Weekly Report for Week Ending February 24, 2005


 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  February 28, 2005 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)  

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

·         CR-050003 requests funds for a Corning 7980 Blank to replace the sapphire test masses that were intended for LASTI.

Special Items:


Special Announcements:

 


Weekly Report Highlights


LSC Issues (Saulson)


No report


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Petrac)

LSC MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports

Most LSC groups have submitted their research plans for 02-15-05 to 08-15-05 and Progress Reports through February 2005. These are undergoing LSC review.

For a web page summary showing the status of LSC MOUs and associated Attachment updates see:

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~irena/Revstatus/Reviewstat.doc

Non-LSC MOUs

·        No report.

 


SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, February 24, 2005. The following items were among those discussed:

  • Conference Calling: The new system with AccuConference seemed to work for this meeting.  However, it is not working for international calls. Some special access capabilities have to be arranged.
  • Action 130, International Scholars: E. Jasnow has an action to check with the International Scholars Office to ascertain whether new rules will apply for students and scientists already here.  He has contacted their office, but they have not yet provided the information requested.
  • Power Failure at Livingston:  Stormy weather in Livingston resulted in a loss of power at 3am today.  The transmission line that feeds the LIGO substation was down.  This is the first power failue since the substation was installed (seven years).  It appears that our equipment has survived.  The detector is coming back up in stages although there may be some additional interruptions.
  • P-Card Training:  P-card training for Livingston personnel is now scheduled for March 9th.
  • Livingston Electrical Maintenance Contract:  Should have a draft statement of work by tomorrow.
  • Replacement of Air Conditioning at Caltech:  Musical offices is in progress in Bridge at Caltech because of construction (replacement of the air conditioning system) and hazardous material remediation activities.  Everyone is asked to be patient if communications are occasionally disrupted.  The SCR will be used again next week for the site teleconference instead of the ECR.
  • The list of assigned actions updated through February 17, 2005 will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

  • Nothing significant to report.  Assisting with Campus wide inventory.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • No report.

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

  • Nothing significant to report (out for 2.5 days)

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

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

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

  • Placed purchase orders and followed up on order acknowledgements. Following up and requested justification information for two new orders that are over $10k to Sun Microsystems and Interactive Circuits.
  • Completing the change order to LSU. Called the vendor on the rate and waiting for a call back.
  • Submitted the two change orders for Triad for approvals.
  • Reconciled the billed credit card transactions for this week which total 7 transactions amounting to $5,986.33. Called vendors requesting for charges to be put through on invoices billed instead of charged to my credit card.  Followed up on pending credits to my card that are over 60 days. The credit card order log for this month is current with only 8 transactions the oldest going back to December 1, 2004.

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

  • No report.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Prepared and submitted a Fabrication Equipment Request for the Thermal Compensation Preliminary Design and Prototype effort.
  • Compared the FY05 data in Phil Linquist's FY05-08 Budget Model with the current FY05 budget and pointed out minor differences.
  • Worked on updating monthly reports.
  • 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)

  • No report.  (See above.)

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

  • The Request for Quotation for the Livingston electrical maintenance contract is being revised as a result of discussions between Mike Zucker and Allen Sibley.  The revised RFQ is scheduled to be released next week.
  • P-Card training for LLO personnel has been scheduled for Wednesday, March 9.  The training will be conducted by P-Card administrator, Jennifer Mertz.
  • The workshop on the design of the Science Education Center for LLO was held on Monday, February 21.  Initial estimates for the cost of the building have come in at 20% over the budget.  The architect, EDR, will study possible square footage reductions to accommodate this overage.

SUPPORT (Baldon,  Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

  • No report.

>Dorothy Lloyd

  • Processed the usual invoices for payment. Tracked and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of February 14.
  • Processed requisitions for standard purchases, payment requests and change orders. For more detail see Cost Schedule Control Systems report by Ruth Brambilla.
  • Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Nothing to report.

DCC Steering Committee (Lindquist)

The DCC Steering Committee met February 22, 2005.  Discussion continued on the requirements matrix currently under development.  The next meeting of the DCC steering committee is scheduled for Tuesday, March 2, 2005.  The location has been moved to the SCR while installation of the new air conditioning is in progress.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • CR-050003 has been submitted.  The request is for funds for a Corning 7980 Blank to replace the sapphire test masses that were intended for LASTI.

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

  • A staffing meeting was held February 14, 2005.  The minutes and action items have been posted

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

  • No report.

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


Summary of activities at the LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by R. Savage)

This has been a particularly busy week due to preparations for the S4 run.   H1 locking and range issues were sorted out over the weekend and, after a rocky first few hours of the S4 run, both interferometers have been performing well.

