Weekly Report for Week Ending December 8, 2005

The LIGO Executive Committee meeting for December 12, 2005 will not be held because of the PAC meeting scheduled for that day.

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

LSC MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports

  • No report this week.

Non-LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report this week.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was conducted Thursday, December 8, 2005.  The following were among the issues discussed:

  • Budgets – we are reviewing the fy 2005 actual costs and budgets.  We spent 96 percent of the budget for labor and 88 percent of the funds allocated for travel.  However, we only spent about one half of the funds assigned in fy 2005 for supplies, materials, equipment, and other purchases.  We are reviewing this to determine how much relates to deferred procurements and tasks.
  • Property – E. Chargois and R. Luna visited Hanford this week to conduct a review and to introduce Mr. Luna to the site and personnel.  The spare AC unit was packaged and shipped to MIT.
  • There are no open assigned actions.  The list of assigned actions updated through December 1, 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>

  • No report, sick leave.

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

Week Ending

December 8, 2005

In

Out

Packages

24

5

Faxes

15

15
  • Scanning Project - Progress continues on scanning of F. Asiri boxes of files.  To date about 5+ boxes have been scanned.  Progress continues on scanning of old blanket purchase order files.

COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

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

  • Issued two one time purchase orders to Limerick for custom fabrication of additional parts for MIT.
  • Placed several orders for the purchase of goods for delivery to MIT and to Caltech.
  • Working on several invoice issues pertaining to taxability on orders for the sites. Have requested the vendors to issue credits for the sales tax amounts billed.
  • The A-133's are being audited and MIT's file was requested. The file along with the current A-133 along with MIT's audit report has been submitted. It was also requested for Triad, for which this requirement is not applicable.
  • The California state tax auditors will be on campus in April 2006.
  • Transferred funds on the Excel subcontract [to facilitate FY 2005 payments and set up the subcontract for FY 2006 - pel].
  • Completed the change order for the purchase of optics from REO under the subcontract and faxed it to Katherine.
  • Requested for the credit invoice to zero out the invoice billed for the one evaluation unit returned to ASA Computers.  The vendor will get back to me on the pending credit for the two evaluation units billed at the higher amounts.
  • Returned the low-profile jack for credit to McMaster Carr. Once the credit invoice is generated, it will be matched against the billed invoice.
  • Completed change order #32 to GSI and submitted it to the vendor.
  • Completed change order #10 to Benton County which adds funds for FY2006 to cover electricity usage at LHO.
  • Completed change order #15 to Gennaro, Gianni and submitted it to the vendor.
  • Completed change order #1 to Total Energy Management and submitted it to the vendor.
  • Completed the large-dollar order to ASA and routed it for approvals before it is submitted to the vendor.
  • Completed change order #2 to Eskew Dumez Ripple to add $5,040 to increase the number of site visits and submitted it to the vendor.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Issued monthly reports for FY05 and FY06 Operations for data through November 30, 2005.
  • Provided information for analysis of unspent funds in FY05.
  • 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>

  • Nothing significant to report.

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

  • Construction of the LLO SEC remains on schedule despite intermittent rain in Livingston.  The noise of the construction, however, is effectively taking LLO out of the S5 run during the day.
  • Two bids have already been received for the installation of the LDAS HVAC at LLO, with a third bid expected tomorrow.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

  • Processed the paper work for fifteen (15) new/revised trips.  At this time there are six (6) trips completed or in the works but are awaiting the necessary paper work to enter the P-Card system.
  • Completed eight (8) Expense Reports and there are twenty-two (22) 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 zero (0) report more than thirty (30) days old.  I have no reports awaiting signature at this time.

>Julie Hiroto

  • Working on details for PAC 19 meeting in LHO.

>Dorothy Lloyd

  • Processed invoices for payment and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded invoice payments for the month of November.  Processed the usual requisitions for purchases
  • Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.  [Contact Jim for December Supplies orders – pel.]

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

  • Requested a one year extension for the Visitor’s Program Grant.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • No open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • No special activities to report.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Nothing significant to report this time.

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

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

Highlights from the last week of elogs are bulleted below:

  • the Tuesday maintenance period was limited to about a five hours... in this time the H1 fine actuator controller box was fixed (see below), the photon calibrator output was swapped to other arm (both IFOs), H2 laser work ensued (below), and  pulsar injections turned off for two weeks to ensure we have some running without them.  The latter point is of great interest to the burst search group, as there was some concern that the pulsar injections were responsible for low-level transients observed in the data.
  • AWG code loaded last week appears to have improved the situation somewhat regarding calibration line drop-outs: long term (~1s) dropouts have now not been observed, but single-point glitches have been seen.
  • S5 PEM injections were begun on the 4k and the 2k instruments, and later, nearly completed
  • coil magnetometers in the external, buried vault were recommissioned and calibrated

