Weekly Report for Week Ending March 31, 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 April 4, 2005 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Announcements
Comments on Weekly Report
LSC Issues (Saulson)
LIGO Lab Operations

Administration (Lindquist)
Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker)
Commissioning (Fritschel), Detector (Coyne)
Campus Research Facilities

40 Meter (Weinstein)
TN, ( Libbrecht)
LASTI (Shoemaker)

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

R&D and Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)
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)

LSC MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports

No report (vacation).

Non-LSC MOUs

No report (vacation).

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, March 31, 2005. The following items were among those discussed:

FY 2005Costs—The costs at the end of March (this represents the end of the first half of FY 2005) seem to be coming in a bit light, probably because of the S4 Science Run.
The list of assigned actions updated through March 10, 2005 will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

No report (campus property inventory).

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

Reviewed numerous vendor responses for an EDMS system for the DCC, LIGO, and LSC Collaborators and selected those that seemed to address most of the system requirements and were within budget guidelines.
Set up demos from four companies--two for next week, two the following. Have set up individual times with the presenters prior to the demo to explain in more detail what we currently have and what we want a new system to do. Will complete a packet of LIGO-specific documents for them to process on the fly using their own systems so we can compare systems more easily.
Working to set up time with Doculabs at the AIIM Conference. This is a group of experts who are neutral consultants who make themselves available to review requirements of customers against potential vendors and to give appraisals of individual software packages and companies from past experience.

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

packages: in - 19, out - 5
faxes: in - 22, out - 17
Continued to process LSC presentations.
Began to check if all LIGO Science Seminar presentations posted from 2004 to 2005 are in the DCC database system.

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

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

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA Press Here.

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

No report (vacation)

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

Nothing significant to report.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

When a Cost Transfer is made in the Oracle system, the expenditure is transferred as requested, however the encumbrance balance in the account is not adjusted to reflect the expenditure transfer. As a result, the encumbrance balance in the account to which the expenditure was transferred is overstated while there encumbrance balance in the account from which the expenditure was transferred is understated by the same amount. I referred this problem to Caltech's Problem Resolution office to see if there was a way to solve it. The response was to recommend a rather complicated fix that would have involved submitting another Cost Transfer to reverse the original Cost Transfer. Esther Cunningham and Gina Salone have come up with a simpler solution, which would reverse the original transaction and then re-enter the transaction charging the expenditure to the correct account number. We have successfully tested this solution to correct a payment to the Exploratorium in March that was charged incorrectly to the Hanford Outreach account instead of to the Outreach Award. Yet to be tested is whether this solution would work when the expenditure and correction are not made in the same month, although our impression is that this solution would work in this situation as well. I want to thank Esther and Gina for coming up with this solution, which not only eliminates the need to submit a Cost Transfer but also results in the encumbrance balances being reflected correctly.
Noticed that the Visitor Program was being charged for Medical and Dental Insurance premiums for a visitor even after the visit ended. Notified Cindy Akutagawa, who has arranged to have 3 months of charges reversed.
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 (vacation).

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

The architect/engineer for the LLO Science Education Center remains on schedule for the production of construction documents by the end of June.
Corrections have been made in allocating expenses to the Exploratorium to the proper site. Reversing the costs, and re-distributing them to the proper account did this. This was in lieu of a cost transfer.
The appropriately witnessed amendment to the LSU/NSF lease will be sent to LSU today.
The web-based registration method for the LSC conference at LLO worked very successfully. It will be implemented for the LSC conference at LHO in August. This will remove the need for any checking accounts at the sites.

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 March 21.
Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

The annual report and request for FY 2005 funding for the LIGO Visitor’s Program will be due to the NSF at the end of April. I have prepared a first draft and distributed copies for comment to key visitor contacts within the LIGO community. Have already received a number of comments back. We should have no problem making the deadline.

DCC Steering Committee (Lindquist)

The DCC Steering Committee met on March 30. L. Turner is setting up demonstrations with selected vendors (see above). Our target date is to finalize a recommendation by June 1. Some work around may be required to support engineering needs leading up to S5,

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

No open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

Minutes and Action Items from March meeting have been posted.

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)

Selected elogs from the week of post-S4 are linked below:

S4 calibration efforts during the post-run freeze were the dominant activity until Tuesday. Cavity pole measurements differed from those taken Feb 4 last year.
After the thaw, efforts to understand which 4k optic or optics needs compensation or replacement took place. These include steering the 2k thermal compensation (TCS) laser onto a 4k optic (the beam is sadly clipped in vacuum by the 2k optic structure). The clipping is at the 50mm level, as seen in this upside-down view of the 4k ITMX as seen by the 2k TCS. Later in the week, central (in detail) and annulus (at max power) TCS heating was recalibrated.
2k PSL instabilities continue. The 2k FSS transfer function was confirmed.
full double-precision floating point is used in the new H2 LSC code installed Thursday

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

No report.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

CDS Software (Rolf Bork)

The new LSC code is ready to go (doubles in all calcs). This software has also been updated to handle 4 more ASPD (compile option), so it is ready for that if/once it is decided to add them. The new code requires change out of EPICS and all suspension front end software to handle doubles from LSC. It is scheduled to install and test this software on LHO2K tomorrow.
Alex has filter modules built into EPICS (Linux version). There is still some discussion with Daniel on exactly how this will be used and possible porting to vxWorks version of EPICS.
Heard from Phil Willems last week that 1/4Hz noise was seen in ASQ signals in S2 and S3 data. I asked him to try and verify if this is also seen in S4 data, as a fair amount of CRC checking was added to the Daq system prior to S4. If this is still a problem, we will need to try and track it down.
I've been in contact with Mike and Peter on when the best time would be to make another trip to LLO. Tasks include building/installing new Framebuilders, LSC upgrades, gigE install and fiber timing install. It will either be next week, or, most likely, May, as they have work already scheduled for most of April.