Commissioning

  • A chiller water pump was shut down to improve the sensitivity of the Crab pulsar search.
  • MEDM screens were generated to aid in monitoring of optical lever signals.
  • Calibration studies continued until the morning of the start of the S4 run.
  • A list of DAQ channels with known problems was compiled.

H1 interferometer

  • Inability to lock for several days was traced to malfunctioning fine actuators caused by an improper EPICS save/restore.
  • ITMX and  ITMY curvature changes induced by heating with the 1064 nm interferometer light were measured and the results were summarized.   Beam spot size changes during ITM cooling were also measured at the RC auxiliary ports.  These data have not yet been analyzed.
  • New low-scatter masks were installed in the thermal compensation systems (TCS) .
  • Inspiral range degradations were attributed to BS drive saturation (and here and here) .
  • H1's rocky S4 start was cured by alignment adjustments for ASPD2 and  ASPD3.  The reason for the required realignment is unknown. 
  • Preliminary tests of the photon calibrator at the Xend station were completed and the PC was shut down just before S4 started.
  • After recording the longest lock stretch in several weeks (20 hours), TCS servo oscillations affected performance.

H2 interferometer

  • After removing photon calibrator hardware from the optical lever platforms, notch filters were  tuned and loaded, then removed in favor of the original filters.
  • The ITMY optical lever laser failed and was swapped out.
  • New calibration lines were implemented.
  • The source of 10-100 Hz glitches during E12 was identified.
  • Acoustic coupling measurements confirmed improvements made just before E12 by optimizing the alignment to each ASPD.
  • The butterfly and drumhead modes of the BS were found to contribute to the AS_Q spectrum.

Outreach

Hanford hosted a meeting of our Local Educator Network (outreach advisory council) on 2/17.


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


LLO has been struggling with a power outage and the staff has been consumed by the recovery.  The following submittals have not been edited.

 

From: Valera Frolov

Interferometer Commissioning

The interferometer commissioning was focused on improving the robustness, and connecting and testing various monitoring channels in preparation for the S4 run. The interferometer ran with high duty cycle (around 80%) during the weekend and the first day of the S4 run. The inspiral range was around 6 Mpc during the day and 7 Mpc during the night. We set the new site record by logging 18-hour lock stretch.

 

We experienced a complete power outage early Thursday morning and the recovery effort is still in progress at the time of this writing.

 

Commissioning activities included:

  • angular control loops were retuned, the TCS setting adjusted, and the range of the RF drives for the ASI control loops was increased to provide more headroom and prevent saturations of the ASI servo. We still have at least a factor of two margin for the dark noise after the RF readjustment.
  • corner station HEPI seismometer was producing glitches and was replaced
  • connected the fast channel for the signal demodulated at twice the modulation frequency
  • connected LVEA radio monitor in the electronics room to monitor the RF level around the 25 MHz
  • investigated the TCS intensity monitor readout. We are mostly limited by the electronics dark noise. But the limit on the contribution of the intensity noise to the interferometer noise is below the current sensitivity by an order of magnitude assuming the transfer function measured at Hanford.

 

From: "Oddvar Spjeld"

AdL Quad SUS Installation Fixtures

  • Additional preliminary FEA on support beam completed
  • Redesign in progress; contacting ICD to find out if a longer-stroke lead-screw can be used with existing course actuation stepper motors.

AdL SEI Engineering Effort

  • Adding illustrations and video/audio index to technical notes document from ASI meeting.
  • Updating BSC prototype drawing overview document.
  • Will be posting updated AdL SEI models on PDMWorks vault at the end of February.

LLO Engineering

  • Redesigned GS13 sensor platforms for HAM crossbeam still in production.
  • Redesign of new HAM door removal fixture in progress.

HEPI Valve Calibration

  • Calibration of new servo valves in progress.

Upcoming Tasks

  • Look into shutter problem (decision made to wait till after S3).
  • Analyze replaced servo valves.

 

From: Igor Yakushin

Data archiving/Condor/LDAS admin:

  • Most of the week was spent on the preparation for S4.
  • Today we had a 2-hour power outage. Data archiving/Condor/LDAS recovered OK.
  • u1d1@t3-22 and u1d9@t3-8 failed and were replaced by spare disks.
  • node9 seems to have trouble communicating with its floppy and CDROM devices.

Data analysis:

  • Setting up and debugging waveburst online infrastructure.  It is running at CIT at the moment. Not yet sure if it is working correctly.

 

From: Rich Riesen

Safety

Commissioning my newly learned skills and knowledge acquired from  LSO training last week.