4K IFO

  • since having its calibration updated, H1 has indeed run for stints at 12 Mpc, however this week it has run typically at 11Mpc during evenings.  The reasons for the lower range are not yet understood, but coherence between AS_Q and AS_I in the 10-few hundred Hz range is now large.  FJR has suggested upconversion from times of higher microseism is responsible.  The useism loop was broken during POPI commissioning, so this is currently off but will be recommissioned next week.  All ASI loops have been observed to saturate during the day.   REFL_I was seen to be coherent with AS_Q during times of lower binary inspiral range; the coherence was decreased by better aligning the light on the reflected photodiode.
  • The x-arm fine actuator was responsible for some lock-losses, as the PZT actuator railed.  This meant the controller box had two be swapped out on a Tuesday maintenance session.
  • we continue to struggle at times with configuration control issues, e.g. notch filters erroneously applied in the ASC were removed and gold-standard and STAT variables reset
  • it was suggested that AS_I phase tuning could minimize junk modes in AS_Q
  • windowing, and possibly single precision floating point calculations in DTT explain the lack of perfect coherence observed between DARM_CTRL and AS_Q

2K IFO

  • the new calibration for H2 impacted the binary inspiral range (upwards) by about 10%, neatly moving us from 4.5Mpc to the S5 design goal of 5Mpc.  This calibration of course applies retroactively back to the start of the run.
  • an alignment of the PSL clawed back 1W in laser power during maintenance; the alignment had clearly drifted in the last fifteen days and was temporarily improved.  About 1/2W has been lost since this Tuesday alignment, so drift continues.. more here noting that simply removing the cover improved the power
  • the source of the broad bump near 1.6kHz remains unknown although there are suggestions of aliased high frequency lines

DAQ

  • multiple disk failures plagued fb0 last Friday, with fixes in place by Saturday morning.

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

L1 Interferometer (Frolov)

The cumulative duty cycle for science data taking has approached the current daily and weekly average level of 50%. This week it was mostly limited by seismic noise from construction and exceptionally bad weather (high winds and microseism exceeding the 95th percentile of historical levels). The Tuesday maintenance period had to be extended to continue investigation of the persistent ITMX HEPI instability and to diagnose an electrical short in one of the piezo actuators on the Mode Cleaner input beam periscope. The ITMX HEPI malfunction was finally traced to a stuck bit in its Pentek digital to analog converter (now replaced).

The interferometer BNS range improved to 10+ Mpc during quiet times after retuning of gains for subtraction of the Michelson and recycling cavity degrees of freedom from differential arm motion.

Modification of the anti-symmetric port photo detectors to increase the RF coupling increased the range of the AS_I servo, which in turn reduced apparent upconversion in the electronics at frequencies below 100 Hz.

Unfortunately despite all these improvements we still have non-stationary components in the interferometer noise below 100 Hz; these are thought to be related to excitation and upconversion of one of the optics' suspension bounce mode.

Other activities this week:

  • the new Statevector code was installed.
  • measurements of the acoustic, seismic, and magnetic couplings from the ambient LVEA and VEA noise to the interferometer dark port were performed.
  • diagnostics on the readout of the weather stations identified a synchronization problem in some legacy software.
  • a piezo actuator on the PSL periscope shorted out and let the smoke out of its driver board. It was disconnected and mirrors were aligned manually.  A replacement actuator and driver board are being prepared.
  • the missing channel on one of the WFS1 quadrants was finally found to be due to a bent connector pin on the whitening board interface, and fixed

Outreach (Zucker)

Hosted  members of the Delta Kappa Gamma society (women in education), the 6th grade at Runnels School of Baton Rouge, and 80 high school physics seniors from Tara High in Baton Rouge.  The latter group was a record size but went spectacularly well, on account of good logistics and planning and excellent help from the science and engineering staff, starring the enigmatic Dr. Brian o'Reilly and Professor Rai, who gave out autographs (!).

SEC construction has picked up in intensity (to the detriment of S5 locking during daytime hours). Pile drilling and concrete pouring finished this week and grade beam excavation is in progress. Intensive concrete work is expected next week. Steel is on order and should begin arriving in about 10 days.

LLO Facilities (MZ)

See Outreach for SEC status. Bids are in for the LDAS computer room HVAC upgrade, selection is imminent. The gate repair is stuck waiting for special tube stock, vendor is looking for a workaround.

CDS (Bogue)

  • This week finds me in the middle of a few different things.  I spent many hours looking into problems with the scimon plots that are automatically generated out to the london web site.  I've determined that the  scripts are running properly and that Keith Riles and I should take a close look the data being requested.
  • Tuesday maintenance went well.  The dmt switch to jumbo frames has been delayed until problems with passing traffic through the switch can be resolved.  Similarly, upgrade of our dtt code has been delayed by the programmer.  Thanks to Dave Barker, we now have the latest and greatest state vector code.  Most of the rest was channel maintenance.
  • I now have email alerts running on the core cds servers.  Among other things, this lets me see the errors from cron jobs that have problems.  I am fixing those as I go.

