 results will also be generated before the November LSC meeting.

Shawhan:

* Made an additional set of "toy" simulated burst waveforms to evaluate burst search algorithms:
http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/bag-enote.pl? nb=burs3sim&page=3
* Helped Rana set up conlog at the 40-meter.
* Updated a number of LIGOtools packages, now with full support for Macintosh OS X.
* Planning the Burst Group face-to-face meeting at MIT this weekend.

Yakushin:
1) Produced LIGO-GEO waveburst triggers on S3 playground.
2) Produced more MDC frames (whistles, cusps, and inspiral) on S3  playground per Peter Shawhan request. Testing them with waveburst now.
3) Testing how much better would waveburst do for 1kHz signals if we  had not restricted from the beginning the processed band by 1024 Hz.
4) Writing documentation that describes how to run waveburst for the benefit of reviewers and for Siong to be able to run waveburst on LIGO-GEO data.
5) Discussing with Siong and Sergey the possibility of LIGO-GEO online  data analysis using waveburst during S4.
6) Preparing for the burst f2f meeting that will take place at MIT this  weekend.

Last week:
Mendell:
Reported on comparisons between StackSlide, Hough and PowerFlux searches at the Sept. 28, 2004 CW telecon.  One bug was discovered in the StackSlide code which was fixed.  The most interesting comparison is probably shown on these S2 investigation pages (protected with the usual CW group password)
http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/enote.pl? nb=puls2stackslide&action=view&page=17
and
http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/enote.pl? nb=puls2hough&action=view&page=46.
The Hough and StackSlide code agree very well qualitatively, though the exact algorithm that find the frequency at time t are very different in the two code, which can account for the quantitative differences. However, we continue to work along these lines to further debug the codes.

Shawhan:
* Wrote Matlab code to produce additional simulated waveforms for burst search efficiency studies

* Read the GW-GRB correlation analysis preprint posted by the Rome Group (astro-ph/0408544) and sent Peter Saulson a number of comments to forward to the authors.

* Final reviewing of the S2 known-pulsar paper, which has now been approved for release as a preprint.

* Worked a little on the S2 untriggered burst search paper.

Sutton:
This week I finished the new DMT "easy calibration" tool and placed it in CVS.  I have been editing the draft LIGO-TAMA bursts paper.  I have been helping prepare the white paper for the joint AURIGA-LIGO analysis, producing pretty plots of the amplitude response of the detectors, drafting a simulations proposal, and also producing sample MDC frames (with help from Igor Yakushin).  The MDC frames also include signals for GEO and TAMA, so they could be used for joint analyses with those detectors as well.  Finally, I have examined the SNR at which various simulated signals became detectable in the S2 bursts search. The SNR looks like a good predictor of detectability: all of our 50% efficiencies occurred for SNR in the range ~10-20.

Yakushin:
1) Tested that calibration code is working correctly in waveburst.
2) Tuning waveburst on S3 playground in maximize efficiency and minimize background rate. It turned out that if we want to be able to detect 100% of strong enough WNB1, WNB2, SG5 signals (long duration bursts), we have to increase the coincidence time window to 100ms in the postproduction analysis. That leads to about 30-40% increase in the background rate.
3) Working on waveburst version 5 documentation.
4) Tested that current input mechanism in waveburst can read GEO 
frames. Preparing waveburst to apply to GEO data.
5) Produced better time, frequency and hrss reconstruction pictures for 
S2 paper.
6) Helped Patrick Sutton to fix bug in his modification of my MDC 
script.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)
New code for the createRDS functionality requested by the LSC Computer Committee made it into the nightly build for last weekends testing of LDAS. The new code cased roughly half a dozen of the integration and system tests to fail. All of these have now been fixed. This means the code's backwards compatibility is now in place, but new tests are now needed to test out and exercise the new functionality for createRDS.