CDS Hardware (Jay Heefner)

Fiber Optic Timing Link (Sander)

All components tested. Peter King is checking the test plan.
Can not get the test equipment for the original site tests for at least several weeks. Sander will find out the date that LLO wants to install the system and decide whether we can come up with an alternate set of tests.

LSC PD (Ben)

Rich and Ben are coming up with a total number needed for the sites. That number is on the order of 30. Todd is working on some PDs that will be tuned to 24.5 MHz and 29.5 MHz.

ISS (Flavio)

The ISS for H2 can be shipped tomorrow.

Elect Shop (Todd)

5 SOS coil drivers are ready for the 40M. 5 additional units are in fab. Front panels for the modules are in house.
2 LSC PDs ready for test. 4 more are very close.

DMT

no report

PSL (PeterKing)

In characterizing some baseline noise measurements with the SR785 signal analyzer, one set of measurements was affected by some magnetic pickup whereas three previous measurements were not. Fortunately this only messed up the region beyond 10 kHz, which is outside the region of interest for the low-frequency intensity noise stuff I want to do. Thus far everything has been characterized at low frequencies, the photodetector dark noise, instrument noise floor and some reference resistors.

TCS Quiet Chiller (Ken Mailand)

I have given information on a larger chiller heat exchanger to Cheryl at LHO, she wants to install it in one of the units for the 4KX arm.

Optical Metrology (GariLynn Billingsley)

The surface measuring interferometer has been calibrated, measurement of one of the original LIGO pathfinder pieces repeats in power to about a half a nanometer. The instrument appears to be more sensitive to vibration since its refurbishment; it is difficult to get the same kind of repeatability as we had when originally characterizing the LIGO optics.

In characterizing optics for potential replacement in H1, we've found relatively higher scatter on BS06 and BS02, but aren't sure if the higher signal is due to the 50% coating of the BS vs the HR of the ITMS. Liyuan is trying to get a model working on that. It may also be time to switch to an integrating sphere, so we can have a better chance at getting absolute numbers for scatter.

In surface measurement BS06 shows marks, but is still in spec (http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/E/E960100-D.pdf ). The marks appear to be smaller versions of the streaks that were seen on 4ITM01 and 08. Helena will try cleaning to see if she can move or remove the spots. You can see a preliminary phase map of BS06 at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~coreopt/Interferograms/BS06prelim.jpg

LIGO NSF Documentary Movie (Calum Torrie)

Oddvar, Ken Mason and I have been working with William Maher to create CAD files of the seismic and suspension system for the LIGO movie (both initial and advanced LIGO versions).

Optical Contamination Cavities (Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang)

OTF West Bridge

Chamber # 3

Still pumping and cavity is locked. We still waiting on the 1.00" mirrors to be tested. Cavity is clean.

60-watt laser for absorption test is in Standby

Scatterometer enclosure

We have been scanning the beam splitter two of them for beam scattering. We have encountered some situation in terms of power shut-off and building cleaning. Dr. Zhang is releasing the result from previous scanning.

OTF at Lauritsen

Cavity#1 Chamber has 20 pieces of Micro-D-Connectors IN. The cavity is clean so far. We continue taking measurements for Ring down and absorption every day.

Cavity #2 is in standby.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO commissioning:

Osamu presented a status report on work at the 40 meter lab, at the LSC meeting on March 22.
Osamu made several attempts to lock the arms with freely moving central part (PRM, SRM, BS) (our standard approach to full lock is to first lock the central DRMI and then add the arms; but the reverse approach might be promising as well). He tried doing a DC offset lock of the YARM using the transmitted light (TRY) normalized to the power in the POB DC. This didn't work well, due to (a) saturation of TRY QPD; (b) oscillation of the servo due to high gain; (c) the normalization failed to behave well when the signal recycling cavity swung through resonance.
He then tried to put together a simple common mode servo to aid in locking one or both arms. The signal at POX 33 MHz was fed into an SR 560 amp with a pole at 1 kHz, actuating on the MC servo test input. Osamu found that the gain of the MC servo was too low for this to work. He has some ideas for improving the gain, but will set this project aside for now and go back to locking the DRMI first.
Osamu tried locking the DRMI again but found that, despite all the work done over the last month, it didn't lock. Something has changed / broke; Maybe alignment, maybe STACIS. Under investigation.
Last month, Rana worked on minimizing the ANG -> POS coupling at high frequency in the mode cleaner, by adjusting the angle output matrix in the three mode cleaner suspended optics. Later, Virginio modified the coil output matrix and filters for MC2 to minimize the POS -> ANG couplings. This probably undid what Rana did; they will work together to fix it.
But in the meantime, Osamu sees that the ANG -> POS coupling is much reduced, and was able to restore the gain on the MC WFS servo to bring the UGF up from 0.6 Hz to several Hz. It should be at least 10 Hz; we hope that when Virginio and Rana are done, we can turn the MC WFS servo system back up.
Rana, Dan and Osamu are proceeding with plans to re-layout the AP table, and move the SP LSC PDs onto that table. All the required new 2" optics and other hardware is in; they will work on it in the coming days. We decided that we probably don't need an electro-optic shutter or even a fast mechanical shutter on the SP beam line; we'll just put in a manual variable attenuator and work with low power.
Rob measured the MC and arm cavity ring downs, and is analyzing the data.
Rob measured the seismic noise during the day and night. Now that Virginio has finished tuning up the STACIS system, Rob will add the accelerometers back into the PEM system.