  • Conducting an audit on our laser safety eye ware (count, O.D., condition, etc.........)
  • Updating site safety/laser safety walk thru check lists.
  • Going thru all site lasers (except the PSL) verifying proper safety labeling, condition, proper storage, etc.

Found no safety concerns during my weekly site safety tour.


INITIAL LIGO DETECTOR SCIENCE & ENGINEERING (Coyne)


CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

CDS Software

no report

CDS Hardware

Rich Abbott reporting

  • Working with DCC steering committee on list of requirements.
  • Reading and commenting on Benno's AdL PSL document
  • Getting things rolling for timing system re-design
  • Working with Ben on RFPD needs post S4

 

Jay Heefner and Ben Abbott reporting

 

Fiber Optic Timing Link (Sander)

  • The second fanout box is tested.. So far the count is 3 transmitter, 2 fanouts and 9 receivers ready.
  • 40 meter test system will be installed today.
  • The additional 10 receiver boards are due this week.

 

AdL SUS (Mohana)

  • Drawings for the CIT quad test stand are ready for install. Installation should start this week.

 

ISS (Flavio)

  • Documentation and testing continues.

 

LSC PD (Ben)

  • Serial #101 (now 1101) arrived from Livingston yesterday.  It had been having trouble in the field.  Upon testing, it became evident that one of the pins of an OpAmp was unsoldered (U2 pin 3) This was soldered down, and it now functions properly.  It will be returned to Livingston this week.
  • Waiting for list from sites. Rich and Ben have been tasked to make a survey of PDs that are needed and could be fabricated with what we have in house, then to determine the necessity of ordering long lead parts for future fabrications.

 

EE Shop (Todd)

  • Phoenix working on fiber optic timing modules.
  • Building additional LSC PDs.

 

DMT

no report

PSL

PeterKing

The low-frequency intensity noise of an NPRO was measured with suspended photodetector.  Most of the noise unfortunately seems to be due to the crude suspension employed with the mechanical resonances clearly evident.

Optical Contamination Cavities & Scatterometer

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

OTF Lab. (W. Bridge)   In recovery
This chamber stil has two samples, white Ceramabond, and disks of TRA-BOND #2254 color light brown epoxy.  Cavity is in recovery after the full shut down.  cavity is been pumping with Ion pump.  The roughing pump is under a minor refurbishing, oil changed and filters etc.

Absorption Test Measurement prototype  shut down

Scatterometer system  in progress after recovery
The fused silica 2ITM04 is back in the scatterometer enclosure as reference.  We were  scanning the 2ITM02 for beam scattering BUT it shows huge scattering peeks.  We have had cleaned it (Helena) But the results was the same.  We have fully cleaned (two each) a 1.00"  inch 70ppm mirror and took the scan and the result was much better, therefore this means that the big mirror needs better cleaning.  The fabrication of a new mount to accommodate one inch mirror under the
scatterometer is underway.

The Quantronix 60 watt laser still fully shut down

OTF Lab at Lauritsen ROOM 38 
Cavity #3     not a major change
The contamination test for (6) new disks of VAC SEAL Epoxy samples is in progress. Cavity is locked and we are taking measurements  for absorption and ring down for contamination loss every day.

Cavity #2  in progress

Mode matching and the alignment of the optics for the new 414 npro is underway.
The 51cm long contamination cavity is ready for cleaning and bake.
We are still in need of a1/4waveplate, polarizer cube, some lenses.

 


40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)