New versions of Xerces (C++ XML parsing IO library) and LAM (Message Passing Interface Library) were tested on tandem systems this week. The Xerces upgrade revealed no issues and was specifically to address an issue with new compiler technology from GNU. The LAM upgrade was to fix an issue with hardware failures that left dead files on a rebooted system and prevented LAM to start up. The LAM development team provided a fix to this bug but we are having trouble running LDAS with this new LAM on the test tandem environment. We will need to investigate further before promoting the LAM upgrade. Also was able to upgrade to the latest version of iODBC (open source Open DataBase Connectivity standard library).

We have seen an increase in hard failures of nodes on the LDAS-CIT system which has prompted several requests from system administration to enhance testing capabilities of nodes and user accounts on the large clusters. These are being integrated into LDAS along with built in tests under the controlMonitorAPI's GUI.

An issue with single timestamp time ranging parameterization for the new createRDS command was discovered in the TCL layers and fixed.

The code changes to support PR 2705 are now in and being evaluated. This will allow tarballs of files to be pulled into LDAS for analysis in user commands.

Began the migration effort to port LDAS to Fedora core 3. Plans are in the works to configure a tandem system with Fedora core 3 pre- release 2 and rebuild all of LDCG and LDAS on that platform. This will probably require several days of testing to identify any porting issues which may need code changes, followed by more testing before we are able to migrate onto a bigger system like LDAS-DEV and LDAS- TEST for more thorough "threaded" testing.

Have wrapped up seven more XIO functions from Globus for use in TCL. There are still a few more functions in the XIO subpackage to be wrapped. Presently developing TCL test code to exercise these newly wrapped functions in a client server simulation. The test programs are being debugged.

Researching the interactions between MyProxy and Globus client proxy along with the GRAM for use in testing of the TclGlobus software in an automated environment. A flow chart showing the interactions is almost finished.

Attended a griphyn/ivdgl management meeting on Tuesday morning in which the discussion focused almost entirely on Open Science Grid issues. In particular, the state of the current OSG "Blueprint" document and plans for upcoming meetings. KB made arrangement to attend the next OSG Blueprint meeting at Fermilab in about two weeks.

Last week:
IBM made the general announcement of its DB2 8.2 release to the community this past week. A check of the Academic website shows that this has not yet made out to our channels for downloading. However, it did reveal that two new patches are available for the version of DB2 (8.1) that we are currently running. These are now downloaded but I will wait to see if we can get the new release in time for the Nov 15th LDAS release before committing to either the patches or the new release in a week or two.

In an effort to automate nightly testing of the Tcl/Globus code being developed, an issue with certificate authentication was identified. This was a natural place to review the recommendation from out project advisory committee to look into using myProxy. We held a meeting to discuss this possibility and will install the myProxy on our Tcl/Globus project server over the next week and explore the flow of a automated test script to perform the growing series of unit tests we are developing to test the new Tcl/Globus wrappers.

Wrapped up the two XIO functions (globus_xio_read() and globus_xio_write()) this week and developed unit tests to validate these. A couple of refinements have been identified for these wrappers and thier associated tests. These functions handle all globus streams (file, socket, etc.).

The cmonClient now has new GUI controlled tests that allow the testing of all MPI users and nodes on an LDAS system in response to the PR 1780 change request. Also added support for selecting time ranges based on a LIGO run (e.g., E10, S1, S2, etc.). Fixed the time selection widget to use "last 5 minutes" per request in PR 2682.

Fixed up PR 2706 - remove references to resource variable ::bwulfHost in the controlMonitorAPI's server.

Close out PR 2355, wake up of dataRecv and non-dataRecv threads in the lightWeightAPI.

Added an FAQ to the webpage for the 1.2.0 release of LDAS documenting a bug in the lamboot code used by the mpiAPI. The LAM developers have provided a patch and will be fixing this bug in the next LAM release.

Continued working on changes to the frameAPI and the frameCPP to support concatenation and appending of frames in a frame file for the next release of LDAS.

Began testing a fix to PR 2705 involving user commnands that fetch hundreds of files for inclusion in an LDAS datapipeline as input data. This is being implemented to use a tarball option.

Ran all LDAS system and integration tests on the development system using CVS version 1.2.18. Updated webpages and cvs with results. No surprises. Had to fix a bug in the dcmangle diskcache test script to properly use the new /scratch file system mounted from SAM/QFS.