IFO modeling and DC detection development:

Rob presented the plans for the Homodyne (DC) readout experiment at the 40-meter lab, at the LSC meeting on March 22.
Keita gave us a straw man design for a 4-mirror output mode cleaner for DC detection. Rob and student Marcus Ng are reviewing Keita's design, and will develop a final design. Mike Smith will draw it up and order parts for the output mode cleaner, mode matching telescope, and PZT steering mirrors. We're writing up the design in preparation for a system review.
Monica is developing a 40m model for Finesse, to complement and test her e2e and Twiddle models.
Virginio has been working on the e2e mechanical simulation.

PSL:

Our PSL tabletop ISS system continues to saturate regularly. Jay will re-adjust the servo offsets to reduce the problem. Our tabletop ISS was a prototype; we'll look into getting a production version to see if it saturates less often. But it may be that the cause of our saturation is the Mach-Zehnder... Or it may be due to the strong correlation of the ISS photodiode with humidity (seen on all PDs on the PSL table; a mystery!).

Electronics, controls:

We have had several failures of the front-end controls, leading (typically) to undampable optics; this happens as often as once a week. It can be fixed by rebooting the digital suspension controller systems. The obvious suspect is the timing system; some kind of timing glitch causes channel hopping of the OSEM sensor signals, and then loss of synch. (Anther possibility is some corruption of the reflective memory network). We look forward to improved fiber-optic timing signal distribution. Jay will also ask Rolf if the modifications made to the ADC timing system for HEPI are worth implementing here.
Jay and Ben continue testing the new ASC system. The signals propagate through the ICS110Bs just fine, but there are a few small problems with the signal propagation through some of the Pentek channels. These will be troubleshot this week, and fixed. It should be ready for 3 WFSs, soon.
10 of the rev. B Coil Driver panels arrived from Front Panel Express. Ben gave them to Todd to use for the boards that are being made. We will then install 3 of them for the PRM, SRM, and BS (we already have installed and commissioned them for the ITMs and ETMs).
Ben has finished packaging the RF frequency multiplier circuit that was designed by Dan, Rana and Steve. Initial testing shows some harmonics that need to be dealt with. Ben is working on some filtration that might help.
Ben installed the reflective memory fiber that replaces the temporary fix that we installed in the sosvme crate.
The TRX and TRY QPDs have noise above 1KHz that Ben has determined to originate somewhere after the PD head. The grounding jumper of the output AD 620 is suspected by Rich, and will be investigated this week.
Jay is working on putting the signals from the Thorlab PDs at the ends into the LSC front end electronics, with a new board. Jay will figure it out and Rob will add the signals to the LA code.
Jay is also getting the signals from the IPANG QPD into the ASC front end. We'll need new hardware and software.
A disk failed in our DAQ RAID array, and was replaced.
Steve reports that the EPICS readings of some of the ion pumps and turbopumps are screwed up. Jay will investigate. He will also look into implementing code by Dan to read in more information about the ion pumps and turbopumps, and fix the EPICS on/off toggle code.
The noisy Coherent OSA head was delivered to Wilson House to see if they can fix it.
Jay is preparing a PC104-based EPICS system which he will test at our LSC/ASC rack sometime soon.

Computing:

Alex and Jay have completely re-invented the controls computing and networking at the 40m lab!
A NAT router appliance was installed, so that the controls computers can get out of the martian network and see the web (and the ilog!!!), but nothing can get in.
A new Linux box with ~ 500 GB of RAID disks was installed, and is now the NFS server for our online software on /cvs/cds; which is backed up via RAID. ALL operator and embedded computers now point to this disk, instead of the old version on op140m (Sun E450 running solaris).
That new Linux box also runs a web server so that we can run our conlog web interface; a samba server to serve /cvs/cds to windows laptops; and a DNS/YP server to share the /etc/hosts table and the user accounts.
Actually, the DNS/YP service is still running on op140m (Solaris); Alex will move it to the new linux box and then turn op140m OFF.
Alex installed two Linux boxes were installed to function as operator consoles; they can run EPICS/MEDM, dataviewer, ROOT, DTT. There are some problems, being worked out.
Our framebuilder software is still in some private location on fb40m; it will be moved to /cvs/cds on the new Linux box.
Two of our wireless laptops run Windows and are useful EPICS/MEDM displays. The third was converted to Linux FC3 and works as a fully functional operator's console, with MEDM, dataviewer, DTT.
After all the changes to the controls computers, Rob got all the always-running scripts running again: (a) snapchecklist; (b) RGAlogger; (c) ISSautoreset; (d) autolockMCmain40m; (e) conlogger. He also set up a script to make RGA plots easily.
Jay will try to reorganize and clean up our EPICS state code, which is a mess.