Computing and Network Security (Roddy)

Spoke with Brian Nichols, LSU's IT Security & Policy Officer, about the Nessus scan last week.  They had a group of network security auditors in from REN-ISAC.  He agrees that in the future we should coordinate scans.  He said that the scan did not turn up anything that needed attention.

Working with Foundry Networks on a support issue on a switch.  I am trying to get two fiber taps on a couple of gig ports to be monitored on a mirror port.  However, the switch is giving errors on 100% of the packets.  I may work on another long term solution, but it would be nice to have this working as a passive solution.

Have an issue with the Arkeia software.  The upgraded hosts are showing up twice.  Haven't had a chance to get on the phone with them yet to figure out how to solve the issue.

Working some with Solaris 10, ZFS, & SMF under Vmware.  Need to script a few things security related.

Usual round of ordering hardware, user & email account mods, etc.

General computing (Giardina)

  • installed new release of Arkeia on mail and alix
  • changed operatoradmin permissions on the security server
  • finished Janeen's laptop migration.
  • creating HTML/PHP interface to security server activity logs.

will include search feature eventually.

these logs are copied over from the entrapass server to abundance.

LDAS admin (Giardina)

  • node134 reporting badblocks on hdb, will replace soon
  • two power strip failures in the last couple of weeks.  replacements arrived with the wrong plugs.  Bernie and I will replace when new ones arrive.
  • shipped tapes LL0600, LL0605, LL0649, LL0657, LL0658 to CIT.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

CDS Software

No report

CDS Hardware

Ben Abbott

Fast Shutter

The solenoids have arrived from Electromechanisms.com.  They seem promising for use in a newer style of fast shutter.

DMT

No report

PSL

Nothing significant

Optical Characterization

No report.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO commissioning, PSL

  • The "new" (50K hours!) MOPA was putting out ~5.9 W when it was first turned on at the 40m lab, and the beam scan showed a long non-gaussian tail to the west. After some power cycling, the power went down to 5.4 W, and the tail disappeared. The theory is that it was on the wrong mode, and now it's hopped to the right mode.
  • The water cooling on MOPA was found to be leaking a bit, so Steve replaced the plastic elbow joints (in which he found cracks) with brass. It's still sweating; Steve and Dan are keeping an eye on it.
  • The MOPA power is still at ~ 5.4 watts. At present, it's being attenuated to ~1/2 watt right after the beam exits the MOPA, while Steve and Rana re-establish the rest of the PSL.
  • Rana discovered that a jumper in the MOPA, required for SLOW temperature control of the NPRO, was missing. He put one in, and now the SLOW control works.
  • Rana fiddled with the optics in the MOPA box to get a pickoff beam onto the AMPMON photodiode.
  • There are some problems with the EPICS readout of the MOPA monitoring signals. Rana traced it to the signals being pulled down by the DAQ interface board. He's working on it.
  • Rana and Steve moved the FSS pickoff to BEFORE the PMC (it used to be after it). The pickoff is just leakage from a HR mirror. Steve will replace it with a 1-2% pickoff mirror.
  • Rana designed and coarsely tuned the mode matching into the PMC and re-established lock. He went on to put in a new lens to get the FSS pickoff beam through the EOM, and then re-established lock of the frequency reference cavity.
  • The plan now is to re-establish mode cleaner lock, then go back and swap in the new TT FFS. Then tune up the PMC transmission and the FSS path. Steve is installing a camera at the PMC reflected port to help in tuning.
  • Steve and Rana plan to install a bigger pickoff for the ISS photodiodes, and Rana will get a good ISS diagnostic going.
  • Rana plans to make changes to the PMC servo board like the ones he made at LLO. We're also expecting new MC servo and CM servo boards, which we will install in due course. We also need to implement the PSL FSS slowpid servo.

IFO modeling

  • Rob continues to work on modeling with OpTickle, Bench, Finesse, Corbitt's code. He's preparing a talk to give at the quantum optics workshop in Germany next week.
  • Osamu has been working with Hiro on e2e simulations of the 40m with radiation pressure. He has new predicted noise curves that agree qualitiatively with theory (theory has quantum correlations, e2e does not).
  • Osamu is investigating modification required to the detector calibration procedure when homodyne detection is used. These mods are also required with RF heterodyne detection with unbalanced sidebands, as predicted by Kentaro.
  • Osamu is refining the calculation of the predicted seismic noise at the 40m.

DC detection development

  • Sam Waldman will be testing PZT drivers and servos for the in-vac steering mirrors that steer from the AP to the OMC. He will develop a high-BW (~100 Hz) loop to supress intensity noise at the DC readout port. Once Sam has a design, he'll work with Jay to draw it up and build it.
  • Mike will show Steve, Sam and Dan how to mount the PiezoJena PZT tilting platform to the DLC mounts without torquing them.
  • Mike updated his drawing of the in-vac DC readout beamline. He designed a new baseplate to mount the output sub-assy, consisting of the following components: 2 DLC steering mirrors, OMC, GWD beamsplitter, focus lens, GWD, OMC reflected beam steering mirror. He is changing the drawings of the components to shorten their heights accordingly to accomodate the new baseplate. Lee Cardenas is assembling two DLC PZT mounts for a test of the OMMT steering mirrors.
  • Steve and Mike will assemble the output mode matching telescope in the lab, and begin assembly of the rest of the beamline.