  • IFO commissioning:
    • Osamu is writing a script to perform initial (before lock) alignment for the dual-recycled Michelson; he is encountering problems with the ranges of coil drivers, which the new revB coil drivers should fix. The script is almost working.
    • Osamu is writing a script for automating the determination of demod phases, offsets, gains for the dual-recycled Michelson.
    • Virginio has been working on improving the MC2 diagonalization, using the new optical lever. This is essential: coupling between length and angle introduces considerable jitter on the MC transmitted beam, hampering progress in lock acquisition.
    • Dan and Monica continue to take photos of our optical tables and documenting their as-built configuration.
  • IFO modeling and DC detection development:
    • Rob is "deepening his relationship" with noise and signals in RSE via Finesse and RSENoise.
    • Monica has compiled transfer functions generated by e2e and Twiddle for the 40m configuration, from CARM and DARM to all the ports at 33 and 166 MHz. There are some discrepancies between e2e and Twiddle that she is investigating, before moving on to the signals at 133 and 199 MHz.
  • PSL:
    • Dan will compile statistics on how often the ISS saturates, and try to figure out why (and if it happens more to us than at the sites).
  • Electronics and computing:
    • After some slight tweaking by Ben, the Rev.B coil driver databases are now ready for installation. One has been installed in the Y-End, and seems to work fine. The rest should be installed this week.
    • Ben will determine the appropriate values for the resistors that determine the bias voltages and the length control gains in all of our various coil drivers. the MC coil drivers have 1.2K resistors; the test mass coil drivers have 100 Ohm resistors; the BS, PRM, SRM coil drivers have 430 Ohm resistors.
    • The new main IFO ASC system is being debugged by Jay in wilson House. It's almost ready to go; should be installed in the lab any day now.
    • Sander tested his fiber timing link to the east end (ETMX) crate with assistance from Ben.
    • Our RFM network went down last weekend. Ben, Jay and Rolf discovered a broken fiber optic cable; when that was replaced, the RFM network was restored. Dan restored all the EPICS settings.
    • Ben continued his test of the in-vac DC photodiodes, letting it run over the weekend with 100 mW of power being dissipated in a vacuum bell jar. The temperature seems to have stabilized, and has increased only around 4 Kelvin. This puts the operating temperature of the photodiode itself at somewhere slightly above 76 deg. F. This shouldn't pose any threat to the semiconductor material.
    • Dan has made mods to EPICS state code and databases to read in more information from TP2 and TP3 pumps; he will test it, with help from Steve, soon.
    • Monica regularly run's Rob's script which compares OSEM sensor readings from EPICS with the front end. It reports only one known problem: the ETMX side sensor sign is flipped. This is a known problem; the AA chassis is backwards; the DCN wasn't followed when the chassis was built. We'll fix it one day, not high priority.
    • The controller for one of our oputical spectrum analyzers was sent in for repair; they want $700. Probably, the LIGO electronics group could repair this, so we'll have them send it back to us unrepaired.
  • Lab Infrastructure:
    • Bob came in on President's day to find a flood at east end of the IFO hall. 0.25" water on the floor. Steve cleaned out gutters on roof. Scopes were sitting in puddles of water. There's also a leak above Dan's table, and another in the east arm inside wall. Steve is requesting more more drainage holes be installed in the roof.
    • Steve reports that electricians have completed the installation of three new 20A breakers: one for UPS for critical control computers, 2 more for plugs. We will switch over to these circuits soon, but we need Larry W or Alex I on hand in case we encounter problems with rebooting the computers.
  • Bake oven Lab:
    • Bob completed 3 bake jobs: Ken Mailand's test bearings; feedthroughs for Hanford; micro-D's for Helena & Jay.
    • Bob continues to work with Calum and Helena in synchrotron, testing leaf springs for AdLIGO suspensions.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)


No report


LASTI (Ottaway)


We have nothing significant to report this week at LASTI.


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

E2E weekly Meeting

Monica Varvella presented comparison of transfer functions for common and differential mode signals calculated using E2E and Twiddle model for the 40meter dual-recycled interferometer.

Mechanical Simulation

(Mark Barton) I finished debugging the new pendulum modeling toolkit and simplified Mathematica triple pendulum model that I reported last week, and created an e2e model that uses the exported state-space description.   As hoped, the time domain simulation runs much faster than before.

Recycling Gain in Various Thermal States

(Biplab) Using FFT model, studied variation in recycling gain of both sidebands and the imbalance between them as a function of various combinations of heated states of two input mirrors (ITM). Studied these for 3 different cases:

(i) changing effective refractive indices of ITMs

(ii) Keeping refractive indices at 1.45 but using spherical phase maps

(iii) Using realistic phasemaps generated by Phil Willems.

These results will also be used to qualitatively characterize and understand differences in phase camera images.

Simulation of 40 meter Interferometer

(Monica) Common and Differential arm (CARM and DARM) mode signals obtained with e2e package have been compared with Twiddle results: The primary signals seem to match well (DARM Asymmetric Port @ 166 MHz and DARM Asymmetric Port @ 33 MHz, CARM Symmetric Port @ 33 MHz) but there are some differences in the secondary channels. Tests are in progress to understand these differences.

Alfi

(Bruce)

  • Working on fixing new bugs found during documentation work (bundler and port issues.)
  • Working on bugs found during integration of new JGo library.

 

(Melody)

  • Finished regression testing using the new JGo library.
  • We anticipate distributing a new  ALFI release soon with the new JGo library.
  • Looking at the existing Problem Reports and address some of them.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Creighton:

I'm reworking the Einstein@home validator to deal better with floating-point differences between architectures: first, by computing relative rather than absolute differences among files; second, by thresholding on individual events rather than accumulating errors among events.