Continued review of Open Science Grid documentation on the web while also continuing to dig through the latest version of the "blueprint" document.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
* All LIGO data in HPSS has been copied to SAM-QFS and deleted from  HPSS.
*I'm now working on getting other people's data off of LIGO tapes (that was put there by mistake) in HPSS so that we can reclaim the tapes for SAM use.
* Still working on getting STK maintenance quote.
* Tracking down missing labels for cleaning tapes.

(Al Wilson)
* Repair of node113, needs a new motherboard. System is out of warranty. Will have to be ordered. Replace with node7 from the TEST system. Data recovered.
* ldasbox2 repair. Found the bios to be bad reflashed. Hard drive is  now having errors. Will replace when data is backed up.
* Helped GC with a setup of a laptop for redhat.
* Installation, and distribution of BB monitor of the nodes.

(Stuart Anderson)
* Tested SAM-QFS version 4.2 in combination with SAN-4.4.2 and the latest Solaris 9 Recommended Patch Cluster. This version has passed initial testing and is now running on the LDAS-DEV and TEST systems. Unless a new problem shows up we will start upgrading the production systems to this version next week.
* Installed and started testing Fedora Core 3 Test 2 on my laptop computer. LDAS version 1.2.30 builds successfully and all unit tests pass on this version of Linux.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
* Received ASA pcraid #8 unit on Wednesday.
* Upgraded LDRdataFindServer.
* Added several more condor accounts.

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
* Installed new certificates on gateway.
* Copied GEO data to LLO to use in joint LIGO-GEO analysis.
* When working with GEO data, discovered a bug in LSCdataFind that would in most cases miss the first GEO frame for a given time interval. Submitted a bug report which was promptly addressed by Scott.
* Configured LLO's cluster for matlab use so that Laura could run   r-statistics on S3 burst MDC frames.

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
* I have added the follow options to createrds.tcl and createrdsGUI.tcl, which are set in the resource file createrds.rsc: 1) "set includedirs [ list ... ]" (If includedirs is not an empty list, reduce input data from these directories only) and 2) "set excludedirs [ list ... ]" (if excludedirs is not an empty list, do not reduce input data from any of these directories). The default is that these are empty lists, and everthing works just as before.  These options can be used to reduce just the locked stretches of archived data, rather than all the data produced by the framebuilders. The changes have been checked into CVS:
  CVS/Root = 
:pserver:USERNAME@gravity.phys.uwm.edu:2402/usr/local/cvs/lscsoft,
  CVS/Repository = dsorun/contrib/createrds/scripts.

(Ben Johnson)
* The cluster at LHO how has S2+S3 L3 RDS data for both observatories, and is only lacking S3 L1 RDS data for Livingston. Spraying the LLO data and publishing the entirety of the L1 RDS data still needs to be performed.
* Firmware/hardware upgrades for the 3510's at LHO completed. Save for
  the 3510@fb0's disk firmwares.
* Daily segment archiving GUI has been finished. This should allow for easier segment archiving by the operators at it automatically runs and parses the conlog.
* Attempting to revive the control room web page display computer. It needs a BIOS reset to get it to boot. It probably needs a new processor and or motherboard. This is certainly a backburner issue, though.

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
-Upgraded mozilla / firefox on several machines
-Working on new syslog server and tripwire configuration for gc nodes
-Continue working on linux setup for gc
-Setup account for new MIT grad student Chris Wipf

Livingston:
(Shannon)
Spent the last few days completely rewiring the network in the auditorium.  There is now a fiber uplink and a dedicated switch in the auditorium.  Still a few things to do in there (including cleaning up the hundreds of feet of CAT5 removed) but all of the network ports should now work.

Spent the afternoon today at LSU discussing their future networking plans with Sean and Ric.  I had hoped to also meet with Boyd but he was on vacation.  Met the person who does the traffic shaping for the LSU network.  He says he will prepare a list of what is throttled and how so I can provide this to Albert.  They also say that they may up the speeds on the I2 connection since Quest is offering it at a discounted rate, but this may or may not happen.

