Weekly Report for Week Ending May 19, 2005

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, May 23, 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)
  6. CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED
  • CR-050005 -- Expansion of the DMT hardware infrastructure

Special Items:

  • Annual Report Assignments and Due Dates

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

Livingston--After the previous week laser swap, the power into the Mode Cleaner was increased to 5 W and the low noise spectrum was recovered, with SenseMon reporting an inspiral range just over 10 Mpc.

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

MOU Amendments, MOU Attachment Updates, and Progress Reports

MOU Attachment updates for LaTech, Loyola, Penn State, Stanford and Trinity LSC groups are signed-off. The documents are in DCC awaiting archiving and web posting.

Note: As reported earlier, all Progress Reports for all active LSC groups are in DCC awaiting archiving and web posting.

Virgo: MOU Amendment No. 1, and Attach. No. 5 and No. 6 (combined data analysis) are in final review by LSC and Virgo/Saulson and Mours.

EGO: Attach. No. 2 (preliminary investigation of flat beam profile Fabry-Perot Interferometer concept) is signed-off. The document is in DCC awaiting archiving and web posting.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

There was no site teleconference was held on Thursday, May 19, 2005.  The list of assigned actions updated through May 5, 2005 will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) by packing, shipping, and preparing a Commercial Invoice and related US Customs  document for one (1) Fuse Silica Substrate, serial number 41TM1, to CSIRO (R. Netterfield), Lindfield, Australia.  Account Number P204296.
  • Provided assistance to Thermal Compensation Preliminary Design (P Wllems) by providing the necessary documentation for the return of a Laser and Power Supply to Laser Mill (A. Barrett), Hyde Park, MD.  Account Number P443660.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula ) with packing and shipping of one (1) coated mirror, serial number MMT14K04-1, to Stanford University (Dr. R. Route), Account Number P204296.
  • Caltech's campus inventory is ongoing.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • Attending AIIM Conference.

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

  • packages: in - 12, out - 8
  • faxes: in - 30, out - 18
  • Began processing documents from the PAC Meeting at Livingston.

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

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

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

  • Issued the purchase order for the fax maintenance agreement. The vendor will be submitting the invoice for the prepayment for the year.
  • Assisted Odvar in obtaining quotes for the IDC actuators from several distributors. We have received several quotes.
  • Completed change order #3 to LaCour to remove available funds of $10 for close out of LIGO.EPI 1.
  • Followed up on the status of the Datum order which was awaiting receipt of payment to proceed.
  • Completed change order #20 to REO to add funds for the optics fabrication.
  • Followed up on pending Release of Claims which 3 have been submitted and close out completed. There are 4 subcontracts still pending the Releases.

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

  • Nothing significant to report.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

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

  • No report.  (See above.)

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

  • The applicable members of the LIGO staff have received their new AccuConference cards and PIN's for use in reservationless teleconferencing.  The transition from Raindance to AccuConference will be complete by May 31.
  • The list of LIGO account authorizers and approvers has been transmitted to Purchasing Services for use in the TechMart program for purchasing.  Training on the use of the TechMart system begins on June 13.  This list will be posted on the LIGO web site.
  • Purchase of a new copier for the 6th floor of Millikan is now underway.  Delivery is expected by the end of this month.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

  • Processed the paper work for twenty-six (26) new/revised trips.  At this time there are eight (8) new trips that need to be completed and ticketed before the paper work can be completed.  Assisted several LIGO people with their travel arrangements using their P-Cards and made several reservations for outside visitors coming to a LIGO site for meetings and/or workshops.  LIGO will be sponsoring thirty-eight (38) SURF Students this summer and all but three (3) have been completed.  We have twenty-six (26) coming to LIGO/Caltech, seven (7) to LIGO/Hanford, and five (5) to LIGO/Livingston.
  • Completed thirteen (13) Expense Reports and there are eleven (11) reports yet to be done.  I continue to contact travelers who have outstanding Expense Reports (more than one (1) month old) to ask for their cooperation in sending me their receipts so that these can be closed in a timely manner.  Presently there are three (3) reports more than 30 days old.  Travel Audit's new policy of accepting only original signatures seriously holds up the process of closing reports.  I have one (1) awaiting signature at this time.  Reconciled forty-seven (47) P-Card charges for the week requiring telephoning hotels and car rental agencies to verify which traveler used my card and for what amount.
  • Coordinated and initiated the opening of thirty-seven (37) new cards with the selected new teleconference company, AccuConference.  New card holders have been sent their new information and I'm presently in the process of mailing out their wallet-size cards.  The old RainDance account will be closed as of May 31, 2005, and each holder of a RainDance card has been asked to return their wallet-size card to me and destroy any information containing their account number on the old card that they may have printed out.

>Julie Hiroto jhiroto@ligo.caltech.edu

  • Nothing signifiant to report.

>Dorothy Lloyd

  • No report.
  • Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

As mentioned during the Executive Committee meeting on Monday, April 11, 2005, LIGO must submit an Annual Report for Operations by August 1, 2005 and this annual report must be accompanied by a request for a two year extension (FY 2007 and FY 2008) as well as a justification for why Caltech/MIT should be continued in the role of management of LIGO.