Lab Infrastructure:

Steve cleaned and glued black glass beam dumps onto all of the RF PDs.
Steve and Bob performed maintenance on our three Leybold roughing pumps (first time in 15 years). They changed the pump oil, and saw some oil vapor on the intake hose; Bob has cleaned, baked and RGA scanned it. He put ball-valve spigots on it to make the oil change easier next time. They raised the entire rack of pumps to make it easy to put in and take out the drain pans.
Steve cleaned carts & dollies around the lab, and provided them in key places so that people can put equipment on them instead of putting them on the tops of optical tables.

Bake oven Lab:

The new wiring in the south annex bake oven lab is now complete and Bob is putting everything back together.
Bob installed a new internet-ready temperature controller for oven E.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No significant progress to report this week.

LASTI (Ottaway)

Ken Mason reports:

Design and analysis is complete for the BSC solid stack, which will be used to test the suspensions quad prototype at LASTI. Fabrication drawings are now being made.

Lee Cardenas is at MIT to assist in the dismantling of the initial ligo seismic isolation in the BSC chamber. The Hepi system has been locked in place, the dome removed, and downtube has been lowered onto a stand isolating it from the support table.

Laurent Ruet reports:

We have all (Myron, Lee, Rich and me) spend our week end working on the BSC, we are a bit more than half way done (masses and optical table have been removed and midle masses have been put back inside, springs have been reloaded so that now we are have a "suspended BSC" again, now we need to bring the clean room frame down again, remove the platform and put the dome back on it ) On my side, I have finished thee report about the triple, I am in the phase of reading, correcting reading.............

Also worked a bit more on the mathematics of the estimator/control.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

Weekly Physics Meeting

Sany Yoshida presented his work at Caltech this week on Violin modes in e2e model (details below). Viewgraphs: http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~e2e/ME2ET/Minutes05/050331 ) Mark Barton showed results for some related issues in Mathematica simulation of suspension model of Advanced LIGO. Hiro discussed some interesting results from FFT studies (details below).

Mechanical simulation

Sany Yoshida worked with Virginio to take over the single suspended mirror modeling done by Virginio. Hiro worked with them to build e2e boxes. A few bug fixes and speed improvements of the state space module were made.

Report from Sany: Virginio and I worked on modeling of the violin mode for the LIGO I Large Optic Suspension. Using a maple program previously written by Virginio, we first computed the ABCD matrices to describe the dynamics in the state space representation. Then we imported the resultant file to an e2e box file to compute the optic's motion for the pendular, pitch and yaw degrees of freedom.

The current model (developed by Virginio) describes the violin motion in the following fashion. The suspension wire consists of several segments (up to 15 segments can be used in the current version) each of which is modeled by a massless string and a bob. Here the last bob represents the suspended optic and has a different mass from the other bobs. The two wires can have different lengths, and consequently, different stiffness.

To test the programs, we used white noise as input to the suspension point and looked at the optic's motion for the pendular, yaw and pitch degrees of freedom. In this run, we considered five segments (hence up to the fifth order of the violin mode) for each of the two wires. The resultant power spectra seem to be reasonable, showing the pendular, pitch and yaw peaks at the right frequencies, and five peaks of the violin mode with splits consistent with the assumed wire length difference.

FFT Studies

(Hiro) This work is to help the mode matching test at LLO and to understand the possible mechanism of LHO2k high recycling gain: The mode matching of fields in various conditions of interferometer was studied -

Two kinds of input beams: one, which matches with cold input mirror (ITM) arm, and the other with hot ITM arm.
Various thermal states of ITMs, two ITMs cold, commonly heated and differentially heat.

The FFT run results show the following.

Carrier (CR) is very stable both in Power Recycling cavity (PRC) and in arms, almost insensitive to input beams and to thermal states of ITMs. The curvature and beam size of CR in PRC are set to be the idealistic case, regardless of the ITM thermal state and input beam.
The reflected CR field always have a ring structure (i.e., mixture of TEM00 and even higher order modes) is the input beam is not set to match with properly heated ITMs.

One conclusion is that the input beam mode mismatching to Core Optics (COC) shows up most prominently in the reflected field, and fields in COC are insensitive to the input beam structure. Further study is going on to understand some of the FFT results.

Commissioning Related:

(Biplab) Worked on two issues: (i) Why H2 interferometer recycling gain is so good and why H1 cannot achieve a similar value. (ii) Modeling support to Dave Ottaway for his spot-size measurements of POY beam at H1.

Simulation of 40m interferometer

(Monica) I'm using Finesse to resolve the differences between e2e and Twiddle for minor signals. I still have some configuration problems but I already built the 40m optical configuration in Finesse. In the meanwhile I'm calculating numerical expectations of the power outputs with Mathematica. A new e2e box for the 40m e2e package is under implementation: I want to substitute the IFO optical configuration (the central part -> Dual Recycled Michelson) with one consisting of e2e's 'rec_sum' module plus the signal recycling mirror.

Alfi

(Bruce) Continuing work on recursive bundle content tracing and the processes needed for unresolvable data types in partially connected bundle output.