Electronics, controls

  • Ben has finished running all of the 10 custom cables for the TTFSS installation. I have drawn up a schematic for the system, and assigned cable names to the cables. I will install the new system today, 12/8 following the installation plan E040423-00.
  • Our old RAID array finally seems to have given up. Alex Ivanov installed a new 1.5 TB raid array, and after great struggle, is getting the 4 years of minute-trend frames off of the old RAID array and on to the new. Thanks, Alex!
  • Alex fixed the epics screens' date and time display, by re-starting the NTP daemon on the appropriate cpu (c1dcuepics) and correcting the time.
  • Rob worked on some scripts for autolocking the FSS and PMC servos, with the help of some triangle-wave scanning scripts.
  • Rob continues to work on rewriting the LSC code; don't expect it before he returns from his trip, next year.

Lab Infrastructure

  • Dan got his appendix taken out.
  • Kelvin is our new janitor.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No report.

LASTI (Ottaway)

The majority of the last months activity have been installing infrastructure and preparing upgrades for the triple pendulum experiment and the ponderomotive squeezing experiments.

Quad Controls Prototype Infrastructure

This week we began assembling the test stand for supporting the quad and the solid spacer. The new clean room has arrived and after assembling the initial frame it was realized that the clean room was not structurally strong enough so we negotiated with the manufacturer to get additional stiffeners. Once these two items have been fully installed we will begin the installation and assembly of the solid spacer that substitutes for the AdvLIGO Seismic isolation system in the initial quad suspension tests.

We have been consolidating electronics rack space to make way for the electronics for the quad and later the BSC Seismic.

Triple Pendulum Experiment

The second pendulum is ready to be installed in LASTI. It was tested with the initial triples electronics. We are now shaking down the electronics for the second triple.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

Advanced LIGO simulation

(Hiro) The sensitivity curve of 40m was calculated using e2e.

www.ligo.caltech.edu/~hiro/talks/40m_e2evsABYC.pdf

This is based on classical mechanics and optics and independent quantization of the radiation pressure noise and shot noise. There are still issues to be understood, including the control system and observation.

In a similar strategy, Adv.LIGO configuration was tested, but the arm lock becomes unstable due to (probably) large radiation pressure and high finesse. This will be studied more systematically.

FFT study

(Biplab) Had a meeting with Bill Kells, Kip Thorne and his student Pavlin Savov regarding the simulation of parametric amplification.  As a first step Pavlin will develop his code for calculation of eigenmodes of cavity and results of that will be compared with FFT results already obtained for various single-mode studies. After that, more complex studies using mirror accoustic modes will be attempted.

Doing more studies on Adv LIGO cavity modes for comparison with some results obtained (by Pablo Barriga, Univ. W. Australia) for frequency shifts of these modes.

Modeler

(Melody) Building other versions of the gcc compiler (4.0.2, 4.1.0, 3.3.6) in saiph to see if the application performance is improved.

Alfi

(Bruce)

  • Completed work on new data object to track changes in bundler I/O names in inherited bundlers.  Now testing that the new system does not break the current use of bundlers (PR 511.)
  • More work on multiple warning handling (PR 476).

(Melody) Working on Problem Report(PR) 296 - easier access to settings.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Mendell:

In the last weekly I reported that a few minor issues to do with SFT cleaning remain to be sorted out. These turned out to be caused by a one line bug in the StackSlide code that has since been fixed (and does not affect any other work by the pulsar group.)  The SFT cleaning code is the newest and last section of the StackSlide pipeline undergoing review. Tomorrow I will present updated tests of this section to the reviewers, to finish the code review, and to set the stage to move on to reviewing S4 results.

I also reported that I was working on problems with S5 SFT generation.  These problems were due to memory usage and spectral contamination at high frequencies by low frequency noise. The memory usage problem was solved by compiling with different options, reducing the amount of memory used. The spectral contamination problem was due to a lack of high pass filtering, needed when you have very non-white data with a large dynamic range that has very large amplitude noise at low frequencies. Now that S5 SFT generation is more reliable (though not completely automated yet), I am starting to study whether the 1 Hz lines exists in the S5 data, using the StackSlide code on the SFTs.

Shawhan:

  • Prepared GWDAW talk about S4 LIGO-only untriggered burst search.
  • Critiqued a few other people's GWDAW presentation drafts.
  • Debugged and fixed problem with SeqInsert at LLO.