I propose the following general outline and assignments.  Note that for most topics I will need a summary of work accomplished over the past year as well as a bullet list of work planned for the next year.  I would like to have contributions by Friday, June 17, 2005.  Please keep contributions modest in size (a few paragraphs to a page or two).  I propose to raise this as a discussion point during the Executive Committee Meeting on Monday.

DCC Steering Committee (Lindquist)

No meeting this week while members of the committee are off at conferences, PACs, etc.  Next week we have scheduled teleconferences with references provided by a couple of potential vendors.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • Change Request CR-050005 has been distributed for consideration during the next meeting of the LIGO Executive Committee.  The request is for the expansion of the DMT hardware infrastructure.  The cost estimate is $70K---split 60/40 between the Hanford and Livingston observatories respectively ($78K in the original change request).  The proposed change provides additional computing nodes for online monitors, an upgrade of the development and testing machines, and network upgrades with better security.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • A staffing committee meeting was held on Monday, May 16, 2005.  Minutes is progress.  All files are posted and up-to-date on the web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

As the result of discussions at the recent LHO safety audit, it was agreed that all non-administrative tasks will require a LHO Work Permit prior to start of the task.  To help make the work permit process successful, John Worden has prepared and put-on-line, the LHO Visitors "Work Permit Guidance" document for use by both the Control Room Operators and LHO visitors.  The LHO Work Permit Guidance document has been submitted to the DCC as LIGO-M050194..

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

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (Landry)

Commissioning highlights from this week in Hanford are bulleted below, pertaining to general, 4k and 2k issues, respectively.

  • DDT-contaminated soil is being moved from Horseshoe Landfill (near the Nike missile silo on Rattlesnake) to the Hanford site via the Y-barricade.  The result will be about 45 dumptruck loads per day past LHO on route 10, for a total of ten days.
  • Analysis of S2 data with the Hough transform yields outliers at 70.12Hz and harmonics in multiple IFOS.  Investigations find the base frequency in VME crates.  In addition to specifice lines, this study finds broadband coherence near 100Hz and below, with AS_Q and magnetometers. 
  • The status of acoustic enclosures for the REFL ports is discussed.  Both 2k and 4k REFL ports will receive an acoustic enclosure in the near future.
  • DTT was upgraded, adding features and correcting bugs

4K IFO

  • Thermal compensation dominated the commissioning on the 4k.  Early in the week, a brief lock at a record (H1) 9Mpc range was recorded.  Transfer functions of TCSX to ASI_CORR show a change in polarity when increasing the TCS power above 4.7W.  This caused problems with servo stability.  Work at a lower TCS power and a modification to the power supply made for some improved performance. Angle instabilies were discovered while working with the TCS.
  • The PSL power saga is described.

2K IFO

  • The new crystal oscillator was installed and warmed up over the weekend.  Next it was commissioned, improving  the noise above a kHz.  We expect that we are now shot noise limited at high frequencies.
  • Higher power: we're now routinely running at 2X the S4 power into the MC.  Note this had been tried previously (briefly) but had no effect on noise curve: now, the remaining noise is at least exposed.  We need noise budget, and this is getting worked on this week.
  • WFS and SUS scripts have been copied to LHO for tuning purposes.  One allows the WFS output matrix to be diagonlized.  e.g. it will allow us to ramp WFS2A separately from WFS2B.  The latter's unity gain frequency could then move to 3hz, instead of its current paltry 0.1Hz.  This could reduce AS_I by factor of roughly 30, as seen at LLO, suppressing low frequency fluctuations.  Likewise, scripts for large optic SUS diagonalization were employed.  Angular noise coupling was measured for the noise budget.
  • An H2 IOO PZT board was repaired

Outreach (D. Ingram)

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

L1 Interferometer (Frolov)

After the previous week laser swap the power into the Mode Cleaner was increased to 5 W and the low noise spectrum was recovered, with SenseMon reporting the inspiral range just over 10 Mpc.

There are currently 11 W available from the laser and 6 W available into the Mode Cleaner. Two optics on the psl table were replaced to reduce the losses and the laser temperature was scanned to maximize power output.

Investigation of the sidebands around the 120 and 180 Hz power lines revealed that they are coming from up-conversion of the 6 and 10 Hz low frequency peaks in ASQ. Suppression of the low frequency peaks around 6 and 10 Hz with additional resonant gain digital filters reduced the sideband peaks of the 120 and 180 Hz below the broadband level. Other noise investigations that were done but did not uncover noise sources: the additional filtering of the SPOB signal which is used to track the ifo optical response, and the LOS local side damping.

The ringdown of the ITMX suspension wire fundamental mode was remeasured. The results are consistent with earlier measurements. It was established that radiation damping does not affect the measurement, by measuring the ring down with both a simple Michelson ifo and the full ifo.

The spare LOS bias module was tested and electronics oscillations were found between 5 and 7 MHz; these could affect the ifo noise.

The new Y end station heater controllers were installed. The 1 Hz sidebands of 60 Hz are no longer in the magnetometer spectrum. The eagerly awaited upgrade of the remaining heaters in the X end should remove the 60 Hz sidebands in DARM.

The latest software was installed on all CDS real-time front ends and new hepiepics, susepics, and iscepics. The new software supports double precision floats throughout the filter calculations and signal transfers thru the LSC/optics chain. Both frame builder computers were upgraded and tested. The back up frame builder had to be bypassed due to check sum errors, isolated to an intermittent network card.  A replacement network card was ordered.