(Melody) Working on fixing existing Problem Reports (PR). Finished fixing PR 449 (a cleanup utility to delete ALFI backup files after a certain amount of time has passed). Finished creating an option in the ALFI Preferences page to clear all files in the backup directory.

Fixed a bug in the Primitives Properties dialog when associating a data file for the primitive.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Charlton:

This week I have been performing simulations using my chirplet analysis code on the LDAS grid machine. Each simulation generates an instance of noise + a signal which is then analysed to produce a test statistic, which is the maximal correlation of the data with a basis of multiscale chirplets. I am using the ldas-grid machine to do a large number of simulations over a range of signal-to-noise ratios.

Creighton:

I'm still working with the Einstein@home validator to see how much we need to relax our constraints to get near-100% validation rates. In particular, if our validation rates get close to 100%, we can reduce our redundancy from threefold to twofold, for an effective 1.5 times increase in computational power.

Mendell:

Progress on the StackSlide search was presented at the March 2005 PULG F2F and LSC meetings; see DCC documents G050144-00 and G050145-00. Attended the 21st Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting and gave an overview methods talk on the search for periodic gravitational waves; see G050191-00.

Shawhan:

Did hardware signal injection studies after the end of the S4 run
Followed up on S4 online WaveBurst events
Modified guild and the 'ldasjob' package in LIGOtools to work with the revised protocol for using persistent socket connections to the LDAS manager
Released a new version of the LIGOtools 'segments' package to fix some bugs in segwizard that appeared when working with certain S3 and S4 segment lists
Read and commented on some GWDAW proceedings and analysis results papers
Worked on S2 untriggered burst search paper
Reviewed PowerFlux material for APS April Meeting

Sutton:

I've been analyzing the data from the new simulation runs of TFClusters that I performed last week. I used the data to do Monte Carlo simulations of the LIGO-TAMA network efficiency. These allowed me to quantify the impact of various possible systematics, such as calibration uncertainties. I'm now summarizing the results in a web page. In other news, I wrote up some comments on the LIGO-AURIGA draft for the GWDAW 2004 proceedings. At Igor Yakushin's request, I also distributed to him (and the bursts group) my matlab codes for handling detector geometry, antenna responses, and MDC parameter generation; these might be helpful in designing a new MDC frame generation engine.

Yakushin:

1) Showed that 4 of the loud triggers produced by S4 online waveburst analysis are due to the boundary wavelet transform artifact and disappear when one increases the offset on the boundaries of the science segment from 4 to 8 seconds: http://ldas-pcdev1.ligo.caltech.edu/~igor/followup.html. We should have done so for S3 analysis as well when the maximum wavelet decomposition level was increased. However, we did not observe those boundary artifacts in S3 because the data was very glitchy.

2) Participated in the Special telecon about follow-up studies of S4 online WaveBurst events this Monday.

3) Redesigning the MDC production infrastructure. The problems with the existing infrastructure: 1) very slow because datacon instead of Condor is used; 2) respfilt function was designed for AS_Q calibration and we now use DARM_ERR; 3) we need more advanced algorithms for beam pattern function and arrival time computations that would take into account a) non spherical Earth model; b) all the ifo and bar detectors; c) allow easy coordinate transformation between Earth and world coordinate systems (useful for directional search); 4) existing infrastructure is very hard to use and involves too many steps and scripts.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

During the LSC Meeting several people discovered a problem submitting jobs to LDAS from behind the NAT router that was setup for the meeting. LDAS does not test (hardware not available at this time) client side software from behind NAT routers which introduce a persistent socket problem. Once the problem was identified changes were made to the LDAS managerAPI to support connectivity to clients from behind NAT routers. This fix was patched onto the existing 1.5.1 release of LDAS and placed at all LDAS sites.

Worked on several problem reports targeted for the 1.6.0 release of LDAS:

PR2221 - generic API getElement returns invalid string for empty element array

Working on setting up regression test.

PR2729 - FrVerify should verify metadata

Have support for validating the start time
Have support for validating the duration
Have support for validating the leap seconds
Working on validating the observatory information.

Did code review of some of the diskcacheAPI pending changes. The patch for fixing the number of directories appears to be good. It will be tested on a tandem system over the weekend and then on ldas-dev early next week. Still reviewing the stride modifications.

Updated cmonClient resource to include a complete listing of user commands for selection and support filter of DSOs for dataStandAlone also. Tested ldas beowulf search users and nodes at lho, llo, cit and mit via cmonClient nodes/users test. All passed except mit search user 9. Updated list of PRs to be included for ldas 1.6.0.

Testing: Ran system test on ldas 1.5.21. Got dataStandAlone and putStandAlone scripts to run as regular tests on dev without running out of disk space. Working on script to encompass all user commands. Tested the script on test, cit, lho, llo and mit when Phil put in the manager patch for persistent sockets and ldas was upgraded everywhere. Copy Peter's changes to ldasjob package for persistent sockets to ldas and cvs the change.

TCL/GLOBUS

Fixed incorrect SWIG wrapping of Globus GASS cache package.

Worked on debugging Tcl script to provide an example on how to perform parallel transfer using Globus FTP client & control.