Lazzarini:

Worked with Brian O'Reilly (chair of the cailbration committee) to perform a review of the V4 S4 calibrations. Need to continue on this early next week. Report looks good; hopefully the calibration can be vetted next week. This will enable groups to perform a final pass through the S4 analyses with finalized calibrations. In summary: H1 and L1 will be revised upward (i.e., less sensitive) by ~ 10% each w.r.t. V3 S4 calibrations; H2 will remain the same.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

The nightly test runs have been measured to loose about 250KB per job in file system space. Running FSCK by a system administrator has been shown to clean up some fraction of this. We need to make a few more measurements to determine what the fraction is.

With the inclusion of large file support, we have seen a slight increase in the amount of memory used by running processes. This is thought to be associated with larger static and initialized objects associated with 64 bit file I/O. Once full 64 bit support is implemented, the increase will be trivial relative to the available memory space of the processes.

Started working on 64-bit compilation. I learned how to build 64-bit applications using automake/autoconf/libtool. As a proof of concept, I was successful with compiling lib/general 64-bit on Solaris 10.  Before I can go further, I need to compile many 3rd party libraries 64-bit as all of the other libraries have dependencies on 3rd party software. Among these are Tcl/Tk, FFTW, libCURL, BLT, lam, ObjectSpace, and clapack.

TCLGLOBUS

  • Updated TclGlobus documentation with XIO-based Tcl channel section.
  • Still working on server functionalities of Globus FTP control test units.
  • Fixed minor issue related to Tcl channel implementation of server-to-server communication using host certificates.
  • Investigated on how to use service certificates instead of host certificates within XIO-based Tcl channel.

GRID COMPUTING

  • Worked with OSG Executive Board to rewrite several sections of the "OSG Management Plan." The document is expected to be part of the discussion at a mid December teleconference with the funding agency.
  • Worked with the OSG Council on developing a section of the "OSG Plan of Work" document to address advanced workflow management and Virtual Data Services which could enhance the ability of LIGO and other VOs to submit jobs seamlessly to the OSG Grid.
  • Attended Griphynligo meeting and determined that documentation on new Inspiral Hipe 16,000 Dag node production code is incomplete.  Requested completion from Duncan Brown via existing Inspiral web page.
  • Determined that Duncan Brown has tested third party copy. Plan on testing this with latest VDS in OSG 0.3.1 in the future.
  • Provided Alex Sim, implementor of SRM at LBL an account on osg-itb-se for port of SRM to FC4 [JKB: With Kent's approval].
  • Continued validation tests related to MonALISA reporting to determine the extent of valid reporting of jobs from osg-itb to GOC web server.
  • Corrected error in OSG Twiki document related to LIGO VO nomenclature.
  • Updated Validation page in OSG Twiki related to validation testing of osg-itb with OSG 0.3.1
  • Reviewed new document related to CEMon and related infrastructure and lack of FC4 support.
  • Attended OSG-INT meeting related to OSG releases 0.3.2/0.3.3
  • On-going monitoring and systems administration:

(a)    Yum updated osg-itb and osg-itb-se.

(b)   Added Ganglia monitoring infrastructure to osg-itb.

Lazzarini -

Stuart, Kent, and Albert met with Duncan to discuss hand off of a number of collaboration-critical software infrastructure projects to others to allow Duncan to focus on S5 science.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Talked with Ed Maros about how to have LDAS determine where it's .md5 files should go.
  • Have not had a recurrence of the "data strewn across too many tapes" problem since getting Ben to use '-w' when labeling tapes (and ejecting tapes after labeling before restarting archiving).
  • Did the standard tape exporting, shipping, ingesting.
  • Did some cleanup work in Synchrotron.
  • Have (at the request of the development team) run samfsck on dev's /export a few times to clean up the leaking disk space problem.
  • Worked with STK to get a replacement drive for 0,0,10,10 which had a tape (CL0462) stuck in it.  The tape broke but can be repaired once we get a leader block splicing kit (Marty was going to get us one).  The drive has been replaced but the WWNs were not copied from the old drive, so I still need to update the software before the new drive is functional.
  • Dealt with staging problems at both sites (samu 'n' showed staging activity but was frozen in place, samu 't' showed no tape activity) requiring the stagerd to be killed and the SAM robot daemons restarted.  My guess is that these problems were related to "duplicate" VSNs (tapes that had been imported twice and then SAM marked them 'd' for duplicate in the catalog).  In both cases I've cleared the duplicate condition and haven't had a recurrence of the problem...if we go another few days without the problem occurring then I think it's fixed.
  • /archive/home was not marked release -n at LLO (fixed recursively).  Checked at LHO and CIT and it was fine there.
  • Pursuing the question of why some files are not being archived for a very long time and then only with human intervention.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Kickstarted 80 nodes from the old cluster.
  • Wrote management system for kickstarts.
  • Assisted in cleaning process @ Synchrotron Data Center.
  • Assisted in moving racks @ Synchrotron Data Center.
  • E-mailed Sean @ ASA Computer testing and configuration details for new cluster.
  • Updated wiki with Kickstart instructions.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Traveled to vendor [ASA] selected for next CIT cluster to discuss details of the large order placed last week.
  • Construction of the computer room at Caltech (215 Synchrotron) is now complete, and we are starting to turn back on the computer systems that where down during the upgrade--including 80 dual-Xeon cluster nodes.
  • Lots of cleanup in 215 Synchrotron after construction was completed.
  • Worked with Bill Tyler to order the equipment racks for the next cluster.
  • Placed a work order to install 12 30A/3-phase electrical circuits for the new cluster.
  • Obtained price quotes for 17kW power strips for each computer cluster rack to handle the estimated 14kW per rack of the new cluster.