L1 Commissioning (King)

I helped measuring the timing jitter of the electro-optic timing system.  The results from the serial data analyzer still puzzle me as the eye diagram was all out of whack, which suggests that there was a problem during the measurement.  However the instrument consistently reported a factor of two greater timing jitter than for the copper-based setup.

Education and Outreach (Thacker)

  1. Assisted in exhibit installation; (7 exhibits)
  2. Assisted in Exploratorium exhibit training 2-day workshop
  3. Presented talk on LIGO SEC outreach to LIGO PAC.

Site Safety and Security (Riesen)

Replaced defective Laser Safety System controller at the X-end station.  Re-set the main security gate and fixed software changes so the gates will open automatically when leaving the site.  The Laser Safety System is now fully functional throughout the site.  Rounding up and repairing defective IR viewers.  Waiting for 2nd quote for getting the staging building's crane functions updated.  Found no laser or site safety concerns this reporting period.

Mechanical Engineering (Spjeld)

AdL Quad SUS Installation Fixtures

  • Received quote on IDC linear drives from three distributors.
  • Looking at alternative drive configuration to avoid binding.
  • Manufacturing drawings of completed parts in progress
  • Addressing design issues raised in design review committee report

AdL SEI Engineering

Review of tolerances and off-the-shelf parts on Ad SEI drawings in progress

LIGO  Outreach Building ­ Pendulum Exhibit

Designed and estimated mass of truss support sections for pendulums

General Engineering

  • Redesign of HAM door removal tool in progress

LLO General Computing and LIGO Computing Security (Roddy)

HPLF, Optics Modeling, Data Analysis and L1 Commissioning (Franzen)

1)      HPLF news: The again broken IPG Photonics 100 W laser was received and examined by the manufacturer. During Monday's telecon (May 19) we were informed that the core fiber was burned and needs to be replaced.  The IPG stuff are not sure what caused the failure but speculated in back reflection or power fluctuations in our lab. We are not so convinced. The laser is now being repaired for another round.

2)      Took part in commissioning activities aimed at increasing the PSL output beam power.

3)      Writing on to me assigned parts of an UF AdvLIGO Input Optics Preliminary Design Review document.

CDS software (Khan)

Worked with Rolf and alex on the code and Frame builder upgrade. This new upgrade involves changing the floating point point variable from single precision to double precision format and also the size of the daq channel name length is increased from 40 to 255 characters.

Developed a new stat screen for the TCS servo.

LDAS/Condor Sysadmin and Burst Analysis (Yakushin)

Data archiving/Condor/LDAS admin:

1)      /frames and /dmt have been rebuilt to support better small files. The corresponding data was restored from tape.

2)      Last Friday there appeared a smell of burned plastic in the LDAS room. The problem was traced to some burned isolation on the cable in the power panel. The cluster was turned down to reduce the power load until the power panel was repaired on Monday. Now everything is back to normal.

Data analysis:

1)      Participated in the waveburst review face to face meeting at LLO on Monday and Tuesday.

2)      Preparing FOMs, documentation and tests requested by the waveburst review committee.

3)      Processing SG15 burst MDC frames.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

CDS

no CDS weekly meeting (conflicted with PAC meeting)

CDS Software

no report

CDS Hardware

Ben Abbott

LSC RFPD: Todd or I will begin testing the PDs that he has made soon.

DMT

John Zweizig

This week I spent upgrading the dmt online machine system software at LHO.  I also began a configuration change which is prompted by security and reliability concerns. The most fundamental change is to stop using the two original E450s as processing nodes and devote them entirely to providing the necessary dmt support services and as for communications between the DMT processes and external services and clients.

PSL

PeterKing

The high power photodetector testing continues. No problems so far.

4ITM05 Metrology

GariLynn Billingsley

Completed the HR surface figure measurement with the Fizeau interferometer. The surface profile image and other data for this optic here. The required rms is < 0.8 nm over the central 80mm with tilt, power and astigmatism subtracted. The value for 4ITM05 is 0.44nm rms.  I think this is still limited by our current (new) calibration.  As we measure more optics with this configuration the calibration will get better and we will get a lower number for the rms.  Many of the CSIRO optics (4ITM06 comes to mind) had an rms over the central area of ~0.2nm rms.

The piece showed more of the "streaks" that we have seen before. The "streaks" are the same as have been seen before and after coating; we believe they are a part of the surface.  We suspect they may have been caused by the Liquinox cleaning since they do not appear in any of the CSIRO data sets, and their instrument is certainly sensitive enough to see these. All of our optics have been cleaned with Liquinox before coating. We have got some tests underway to try to verify whether it was the Liquinox.

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

An bulk absorption scan was made at a depth of –2 inches.

The next measurement will be a coating absorption scan.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

  • The 40 meter Technical Advisory Committee (40m TAC) met on Thursday. Osamu presented a status report (G050265-00): see: ppt or pdf.
  • Dwight Carter and Carol Wilkinson have assembled a 40m experimental work schedule in Primevera (following closeout of the 40m construction work schedule).

