Weekly Report for Week Ending March 16, 2006

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

Due to the LSC Meeting March 20, 2006, there will be no LIGO Executive Committee meeting scheduled this Monday.

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report. LSC Meetings currently in progress.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

LSC MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports

No report this week.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was conducted Thursday, March 16, 2006. The following were among the issues discussed:

Contract for CES Kinetic Façade—the contract has been awarded.
SEC Construction—Building nearly enclosed, but there is still some fairly noisy equipment on site disrupting S5 operations.
Property—Capital equipment at Livingston has not been tagged in accordance with policy (within five working days). Corrective action is being discussed.
Teleconferencing—a brief conversation with the president of Accuconference is scheduled immediately following this meeting to discuss options relative to recent service issues.

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 (Luna)

>From: Rod Luna <rluna@ligo.caltech.edu>

Updated Hanford inventory in the Caltech's property records system.
Provided assistance to the General Computing Group with the shipping of 5 Laptops and 3 Projectors for the LSC meeting @ LHO. Account Number LIGO.DIR 1.1.1 NSFLIGO.FY02ON.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

No report (at Hanford for LSC meeting).

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

Week Ending

March 16, 2006

Out

Packages

Faxes

Worked on old stack of MOU's/Progress Reports (checked for database entry, electronic copies and hard copies on file).
Total volume of incoming packages was much higher than normal.
Scanning - Progress continues on scanning of contract closeout files.

COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA Press Here.

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

Working on change order #2 to Cangelosi Ward.
Completed change order #36 to Excel Engineering to add funds to cover pending invoice and submitted it to the vendor.
Received change order #16 to the University of Florida back from routing and submitted it to the vendor.
Completed change order #31 to Galli and Morelli and submitted to the vendor.
Placed various purchase orders for goods and services which included repair of equipment, reprint color charges, reimbursements for various individuals at LIGO sites, and electrical work.
Responded to LSU, Ag Center's request for approval of a change in Principal Investigator.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

Notified by Property Services Department that they require a "justification" whenever expenditures for a fabrication account exceeds the estimated cost for the fabrication which was indicated on the original Fabrication Equipment request by more than 20 percent. This justification or explanation can be in the form of an e-mail to the Property Services Department explaining the reason for the increase, such as scope change, etc.
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>

The contract for the design of the kinetic facade for the LLO Science Education Center (SEC) was awarded to HPD, Inc. Representatives of HPD attended a meeting in San Francisco with Mike Zucker and representatives of the Exploratorium to view their kinetic exhibit models.
The LLO SEC construction remains on schedule, and the building will shortly be fully enclosed (See photo). They still expect about two or three more weeks of noisy construction activities.

The construction of the LDAS structure inside the Staging Building is nearly complete, and movement of the LDAS equipment into the structure is scheduled for next week.
The review package for the HAM-SAS prototype for Galli & Morelli is being reviewed prior to being submitted to the NSF for approval. The NSF should receive this package early next week.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

Worked on the usual new trips, expense reports, reconciling, calendar reservations, and itinerary entries.

>Julie Hiroto

No report.

>Dorothy Lloyd

Processed the usual requisitions for POs and payment request, and approved and submitted the weekly incoming invoices to accounts payable for payment.
Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Advanced LIGO Review Preparations (See Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)).

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

Change request CR-060004 was submitted by Allen Sibley, March 16, 2006. This change request moves budget previously discussed and approved into account WBS 3.12 (LDAS Maintenance) to cover the costs for the new ground-floor LDAS enclosure. The enclosure provides infrastructure (HVAC, electrical, lighting, communications. etc) and sound attenuation for the LDAS complex. Using account 3.12 assures proper allocation of taxes and overhead. Since this request only moves budget into the appropriate account and does not allocate any additional budget, we have not scheduled a meeting of the LIGO Change Control Board. If there are no concerns, the change request will be approved at the end of next week (March 24).

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 27 and I am gathering information for the agenda. All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page.

Prepared numerous appointment and reappointment memos for various Visitors, and Post Docs.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Nothing significant to report this week.

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

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

Duty cycles remain a concern at LHO, with this week numbers (H1 - 77%, H2 - 73%) lower than targeted. As the mean-time-to-lock on both machines appears higher since the HVAC modifications, one more fan was turned on Wednesday morning for the LVEA to bring us back to 75% of the air flow of pre-commissioning levels. We will monitor the effect on duty cycles in the coming week and hope the mean-time-to-lock drops below its current ~1-1.5h value.

Some elog highlights are bulleted below:

the 2k MC servo gain was varying by 6dB on measurements, so the MC servo card was swapped out
TCS enclosure for the 4k improved laser power and stability markedly
duty cycle and range plots, with extrapolation to the end of the run
the H1 steering mirror was found moved to new place, not near historical location, and the IFO was aligned around this
Burst studies were made on H2
dust levels on ISCT10 indicated some problem which was later attributed to gaps in the shroud
links regarding duty cycle (Garofoli): "I now [calculate] a rolling lookback of the statistics over the past 7 days. Additionally, these are archived so that you can get the one for this week. To find the current day's archive, just look in the first link directory (ie here). -J.G."