Mandic:

I worked on automating the hardware injections of burst and inspiral waveforms. The goal is to perform these injections on a daily basis, few minutes per day, so automating the procedure would reduce the down-time of the interferometers. I also worked on preparing the various waveforms and auxiliary files for injections. Finally, we performed stochastic injections in the LLO-ALLEGRO pair.

Mendell:

I have organized the plots showing showing distance, frequency, and epsilon (quadrupole moment) covered by the various continuous-wave searches using S2, S3, and post-S3 noise curves.  These plots are posted on the PULG S2 investigations page, under the General catagory, at this password protected URL: http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/enote.pl? nb=puls2general&action=view&page=44.

Shawhan:

  • Set up access to archived data using DTT on CDS gateway node at LLO.
  • Worked (with Vuk Mandic) on preparations for hardware signal injections during S4.
  • Added a command-line mode to 'segwizard' and released a new version of the LIGOtools 'segments' package.
  • Posted study of data quality flags for S3 untriggered burst search, and created final list of time intervals to exclude.

 

Yakushin:

  • Setting up and debugging waveburst online infrastructure.  It is running at CIT at the moment. Not yet sure if it is working correctly.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS:

Creation of the Level 1 and Level 3 RDS frames at the sites have been flawless so far during the science run.

Users of LDAS have been doing a significant about of simulated data geneation using the dataConditionAPI and writing the data products as frame files. This has on two occasions filled up the filesystem. To minimize this we are investigating making changes to user commands to support data compression in the frame data products. This will require a modification to the SWIG wrappers used by TCL and changes to the Tcl layer in the frameAPI for all classes of user commands that can output frame files.

The new features in the createRDS command to support data dropouts in the interferometers has uncovered a new issue with trying to merge Hanford and Livingston frame files. With the new feature it is possible that the frame lengths for overlapping GPS times are not the same due to the dropouts being supported. The software doesn't properly handle attempting to merge these time length dissimilar frames (which wasn't possible prior to the new features. We'll be working on a solution for this and push out a 1.5.1 release with the fix before the end of the science run. The merging is not needed during the science run so this shouldn't present a problem at this time. We expect to have the 1.5.1 release within two weeks.

Currently investigating the port of LDAS and LDCG software to the GCC 3.4.3 compiler on one of the tandem systems. All packages in /ldcg compile except for mozilla and octive (neither being critical). Still need to compile LAL, LALwrapper and finally LDAS.

Mysteriously, the memory leak in the dataConditioningAPI has dropped down by a factor of 5 to its pre Fedora Core 3 level. This has been observed for a week now and there is no explanation.

DB2 has new recommended patches for their database. We will begin testing these this week on one of the tandem systems.

Still waiting to hear that MIT is ready to upgrade to LDAS 1.5.0.

TclGlobus:

Completed I/O client/server with authentication and encryption test case. With MyProxy server, proxy credential can be extended without generating a new proxy certificate.

Fixed XIO TCP and UDP client/server copy test cases. TCP and UDP server attributes were incorrectly used before. Added XIO TCP and UDP atts and cntls online documentation (ROBODOC).

Working on SWIG implementation of globus_io_register_select().

Working on Tcl test cases to exercise the following I/O functions:

  • globus_io_cancel()
  • globus_io_register_cancel()
  • globus_io_register_send()
  • globus_io_try_send()
  • globus_io_send()
  • globus_io_register_writev()

 

Two out of 96 SWIG-wrapped Globus I/O functions are still buggy.  The functions are:

  • globus_io_register_select()
  • globus_io_secure_authorization_data_get_callback()

 

Open Science Grid R&D (OSG):

We lost our green light on the OSG sites board shortly after the end of the integration meeting last week. This is due to the user directories not being setup properly from a permissions point. Since a new release of the OSG software cache was announced this week (0.1.2), we decided to reinstall and fix the issues while upgrading.

The cluster used for our OSG testbed had two more nodes taken out over the weekend.  This has left us with a single node to use for computing behind our OSG gatekeeper.

We have continued to find minor system level configuration issues on our OSG testbed that we hope to have fixed this week so that actual jobs can be run.

One aspect of the OSG testbed that was expected to be integrated at the meeting was the storage management software (SRM/DRM). Unfortunately, this package is not yet ready and it may be a week or two before it is release and we can begin experimenting.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Freed up some tapes (relabeled unneeded copy 2 tapes) and some tape slots (ejected tapes for shipment to CIT) at LHO.
  • Got numbers on how much data was pinned to disk on our 3 /archive filesystems.
  • Did _lots_ of work on LDR for S4:
    • Published E12 L3 data to cluster (as a test)
    • Improved lag.html graph
    • Put a cron job in place to monitor LDR/RLS memory and file descriptor usage
    • Spent time monitoring average transfer rates via LDR and tuning parameters for file transfers
  • Dealt with aftermath of power outage at LLO (checking for corrupt data).