IFO commissioning:

  • After the re-layout of the SP beamline, some changes to the POX & POY, and new end Thorlabs DCPDs, Osamu and Rob have re-locked the dual-recycled Michelson (DRMI, arms blocked). The SP DDM signal and MICH dither are a little noiser than before; Looks like more ground loop noise. Under investigation.
  • Osamu changed the MICH dither lock frequency from 1230 to 1050 Hz, to be less sensitive to 60 Hz harmonic noise. Hoping for better dither signal tonight.
  • Osamu measured the carrier reflectivity of the arms: for x-arm, it's 84.0%, y-arm is 86.4%. (spec is 93%). This means we will get a recycling gain of ~6, and an undercoupled PRC. There is obviously an anomalous source of loss, maybe due to dust or other scattering centers on the mirrors; it is made more severe by the high finesse of the cavity. The mode matching into the arms is not yet well tuned; with better mode matching the reflectivity will be even lower. But it should be noted that offsets in the measurement of DC power are big, so there is a rather large error in these measurements.
  • Dan's work on re-location, re-layout, re-alignment and re-commissioning of the SP RFPDs is complete. A third SP RFPD, at 166 Mhz, has been installed and placed on a proper mount (borrowed from LLO). The PD and electronics have been fully checked out by Ben.
  • Osamu and Steve plan to simplify the layout of POX and POY on the ISCT table sometime this week. They're waiting on a few more 2" optics.
  • Monica continues to work towards calibrating LSC signals by exciting ITMX and ETMX with xarm locked, and measuring the response at AP 166 MHz. She's getting numbers that are comparable to what is seen at the sites, ~ 5e-9 m / count of LSC-ETMX_EXC.
  • Virginio and Monica measured the ringdown time constant for the arm transmitted power. They rapidly switched the light power by flipping the sign on the PSL frequency stabilization servo, and then measured the exponential decay of the light transmitted through the arms. They got 55 microsecond decay time, which is consistent with the design spec finesse of 1255 (T_ITM = 0.005). However, this does not take into account the decay time of the mode cleaner, which is in between the PSL and the arms (which should have tau ~ 45 microseconds).
  • Rob continue to teach the lock acquisition code new tricks. He has implemented CARM & DARM, using TRX +- TRY, and has acquired lock on both arms using this. He's working on code to dynamically change the control scheme, switching between different CARM/DARM signals depending on the state of the interferometer.
  • Rob has implemented a "digital bell": he uses a high-Q filter module in the front end software to generate a sinusoidal signal for dither-locking the Michelson, without using the arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). This greatly reduces the traffic on the reflective memory network. It can be easily turned on and off from the LSC EPICS screen. It seems to work well.

IFO modeling and DC detection development:

  • Monica continues to study and compare 40m DRFPMI error signal sweeps (DARM and CARM) in both e2e and Twiddle, and now gets very good agreement in mode cases. Small discrepancies are likely due to small differences in the demod phases.
  • Monica continues to study the implementation of radiation pressure in e2e, and its application to optical spring effects at the 40m. She's trying to repeat some optical spring simulations done by Hiro some time ago.
  • Now that Monica's e2e simulation of the 40m DRFPMI optical plant is rather well tested and validated, she is focusing on the development of the control plant.
  • Virginio completed a design for a proposed T050076-00.pdf Suspension-Point-Like-IFO (SPLIFO) for the 40m arms, using the STACIS isolators to actuate on the stacks.

Electronics, Controls:

  • Efforts to reduce the noise from various signals needed for lock acquisition, have led to a more global assault on ground loop problems at the 40m.
    • It was found that all racks had been grounded to the wall at the kill switches installed by Caltech electricians (in addition to being grounded to the isolation transformer that supplies the power to all the racks). This is a great way to make ground loops! We plan on disconnecting all these additional grounds in the next few days.
    • All optical tables have been grounded to the vacuum envelope, for safety. If any electro-optics on the tables are accidentally grounded to the table, this is a great ground loop. Steve is replacing all these grounding cables with ones that ground through a 1 MOhm resistor.
    • Bob is checking for any ground loops at the rack cross-connects, and any ground connections between racks. Ground shields of inter-rack cables should only be connected at one end. So far, Bob has found and fixed several problems on cross-connects. Should be finished with the LSC/ASC racks by end of week.
    • Steve is surveying the paths whereby electro-optics on the tables get AC power, to ensure that they have ground isolators and trying to ensure that they are plugged in to the same rack that processes their signals. Auxilliary devices (cameras, mech shutters, OSAs) are plugged to wall ac power.
    • Ben is drawing up a master plan and documentation for grounding and shielding in the lab.
    • Jay is thinking about the design of ground isolating signal distribution boxes to safely get signals to scopes in the control room.
  • Ben and Rob installed new RevB coil drivers on the remaining three suspension controllers: PRM, SRM, BS. They fully check out and are now in service. They re-aligned the optics using the oplevs as a reference, and reduced the gains on all the drive path filter banks to account for the increased drive in the new coil drivers. Rob will re-balance the coil gains in the next few days.
  • The pitch bias for the ITMY RevB coil driver was insufficient to take out the large pitch in that optic. The drive path was still experiencing large length-angle coupling, especially during/after dither lock. Osamu has modified the bias path resistors on the coil driver to permit a larger pitch bias setting. Currently, all signal path resistors on 7 coil drivers are 100 Ohms. All bias path resistors are 430 Ohms except ITMY, which Osamu changed to 100 Ohms.
  • The front end readout of the Thorlabs PDA 520's at the X and Y ends is now fully operational, and these signals are available for, and used in lock acquisition (DC transmission lock of the arms). These PDs are not noticably faster than the QPDs we had been using, but they are much less noisy. We may want to replace them with a faster (smaller aperture) PD.
  • Ben still needs to get the DC signals from all RFPD monitor/control cables into the front end ADCs without the use of an auxilliary DC signal cable (which causes ground loops). He'll get that done this coming week.
  • Ben is updating the drawings for the rack electronics for the digital suspension controllers (DSC), the ends, and the LSC and ASC systems, to reflect the many changes that have happened over the last year.
  • Jay and Peter King measured the jitter on the fiber timing links installed in the lab, at the vertex and at the two ends. Results are documented in the elog. Clearly, the fiber distribution system adds jitter, but the jitter at vertex is about the same as at ends, so it isn't degraded by the "long" fiber run. And the jitter is about what might be expected given the parts used. It's tolerable for us, but could have been done better, using parts for 200 Mbaud links instrad of 50 Mbaud links. We do have anecdotal evidence is that this new system is better than what we were getting using 40m long copper cables; we haven't been rebooting the crates at the ends as much as before.
  • We await Rolf's return to get the IPANG QPD signal into the front end ASC system.
  • Still need to hear from the authors of ezcademod, to fix the problem that when garbage goes in, ezcademod spits out NaNs, which go into the front end and crash it.
  • Until the Thorlabs DCPDs were installed, we were using the DC signals from the QPDs at the ends, which were very noisy. Rana, Jay, and others worked on fixing up the QPD interface boards so that the signals are properly filtered, and ground loops reduced, and the board is in conformity with the most recent DCN.
  • Last week we discovered that autoburt had not been running since March 16, when the op140m computer was rebooted. Autoburt was restarted on May 11.