(Lazzarini)

  • Working  with Stuart, Phil, Florence to determine end-of-year actual expenditures from 1.5.1 including the recent cluster purchase.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Upgraded ldas-gridmon to FC4 - this completes the FC4 linux upgrades for MIT.
  • Installed host certificates for ldas-sundev and ldas-pcdev1.
  • Submitting sun contract support for 2006 ldas computers.

Livingston

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • node134 reporting badblocks on hdb, will replace soon
  • Two power strip failures in the last couple of weeks.   Replacements arrived with the wrong plugs.  Bernie and I will replace when new ones arrive.
  • Shipped tapes LL0600, LL0605, LL0649, LL0657, LL0658 to CIT.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • Reports on gaps in the S5 data from last week are posted here:

  http://ldas.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/GapChecker/gapReport01DEC2005LHOS5.txt

  http://ldas.ligo-la.caltech.edu/ldas_outgoing/GapChecker/gapReport01DEC2005LLOS5.txt

  • The gaps in the raw (L0) data are due to times when the framebuilder and its backup goes down at the same time. This can happen during maintenance or when unexpected problems with the DAQ system occur.  Gaps in the raw data produce corresponding gaps in the RDS data.  Note that the gaps in the L1 and L4 data are 64 seconds wider than the gaps in the L0 and L3 data because L1 and L4 RDS generation involves downsampling. Data right next to a gap cannot be downsampled since this requires extra data at the start and end of the time series to work properly. The only gap in the RDS data that is not due to a gap in the raw data is the first gap in the LHO L1 RDS data. This is an extra gap that occurs because on Nov 8, H2:LSC-SPOB_MON was changed to H2:LSC-SPOB_I during the times this jobs runs on. When I get a chance I hope to further automate gap checking. In conclusion, there are no unexplained gaps in the S5 data, and S5 data archiving and RDS generation is running smoothly.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Fixed misconfiguration on about 8 nodes. Some still have symbolic links to CIT's Condor configuration.
  • Helping some users debug their cluster jobs; mainly in relation to the Condor restart this past Tuesday.
  • I have nearly finished with apache setup on ldas-pcdev2. I am finishing it up presently.
  • Working on tape catalog program to help us make effective use of the tape cabinets at the sites, plus keep track of all our tapes in general.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Keith)

  • Troubleshot grad student linux desktop - (bad power supply forced machine into sleep mode at random times)
  • Hosting CSR ultra 5 box on subnet for admin network troubleshooting and testing

Livingston

(Dwayne)

  • Installed new release of Arkeia on mail and alix
  • Changed operatoradmin permissions on the security server
  • Finished Janeen's laptop migration.
  • Creating HTML/PHP interface to security server activity logs.  Will include search feature eventually.  These logs are copied over from the entrapass server to abundance.

(Shannon)

  • Spoke with Brian Nichols, LSU's IT Security & Policy Officer, about the Nessus scan last week.  They had a group of network security auditors in from REN-ISAC.  He agrees that in the future we should coordinate scans.  He said that the scan did not turn up anything that needed attention.
  • Working with Foundry Networks on a support issue on a switch.  I am trying to get two fiber taps on a couple of gig ports to be monitored on a mirror port.  However, the switch is giving errors on 100% of the packets.  I may work on another long term solution, but it would be nice to have this working as a passive solution.
  • Have an issue with the Arkeia software.  The upgraded hosts are showing up twice.  Haven't had a chance to get on the phone with them yet to figure out how to solve the issue.
  • Working some with Solaris 10, ZFS, & SMF under Vmware.  Need to script a few things security related.
  • Usual round of ordering hardware, user & email account mods, etc.

Hanford:

(Christine)

  • A DNS change at Caltech caused some problems with emails being bounced and LSC grid users not being able to enter files in CVS.  As a quick fix the MIT DNS servers are now being used instead of the Caltech servers.
  • Changing to the MIT DNS servers didn't fix all the problems.  Sometimes web URLs return host unknown and then a retry works.  SSH from a local computer to another local computer resulted in an inability to authenticate the host, then moments later it worked.  All of this is pointing to an internal network problem.  There are several possible causes that I am working on to see if they will fix the problem.