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Replaced the hardware for 4 failed nodes in the CIT cluster.
  • Worked on several LDR, Condor, and on-line analysis tool issues related to S4.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Updated intel boxes in ldas lab to FC3.
  • Getting condor back online (two failed disks so far).
  • Installed FC3 on pcraid8 and pcraid3.
  • Installed FC3 on ldas-pcdev1 (updated with yum).

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • Most of the week was spent on the preparation for S4.
  • Today we had a 2 hour power outage. Data archiving/Condor/LDAS recovered OK.
  • u1d1@t3-22 and u1d9@t3-8 failed and were replaced by spare disks.
  • node9 seems to have trouble communicating with its floppy and CDROM devices.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

(Ben Johnson)

  • S4 publishing, both into LDR, and the segment database, is underway at LHO and LLO. Despite an initial RLS-related crash, the publication process has been stable.
  • Assisting Scott Koranda and Steffen Gruenwald with publishing GEO data at AEI.
  • The basic infrastructure for online analyses is essentially in place.  Duncan Brown is running inspiral jobs at LHO successfully. Other users are also reporting success.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

  • updated intel boxes in ldas lab to FC3
  • getting condor back online (two failed disks so far)
  • building replacement wireless router for NW17
  • working on ALGOR license server

Livingston:

(Shannon)

No report received

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
  • Most of the week has been spent rebuilding a Windows 2k PC that was infected with a worm software package called Hacktool.  The PC was reportedly sending SQL Slammer traffic to computers at Sallie Mae Services.  The Network Administrator at that site notified me of the problem.  I have reinstalled Win 2k and all the drivers, which seems to have wiped out the hacktool software, but now I'm having problems getting Symantec to install.
  • Had to research a replacement printer for the receptionist office.  The old one is costing too much to repair and is not meeting the current demands.
  • Several new accounts set up for LSC members participating in S4.  Several needed passwords reset.
  • Other misc. user support.

 

CIT:

(Mike)

  • Keeping up on the spam filters.
  • Irena Petrac: Reloaded her workstation due to viruses.
  • Finished up moving the rest of the users from Bridge Annex to 2nd floor.
  • Trouble shooting network & e-mail issues.
  • Worked with the backup server.

(Veronica)

  • LSC website:  Continue working on integrating a merchant interface for online credit card payment into the March meeting website.  Updates to the March meeting website.  Postings to the LSC website.  Help to DCC in updating the webpages for MOUs.  Help to Irena Petrac with the LSC e-mail list issues.
  • LIGO:  Updates to the website.  Preparing a set of high-resolution images for a publisher.  Working on the online forms for the 40m website.
  • CaJAGWR:  Videotaped the seminar by Bill Folkner.  Website updates and user support.

(Larry)

  • Assisted Mike in resolving the mailserver problem. Also, spent time going through the spam filters.
  • E-mail Statistics Feb 17-Feb 23 2005
    • Accepted Messages       23,397
    • Rejected Messages       16,247
    • Virus                    1,136
    • False Positives            131
    • Total Mail              39,644
  • Still working the SDRC IDEAS licensing issues. Campus has got the contract from UGS and is placing the order soon. They are waiting for a few other departments to respond.
  • Resolved a couple of issues for the E2E group. There are going to be a number of changes and upgrades for that group in the next couple of weeks.  They have one server that is still having timing issues and we are working on resolving that problem.
  • The abatement is still going on. So far no major problems. However, it looks like the air-conditioning for the computer room may be shutdown for about 8 hours next week. We have just started at seeing what can be done to make sure we don't have to turn the equipment off.
  • Helped a number of people out with e-mail configurations, e-mail alias changes and setups with new mailing lists.  The LSC mailing list is still having a problem with the Database so we are hand editing some of the files.
  • Resolved a few issues concerning network and server performance. There were a couple of processes on different servers that just went into loops and were using up all of the CPU cycles. The applications varied; java, ssh, nis and rpc were all guilty applications on different boxes.
  • Working with Mike on resolving a NAV and Eudora conflict. The latest NAV is causing problems with the smtp when using SSL on Eudora.
  • Regular user support of setting up accounts and setting up new host id's.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Systems and Management

Adv. LIGO Systems
from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

 

Planning

·        Worked a little on the installation planning, intended as a follow up to a presentation/meeting last October. This will be an agenda item for the SUS breakout session at the upcoming LSC meeting.