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
- Dealt with some problems due to a full user disk.  I'm again cleaning up some user accounts and moving them around to other disks to make more room.
- Helped a couple of users with remote file copies.
- Continued building a SunBlade 1500 for a user's desktop computer.
- Reviewing lots of software and documentation for possible security functions.
- Finishing up the new work permit web form.  I gave up on the PDF form for now and have made a html form with perl cgi.  The html form works well with all versions of Netscape but not with Internet Explorer.
- Other misc. user support.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Vuk Mandic: I finished loading and ghosting his new laptop; he is now up and running.
-NTSRV: I ran end of month ghost back ups on all NTSRV's.
-Linda Turner: My goal was to try and reload this from scratch, but ended up having a busy day and ran out of time. I was not able to start and complete this job. I ended up patching up what I could, for the upcoming LSC conference.
-Unpacked and tagged new equipment that came in from Dell. (Computers & Monitors) Ed Chargois gave me a hand with this.
-Loading three new computers to swap out users with older workstations. One of these is for Dennis Coyne, which is requiring me to load all GC and Engineering software. The other is for Mary Lei, and the last of he three is for General Computing.
-I tried to get the LAN card on the new Dell computers to work with ghost. No luck so far. Need to do some more research on these new gigabit network cards that Dell is pushing out.
-Moved Bill Kells to another office. I also setup additional network connection for his laptop. I also updated his laptop with updated OS patches and firewall software.
-Tested all GC and Engineering software with service pack 2 for our XP users. We can now give a green light for our users to load service pack 2. There are some minor modifications with "Windows Security Center," that need to be setup after this service pack is loaded.
-Other onsite/phone user support that included software, e-mail, and printing issues.

(Lisa)
- Did monthly backups.
- Spent a day tracing a particular e-mail problem down.  It turned out to be a problem with someone's personal spam filters.
- Spent some time in the 40m replacing a failed hard disk and resolving problems with the wireless on their martian network.
- Higher than average amount of user support.

Mail Stats 09/30 - 10/06/04
Messages Accepted:      18919
Spam Rejected:          7008
Viruses Rejected:       736
False Positives:        12
Total Mail Thru:        26663

(Veronica)
- LSC website: Last-minute changes and updates to the November meeting webpages. Updates to other pages of the LSC website.
- LIGO website: Updates to PAC Meeting and NSF Review webpages. Upkeep of other webpages. Address involving Sharon into postings to seminars pages.
Updates to the roster database. Prepared a high-resolution image per a request from Caltech Public Relations office.
- CaJAGWR website: User support. Updating the webpages for the seminars for the current term.
- Project Science: Updates to the current workshop pages.

(Larry)
-Still spending time on purchase related items. Had a special account setup with one vendor because of the difficulty contacting the sales rep.. It took some time to get the cables needed by the LDAS group. The manufacturer changed the cable configuration but we eventually found someone that could supply the cable type needed by the group. Received a number of orders from different companies and still tracking down items that we should have received by now. Started placing orders to replace some of the older desktop computers.
-Spent a deal of time tracking down files and file systems for different people. Most were files from people that had left the project and were needed by others referencing those files.
-Spent some time on cybersecurity issues. I will be spending more time on related items over the next few weeks.
-Still trying to work things out to clean off old unused file systems.
-Spenta day repairing a number of functions that no longer worked properly after installing a series of critical patches on one of the sandboxes. Some applications needed to be re-installed, others turned off and/or removed. A few applications just needed to have their queue cleared out and restarted but it did take some time to track everything down. I thank Hiro and Stuart for helping out with different parts of the repair.
-Assisted a number of users with misc. items.

Last week:
MIT:
(Keith)
-Helped run ethernet cable in high bay
-Swapped out bad harddrive in library computer
-In process of upgrading firefox browsers on all the windows machines

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Attended the NSF Cybersecurity meeting in D.C. this week.  This was a very informative meeting from the viewpoint of a NSF funded project, and there are recommendations already to make this an annual meeting. The FBI was also represented by one of the leaders of one of their computer intrusion task forces.  He had some interesting information to share without discussing the ongoing case which prompted this conference. More information will be compiled in reports to follow.

