Weekly Report for Week Ending October 6, 2005

Highlights	LSC	Administration	Hanford Observatory
Livingston Observatory	Detector	40 Meter	TNI
LASTI	Data Analysis	Adv. LIGO Development	Past Weekly Reports

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday October 10, 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:

Review of Advanced LIGO Budgets

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

No report.

Non-LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Jasnow)

A site teleconference was held on October 6, 2005. Discussions were held regarding finalization of the FY06 budgets for the sites. Review of the budget is still ongoing, with some questions to be answered. These are expected to be resolved shortly.
The signed contracts from Cangelosi - Ward for the construction of the LLO SEC have not yet been received. These contracts, plus the performance and payment bonds, must be received before a Notice to Proceed can be issued. Additionally, Robert Ward, of Cangelosi - Ward, indicated that a Notice of Contract is needed to reduce the costs of filing with the State Clerk. Ed Jasnow stated that it would be issued with the executed contract.
A Contract Work Order form has been designed for use on the Excel contracts at LLO. It has been sent for review by Mike Zucker and Allen Sibley.
HR has scheduled a "benefits fair" at LHO and has requested that LIGO see if it could pay for travel to the site. After some discussion, it was agreed that it would not be allowable to pay directly for an overhead function. Additionally, LIGO did not pay travel costs when HR went to LLO for similsr reasons.
The LDAS computers have still not been delivered to LLO from the warehouse in Baton Rouge. It was agreed to put more pressure on the transportation company to deliver them.
Repairs on the damage at LLO caused by Hurricane Katrina have not yet started due to communications problems with the manufacturer of the exterior panels that were blown off. Attempts to contact this company are continuing.
The list of assigned actions updated through September 01, 2005 (the last time that it was updated) will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

Nothing significant to report.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

Continued to add abstracts to the database for publications. Included cite references where available.
Geared up to begin scanning of all boxes packed from Larry Jones (16). Organized file and naming conventions and showed staff how to apply to each of the boxes. Hopefully this will help streamline the process while keeping some uniformity among each of the workers.
Began to review keyword list in preparation for migration to the new DCC system. Need to consolidate those that are duplicates, rename as necessary and just do general cleanup of the list.

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

Revised/altered a Contract Work Order form.
Spent time searching through the database to locate a tax exemption letter for the LLO Site.
Considerable amount of filing this past week.
**Update on Scanning Project** - The remaining boxes of account files have been scanned and book-marked. The cd's still need to be burned for these files. There are 10 boxes of these account files that need to be shredded and it has yet to be determined if they will be done in house or not. Mostly prepping and some scanning have begun on those Larry Jones' boxes I had mentioned last time. We're currently down to one temporary employee.
Activity:

Week Ending

10/06/05

Out

Packages

Faxes

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Cronin, Brambila, Kaufman)

>From: "Cronin, Holly" <Holly.Cronin@caltech.edu>

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA Press Here.

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

Completed the no-cost extensions and submitted the changes to the vendors on the following subcontracts:

Corning 1026782

Creath, Katherine 1054775

Goodrich Corp 1035388

Heraeus Optics 1025997

Crystal Systems 1012376

REO 1002093

CSIRO 1063039

Completed change order #1 to Dynamic Light Control and sent the change to the vendor.
Submitted the request for the name change on Waveprecision to General Optics so that I can complete the no-cost extension.
Completed the change order to FKM.
Completed change order #8 to LSU AG and submitted it to the vendor. Requested for new certifications.
Working on the change order to Great Impressions.
Working on the change order to Thomas Nash.
Provided training for a LIGO requisitioner in preparing TechMart requisitions..

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

Completed the report for September 2005 for FY2005 Ops and R&D.
Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Florence)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

No report (vacation).

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

The contract for the construction of the LLO Science Education Center has been signed by Cangelosi - Ward and is being sent here. Upon submittal of the performance and payment bonds, a formal Notice to Proceed will be issued, and the date for a kickoff meeting will be set.
A Contract Work Order form has been designed for use on both Excel contracts at LLO. This form is based on one successfully used at JPL. This will document work issued and cost estimates for the work.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

Processed the paper work for six (6) new/revised trips. At this time there are four (4) trips completed or in the works but are awaiting the necessary paper work to enter the P-Card system.
Completed twelve (12) Expense Reports and there six (6) 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 thirty (30) days old. I have two (2) reports awaiting signature at this time. Worked on copying and recording all the expense reports completed last week to be sent to Travel Audit for final auditing and payment.

>Julie Hiroto jhiroto@ligo.caltech.edu

Travel arrangements for Barry. Proposal processing for Albert and Phil.

>Dorothy Lloyd

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

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Supplemental material for the Request for an extension and supplemental funding for FY 2007 and FY 2008 for LIGO Operations has been sent to the NSF. The Request for supplemental funding for the Outreach Building in Livingston has been enhanced and resubmitted to the NSF.

DCC Steering Committee (Lindquist)

The purchase order with Synergy for the new document management system seems to be held up pending the return of personnel key for processing the procurement.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

No open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, October 24, 2005.
All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

No report.

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

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)

M7 begins Friday at noon, running into the mid-weekend (Saturday night 24:00). The IFOs are functioning at or above S4 ranges but locks have been short in the last 24h, in part due to commissioning work.

ASPD4 latching and saturations were problematic on H1 and H2. H2 received a new photodiode to mitigate AS_I saturations (recall ASPD4 on H1 was swapped out last week). Burn spots were found on ASPD2 and 4 on the 4k.