[Lazzarini note: it appears that Caltech has changed its policy and will now allow LIGO to manage its own DNS server for the ligo-wa and ligo-la domains. This should allow us the freedom to optimize the configuration and to correct the problem.]

  • The WAN backup circuit is finally in place and "working".  We are seeing link lights from LHO through to ESnet in Seattle.  A test will be scheduled shortly after the first of the year to bring down the primary GigE WAN circuit and throughly test the 10 Mb backup circuit.
  • I have received some information on the output drops and overruns I'm seeing on the GigE interfaces on the router.  Cisco advises updating the IOS and setting up QoS to manage the overruns.  PNNL thinks that adding more memory might be a better place to start.  I will be trying all of the above.
  • Purchased several new laptops for operators.
  • Requested that any user who is bringing their own personal laptop from home sign a form so they know the rules to using a personal computer at work.  This created quite a stir and I have spent much time defining what it means to bring a personally owned computer to use as a work computer.  This is not the same as working from home on your own computer and it is not the same as LSC members bringing their institution supplied computers to LHO and it is not the same as a visitor bringing a laptop to use during a conference.
  • Working with Greg Mendell to define a standard Lab wide setup for access to LSC Grid tools from GC computers.

Preparing for the PAC meeting next week.

CIT:

(Mike)

  • Worked on a Laptop that would not recognize the hardware key for Solid Works. I ended up having to download the driver from Aladdin's website in order to get this laptop to recognize the dongle. I also installed Primavera on this laptop.
  • DCC: Loaded 2003 Server, SQL server 2000, ColdFusion ver5 server edition, and finally Synergy software. Synergy is our new database software for DCC. There is a lot of work involved here and a good chance that I will have to reload this software again. I have also been on the phone with Synergy's tech support. This is an on going project.
  • Spam Filters: Continued work on spam filters searching for false positives.
  • DHCP Server: Ran out of leases. I had to manually free up expired leases.
  • Loading a laptop with Fedora for a user to take on travel.
  • Dead Sun box over in Lauritsen. I am reloading a sun box to replace this unit.
  • Other misc. user support.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Roster database updates.  Website updates.  Prepared a high-resolution image for an APS-sponsored publication.  Updates to the PAC meeting website.  Miscellaneous user support.
  • LSC:  Usual upkeep.  Updated a number of bouncing email addresses in lsc-all and lsc-nonligo.
  • CaJAGWR:  Website update.

(Christian)

  • Irene Baldon; Replaced drum kit cartridge on Irene's local printer.
  • 3flr W/B - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
  • Dorothy Lloyd; Configured a loaner laptop with Eudora and a dialup account for Dorothy to use.
  • Wilson house; Installed Norton AV on Mohana Mageswaran laptop.
  • Re-imaged two laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Larry)

  • Worked a number of procurement issues. A couple of Dell orders have shipped and should arrive this week.
  • Spent a deal of time working on room 18&19 (server rooms).  The fire suppression system was tested and did pass but it also revealed a couple of other logistical issues concerning power and the air-conditioning system that need to be addressed.  Assisted the PMA group on setting up a new SUN server in room 19.  Did some testing on the remaining dual core quad cpu unit in relation to performance issues. Some items are running as they should but the E2E group is seeing a performance problem in their application. The group is doing some more testing when they get time.
  • Assisted in getting things ready to send the Monarch system back for repairs.
  • Worked the mail filters. There was a new source of spam causing a lot of items to be caught in the filters which had to be cleaned out by hand.
  • Worked on a couple of accounts which needed to be cleaned up.
  • Performed the monthly backups on the user home directories.  Reset the daily backup server. Reset one of the internal web servers that was having some issues starting some web applications.
  • Attending the LISA conference.

Mail Statistics for Dec 01-07, 05

Mail Statistics

December 01 - 07, 2005

Rejected Messages

17,467

Virus Messages

2,146

Accepted Messages

15,143

Total Messages

32,610

 

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems, Management

Systems

from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

  • Held an Optomechanical Layout Working Group, 12/8 focused on collaborative use of SolidWorks and PDMWorks

Records Of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

  • M050175-01, Initial Alignment Requirements on COC Coating Reflectivity, is in the signature cycle
  • M050397-00, Core Optic sizes, including TMs, BS, FM and RM, is in the signature cycle
  • M050418-01, Separation of chains in quad suspensions, is in the signature cycle

Requirements

  • Revised the SUS Universal Design Requirements, T000053-04, to include a duration for the low temperature, non-operational, in-vacuum bake

Interface Issues

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

  • Nothing significant to report

Vacuum Compatibility

Vacuum Preparation [Cleaning, Baking, Residual Gas Assay (RGA)]

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

  • I have completed most of the metallic parts for the Quad Controls Prototype and have began working on the magnetic and optical assemblies.
  • The connectors for the Electro-Static Drive (ESD) have been delivered from AccuGlass. Mike Gerfen in the CIT machine shop is making the PEEK clamping beads that go in the ends of the connectors. He says that they will be ready next week, then I can put the connectors on the ESD cables.