Outreach (D. Ingram)

Raab and Ingram hosted a meeting of the LHO Local Educator Network (outreach advisory group) on 3/15. Josh Myers and Kyle Ryan hosted a pair of Pasco High students for job shadows on 3/6.

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

S5 run summary (Franzen)

The week offered us several challenges: - It was observed that the power in the 60 Hz harmonics were elevated more than an order of magnitude. This of course reduced our inspiral range and also affected the AS_Q histogram in the Figure-Of-Merit 2 display. The cause was found to be due to a ground loop at IOT1.

During the week the IFO experienced several lock-losses during seismically quiet times. The lock-losses were sometimes preceded by WFS oscillations. The cause was found to be railing of the RBS servo, which in turn was caused by misalignment of the beam on the REFL PD. The cause of this probably originated in the installation of the lower PSL PZT mirror last week.
After the two items described above were resolved the system has been behaving rather well, also thanks to the low seismic noise. The exception was the occurrence of 1/f DARM noise in the 40-300 Hz region for 30 minutes around midnight Tuesday to Wednesday. This phenomena has been observed a few times earlier and the cause is still unknown.
fb1 frame files were found to be corrupted. The data was recovered from fb0 frames.

The major maintenance activities were:

HEPI development,
SUS channels added to daq,
framebuilder 3511 was installed, and
MC WFS relief servo was reinstalled

LLO Outreach (Thacker)

Narrowed the final Exploratorium Exhibit purchase to candidate list of 8. Met with new Exterior Exhibit contractor at the Exploratorium location to discuss direction of effort.

LLO LDAS (Yakushin & Giardina)

(Yakushin)

Storage/Condor/LDAS admin:

Made more layouts for the computing equipment in the new location taking into account the actual constraints of the room under construction;
Scheduled StorageTek/SUN engineer to help us with the tape robot move next Friday;
Scheduled tape drive firmware to be upgraded to RQ.35.405 during next Tuesday maintenance period. StorageTek engineer also recommended to upgrade tape library code to 3.1.0.
Received final quotes for 1 year service contract for the SUN equipment, working on PO;
Installed lscsoft on the nodes on Kipp's request;
Fixed fftw3 rpm on ldas-grid on Kipp's request;
fb1 produced no more frames with incorrect checksum after last week daqd crash and restart; Disk2Disk and create RDS scripts are switched back to use fb1 frames; users are notified that they can resume using /frames;
made /cluster visible to ldas-jobs on Shourov's request;
restored data on node209 after its disk was replaced.

(Giardina)

ejected tapes for storage and imported tapes into L700 * ejected tapes for shipment to CIT and imported tapes into L700 * LDAS external network connection was lost temporarily due to power outage for electrical work in new LDAS room. Internal and framebuilder connections remained up.
working with Lisa on the 3511 setup.
preparations for LDAS move to new location

Data analysis (Yakushin):

1) Continue testing coherent version of waveburst on S4 data; the results will be presented at the LSC meeting; 2) Working on APS slides for my S5 burst talk. The current draft is available at http://ldas-jobs.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/APS.

LLO General Computing (Giardina)

finished with installing base image for Janeen's new PC, however having issues with Solidworks install complaining about file missing from disk 3.
main gate appears to be working correctly, at least for now. Found a loose wiring connection, and replaced a faulty component with one from the side gate. Rich ordered and received replacement and one spare.
one of the Foundry EdgeIron switches in the OSB failed. East side offices were without network connection for most of the morning. Shannon replaced inactive connections on the working switch with those that were from the east side offices.
removed paper jam in copier, and straightened piece that was causing jams
temporary power outage for new LDAS room electrical work caused GC network outage in part of high bay building. LDAS lost its connection to outside world, but internal LDAS and connection to framebuilder remained OK.
other usual user requests and support

LLO CDS Computing (Bogue)

Worked with Dwayne and Dan to configure the sam-fs filesystem on the backup framebuilder. Dwayne and I are currently working on reconfiguring the daq to give us more look back on that machine.
Continuing to work with brian and folks from hanford to identify and resolve our channel discrepencies.
Finished the initial build of a new server for cds.
Worked with ldas folks on the framebuilder data corruption problem that we had last week. Implemented recommended configuration changes on the framebuilders to support future troubleshooting.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

DDS

See the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

DMT

No report

Absorption Measurements on 4ITM07

Bill Kells

Although all the nails are not quite in the ITM07 "postmortem" coffin, A few outstanding conclusions persist (and are being rapidly sharpened).

1. Our (actually L. Zhang performing all the diligent instrumentation) most refined "absorption scans" of the contaminated ITM07 surface give a mean sampled area (~ 1 cm²) absorption of 12 ppm.

(Note that we have come to realize that the "absorption scan" method we employ is not physically equivalent to the mean surface heating which a LIGO cavity beam would induce. The heating beam size and vacuum /or/ air environment can make crucial differences depending on the nature of the contaminant).