 

Records Of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

·        no new or changed RODA status

 

Requirements

·        nothing new.

 

Interface Issues

See the "Interfaces" section of the AL Systems web page

·        Continuing coupled SEI/Quad dynamics analysis in modal basis -- a report is being prepared. Have also started to integrate a more up-to-date SUS structure model.

Reviews and special meetings

·        Nothing new to report.

 

From: Carol Wilkinson <wilkinson@apex.ligo-wa.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO Project Management

Advanced LIGO Progress Updates
The next progress update for Advanced LIGO development activities will cover the period from February 1 through March 31. Updates are due by the 7th of April.

Advanced LIGO Project Planning
Work is progressing on up-dating the MREF-funded portion of the Advanced LIGO project. These updates are required to address funding changes stipulated by NSF and to incorporate new knowledge affecting scope, costs, and schedule. In order to take advantage of the new cost manager software, activities are being arranged into work packages corresponding to cost control accounts for cost and performace tracking. Resource personnel information is also being loaded into the Primavera schedule to facilitate workforce scheduling and planning for the transition of personnel from operations to project and back.
The Installation and Facility Modification sub-projects are the first to be updated. Work on these sub-projects is expected to take until the end of March,  when the effort will move on to updating the sub-system procurement, fabrication, and assembly phases.  The remainder of the Advanced LIGO research and development work, with the exception of some final design activites, will not be included in this effort. The updating work is expected to be complete by the end of June.

 

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

 

Progress Period from 02.18 to 02.24

 

Out of the office on 02.18, and 21

·         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 work on the 40-Meter schedule changes.

§         Executed telecoms with Carol and Dwight.

§         Finished work preparing progress data requests for progress period ending 03.31.05.

 

·         ROSTER DATABASE:

§         Assisting Irena as needed on record changes.

§         Continue to assist Irena with setting up her web site to accommodate review of attachment As.

§         Assisting Peter Saulson regarding PI mail list.

§         Working with Dwight to set up his access to the roster database.

·         COST BOOK DATABASE:

§         Prepared data requested by Carol - WBS Structure / Definitions.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason <kmason@ligo.mit.edu>

Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure

SEI Structure:

92 0f 135 drawings have been completed and released by ASI. All remaining drawings have been completed and are in different stages of checking.

ASI will have all drawings complete by Friday. Ed Jasnow plans on picking up the documentation on Friday and make copies to send to LIGO personnel for review.

The buy-off meeting scheduled for 3/8 at ASI is in jeopardy. There is concern there is not enough time to dig through all drawings, analysis, and project files before we need to buyoff on the package. Also Ed Jasnow is unavailable on that date.

Actuators:

Four large and one small actuator has been assembled and tested. PSI plans to have all actuators completed by Friday of this week. I plan on sitting down with Scott Stewart and Scott Greely next Tuesday to review test results and to discuss the thermal modeling they did during the design of the actuators.

Suspension

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

AdLIGO Suspensions
Working on modeling the tablecloth for an fea of its resonances. Working with SUS team on welding issues.

Coordinating with Calum and Ian on Ian's visit here in March. To support that we are considering sending him the parts and hardware for his subassemblies beforehand so that he may assemble them and redline any drawings, if required. He'd then send the assembled stuff back just prior to his arrival here on March 14th. His travel plans are still in the preliminary stages, but we hope this set-up will make maximum use of his time here. Personal and professional committments keep him in the UK for the month of April so planning and coordination is essential.

Continuing to meet with Laurent every Tuesday at 8:30. This week's meeting proved very useful as the source of the dubious pitch resonances was found to be caused by the wire diameter at one stage. We really appreciate all of the work Laurent and Rich have put into this testing. Laurent is now in France until March 17th. We hope he can join us for quad assembly work in April.

Supporting Oddvar and Ken Mailand on their installation fixture designs.

Met with Carol on SUS budgets and schedules. Good meeting. I have an action to provide budget projections through 2008, in the next week. I hope to get to that tomorrow with Thomas.

Gin Gin
Planning a telecon with Bram next week.

From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>
 
Advanced LIGO Suspensions

1) QUAD ETM SUSPENSION

Work is continuing on the quad build at Caltech. All of the suspended stages are now ready and we hope to suspend some of these later this week. The machining of upper structure will be started this week.

2) MODE CLEANER at LASTI

The MC team (Rich, Laurent, Norna, Janeen, Mark, Calum with some input form Ken Strain) have now successfully matched up all of the transfer functions (and mode frequencies) between the Caltech and MIT suspensions and the MATLAB model. The one item that eluded us was rectified this week when we realised that the wrong wire diameter was chosen on the MIT suspension. Once we realised this all of the numbers agreed.