Commissioning highlights are bulleted below:

4K IFO

configuration control continues to be and issue: IFO performance got a whole lot better this week after it was noted that the WFS output matrix (particularly the off-diagonal elements) were simply wrong
Time domain studies indicate that 1Hz and subharmonics observed in S4 in DARM_CTRL are indeed also resident in the error signal (here, and later, here). We still don't understand why the lines are not seen by the pulsar group nor in DTT in the error signal. The source however appears to have been isolated to the 1PPS GPS ramp. We will run without the 1PPS in M7, and work is underway to produce a kinder, gentler ramp that won't crosstalk into everything, perhaps a sinusoid.
REFL beam stabilization (RBS) was installed on ISCT1. In other REFL investigations, it was found that the waveplate was stuck, the source of CM troubles late last week
coherence was seen at acoustic (200-300Hz) frequencies with ISCT3 accelerometers and DARM_ERR during S4. Lately, likely due to mods of the beam path, the coherence has moved to slightly higher frequencies.
end station velocities (larger in the anthropogenic band up to 20Hz in EY than EX due to the proximity of route 240) argue for a PEPI-like solution to be added to the currently-implemented POPI one
WFS stability at high power was investigated. ADC saturation was observed to be problematic.

2K IFO

The ADCU associated with the fast ASQ channels was responsible for the ~122Hz howler on H2 that was killing binary inspiral range. Cards that were pulled from H2adcuFAST and have been left this way
the big Thermos: CP6 at the X midstation was being clad in insulation to mitigate lockloss-inducing pinging
an ill-named fast shutter was swapped, now closing in ~7ms
ISCT10 was refloated

DAQ

new REFL beam steering code was installed before last weekend, to prepare for installation and commissioning this week (above)
new statevector code was loaded for both IFOs; this impacted several monitors who read out the statevector and construct trends based on what they find

Outreach (D. Ingram)

LHO hosted Hungarian physicist Rácz István and camerman Páp Ferenc this week for their work continuing on a gravitational wave film. A Hungarian foundation supports the film's development.

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

L1 Interferometer (Frolov)

The interferometer has been running for two days with the reflected beam stabilization (RBS) turned on. Several hours-long lock stretches with inspiral range up to 8.5 Mpc were achieved. The issues with starting the RBS from cold or hot states have been resolved by insuring that the interferometer input beam alignment is restored to the cold state after each lock loss.

The presence of 1 Hz lines in the interferometer dark noise was confirmed.

Similarly to the Hanford interferometers, an impulse in the DARM signal appears to be phase locked to the GPS timing signal.

The beam size on the anti-symmetric port was increased to prevent the burning of photo-diodes at high interferometer input power.

CDS (Bogue)

No report.

CDS code support (Khan)

No report.

Education and Outreach (Thacker)

No report.

Site Safety and Security (Riesen)

Rich is on vacation this week.

LLO General Computing (D. Giardina)

installed Protel for Ken Watts
Kantech security software installation with Chuck Brannon of Excel. System scheduled to be switched over to new version next Monday. Requires replacing some hardware. During installation noticed some doors reporting incorrectly. Their sensors are now fixed. Also fixed the side gate 'fully opened' sensor, which was not detecting the gate being opened.
DNS changes for Lisa B: l1awg.cds.ligo-la.caltech.edu is new alias for gdslvea1.cds.ligo-la.caltech.edu and lloscript.cds.ligo-la.caltech.edu replaces llo2.cds.ligo-la.caltech.edu

AdL Mechanical Engineering (Romie)

Working with Helena and Caroline on Ribbon/Fiber/Ear PDR documentation, due today.

Working on Estimate to Complete budget for Carol.

LDAS/Condor Sysadmin (Giardina)

replaced failed disk in T3-14
At Igor's suggestion and guidance, wrote small script to run badblocks during night hours on weekend and monitor output, sending email on detection.
node63 reported bad blocks on hda, to be replaced soon.
Donnie Buzbee came in to troubleshoot problems with 3510 controllers and disks. He worked with Igor since I was scheduled to do Kantech software upgrade with Chuck Brannon of Excel.

LDAS/Condor and data analysis (Yakushin):

1) The biggest problem after LDAS move downstairs is malfuctioning HVAC in the high bay area. The temperature in the high bay area is about 8 degrees above the optimal operating point. The humidity is about 10% higher than it should be despite the fact that HVAC in the high bay area was designed for much larger heat loads than LDAS computers can generate. Allen is working on finding the way to fix the cooling problem by either fixing the existing HVAC or bringing the temporary AC unit.

#MZ NOTE: TEMPORARY CHILLER IS RUNNING, SITUATION IS STABILIZED

The situation should be resolved next week. Another potential problem is the presence of mice in the high bay area (Allen and Mike have been alerted). I also asked for the high bay area to be regularly vacuum cleaned to protect the equipment from dust.

2) 3510 unit developed a problem in the I/O module of the primary controller. The primary controller failed on Friday morning, the unit switched to the secondary controller. On Friday night the secondary controller froze as well. On Saturday morning I power cycled the unit, it came back on the primary controller, but since then it periodically generated error messages in 3510 event logs. Also drive 9 failed. I have replaced the primary controller, the failed disk, reseated secondary controller and all the disks. At first glance that fixed the problem but we need to use the system for several days to make sure. Currently we are working on restoring damaged /archive file system from tape. There were also some errors corrected in /frames file system that is used by fb1.

3) Failed power supply was replaced in node8.

4) Moving company keeps rescheduling the delivery date for 140 nodes from CIT.