Bake oven Lab:

  • Bob's bake oven lab had a big hole cut in the wall to permit the installation of the large new air-bake oven. It's now been temporarily re-sealed, awaiting the delivery of the oven (3-4 weeks). Bake oven lab mods to accomadate the new oven are proceeding ahead of schedule.
  • Bob continues to work with Calum and company at the AdLIGO suspension lab in the synchrotron building.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

From Helena:

Advanced LIGO Coating Development

Talked to JMM.  Delivery of the TNI mirrors is still scheduled for the 1st-2nd week in June. Coating calibrations are under way.  He is also manufacturing a container to preserve the coating properties during shipping.

As a side note, he informed me that US customs do not allow wood containers to be shipped to the US from overseas because of termite problems.

For lower mechanical loss coatings, JMM tried cobalt as dopant; it did not work well, the optical absorption was very difficult to control, he discarded this material.

Research is under way with a new alloy. Annealing of this coating produced some crystallization resulting in higher than desired optical absorption. They are working with the annealing parameters to improve it.

From Akira:

Added two new magnets to improve eddy-current damping, and started putting together required vacuum hardware to pump out.

LASTI (Ottaway)

No report.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Biplab Bhawal)

SimLIGO Study

(Biplab) Studied the effects of transversal shifts of mirrors on the noise curve. SimLIGO could hold the lock well even for a shift of 1 cm (may be more - need to test) on end mirrors, if such shifts are done slowly over time (tried 1mm/sec).

(Sany Yoshida and his students)

As the table top motion, they used to use the accelerometer output instead of the simulated motion to make the simulation more realistic and to include effects which are not properly included in the simple seismic motion model. Now after HEPI having been installed, they started to use geophone data based on the advice of Joe Giaime. The first trial was successful.

The development of the pendulum model with violin modes developed by Virginio was taken over by Sany. The validations in simple cases were done and it seems to be working. The development environment, Maple, has been installed at LLO and Sany can now develop the code himself.

The input beam simulation with realistic MMT is still going on. There are some issues not well understood. This has been discussed at the e2e weekly meeting and some suggestions were given to trace the problem.

Simulation engine code development

(Hiro)

Hiro is working on the simulation engine code to implement features for the advanced LIGO simulation.  One new feature added is a generic and modular framework to support different time steps.  By using this feature, subsystems with difference bandwidths can be mixed together with different time steps being used in different subsystems.

Simulation of 40m Interferometer

(Monica) Error signal sweeps have been simulated with e2e using the right 40m arm-length; the agreement with Twiddle is good especially when the demodulation phases are exactly 0 (Inphase) or PI/2 (Quadrature); That is the case for the demodulated signal at the dark port both at 33 MHz and 166 MHz.

ALFI

(Bruce, Hiro)

Bruce has been working on the refinement of the new data stream management in ALFI, called bundle.  A version was implemented, but it turned out to be too slow when checking missing links.  Hiro and Bruce discussed about various possibilities to make the implementation modular and faster.  Bruce is trying to complete the new implementation.

(Melody) Continuing on fixing existing Problem Reports.  Currently working on the user interface for allowing the user to choose the display for nodes:  graphic, node name, or a multiline description.

Worked on revising the Rename dialog to include the available choices.

Working on allowing primitive nodes to be able to display an icon from a jpg or gif file.

Data Analysis Activities (Hiro Yamamoto for Albert Lazzarini)

Gregory Mendell

I have checked into lscsoft/lalapps CVS, under the /src/pulsar/StackSlide directory, code with two new options. The code can now create sky bands perpendicular to any point on the sky, and the first option allows this to be either the Earth's average acceleration vector, generating sky bands similar to those used during the PowerFlux search, or the galactic pole (for generating sky bands parallel to the galactic plane). The second option allows the removal of instrument lines from SFTs using code borrowed from the Hough search.