OSG/GRID

Worked on two OSG configuration issues involving the Globus Gatekeeper and the Condor-G scheduler left over from Naveen's original configuration. Still not able to run condor jobs on the system.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

Found a few problem files that LDR hadn't transferred and referred them Scott, seems to have just been problems with changing the gpsStartTime in collections.ini.
Worked on getting the last files from the end of S4 to transfer via LDR, also ended up referring to Scott.
Began testing SAM-QFS 4.3.
Tested performance differences between setting a 3510 cache to optimized for sequential or random i/o. Doesn't make a big difference for our application as best we can tell.
Relabeled LHO tapes to get them more archiving space.
Cleaned up grid account for Naveen (departing LIGO employee).
Undamaged a few files that had been marked damaged at CIT and verified that they could be read correctly.

(Phil Ehrens)

Replaced failed disk drive(s) in datacache ide raid array.
Returned 17 hard drives to Maxtor for warranty replacement.
Initial interaction with iVDGL certification authorities, toolchains, and protocols.
Test builds and installs of Subversion with Apache support.

(Stuart Anderson)

Tracked down and fixed a reproducible kernel crash on the Linux cluster head node at Caltech that was due to a known Linux kernel NFS bug that has been fixed in newer 2.6 kernels.
Tracked down slow Condor performance problem (reading a file 1-byte at a time) and submitted a problem report.
Worked on failed IDE-RAID drives.
Coordinated tracking down various grid software failures at multiple locations due to expiring host/service certificates.
Helped with SAM-4.3 testing.
Working with Sun to track down a SAM-QFS migration bug related to switching our systems over to supporting small files efficiently.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

Investigated NFS trouble with new pcraid running FC3.
Remove certs for Naveen.
Investigated condor trouble @MIT. Turned off PREEMPT line in config file, seems to allow jobs through now - still investigating this.
Having Sun put both T3 units on our yearly sun maintenance contract.
Made fedora yum changes.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

Installed Ben's data archiving tools in the control room and on ldas side. Configured ldas and dataserver machines for the corresponding AstroWatch data to be archived by tape robot. Getting some feedback from the control room. In particular Brian found some bug/feature of the script: if one erases the last segment offered for archiving, the next time the GUI starts, it would offer the last segment not from the beginning but from the end of the previously rejected segment. The reason for such a behavior is that GUI remembers the last time it was started and next time searches the conlog starting from that time. One possible fix would be to allow a user to choose starting from which time the conlogs should be searched.
Helped users with accounts and other issues during last week grid workshop at LLO.
The support contract with SUN is close to be formalized. SUN has already received the PO number and my understanding is that we can already start using the new contract.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

Reports on gaps in the S4 LHO and LLO data are here:

http://ldas.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/GapChecker/ gapReportLHOS4End032405.txt

http://ldas.ligo-la.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/GapChecker/ gapReportLLOS4End032405.txt

Note that these reports show that there are NO gaps in the LHO raw, L1, or L3 data. There are 15 gaps in the LLO raw data, and 9 corresponding gaps in the L1 and L3 data. All gaps appear to be associated with the LLO power failure and framebuilder reboots. There were no LDAS createRDS job failures during S4!

Ben Johnson, Igor Yakushin, and myself have started the archiving and RDS generation of post-S4 "Astrophysics" data, referred to as A4 data. This data is found at LHO and LLO, under /archive/frames/A4. Publication of this data has not yet begun. New web monitoring of RDS generation has also been set up at these URLs:

http://ldas.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/createrds/dsorun/contrib/createrds/monitor/rdsMonitor.html

http://ldas.ligo-la.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/createrds/dsorun/contrib/createrds/monitor/rdsMonitor.html

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

Looked into einstein@home rsync troubles
Replaced noisy fan on lot
Investigated windows desktop with virus trouble
Setup new lab dell pc
Setup new cad pc in myron's office
Ordered matlab 7.2 for highbay pc
Ordered backup hdd for postdoc
Helped get users onto new wireless setup in NW17
Beginning to investigate LDAP

Livingston:

(Shannon)

Working a strange e-mail issue for John Thacker. His inbox seems to be disappearing, but not from the server, only on the client.
Installed a tape drive directly to Baronne and Ilog. The Ilog will be backed up to a dedicated tape drive hopefully on a weekly basis. Baronne is the backup server and needs to be restored in case of a hardware failure.
Spent hours cleaning and moving equipment in the computer lab so I can use it as a lab again.
Created a quick howto for Windows Privacy Tools, GnuPG, Thunderbird and enigmail for Windows users.
Working on Solaris 9 install/security docs.
Setting up a couple of computers in the lab for use in testing & documentation. I plan to have one of each flavor, Windows, Mac, Sun, Linux, etc. This will be useful for creating docs and for configuration and security testing.

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
Installed the latest version of matlab on the license server.
Copied some backup files to CDROM for a user.
The centralized syslog server is up and running. I still have a few more computers to add as clients as well as all the printers.
Provided several users with information on how to retrieve their Netscape mail boxes out of the Symantec antivirus quarantine and to prevent it from happening again.
Set up some more Sun Blade 1500s for users.
Started getting the SunFire V120 server set up.
Other misc. user support.