**MZ NOTE: WE HAVE LOCATED THE COMPUTERS AT A WAREHOUSE IN BATON ROUGE AND ARE STAGING A RESCUE OPERATION

5) The old GigE switch was shipped to MIT.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

CDS Software

Rolf Bork

After a decision made at the CDS meeting, we will back out the filter module change which allows limiting the outputs/histories of individual filters. In its place, we will code up the change as outlined by D. Sigg. This new change will not be coded prior to the start of S5.

The last change to go in will be the LSC control of the fast shutter, along with the auto switching to ASPD5. This code change is complete and will be loaded onto LHO2k during next Monday's CDS maintenance period.

Once this last change is tested, all of the latest code will be downloaded to LLO. This will happen sometime after Rana arrives there (late next week or early week of Oct. 17).

CDS Hardware

no report

PSL

PeterKing

Dave Grimmett and I spent some time fixing an 80 MHz VCO that was modified for use in a SURF project. Unfortunately undoing the modifications was not all that was required to bring the unit back to life. Afterwards the tuning curve and output power versus gain control voltage was measured. The unit will be shipped off to LASTI.

Optical Metrology

Bill Kells

Since Liyuan returned last week, I've been discussing with him and building a more detailed model of the surface absorption setup in the OTF. His latest checks are reassuring (that we are not doing something terribly wrong), but don’t obviate the need finally for an accurate calibration.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

Matt Evans is visiting for a couple of weeks, and is working closely with Rob and Rana on locking. Osamu is still at LHO working on commissioning tasks. Ben is off getting married.

There will be a meeting of the 40 Meter Technical Advisory Committee (by telecon) next Thursday, 10/13, at 8:30 am Pacific. All are welcome; see Alan (ajw@caltech.edu) for details.

IFO commissioning

Matt wrote a "watch-down" script which watches for lock loss, runs the down script, and then runs the tickle script to reaquire lock.
Rob, Matt and Rana have been making good progress towards full lock. As usual, locking all 5 length degrees of freedom is routine; but CARM is offset, so that the arms are not at full resonance and the power recycling isn't kicking in. They have automated the lock acquisition, and the step-by-step reduction in the CARM offset. Until this week, it was possible to climb ~ 20% of the way up to full resonance, but then the noise would overwhelm the servos, the arm power would fluctuate wildly, and lock is lost. This week, after much work, they're ~ 50% of the way up to full resonance, and power fluctuations are much reduced, so they can hold lock in this state for as much as 10 seconds. Frequency noise is the biggest problem.
The above progress was made possible by

many improvements to the servo filters, permitting increased gain in CARM and DARM.

They also improved the MCL path, reducing the crossover frequency and thus the frequency noise.

They also diagonalized the short degree of freedom loops; now, there is significantly less noise on these.

They also found and fixed bugs in the length sensing code which forms the (non-linear) CARM error signal from the DC transmitted power; but they suspect there may still be a problem there, limiting gain at critical frequencies (e.g., 30Hz).

They also looked for saturations of RF demod signals in the LSC rack, but found no smoking guns.

They also attempted to figure out why the signal coming from SP 166I (RF signal for CARM) is so small. In the process, they burnt the PD, and then replaced it. Work in progress.

They are trying to get the digital common mode servo (to MCL) working again, in progress.
They are now at the point where they are unable to increas the CARM gain because of apparent mysteries in the optical plant at lower frequencies. Under intense investigation. It may have something to do with the optical spring; Rana estimates that it should show up somewhere below 40 Hz.
Many more ideas and things to try; intense effort underway!

IFO modeling

Monica continues to make progress in simulating sweeps through arm resonances in the full IFO, at various velocities, and comparing with measurements.

DC detection development:

With help from Peter King, Peter Fritschel, Helena Armandula, and the folks at LHO, we have been promised high-quality optics for our output mode cleaner, without having to order anything new. Many thanks!
Mike Smith has redesigned the OMC to reduce the proximity of scattering surfaces within the beam path. In the process of making final part drawings for the OMC. Redesigned the mounting pads to increase the lowest resonant frequency. Analyzed the resonant modes using ALGOR: with "red brass" material, the lowest normal mode frequency is approximately 670 Hz with four mounting pads pinned.
Parts (optics and such) are coming in for the DC readout beamline, and Mike is gathering them.
Nergis and Keisuke Goda have prepared a preliminary proposal for experimental demonstration of a squeezing-enhanced gravitational wave interferometer at the 40m; see Nergis for details.

Electronics, controls

At Rana's suggestion, Steve is looking into the design of beam paths for our optical lever beams which eliminate all on-stack mirrors, thus decoupling the oplev measurements from the stack motion (especially the resonances at 3-5 Hz). Steve is formulating a plan, but we do not intend to implement it until we vent for some other reason.
Steve has placed our 6 accelerometers at strategic places around the lab and is cabling them up into the PEM system in a semi-permantent way.
Steve is looking to procure a fiber-coupled AM laser for in-lab testing of RF photo-diodes.
Dan has run the MC diagonalization script and adjusted the output matrices, and has re-adjusted the biases to get the MC aligned the way it was before. In order to avoid mis-alignment during the diagonalization procedure, he (and Ben, when he returns) will implement RevB coil drivers on the MC suspensions in order to decouple the biases from the drive voltages.
The oplev laser diode for MC2 died. Steve and Dan replaced it. We need that oplev to adjust coil gains to decouple POS-> ANG.
The MC3 UL OSEM sensor is flaky; sometimes it reads zero. Bob replaced the cables from the satellite amp to the vacuum feedthroughs, but it didn't help. Steve swapped the satellite amp itself with a spare. If it reads zero again, Bob will replace the long cable from the satellite amp to the rack (first, just the connector on the satellite amp end).
Rana and Rob tried to debug the problems with the end QPD whitening switch controls, but they need Jay's help. It's some problem in the Wiring/code/DB.
Rob went through all the EPICS channels that are useful for length sensing (and SUS_OVERFLOW), and added them to the trend data (MANY new channels).