Peter Shawhan

  • Spent time reviewing pulsar analyses
  • Currently attending the Statistics for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis (GravStat) workshop at Penn State

Philip Charlton

  • Finished matlab script to compare band-limited RMS of AS_Q*response with official calibrated strain. This has been checked into CVS under matapps/src/searches/stochastic/CrossCorr.
  • So far I've run the script on all S3 data for H1 only (took a couple of days using only a single processor). This shows that the differences in RMS from the two methods are around +/-5% but there are a number of large excursions (assuming it's not a bug in the script).

Patric Sutton

Last Friday the bursts review committee met to discuss the LIGO-TAMA bursts paper, and decided that all major issues have been resolved.  Since then I've been doing final minor edits.  I've also met with Lazzarini and Tinto for further discussions of the inverse problem for bursts.  Right now I'm in Vancouver for the 11th CCGRRA (Canadian relativity) conference.

Vuk Mandic

  • I studied the accessibility of the Pre-Big-Bang models of cosmology to the S3 H1L1 result. I also examined the expected improvements in S4 and S5 and Advanced LIGO, and I compared these results to the bound from Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis.
  • I am also preparing to run the stochastic code on S4.

Igor Yakushin

Data archiving/Condor/LDAS admin:

  • /frames and /dmt have been rebuilt to support better small files.  The corresponding data was restored from tape.
  • Last Friday there appeared a smell of burned plastic in the LDAS room. The problem was traced to some burned isolation on the cable in the power panel. The cluster was turned down to reduce the power load until the power panel was repaired on Monday. Now everything is back to normal.

Data analysis:

  • Participated in the waveburst review face to face meeting at LLO on Monday and Tuesday.
  • Preparing FOMs, documentation and tests requested by the waveburst review committee.
  • Processing SG15 burst MDC frames.

LIGO Data Analysis System Administration

Software System (Kent Blackburn)

LDAS:

Continued to develop functionality for the next release of LDAS scheduled for the first of June. Due to time constraints several of the C++ specific enhancements had to be postponed for the next release. These involve the diskCacheAPI and the frameCPP library. All critical createRDS development has been completed. This has been reported to the DASWG.

Completed developement on PR2221 dealing with 0 dimension ilwds printing random data. Verification with the nightly build is all that is needed to complete this problem report.

Removed documentation for functions which are no longer a part of the frameAPI.

All of the functions dealt with the DAQ mode for frame access that was deprecated when the TOC mode was supported (PR2817).

Checked in code for PR2617 - column headings for resource vars and PR 2336, sorting of data by clicking on column. Still working on PR 2724 to allow addition of new resource vars.

Completed all system and integration testing on LDAS version 1.5.74.

Updated the test results website. Due to hardware failure over the weekend test jobs began to fail at 6:30AM on Monday. All other tests passed.

TCLGLOBUS:

Discovered a memory leak in the code which required a rework of the callback interface to allow for deallocation of memory. Found several other memory leaks in the code not related to callbacks.

As a result of fixing these memory leaks, identified sevarl places where memory was being improperly released and causing segmentation faults. These were also fixed.

Began developing new tests to more closely track the memory usage of the code.  These new tests also incorporate new debugging mechanism at both the TCL and the SWIG/C levels.

Completed the revision of the GLOBUS FTP Client and I/O test cases to now use the new debugging mechanism. Still working on the updating of the GLOBUS XIO test cased to use the new debugging mechanism and to check for memory leaks.

OSG/GRID:

Described the OSG plans for proposal generation and blessing through the OSG executive board and council with the LSC Computer Committee at this weeks teleconference.

Hardware System (Anderson Stuart)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Converted LLO /frames & /dmt to use md devices for better small file support.
  • Set up LLO new fb0 with SAN/SAM and configured the filesystems.
  • Worked with Alex on LLO fb0 FC problem (looks like one port of their dual 2Gb FC HBA is bad).
  • Copied "new" S2 RDS frames to CIT cluster and published them in ldas-gridmon's LDR.
  • "fixed" LLO damaged tape (by reading it with tcopy...).
  • Working clearing up fallout from stuck tape HL1024 at LHO (got shipped back with drive, I'm retrieving files from the CIT archiving and copying them to LHO).
  • Ditto for data on damaged tape LL0184 at LHO.
  • Continuing to fill in "missing" (at CIT) postS3 data from LHO using tar/globus-url-copy.  Getting close to done with this.
  • Keeping track of problems with the process used above (tar/globus-url-copy) where files are showing up corrupt at the other end.
  • Started rearchiving some trend and dmt files at LHO to free up tape space (lots of underutilized tapes).

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Replaced two failed hard disks.
  • Ongoing work to rebuild LDAS-TEST node 3. An onboard IDE controller failed and both hard drives were left in a bad state.
  • Fully documented desktop Linux installation and configuration.  Partially scripted the configuration process. Prepared nice webpage for same.
  • Configured machine "spud" after upgrading hard disk from 10 Gb to 160 Gb.
  • built 2.6.12pre2 linux kernel and installed on all LDAS-CIT cluster nodes to reduce NFS related downtime.
  • Determined that B drives in LDAS-TEST nodes 6 and 7 were cloned from larger drives and are not usable. Node 7 has had a new B drive cloned, node 6 to follow today.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Worked on several LDAS-CIT cluster stability issues:

·        kernel crashes from heavy NFS I/O.