CIT:

(Mike)

PRISM PM: I received the PRISM PROJECT MANAGEMENT software. I spent time reading and planning the installation of this software. Ended up having to make changes to the current VPN server configuration. I am in the process of running tests with ARES Corp. system administrators, before we release this set up for general use.
Ken Mailand: Updated Algor, which corrupted Solid Works, this required me to update this software as well. This was very time consuming, contacting the vender, getting an online account, to download software, licensing issues, etc. etc.
Loaded another laptop for the loaner pool. This has been turned over to Ed Chargois.
Worked on setting up a cubicle for a new post doc, up on the third floor of W/B.
Dave Beckett: Swapped out a bad monitor for him, and finish up loading his updated PC. I will be swapping out his old computer, sometime today.
Larry Jones: Ghosted his old workstation; and in the process of reloading this computer, due to the OS somehow getting corrupted. This could be a hardware issue as well.
Other onsite/phone user support that included printing/printers, and software issues.

(Veronica)

LIGO: Installed the webpages for the PAC18 meeting. Working on the last of the online request forms for the 40m website. LIGO seminars: Webpages updates, support for the speakers in the setup of their presentations. Even though we only used a phone dialup for the last seminar, I ran a test cam setup in case we are asked to provide a webcast. Updated the roster database. Helped Julie in working on web updates.
LSC: Website updates. Posted the last presentations from the March meeting and a batch of GWDAW papers for review.

(Larry)

Purchased a number of misc. computer items for the users. Ordered a couple of disk drives to get a couple of workstations back on-line. Working on another maintenance contract with SUN. Received the Foundry equipment which was ordered last week. This should allow a few copper GigE connections to the core switch. Worked a number of P-card issues.
Worked a little with Mike on the PRISM software installation. Mike has a few more configurations to test out before going prime-time with it.
Added a few new accounts. Removed a couple of accounts. Made another quick review of the system and we should be able to remove another 10-15 accounts next week. Trying to get as much cleaned up as possible before the SURF program starts up.
Modified the contact information for the LIGO.ORG domain name. Working on a few more modifications to make the domain a little more useful to the LSC.
Resolved a number of printer issues. Covered cartridge replacement to repairing configuration files.
Spent some time going over DCC items. Includes looking at new packages and trying to accommodate requests from George Stokes to update the existing system.
Worked a number of web related issues. Setting up new web directories, cleaning up and modification of files.
Assisted Julie H. with a number of issues. Most dealing with getting files transferred to her control.
Assisted Ed on tracking down a few property items. Just as a note the webcam has been checked out for use, finally. It appears there is now more interest in its use. We are working on getting another one with better resolution.
Worked a couple of backup and file restoration issues. Monthly backups will start tonight.
Continue working with the spam filters on the e-mail system. We are averaging over an hour a day keeping an eye out for false positives. We are now in the process of seeing what changes can be made to the system/procedure to cut down on this time sink.
Mail Statistics for March 24-30, 05

Accepted messages 15,297

Virus messages 1,491

False Positives 226

Rejected Messages 12,049

Total messages 27,346

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Systems and Management

Adv. LIGO Systems

from Dennis Coyne

Planning

Worked on revisions to the FAC (facilities) cost estimate and planning with Carol Wilkinson and Dwight Carter. SUP (support equipment) has been subsumed into the FAC work breakdown structure.
Working with Carol Wilkinson to revise the SEI (seismic isolation) cost estimate basis of estimate (BOE) to be consistent with the latest estimate from the SEI critical design review and re-mapped to a better WBS structure.

Records Of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

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 developed and integrated a finite element model of the current quad SUS structure with ASI's model of the inner stage of the SEI system. Have obtained modal based transfer functions.
Working to establish proper system design sensitivity for use in setting technical noise source limits. Will revise the FS sensitivity plot in the current version of the system design document
May need new HAM crossbeams due to the increased overall load. These crossbeams are also far more compliant than we would like anyway. (New cost item.)
OSEM emitters and photodiodes (80 units each) have been ordered for vacuum compatibility testing.
A small, vacuum compatible stepper motor manufactured by AML and used in Virgo is being tested for compatibility with LIGO vacuum requirements. This unit (model C17.2) or a similar one may serve to move a mass on the SUS quad to enable pitch bias adjustment (though this is not part of the current design as yet). This stepper motor might also serve for other future LIGO needs (e.g. in-vacuum mirror adjustment).
Vacuum Preparation Oven Plans: We need the capability to qualify large parts for LIGO vacuum service. (see the UHV page for background).

o In the near term (2 months) we need to process the quad SUS prototype for vacuum service in LASTI. Late this year we'll need to process BSC SEI parts. Ken Mailand and Helena Armandula have identified some commercial ovens which can serve our near-term quad prototype needs and arrive in time. The plan is to place this oven in the 40m vacuum bake lab.

o Riccardo DeSalvo and Ken Mailand are working on a proposal and cost estimate for a large (BSC-sized) cleaning station and dry N2 bake oven. The proposal (to the VRB and excomm) is to place this system at LLO in the staging building. The alternative of outsourcing the "precision cleaning" is also being investigated, but we prefer the in-house approach because we can control costs and cleanliness better. The proposal should be ready soon.

Reviews and special meetings

Held informal SUS Electronics meeting with the Univ. of Birmingham (Stuart Aston, Dave Hoyland, Alberto Vecchio) group and the US SUS electronics people (Jay Heefner, Mohana Mageswaran). Useful meeting with regard to establishing interface requirements and expectations for the preliminary design review (PDR).
The SUS/UK Electronics PDR has been set for Tuesday 7/12, 8-~11am PT
Held a maraging steel "round table" discussion as part of the LSC isolation working group meeting. Good information exchange, but no conclusions as yet.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

No report

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Suspensions

Tim Hayler is here from RAL to support quad work. He joined us at the LSC last week. We have a meeting this morning about the upper structure design status and the upper structure to tablecloth interface.