Lab Infrastructure

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Nothing significant to report this week.

LASTI (Ottaway)

(Rich Mittleman for David Ottaway)

Vacuum System

The noise in the main Lasti vacuum system turbo pump seems to have gone away and it has been running continuously since last Friday. This turbo was purchased used, so we don't know how many hour that it has on it. Up to now we have been operating it within the manufacturer’s specifications, but have now resolved to be more conservative.

With the BSC stack removed the pump down is proceeding much faster and we are now below 2E-6torr.

Laruent

I have created a solidworks model of the HAM vaccum chamber + optical table to add every parts we will need for the cavity experiment and check that everything is going to be ok. The 2 triples fit without any trouble and only 1 geophone needs to be moved by 4 inches to let the laser beam pass.

I am working on a matlab interface for the modal control and estimator. Even though it takes a bit of time now, I think it's going to save more later by simplifying the way to generate plot and simulations. It's about 1/3 done now.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

Weekly E2E Physics Meeting

Mark Barton talked about "Effect of wire stiffness on pitch modes and correction thereof" (Details below). Viewgraphs are available here: http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~e2e/ME2ET/Minutes05/051006/

Ash Khan from LLO discussed a problem related to the conversion of huge matrix outputs (~300X300 dimension)from Matlab model of seismic isolation system to ASCII files so that e2e can properly read it.

Mechanical Simulation

(Mark Barton) This week I spent lots of time in the lab with Calum assembling and balancing the quad pendulum and reaction chain, as well as giving yet more thought to why it hadn't been stable when first assembled. I did a lot of theory and modeling to see whether the corrections we had made to the wire attachment points to allow for the stiffness of the wires were appropriate. I concluded that we had been applying slightly too much correction because we had not allowed for the slant of the wires at the top two levels, but that this was not nearly enough to explain the observed instability.

Advanced LIGO modeling

(Hiro) Rana has provided a simple design spectrum of table top, both BSC and HAM. SEI+SUS in SimAdvLIGO will be modified to reproduce this by using a toy BSC and HAM.

Modeler

(Hiro)

Hiro and Biplab developed the primitive module interface of fast dual recycled Michelson cavity.

The e2e code related to frequency noise (used in SimLIGO for Common mode ARM control) has been improved by tracing the history of the frequency. This expands the frequency region under control from 100kHz to much much larger so long as the variation of frequency noise is not large. Test will continue to validate the code and this frequency noise issue.

(Melody) Documenting Matt's modeler scripts for remote processing.

Alfi

[In the following PR =>Problem Report]

(Bruce)

Completed work on a secondary alternative to starting Alfi via Web Start for those who may only be able to use Alfi remotely displayed on an X server. (PR 483)
ALfi release generation scripts all updated for the upgrade to Alfi 6. (associated with PR 483)
Beginning work on Alfi node validation (a general check for any inconsistency mostly focused for now on whether bundle I/Os are in a completed state. It will also check for various other possible inconsistencies if and when they are determined to be an allowed state of Alfi. I.e., there are states which are valid in interim work on an Alfi system which may not be a valid state for a completed system to be handed to themodeler.) (PR 495)

(Melody) Continuing with fixing the PRs. Finished improvements on the miniature view of all opened windows (PR 474). Also finished fixing PR 499.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Shawhan:

Busy with the Burst Group face-to-face meeting at MIT on Monday- Tuesday.
Helped work on the S3 untriggered burst search paper for the Amaldi proceedings.
Restarted the interferometer status monitoring web page at http://www.ldas-sw.ligo.caltech.edu/ligotools/runtools/gwistat/.

Zanolin:

Organized LSC-virgo burst workplan and LSC-virgo f2f agenda. Further testing on the parameter estimation. Sprayed some Auriga frames and set up a web page storing cachefiles. Partecipated to Burst f2f. Some activity on WB5 review.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

The managerAPI now has a new socket based on TclGlobus that allow clients to connect and authenticate based on X.509 certificates and is a GSI secured socket.

The controlMonitorAPI has had a similar new socket based on TclGlobus for the cmonClient (GUI to the controlMonitorAPI) to use to establish a GSI secured socket for X.509 authentication for about a week. However, new issues were discovered this week to allow the controlMonitorAPI to act as a "proxy" to forward job requests to the managerAPI using X.509 certificate protocols.

At issue is the need to use the host certificate to authenticate between the two processes running on the same server box. This requires use of functionality that currently isn't available through the TclGlobus. This functionality is likely to be absent from the next LDAS release.

The LDAS-CIT system is now running a pre-release of the Solaris 10 and Fedora Core 4 versions of LDAS (since LDAS-CIT has now been upgraded). The IBM DB2 database on LDAS-CIT and the resource files were upgraded to be concurrent with the components of the next release of LDAS in the effort this week.

Efforts continue in the understanding of why some output frame files do not get renamed from their temporary names to their final names (PR#2900).

Several tests were modified to correctly find some of their missing data.

Continuing with the cleanup of /ldcg, pkgbuilder (formerly known as sinstall) has been modified to supply the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable so libraries and applications and users making use of /ldcg do not have to explicitly have /ldcg/lib in their LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. This also resulted in a full rebuild of /ldcg for Solaris 10.