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
- Working on a new format for our web work permit.  I tried to get PDF forms working, but can't find out how to load the PDF form with the permit number.  Now I am writing perl code to generate the html form.
- Setting up a Sunblade 1500 for a user because his Ultra10 is dying.
- Helped a SURF student get her final report into a format her mentor could read.


CIT:
(Mike)
-Janeen Romie: Worked on this workstation trying to get the CDRW to work. I ended up calling Dell to get a replacement for this. I ended up being on the phone with Dell for a few hours going through many troubleshooting techniques, that I had already performed.
-Calum Torrie: I had to reload Algor software on Janeen, Calum and a visitor's workstation, in order to get Algor to run correctly. On Janeen's computer this turned out to be a big project I ended up having to un-install Algor and then clean up registry before I could get Algor to install correctly.
-Ansys FlexLM: The license server had some problems with users trying to use a certain plugin. This turned out to be a licensing issue. The Ansys support team generated an updated license with the correct seats and time out dates. We are good until October 31, 2005.
-Setup a visitor's workstation that required me to load many engineering packages. This computer is to be used for a user that is on his way from Glasgow.
-Phil Lindquist:I loaded a new laptop with XP and all General Computing software plus some additional software packages. I transferred over all users data, email and desktop preferences.
-Vuk Mandic:I finished loading a dual bootable laptop for him, but came across some issues on the Linux side. I could not get the internal LAN card to work. I gave this laptop to Al Wilson, and he has taken care of this issue for me.
-Linda Turner: Iworked on her laptop due to many problems with Microsoft office and Adobe. This computer seems to have a corrupted registry that is going to require a re-build to correct this issue.
-Performed additional onsite/phone support regarding network connectivity, software, and printing issues.

(Veronica)
- LSC website: Set up a website for the November LSC meeting. Updates to other pages of the LSC site.
- LIGO website: Helped Sharon on web issues for the ITRP pages. Prepared high-resolution images per requests from Caltech Media Relations. Working on the websites for NSF review and PAC meeting.
- Project Science: Updates to the website and user support.

(Lisa)
- Still having some pretty major back problems, so it was a short week  for me.
- Mail server/spam maintenance
- Received the licenses to add the 2d cybernetics robot to the solstice  system.
- Misc. user support.

Mail Stats 09/23 - 09/29/04
Messages Accepted:      22406
Spam Rejected:          8227
Viruses Rejected:       795
False Positives:        4
Total Mail Thru:        31482
% spam blocked:         27%

(Larry)
-Attended the NSF Cybersecurity conference. There will be a few actions taken as result from things learned at the conference.
-Worked a number of accounts and added a few more. Still quite a bit to clean up. Assisted a number of users with various requests.
-Dealt with a number of purchasing and maintenance items. Still need to track down a couple of orders that have not arrived.
-Reworking a couple of items on the new sandbox unit.


Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Systems and Management

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

 

Progress Period from 10.01 to 10.07

 

·         ·         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.

§         §         Attended meetings to discuss cost and schedule changes for the following Sub-Systems - IO, 40m, and SUS.

§         §         Continued work on the progress schedule update with progress through September 30, 2004.

·         ·         ROSTER DATABASE:

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

§         §         Assisting Irena as needed on record changes.

·         ·         COST BOOK DATABASE:

§         §         Nothing new to report.

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

 

Seismic Isolation

 

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

A meeting was held with ASI on 10/1 to negotiate which unplanned activities on their task were caused by LIGO's requested scope changes. Of the 8 liens existing, 6 were accepted by Caltech, for a total added fee of 16K. The 2 remaining liens for a total added fee of 41K were not accepted, and may be discussed again if ASI feels that they can better justify their case.

A meeting will be held with ASI on 10/8 to discuss the following:

1. A decision on whether ASI will be providing a fixed price proposal for fabricating the BSC prototype parts; in addition, other tasks from the current "cost plus" contract may be proposed as fixed price, as well. I had erroneously reported 2 weeks ago that the 10/8 meeting would be covering the presentation of the fixed price proposal. That will be done on 10/24, assuming that ASI decides to go ahead with the proposal.