3) FEA of STRUCTURE

We are now working with an overall structure that has a first resonance somewhere between 85 and 100 Hz. The range is due to the fact that we are finalizing what mass we have allocated for the various stages.  A version has been created to allow Dennis to look at the coupled analysis with the seismic structure.

4) CALTECH LAB

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/%7Ectorrie/pictures/quadfeb2005/Quadfeb2005.html
and
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/%7Ectorrie/pictures/quad17feb2005/Quad17feb2005.html

5) VISITS

Mike Perreur Lloyd has just left after a successful 4 weeks visit to Caltech. Russell Jones, from the University of Glasgow is here for 2 weeks to work on the lower structure / catcher for the ETM controls prototype suspension. Norna Robertson is visiting from Stanford next week.

6) Design Meeting

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ctorrie/QUAD_ETM/quad_etm_setup_page2.html


From: Ken mailand <kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu>

Adv. LIGO
I'm currently learning solidworks, and working on the lower suspension installation arm to move the lower suspension into the BSC chamber. Also I have finished designing a platform for the modules for the BSC chamber, to fit either the large or small port tube, and to allow positioning possibilities to clear obstructions that may be near the chamber.
I have ordered hardware and stock to make one to fit the large and small port.

I spoke to Riccardo re. his previous experience with the air bake ovens, for possible configurations and space requirements. This preliminary hardware design showing an oven with a integral wash cleaning platform was sent for quote, the hardware configuration was modified this week. The preliminary cost estimate for this bake oven/cleaning station should be at CIT in a soon.

I have requested a ball park baking estimate from NTS based on our visit, not a quote, just an ROM for our budgeting use. We can use this with Astro-Pacs cleaning estimate and other shipping and handling costs estimates to compare with our in house estimate, for this task. I spoke to Michael Mize 2-16
and NTS expects to have the ROM finished and to us by 2-23, I left a message today inquiring about the date of the ROM.

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

AdvLIGO: I used the simplified Mathematica triple pendulum model created for e2e to generate a set of state-space matrix elements in symbolic form. These can be used to replace the ones currently used in the GEO Matlab triple pendulum model, and provide better modeling of the blade-wire geometry (the existing code effectively assumes that each blade flexes along the same diagonal axis as the associated wire, rather than vertically). This will allow design space with steeply angled wires to be expored with more confidence. (A quad version is in the works.)

Core Optics

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu


Advanced LIGO Coatings


LMA
Will be placing an order to coat 4 mirrors to be used in the TNI experiment.  The coating will be multi layers of doped Ta2O5 / SiO2 (Formula 2).  This coating formula produced the lowest mechanical loss to date.

CSIRO
After evaluating different annealing temperatures, CSIRO obtained a Ta2O5 / SiO2 multi layer coating where the Ta2O5 has zero stress.
Substrates will be coated and annealed this way to evaluate the effect of zero stress Ta2O5 in mechanical loss.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

 

So far so good with the high power photodetector exposure test.  A little over 2 weeks running at 375 mA without any obvious signs of damage.

A new photodetector topology is being explored.  However a limitation is the amount of photocurrent the design can handle.  I have not thought of a way to overcome this as yet.

Auxiliary Optics

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

STRAY LIGHT CONTROL--In the process of updating the scattered light budget for Adv LIGO, with emphasis on the recycing cavity scattering budget and the requirements for scattering by MMT.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>
 
Juri (23Feb):

Im still working on my cavity simulation using a FFT routine. I made a one-dimensional version of a propagation routine in order to check the grid definitions in the Fourier-space. Then I compared the FFT results with the analytical calculations for a Gaussian beam: the two methods give the same results. I worked with Marco on the elaboration with Mathematica of the beam profiler sampling data.

Marco (23Feb):

I completed the PZTs driver box assembling and it starts working. Further tests will be done in the next days.
I got the first beam spot images from the BeamView Profiler and I analyzed one of them by using Mathematica (helped by Juri and Phil Willems). Then I got a procedure to import and analyze BeamView raw data by Mathematica and learnt about data features and settings.
I also did a first nonlinear fit test but for some reason it didnt converge.
Creep experiment: we are taking data at the temperature of 190oC.

Erika


Made initial simulations of the mesa beam profile using mirror map of the first mex hat mirror prototype. As could be expected the mirror is very sensitive on the mirror imperfections.

Justin


First resonances detected in the modified setup for the si flex joints.

Riccardo


Received from internal refereeinvited paper for the Long Beach ASME meeeting, submitting to ASME. It will be available in http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/paper_asme-2005.doc by the week end


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