Some small cleanup of /ldcg continues to happen. Less has been removed from /ldcg for Solaris as the system provided less supports all needed functionality. Curl has been upgraded to 7.14.1. LDAS has successfully used this version for the past week. The utility lsof has been removed from the Fedora Core version of /ldcg as Fedora Core 4 supplies a version in /usr/sbin. The installation of cvsgraph has been corrected to remove an extra directory layer. The building of the XML-Parser module for perl has been placed after the building of apache as the module requires files supplied by the apache installation. Finally, the building of gnats now includes the creation of several symbolic links. This allows the site specific data not to be lost when newer versions of gnats are built.

Testing: ran system test for ldas 1.7.52 and updated cvs with test results. Develop model tclglobus client ( RawGlobusClient package ) to submit jobs to managerAPI.

TCLGLOBUS

Worked with Mary on LDAS managerAPI and Globus XIO integration problem. The problem was typo on LDAS managerAPI callback procs causing the application in spin loop.

Worked on the possible solution of using Tcl channel to encapsulate all the detailed implementation of setting up Globus XIO from Tcl programmer.

Discovered a problem when two Globus XIO services (LDAS managerAPI and cmonControl server) communicating each other using host certificates only to authenticate each other.

OSG/GRIPHYN/IVDGL

{Inspiral work flows on OSG-ITB}

Successfully executed a 603 DAG node DAX of Inspiral work flow on the LIGO-CIT-ITB cluster from host Verruca using a condor DAGman component with a bug fix supplied by the condor team.

Recruited the assistance of Brian (UWM) and Murali (PSU) to test the Inspiral work flow job submission on OSG PROD clusters at their sites.

Determined that the OSG PROD cluster UWMilwaukee had insufficient space to meet the Inspiral work flow requirements: 50 GB free space. Brian believes he can add disk capacity to meet this requirement on or about Monday October 10.

Determined that the OSG PROD cluster OSG_LIGO_PSU has a missing directory $VDS_HOME/bin/linux and missing executables from its configuration. Requested Murali check the integrity of the VDS installation and report back.

Received information from the VDS team to examine the database version of the Transformation Catalog (TC) and use that database as an alternative to vds-get-sites for managing the physical mapping of transfer and dirmanager files.

{GUMS and PRIMA configuration}

With the assistance of Murali, the LIGO Privilege page is installed in the OSG Twiki at: http://osg.ivdgl.org/twiki/bin/view/Provisioning/LigoPrivilege required of LIGO in order for other VOs to configure their sites to allow LIGO access.

At the Monday systems engineering meeting, Murali committed to providing support for voms-proxy-init functionality on the voms server.

{On-going monitoring and systems administration}

Performed a yum update and reboot of all nodes of LIGO-CIT-ITB.

The necessary version of VDS identified by the GriPhyN-LIGO collaboration with ISI has made it into the next version of VDT which will be the bases for the next release of OSG software stack.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Phil Ehrens)

Installed Solaris 10 and Fedora Core 4 on tandem-iii and tandem-v machines.
Performed various DOE cert related tasks.
Investigated reconfiguring Fedora Core 4 install on systemimager to be a raid 1 mirror between disk A and disk B. Incomplete.
Helped Mary Lei and Mike Samidi with TclGlobus issues.

(Stuart Anderson)

Updated LDAS-CIT with a pre-release of LDAS.
Researching the next generationg CIT cluster including a possible Cisco network switch upgrade.
Monitoring the Synchrotron facilities upgrade and had some of the electrical work moved to increase the airflow under the raised floor.
Helped upgrade several Solaris 9 test machines to Solaris 10.
Cleaned up web services on ldas-sw after the upgrade to Solaris 10.
Brought to conclusion a proposal to add L4 RDS frames for S5.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

working on LSCdataFind .
troubleshot another problem with the Foundry switch (reboot fixed it).

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

The biggest problem after LDAS move downstairs is malfuctioning HVAC in the high bay area. The temperature in the high bay area is about 8 degrees above the optimal operating point. The humidity is about 10 percent higher than it should be despite the fact that HVAC in the high bay area was designed for much larger heat loads than LDAS computers can generate. Allen is working on finding the way to fix the cooling problem by either fixing the existing HVAC or bringing the temporary AC unit. The situation should be resolved next week. Another potential problem is the presence of mice in the high bay area (Allen and Mike have been alerted). I also asked for the high bay area to be regularly vacuum cleaned to protect the equipment from dust.
3510 unit developed a problem in the I/O module of the primary controller. The primary controller failed on Friday morning, the unit switched to the secondary controller. On Friday night the secondary controller froze as well. On Saturday morning I power cycled the unit, it came back on the primary controller, but since then it periodically generated error messages in 3510 event logs. Also drive 9 failed. I have replaced the primary controller, the failed disk, reseated secondary controller and all the disks. At first glance that fixed the problem but we need to use the system for several days to make sure. Currently we are working on restoring damaged /archive file system from tape. There were also some errors corrected in /frames file system that is used by fb1.
Failed power supply was replaced in node8.
Moving company keeps rescheduling the delivery date for 140 nodes from CIT.
The old GigE switch was shipped to MIT.

(Dwayne Giardina)

Replaced failed disk in T3-14.
At Igor's suggestion and guidance, wrote small script to run badblocks during night hours on weekend and monitor output, sending email on detection.
node63 reported bad blocks on hda, to be replaced soon.
Donnie Buzbee came in to troubleshoot problems with 3510 controllers and disks. He worked with Igor since I was scheduled to do Kantech software upgrade with Chuck Brannon of Excel.