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

Changes highlighted in yellow

Cavity

(Location)

Material/Item

Start

End

Comments

Cavity #1

(OTF Lab, Bridge)

“Cable wire” (material type?)

~11/17

TBD

No Change: The cavity has been aligned & locked. Taking daily ring down and absorption measurements.

The digital oscilloscope failed so a new one is being ordered, along with a refurbished pulse generator.

----------------------------------------------------------

The test for 40 pieces of MMG nickel plated Nd-B-Fe magnets (for Helena Armandula, SUS ) has been completed and removed from the cavity.

Cavity #2

(OTF Lab, Lauritsen)

NA

NA

NA

Cavity not ready. It needs some other optics(such as: polarizing cube, 1/4 wave plate and some curve mirrors and lens) and the electronics. We have used/borrowed some of the optics from this system to accomplish
the completion of the other two cavities. Recently the 700 mw NPRO laser was used for Garilynn’s experiment and it needs to be realigned to the cavity.

Cavity #3

(OTF Lab, Lauritsen)

OSEM Flexi-circuit cable, qty ~ 45

(Helena Armandula, SUS)

supplied by Univ. Birmingham (Stuart Aston)

~9/30

TBD

No change:

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)

Seismic Isolation

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

Shipments of clean rooms, support systems, and assembly granite tables to LASTI.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Working with Nergis on her fixtures. Was successful in accessing a number of old Ideas designs and drawings.  Ordering some parts for the quad.

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

There are still one or two loads being baked. All of these should be completed by Friday. Lee and I have assembled the upper structure. All of the wire assemblies, except the top stage wires, have been completed.

Ric Paniagua and i have prepared a plate that will be bolted to the floor of the clean room this will allow us to test the resonances of the lower structure in clean conditions.

I have prepared a concept drawing for the advanced LIGO pick off mirror.

I have been preparing for a PDMWorks tutorial that I am giving on Thursday.

Tim Hayler and I have continued to look at bolted connection in the overall quad suspension structure. We are applying contacts between sections of the structure and the associated bolts.

The installation tooling work with Mike Gerfen is progressing well Questions are being answered as they arise. Ken Mailand, Mike Gerfen and I are looking over Ken's design of an alternative for the air bearing and XY stage. We are continuing to deal with some vendor questions ahead of placing an order for the linear drives and had a successful meeting with the vendor this week.

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I’m working on shop drawings for the SUS installation plate style fixture for Calum, we will met with Mike Gerfin this morning re. a CES estimate. This is an alternate to the air bearing setup, and uses the same table frame.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

 

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Coatings

We had a teleconference with Jean-Marie Mackowski on which the paper on doped tantala that Gregg is writing, on behalf of the coating group, was thoroughly discussed. (Jean-Marie and some of his group are co-authors)

Other coatings

The order for the manufacture of 4 TNI mirrors has been placed with REO.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

I had a discussion with Hiro about calculating the beam pointing requirements after the suspended modecleaner to get an idea of whether or not it would be a problem for the intensity stabilisation.  More data is required.

The beam pointing for the Innolight NPRO was measured.  Most of the variation is in the horizontal direction during a 2-hour warm-up period.  The output beam size variation is quite small (about 1%).

Both Rich and I are getting some details together for controlling the Innolight NPRO digitally.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>

Advanced LIGO Thermal Compensation

I have analyzed the fundamental mode shape of the Advanced LIGO arm cavity, using Juri Agresti's basic FFT code, which quickly and easily models single cavities, with thermoelastic deformations of the mirrors included (as calculated by my FEMLAB model).  At very low power the code predicts the correct Gaussian mode.  At high power, the modes remain Gaussian, but with a spot size on the mirror of ~5.4cm.  With a ring heater surrounding the back half of the mirror, it was possible to restore the 6cm Gaussian spot size with high precision, as determined both by direct comparison of the mode with a Gaussian and by monitoring the power buildup of the cavity for fixed input beam.  This implies that direct compensation of test masses can maintain the arm cavity mode shape, although changes to the higher order mode spectrum still require study.

Stable Recycling Cavities

It is possible to design stable signal recycling cavities such that the coupling of the gravitational wave sidebands out of the arm through the signal cavity is independent of the thermal lensing in the ITM, to first order.  In these configurations, the sidebands exiting the interferometer remain gaussian, and are extracted efficiently, although the spot size changes with the thermal lens.  These configurations are likely to minimize the TCS requirements as far as GW sideband extraction efficiency is concerned.  Cavities having this property are practical for km-scale recycling cavities and for the intra-cavity telescope design by Guido Muller.

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

VERTEX LAYOUT

I have added the IO beam line, steering mirrors for the PO telescopes, OMMT, and an output modecleaner.  Calum has a conceptual drawing of the PO mirror suspension, which I will incorporate.

Other Laboratory R&D

No report this week.

For additional information about this report, contact S. Whitcomb or P. Lindquist