·        Condor performance limit for high rate of file open().

·        disk utilization from 100's of matlab coredump files.

  • Identified and repairing holes in missing CDS minute trend frames.
  • Replicated Burst MDC frames from PSU via LDR.
  • Cleaned up SAM-QFS prestager script to be more robust.
  • Released S4 L1 RDS data from being pinned to disk at CIT to free up several TB of generic cache space.
  • Monitoring/maintaining LDR at CIT as it catches up on Astrowatch data.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Added several users.
  • Got quote for 5U 24 bay dual-Opteron rackmount pcraid.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • /frames and /dmt have been rebuilt to support better small files.  The corresponding data was restored from tape.
  • Last Friday there appeared a smell of burned plastic in the LDAS room.  The problem was traced to some burned isolation on the cable in the power panel. The cluster was turned down to reduce the power load until the power panel was repaired on Monday. Now everything is back to normal.

Hanford

(Ben Johnson)

  • Most of the week taken up with gathering data to make a quantitative statistical argument about the magnitude of the S3- dataValid problem.
  • Ejected 19 tapes from a list given by Dan some time ago. Replaced them with 19 new tapes.
  • Discovered that some S3 raw data was missing. It exists at CIT so Dan is restoring it presently.
  • Refining AstroWatch GUI. It is now elogging reliably. Planning on adding a "History/Resubmit" mechanism, plus enlarging the comment box.

General Computing (Larry Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

  • Continued work on LDAP have login and passwd command working on both Solaris and Linux automounting works only on Solaris so far working on replication (it stopped working this week)-Patched several windows machines

Livington:

(Shannon)

See Livingston weekly.

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
  • Refurbishing some older computers and moving other computers around to create work spaces for the SURF students.
  • Replaced a bad disk in a PC out in the common area.  The computer will be rebuilt with Windows XP.
  • Set up a Sun Blade 1500 for a user to replace a Sun Ultra10 that is having hardware problems.
  • Researched what is involved in having a multihomed network.  This is because I have been looking into the possibility of having a backup WAN connection that would not be part of the ESnet.
  • Other user support for printing problems, virus problems, and AutoCAD installation problems.

CIT:

(Mike)

  • -Bob Taylor: Worked on his computer trying to clean up spyware/aware, but got know where. I ended up having to reload his workstation from scratch. I am still working with him to get some of his old preferences setup.
  • -40 Meter: Worked on the B/W printer, which ended up having a dead jet direct card. I had a backup jet direct card that worked. They are back up and printing B/W.
  • -Worked the Spam filters and e-mail servers with Larry.
  • -Visitor workstation: Finished up reloading and updating 7 more workstations. I have two on my office that I need to get ghost images of, and will put these back into their cubicles on the 2nd floor of W/B.  This gives me a total of 13 workstation's for Surf Students.
  • -I setup a complete workstation in 355 W/B.
  • -I loaded a sun workstation Solaris 10, for my office.
  • -Updating our IP database.
  • -Irene Baldon: Email problems. I ended up spending a couple of hours trying to get Eudora from downloading 5000 old email messages to her local desktop. I have installed Thunderbird, and have cleaned up the mail server.
  • -Solid Works 2005: Updated Janeen Romie's laptop to 2005. One down five to go.
  • -Additional onsite/phone user support that included networking, printing, and software issues.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Working on the website updates for Advanced LIGO.  The old pages were generated by MS Office and I want to rewrite them into a more manageable format.  Website updates for the PAC meeting.  Various updates of the LIGO website.  User support for Julie with media playback in a ppt presentation.  Security patches on videoconferencing pc.  Roster database update / troubleshooting.
  • LSC:  Website updates for the observational results and the June meeting.
  • CaJAGWR:  Compressed and posted the video of the last week's talk.  Taped and compressed another talk given this week.  Website updates and support.

(Larry)

  • Purchased a number of misc. items in preparation for the power outage.  Purchased a couple of peripherals for different users.  Checked on existing orders. A number of computers have been shipped and the SUN units are still in process.  Placing an order for a replacement UPS in the server room.  Delivered a number of items that had been received.  Reconciled p-card.  Went over a couple of contracts for other groups on the project.
  • The electrical shutdown preparations and actual shutdown did take up some time.  The preparations paid off. All of the core servers and network boxes were kept up and running during the scheduled outage.  There were a few minor problems on bringing equipment back on-line once power was restored.  During the outage batteries were replaced in a UPS and a couple of sandbox servers were brought up to date with their patch levels. One E2E server from the 3rd floor was moved to the basement because of heat problems.
  • Worked a number of SURF student issues with Cindy, Mike and others.
  • Working with DCC on evaluation of some s/w packages they are looking at.
  • Spent time repairing a disk containing some of the home accounts.  After the second repair job and testing it was discovered that the disk is having some hardware problems. The replacement disk is basically DOA so I am now building another replacement disk. I am running out of spares and have ordered another one.  After talking with Seagate we need to build a SCSI box running windows in order to use their diagnostic s/w for their disk drives. They will not just exchange them anymore.
  • Moved a couple of systems around for different people.
  • Working with the LDAS group to get a couple of minor cron issues cleaned up.  Phil E. has setup a standard linux install that we will test out in the near future. We want to have the GC computers using the same basic configuration that the LDAS group is using.
  • Working with PMA on a number of networking and air-conditioning issues.
  • Assisted a number of users with various problems.  Cleaned up a few more accounts and setup a couple of new accounts.
  • Setup a cron job to monitor a few processes and make sure they keep running.
  • E-mail issues have been interesting this past week. Mostly just more spam getting through now that we've relaxed some of the rules. A couple of client machines are now using Thunderbird in place of Eudora in order to eliminate problems of e-mail getting caught in a cycle of resending itself.