Hanford

(Ben Johnson)

DB2 has been initialized with the segment database at LHO. It was populated from the L3 LHO RDS frames yesterday. Duncan Brown is currently getting the segfind server up and running.
The 22-Ton air conditioner was started last night. Though it doesn't have all the coolant it needs, it still cools the room more than adequately. It is producing low frequency vibrations that are shaking the building despite the seismic isolation springs.
With the new 22-Ton AC, ear protection is now required to work in the LDAS room at LHO.
The D2D scripts are ready for M7. I will set up the publishing scripts today (should only take a config file change).
Another node's power supply died (node104), and I replaced it with the one spare I had left. I will order more replacement power supplies.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Keith)

Helped support burst f2f meeting Monday and Tuesday
Swapped out failed hdd on workstation anthias - will send back as it's under warranty
Installed and tested freeware Gantt chart software
Created gc account for new grad student (Brett Shapiro)
Ordered several more standalone matlab licenses

LLO (Dwayne)

Installed Protel for Ken Watts
Kantech security software installation with Chuck Brannon of Excel. System scheduled to be switched over to new version next Monday. Requires replacing some hardware. During installation noticed some doors reporting incorrectly. Their sensors are now fixed. Also fixed the side gate 'fully opened' sensor, which was not detecting the gate being opened.
Multiple DNS changes for Lisa B.

LHO

(Christine)

Started installing Symantec Antivirus version 10 on all PCs.
Started installing the latest versions of Matlab, Mathematica and Exceed.
Renewed the maintenance contracts for Winzip, Exceed, Matlab and Mathematica.
Trying to determine the status of the Cisco support contract so I can request troubleshooting help with my router. The router is not able to keep up with the traffic requests and is dropping packets. Last year my support contract was sent to Larry and it appears that efforts to separate my contract have not worked.
We have been unable to get a link working between LHO and PNNL for the 10 mb/s backup network. The media converters check out OK, the fiber path is lossy(DB link loss), but still in the range of the media converters. We've tried just about everything we can think of, but still no link. I continue to work with PNNL to get this working.

CIT

(Christian)

Calum Torrie - Removed 4 different types of adware/spyware running on Calum's workstation. I also added 2GB of RAM to his workstation.

Helena Armandula - Configured new laptop with the standard Ligo image.

Phil Willems - Updated Phil's laptop with Norton 10.

Mike Smith - Configured new workstation and transferred all of Mike's settings and files.

40 Meter - Updated workstations and laptops with Norton 10.

Millikan - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.

Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Veronica)

LSC: With MIT, continued troubleshooting of the credit card entry form for the upcoming meeting. Seems we have it working well now. Updates to the meeting website. Updates to the database of the LSC documents under review. Updates to the observational results webpage.
LIGO: Some Windows server support. Updates to the roster database. Updates to the LIGO website. Working with Dwight Carter on training him to edit the webpages for the Advanced LIGO cost /scheduling.
CaJAGWR: User support.
Project Science: Website updates and user support.

(Mike)

Loaded an engineering workstation with Solid Works and GC software.
Worked on the Spam Filters.
Continued work on updating users Anti-virus software from ver. 9 to 10.0. This was a rush due the Norton 9.0 software not updating its definition files. We have most of this work finished.
Calum Torrie: Problems with his new laptop recognizing hardware key (dongle) for Solid Works. I have contacted GoEngineer regarding this issue. I have been on the phone with support trying many debugging options, but as of now I am not getting anywhere. This is an on going process. On the new dual core Dell workstations they do not come with a parallel port. Therefore our parallel dongles will not work with these workstations. I contacted Go-Engineer and to swap our parallel dongle to a USB dongle this will be an additional charge of $50.00 dollars per dongle.
Added additional users to the wireless access point list.
Ghosted all NTSRV'S for end of month backups. I had some problems with a few of the servers. This was due to DHCP issues on the network. I had to free up some addresses to pick up a DHCP number to connect to the ghost server.
Started installing Ansys 10.0 on our Engineering workstations. This is a big job that will probably take me well into the rest of the week.

(Larry)

Still going through maintenance contracts. The SUN contract is now going through the Caltech system and should be wrapped up next week. Foundry just mis-handled some paperwork and they should have it cleared up in the next few days. CISCO has a huge problem. It looks like they put all of the CIT CISCO equipment on to one contract and now that all has to be separated out. ITS has the most work to do but I still have to check through everything to make sure our items were not included. Purchased a number of fiber related items. Also checking on termination kits to see if it is viable to change out the connectors on all of our spare fibers. Purchased a number of misc. items. It appears another small scanner and a portable DVD burner is still needed. Working on getting the media for the Matlab update and the purchase of a new toolbox.
Still installing equipment into room 19. This will take a few more weeks. The power connection going from room 18 to room 19 has been completed and the UPS has been installed and is charged up. Need to order another edge switch for the room. We will use the spare switch until then.
Setup a number of new user accounts. Also, setup a couple of new boxes.
We have reworked the IP address layout in order to accommodate the DHCP usage. This should only affect a few people and the sandbox units, this should not affect any of the server setups we presently have.
Performed the monthly backups. However, with the change of some of the LDAS equipment there are a few more backups to be performed and some s/w installations need to be done to get things back on-line.
Helped debug a few minor issues on different servers. The LDAS server swap over caused a few links to quit working but all were quickly updated.
Spent time working on a interesting e-mail problem. ITS had sent a message in-which the recipients client utility would not read the message. We tested a number of client utilities on the message and so far only pine and dtmail have the capability of reading the message without corrupting the spool file or mailclient in some manner. Hopefully, we'll get some more time to investigate this anomaly.
Assisted a number of users in getting to the CIT Oracle database in order to register their vehicle. The link is not quite setup correctly and if the DNS paths are not setup correctly you get taken to another location on the web.
The changes made on the spam filters has cut down the time we spend on checking for false positives. However, there is more spam getting through the system but we are still blocking a good percentage.