2. Updated fabrication cost estimate

3. Contract document markups from ASI, covering the latest changes

4. Status of shear slip analyses, design changes

5. Status of global tolerance policy document

6. Status/schedule of scheduled items remaining (especially drawing releases, bid packages, assembly, shipping)

7. Status of weekly reporting plans

8. Status of Ken Smith's writeup on the tilt effects of side and end loads on a curved blade (action item #38; Ken's e-mail of 8/2, expecting to wrap up his writeup "that week")

9. LIGO's response to Tony's questions in 10/1 meeting: analysis manual, correlatable analysis model, solids model file format, insert installation

10. (when ASI is ready to discuss) negotiation of remaining liens: TBD Tasks #1, 2


Actuators:

Bob Taylor received and precleaned the 6 large bobbins and 6 small bobbins and shipped them to PSI for winding.

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:

We received 5 spare cables that were ordered for the STS-2 units.

Galling/Dusting Test:

Nothing new.

Other:

Ken Mailand and Larry Jones will be meeting with Astro Pak on 10/8 to begin planning the task for cleaning, air baking, and FTIR qualifying of the BSC prototype parts that are too large for LIGO personnel to process. These total 21 pieces of 12 different parts, with mass totalling over 3700 lb. The heaviest part is the optical table, bottom half, which weighs 1020 lb. These parts are difficult to handle and will require special fixtures and handling. A pathfinder task is planned to help determine cleaning and FTIR process specifics.

Needed specifications for the in-vacuum cables for SEI and SUS are being discussed, in preparation for ordering the cables.

Suspension

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


AdLIGO Suspensions
We welcome Tim Hayler from Rutherford Appleton Lab. He'll be here at Caltech for the next 3 weeks working on quad noise prototype design tasks.

Working on quad structure design and analysis with Calum and Tim.

Working with Helena and Caroline on re-organizing the WBS structure in Primavera for the ribbon, fiber and ear development. Helena has made a development plan for the work through the end of the final design. I have summarized our work from the last few meetings in a new WBS structure and sent it to Helena and Caroline for review and approval. Once that is done, we will forward this to Thomas for incorporation into Primavera. Caroline and Helena have provided percent completes for the preliminary design tasks and will be able to report progress as soon as it is incorporated. I will schedule a meeting in November to review which group is doing what research along with which group is paying for what equipment/parts during the development phase (preliminary and final design.)

From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>
 
1. QUAD Update

All of the drawings for the Top mass are now in workshop. CES and the Physics shop are progressing well with the various work packages.

The majority of the drawing packages that are being worked on have interface related questions and are associated with either Calum or Mike Perreur Lloyd. Our plan is to review the parts, check interface related questions, apply any re-works and then start the release process. MPL is visiting Caltech later this month when his parts arrive from the shop.

A further set of drawings including ideas for assembling the top mass, wire clamps for assembly, blade clamps and the penultimate reaction mass should be ready for review by the end of the week.

2. FEA of Structure and 2 concepts for the design approach

The FEA work continues. To incorporate the two assembly approaches we are trying to obtain a first resonance of ~ 200 Hz for the upper half of the structure, ~ 80 - 100 Hz for the lower half and ~ 100 Hz for the combined structure.

3. Blades

We are expecting the test blades from VP any day now.
CES report no problems.

4. Design Meeting

For a review of this week's design meeting please refer to the following link: -
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ctorrie/QUAD_ETM/quad_etm_setup_page2.html
        Includes: Top mass assembly, Wire clamp tests and review of "3&1" assembly with mounting concepts for the structure.

5. Visit by Tim Hayler

Tim Hayler is visiting from RAL. The SUS team put together a list of items related to the noise prototype effort. In order to aid in bringing Tim up to speed he has been aiding with the structure analysis, learning about the "3&1" assembly and how to implement it, understanding the GEO catcher work and spending time in the lab with the various suspensions and hardware.


 

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