Mail Statistics for May 12-18, 05.

Rejected Messages                    13,661

Virus Messages                           2,998

False Positives                                367            (In actuality many of these were not)

Accepted Messages                  18,168

Total Messages                         31,829

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Systems and Management

No report this week

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

From: Jay Heefner <jay@ligo.caltech.edu>

Noise measurement s on the capacitive position sensors continue. ADE has been contacted in an effort to determine the source of the 24Hz peak that is seen in the noise spectrum.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Norna Robertson joined us here at Caltech for the day yesterday. It was a very fruitful visit in that we assembled all of the suspended masses and discussed various suspension topics. Ian Wilmut from RAL is here for the week. His help is greatly appreciated.

Checking drawings for Calum. Marking up tablecloth for ECDs.

Working with Carol on redlining the cost book. Also talked with her and Norna yesterday about the proposed items to review for the DRR Update next month.

Met with Mike Gerfen, Dennis, Ian and Calum about the upper structure dip brazing problem. Weld preparation configurations to assure full penetration welds were agreed upon and then documented by Calum. He also ran analyses to confirm that the slight reduction in cross sectional area at the welds, which was offset by the slight reduction in mass, did not affect the first three resonant modes.

From: ctorrie ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu

Structure

We are back to welding the upper structure. Problems came up with the dip brazing process for vacuum. The structure will now be chamfered to prepare it for welding. We have shown in FEA that this should be okay wrt the stiffness, full results to folllow.

Progress is going very well on the lower structure.

Suspension

Janeen, Norna, Ian and I have been preparing all of the suspended parts. We now have all of the suspended stages prepared and assembled!

From: Ken mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO

I have completed a draft of the pros and cons of doing the Adv. LIGO large part cleaning and baking work in-house at LLO, vs. outside local vendors, including costs, and other issues.

Core Optics

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Coating Development

Talked to JMM. Delivery of the TNI mirrors is still scheduled for the 1st-2nd week in June. Coating calibrations are under way.  He is also manufacturing a container to preserve the coating  properties during shipping.  As a side note, he informed me that US customs do not allow wood containers to be shipped to the US from overseas because of termite problems.

For lower mechanical loss coatings, JMM tried cobalt as dopant; it did not work well, the optical absorption was very difficult to control, he discarded this material.

Research is under way with a new alloy. Annealing of this coating produced some crystallization resulting in higher than desired optical absorption. They are working with the annealing parameters to improve it.

From: Gregg Harry <gharry@ligo.mit.edu>

We spent the week finding and fixing some electrical noise problems on the Q measuring appartus.  This is still in progress, but some improvements have already been made and more are anticipated next week.  We have also begun characterizing a superpolished sample that has the same CSIRO silica/tantala coating as the commercially polished one we are measuring now.  This will allow for a direct test of how much the substrate polish effects the mechanical loss.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

Parts from a faulty high power photodetector board were salvaged and stuffed onto a new board.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

No report this week

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu

Juri

I’m working on the modeling of coating thermoelastic noise for finite size mirrors and the noise reduction using a Flat Top beam. Moreover I spent some time with Marco for the analysis of experimental data from our cavity.

Chiara

Arrived in Caltech and after the bureaucratic procedures and informative meetings, I started working with Riccardo on the experimental set-up for taking measurements of transfer functions of the horizontal attenuation system prototype for the 40m interferometer.

Innocenzo Pinto

Summary of work done at TWG.

Genetic synthesis below 15ppm using 30% less tantala than current LIGO design obtained (14.5ppm) . Compared to "nearest" stacked quarter wavelength design yielding comparable (16ppm) reflectivity cuts tantala 24% off.  Compared to "nearest" stacked quarter wavelength design using same amount of Tantala outperforms it in terms of transmissivity (235ppm).  Trend toward stacked doublet configuration (Tantala equidistributed among layers, optical thickness each doublet close to lambda/2) observed. Performance almost equivalent.  General stacked doublet synthesis explored. Two degrees of freedom (optical thickness of doublet, thickness ratio Ta/Si). Silica noise taken into account. Estimated 3% measurement (and process) uncertainty in Ta/Si loss ratio merges strict optima with those constrained by condition optical doublet thickness = lambda/2.  Universal design curves transmissivity vs. total noise curves for relevant values f number-of-layers drawn, and parameterized in Ta/Si thickness ratio (design nomograms).  General relation between coating transmissivity and (infinite structure) bandgap structure investigated. Hints for future research (stacked multiplets, more than two materials, fractal multiplets) singled out.  Presentation and paper draft being written.

Marco

Still working on understanding the beam characteristics of the Gaussian profiles in the MH interferometer.  Switching to the MH mirrors probably in 2 weeks.  Creep stationary.

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