Mail Statistics for Sept. 29 - Oct. 05, 05

Mail Statistics	September 29 - October 05, 2005
Rejected Messages	19,774
Virus Messages	631
False Positives	12
Accepted Messages	15,157
Total Messages	34,931

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Systems

from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

Records Of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

nothing significant to report

Requirements

nothing significant to report

Interface Issues

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

nothing significant to report

Systems Design/Support

nothing significant to report

Vacuum Compatibility & Preparation

Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

Completed a bake job on quad parts today for Calum.
Began a bake job on magnets for Calum
Completed the Bake out of the big air bake oven and will began Qualification process today. I expect to submit qualification tests to Dennis Coyne next week for approval.
Finished reassembling the vacuum system for oven C and have began check out of the entire oven system.
I have installed a new pump on oven E and will complete the bake out of the RGA by tomorrow.
Have ordered new diodes for the OSEMs and should be able to start building and replacing the diodes in the existing OSEMs for the Quad.

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

Cavity (Location)	Material/Item	Start	End	Comments
Cavity #1 (OTF Lab, Bridge)	MMG nickel plated Nd-B-Fe magnets (Helena Armandula, SUS )	~6/8	TBD	No Change Cavity re-alignment is in progress due to power drop and oscillation. ~2 more weeks to completion
Cavity #2 (OTF Lab, Lauritsen)	NA	NA	NA	No Change cavity is close to being ready for samples
Cavity #3 (OTF Lab, Lauritsen)	samples have been put into the chamber OSEM Flexi-circuit cable, qty ~ 45 (Helena Armandula, SUS) supplied by Univ. Birmingham (Stuart Aston)	~6/10	~9/10	taking daily absorption & ring down measurements DuPont Flexible Circuits. The whole part to be constructed of 'flexi' i.e. no 'rigid' sections. (Stuart Aston,Univ. of Birmingham, SUS/UK subsystem) - Start Laminate: Kapton (LF8515) (document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73244.pdf Coverlay (x2): Kapton (LF0110) (document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73245.pdf DuPont Pyralux Series - Kapton / Acrylic Adhesive system. (document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73246.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------- OSEM emitter & photodiode 40 of each, (Dennis Coyne, SUS ) Test has been completed. Results to be posted by Liyuan Zhang soon.
Queue Priority 1	2 Cleaned 50ppm transmission mirrors, 1 in dia., REO coated --	TBD	TBD	witness samples for the LHO vertex volume (added in 6/29/2005 vent)
Queue Priority 2	Stepper Motor (Riccardo DeSalvo, possible SUS or ISC use)	TBD	TBD	Stepper Motor sample had been placed into Cavity #1: Power dropped from 175 mW to ~25 mW after introducing the stepper motor sample, and continues to decrease. It is very hard to keep cavity locked. The stepper motor may have contaminated the mirrors. Will re-test when a cvity becomes available again. To be rebaked soon using the self-heating capability of the stepper motor (not just the oven heater controls)

From: Rolf Bork <rolf@ligo.caltech.edu>

Jay and I put together a cost estimate for CDS systems to be installed at Lasti over the course of the next year or so.
The computer to be used for the Quad controller has arrived. I do not as yet have a delivery date for the PCI-X expansion chassis for the I/O cards. In the meantime, we will install the I/O modules directly into the PCI-X slots of this computer for driver development.
The driver for the ADC card is almost complete. I only need to change the sample clocking from the ADC internal clock to an external clock. Unlike our VME Pentek modules, this ADC does not have a downcounter for external clocks and therefore requires a 16384Hz sample clock supplied. In the short term, the plan is to use a DAC clock output of the old Variable Delay Timing Module, which is a 16384Hz square wave synched to our 4MHz GPS timing clocks.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

Advanced LIGO Seismic Structure Procurement Status

Assembly	Status
Top Assembly Components 20007970-A Stage 0 Assembly 2000795-A Stage 1 Assembly 20007825-A Stage 2 Assembly 20007825-A	RFQ complete, awaiting bids. Quotes due 9/30. Quotes recieved. RFQ complete, awaiting bids. Quotes due 9/30. Quotes recieved. RFQ complete, awaiting bids. Quotes due 9/30. Quotes recieved.
Stage 0-1 Spring Assembly 20007878-A Stage 1-2 Spring Assembly 20007890	Fabrication drawings are complete. Drawings must now be checked. RFQ for blades and rod flexures complete. Maher Limited holding maraging steel for blades and flexures
GS-13 Pod Assembly 20007810-A L-4C Pod Assembly 20007820-A STS-2 Pod assembly 20007941-A	Geophones, seismometers and lockers are in house. RFQ complete, awaiting bids for vacuum housings. Quotes due 10/16 RFQ complete for machined components. Quotes due 10/16 RFQ required for internal pod harnesses.
Stage 0-1 Kinematic Lock 20007941-1-A Stage 1-2 Kinematic Lock 20007941-2-A	Tooling design complete. RFQ complete, awaiting bids. Quotes due 10/21
Stage 0-1 Actuator Assy.'s 20007966-A 20007967-A Stage 1-2 Actuator Assy.'s 20007968-A 20007969-A	Tooling design complete. RFQ complete, awaiting bids. Quotes due 10/21
Stage 0-1 Standoff Pin Stage 0-2 Alignment Tower and Washer Stage 2 Keel Plate Alignment Tower Blade Pre-Load Tooling Blade Calibration Fixture Modifications LASTI Test Stand and Spreader Bar	Solidworks part files exist for the standoff pin and alignment towers. They will require a dimensioned drawing and checking prior to soliciting bids. The blade pre-load tooling and calibration fixture tooling will require redesign following the redesign of the blade springs by ASI. Purchase order for test stand issued to Southern Enterprises. Delivery to MIT by 10/16