Participated in the SUS electronics discussion at LLO last week. Participated in the LSC before that.
Enjoyed vacation on Friday and Monday.

From: Ken mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO

I’m working on a lower suspension installation fixture arm, attaching to the flange of the BSC chamber. I’m doing a detailed design of the arms, minus the interface with the suspension frame. I will get with Russell when the framework closer to final design. The Algor stress analysis indicates no problem stresses or deflection issues on the preliminary design. I have selected a common tapered roller bearing for all the pivot shafts.

One of the module shelf brackets for the BSC chamber has been completed. Further work on the attachment of the chassis box will be done when the chassis box component part has been selected by Todd.

From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>

ADVANCED LIGO SUSPENSIONS - 2 weeks again!

LIGO Movie
Oddvar, Ken Mason and I have been working with William Maher to create CAD files of the seismic and suspension system for the LIGO movie.

Quad build
For the LSC meeting last week we had built a triple pendulum. This week we hope to have a quad suspended from a fixed support.
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ctorrie/pictures/
With respect to tooling Ian Wilmut finished a week at Caltech. With veronica we gathered a couple of hours of video footage of Ian assembling and using the tooling he had designed.

Drum Ended Wires
Ricardo and I spoke with Mr. Galli, the producer of the drum ended wires, and discussed a series of 10x and 60x magnified photographs of the prototype wires. further wires are planned for the controls prototype to cover the top and UI stages.

FEA
Tim and I worked on the FEa of the interface ring between the upper and lower structures, results to follow.
Janeen and I worked on the FEA of the tablecloth. The requirement of the 1st mode > 20 Hz was easily met.

Drawings for the Controls Prototype
The four main items left for the controls prototype are as follows: - "3and1" assembly tooling, table cloth and the upper and lower structures
All are in hand.

LSC Talk
I gave a talk at the LSC which is now on the DCC, LIGO-G050175

Upper structure
Tim Hayler has been visiting form Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for the last 3 weeks. Yesterday we received 21 drawings and CAD files, including an assembly, of the upper structure for advanced LIGO. All of the piece parts have been completed by Caltech Engineering services (CES) and as of yesterday work can now start on the welding.

Core Optics

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

Advanced LIGO Coating - Cleaning tests

Document T050055-00-D has been placed in the DCC OUT folder. It shows the effect of several cleaning methods in optical absorption.

The tests were performed at Stanford University last March 17th.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

AdvLIGO PSL

The conceptual design review was held last Thursday. There were no big surprises. Benno (as I recall) will circulate notes about any outstanding issues that we need to resolve.

The campus safety office confirmed that I did not miss any fine print as far as laser safety goggles is concerned. The minimum optical density for laser safety goggles for the 200-W laser is 5.5. So our existing glasses are sufficient.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

ADV LIGO

OPTICAL LEVER

I completed a tolerance analysis of a candidate optical receiver lens system using ZEMAX. The receiver lens has an effective focal length of 13 meters. The angular/displacement sensitivity on the quad photodetector at the focal plane is approximately 0.013 mm/microradian; with the QPD's used for the current LIGO optlev sensors; we should be able to detect a 1 microradian angular beam deviation. ZEMAX assembled a random assortment of lens systems with typical tolerance values; the internal beam shifts due to the non-ideal properties of the real lens elements and the assembly tolerances could be compensated for by tilting the lens barrel and by focusing of the input objective lens assembly, so it appears that the lens system can be assembled in a lens barrel with fixed spacers without the need for individual decentering adjustments of each lens element. I am in the process of evaluating the coupling between the displacement and angle of the input beam.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu

Juri

I’ve been in Hanford for the S4 shifts. The abstract “Flat top beam profile cavity prototype” was accepted for an oral presentation in the conference on “Laser Beam Shaping VI,” part of the SPIE Optics & Photonics 2005 Symposium which will be held 31 July-4 August 2005 in San Diego, CA.

I’m working on my simulation program in order to obtain Erika’s results for the first Mexican Hat mirror prototype and to make further analysis on misalignment and control of the cavity with Mexican Hat mirrors.

Anamaria:

I have restarted working for LIGO this term. I will be seting up a similar experiment to the one I did last summer, but more ample. I will try to compare Maraging, Copper-Berylium, and two types of glassy metal for the MGAS blades. Right now I am trying to get the blades manufactured. Also I will have to start training David Koenitz, who will be working with me on the same project.

Marco (29 Mar)

OTF lab: asbestos removal and roof clearing works are finished. We are going to restart the lab.

PZT driver: PS problem was fixed by putting an anti-latch up filter on the LN723C voltage regulator into the control circuit of both the high voltage PSs. Now all OK.

Innocenzo

Pinto &C. Universita del Sannio & Salerno working on a Genetic Algorithm version implantable in Caltech, and on various Darwinian evolutions of mirrors.

Maddalena:

Replying to required revisions of LF GAS paper.

Justin:

Playing with different modes of flex joints.

For additional information about this report, contact Stan Whitcomb or Phil Lindquist