From: "Joseph A. Giaime" jgiaime@ligo.phys.lsu.edu

Agenda for the weekly SEI telecom

Friday, Sept 30, 2pm Eastern, 1pm Central, 11am Pacific time

Announcements

New group member at Stanford: Matthew DeGree
Meeting later this afternoon to discuss HAM SAS procurement bid prep.

BSC SEI status, Ken M

ASI meeting

Gina has sent out all RFQs. First work package (main structure) bids are due to us today. We need to have a small committee, recommending a selection, late next week.

Ken points out that the ballast masses are quite expensive and may be amenable to value engineering.

Next batch of bids due Oct 15 or so.

ASI has finished the spring redesign and delivered the results on CDROM. Ken is starting to fold the changes into our PDMWorks model and drawing database.

Ken wants to get new bid on blade and flexures reflecting the new shape

BSC work (Rich M)

HAM control with VME (Pradeep)

no report.

Electronics (Jay, Brian)

received new GS13 readouts (Thursday)
needs for cables (Jay)

New boards received at Stanford; Brian has vented the ETF and will test them soon.
Shyang assembling parts for locker/unlockers to be sent to Jay. Brian will liberate the stamp unit and send it to Shyang.
Rolf and Jay continuing work on the new PCI/X ADC/DAC boards and DSP, plus software. Test results expected within a few weeks.
Brian to send an STS-2 to LLO before the beginning of the S5 run. It will be our spare for the run.

Suspension

From: ctorrie ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu

Mark and I now have a quad with reaction chain suspended in the lab. Still some work to do but both chains are stable! See: -http://131.215.114.242/view/index.shtml for a live view

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Working with Helena and Caroline on Ribbon/Fiber/Ear PDR documentation, due today.

Working on Estimate to Complete budget for Carol.

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

The bonding of magnets to aluminum holders / flags with a sodium silicate solution seems to work properly; the bonding strength seems to be similar to the one obtained with Vac Seal.

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

This week I spent lots of time in the lab with Calum assembling and balancing the quad pendulum and reaction chain, as well as giving yet more thought to why it hadn't been stable when first assembled. I did a lot of theory and modeling to see whether the corrections we had made to the wire attachment points to allow for the stiffness of the wires were appropriate. I concluded that we had been applying slightly too much correction because we had not allowed for the slant of the wires at the top two levels, but that this was not nearly enough to explain the observed instability. I summarized this work in a talk G050496-00-D, for the E2E group, which I'll reprise next Tuesday for the SUS group.

From: Ken mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I have suggested an idea to Calum for a quick test for the suspension fixture rotating table, using a piece of Teflon between the contact surfaces.

Cheryl installed the flow meter mounts at LHO and the drawing is in the DCC.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells <kells@ligo.caltech.edu>

I've been preparing for the TCS meeting Phil is calling (next week ?) by running Bench to determine how much cold arm mode mismatch can be tolerated to run AdL at low power (but full input beam power !) with no diminution of [matched] sensitivity.

Also: ongoing development of a better take on the PI situation. Mostly trying to reconcile the different views: UWA, MSU, Caltech.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

An cost estimate-to-completion for the LASTI laser was done, largely based on a previous costing.

Testing of the 200-W laser is pencilled in for the first week in November.

Auxiliary Optics

No report this week.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Juri Agresti <jagresti@ligo.caltech.edu>

Chiara

I made the hardening process for the maraging steel wires. The first step for this process is heating the material, in argon atmosphere for about 100h at a temperature of 435°C. The second step is heating the material at 470°C for about 2h. I put a thermometer inside the material in the oven in order to check the temperature of the maraging steel during all the heat-treatment. From the measurement of the internal temperature I found that the steel reached 435°C in about 20h. With the fit of these data I could figure out a time plan for the second step of the process. To reached 470°C I set the temperature of the oven at 500°C for 2h ( time for the material to reach 460°C ) and after at 470°C for 1h and half.

About the measurement on the test for horizontal attenuation system with four Inverted Pendula, I found some problems with the signals from one of the two accelerometers. The signal was too noisy. I figured out that the problem was in the cable.

Valerio

I've redesigned my SimMechanics model of the HAM-SAS in a hierarchical structure. For this reason I have created a custom Simulink library containing blocks that represent the single parts of the suspension such as the GAS, the IP leg, the ground. Now it's possible to create simple structures just dragging and dropping these blocks in a Simulink model. In this way it should be easier to find out the origin of our unexpected simulation results. In particular we need to understand whether or not these problems are coming from the incapacity of SimMechanics to simulate these structures correctly.

Juri

I extended the analysis of tilt sensitivity for our MH cavity including the measured maps for the three cavity mirrors (input, folding and end-MH). The deformations of the input and folding mirrors have a great impact on the resonant mode shape and power distribution. The orientation of the three mirrors is a critical issue and a meaningful comparison with the experimental data should require a better knowledge of the actual mirrors orientation. However my simulations support the idea that the discrepancies with the theoretical prediction using perfect optics can be explained by the deformed mirrors.

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