2. A different ~ 1 cm² sampled area of the same mirror, but simply cleaned, and then scanned in exactly the same manner gives a mean absorption of only 0.6-0.7 ppm. In this respect (to cleaning) ITM07 responded to cleaning similarly to the in situ cleaned H1 ITMy.

3. Our calibration piece in this is a surface cleaned, 1" dia. test optic which is well characterized (at Stanford, and in our OTF contamination cavity setup) to have a uniform ~19 ppm absorption characteristic of the HR coating itself. When scanned (identical method as in 1. and 2. above) this calibration piece shows a clean pixel histogram peak at 19 ppm.

4. D. Ottaway's latest H1 ITM lensing analysis (LIGO-T050074-01-R) boils his conclusions for ITMx down to: all ifo observations consistent with 1. 13ppm pure HR surface absorption; or 2. 42 ppm/cm pure substrate bulk absorption. If I take the reasonable value of ~4ppm/cm for the actual bulk contribution and the rest being HR, then this HR attributable value is ~12ppm (amazingly equal to that found in 1. above!).

5. Although the mean of all pixel absorptions in the scan 1. (above) is 12ppm, the distribution is highly irregular. ~90% of the pixels in this scan contribute to a histogram peak at ~ 1 ppm (per pixel absorption). However the remaining 10% form a long tail (out to 100s ppm/pixel) above 10 ppm/pixel which dominates the mean absorption. That is, the HR surface is extremely irregular in absorption (strikingly so in comparison to 2. and 3. above), not seemingly characteristic of a uniform [contaminant] film.

Of course, like all examined optical surfaces, ITM07 (which has been sitting around in lab air for months) has a lot of surface "dust" particles on it. Note that, if totally absorbing, only ~ 10 (10 micron)² per cm² could cause the affliction we found in H1. We easily see (with a microscope) this [gemetrical] level of "dust”! However due to the details of our absorption scan technique (step size an irregular ~ 100 microns. Probe heating beam dia. > 100 microns, and other factors) it has not yet been possible to absolutely conclude that the scan mean absorption of 12 ppm is entirely due to distinct surface "dust". At this point is appears that there very well may be an anomalous [quasi] uniform component (say ~ 1-2 ppm) as well.

Note from Dennis Coyne: This means that we can not currently say conclusively whether outgassing in the current vacuum environment coats the optic at a level which could be detrimental for ADL. Liyuan and Helena will try to remove just the dust particles and see if the subsequent absorption level is ~0.6 ppm. It is not clear whether any techniques for removal of just the dust will work.

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO Commissioning

Rana, Rob and Sam made some progress in restoring full lock. They can reliably lock the DRMI+2ARMs interferometer in the anti-spring state with offset-CARM; acquisition was taking 1-3 minutes, and lasting until they broke something. They could engage the digital path of the CM servo, but not the AO path. They continue to be stymied by LSC signal electronics problems, (see electronics section below) and are working through them.
Dan and Monica are measuring the couplings from various channels into DARM, including secondary loops, mirror alignments, oplev loops, etc. They have determined suitable excitation levels. Now they just need to lock the IFO and start measuring couplings. They have been thwarted so far by various problems in the scripts, AWG, test points, etc, and are working through the problems.
Osamu and Steve adjusted the alignment and minimized the reflected light in the Mach Zehnder and input mode cleaner systems.
Alan is circulating a new draft of the 40m optical response paper; hope to submit for LSC review in the next couple of weeks.

IFO Modeling

Monica continues to "commission" the length control servos in her e2e simulation of the full 40m/AdLIGO optical configuration. She is measuring the OLTFs of the different loops with DARM on and off and radiation pressure on and off. MICH looks sensible and she is moving on to SRC. She found the problem with her POX and POY loops that made single arm locking difficult, and is following up on it.
Rob is back from NAOJ Japan, where he worked on a prototype displacement noise free interferometer, with Seiji, Yanbei and Keiko. Two publications are in the works.
Rob has implemented RF readout in his Optickle modeling tool (matlab-based, with full implementation of the Corbitt et al quantum formalism).
Osamu is working on AdLIGO noise calculations.

DC Detection Development

Ben talked with Todd and procured some of the electronics that are needed for the DC readout scheme. The OpLev chain is preferred by Rana for DC detection alignment, but none of the boards are here. He spoke with Jay, who felt that we should all sit down and design the system, then decide which electronics we should make based on our requirements. Ben will get a meeting together with Rana, Sam, and Jay to make this happen soon.
Sam added an optical chopper onto his DC readout alignment control test beamline, to diagnose the anomalous loss of phase. He traced most of it to the oplev QPD readout board which has two 800 Hz butterworth LPFs. He's thinking about how to fix this in a modified board for the final system, in consultation with Jay and Rana.

Electronics, Controls, Computers

Ben, Dan and Rana have been looking at the noisy LSC demod boards. Ben and Rana measured the noise with different LO input levels, and the amount of RF leakage, and discovered some anomalies. The demod board for ASPD 166MHz signal appears to be a factor of 10 more noisy than the other boards. Ben is testing it at the Wilson House to determine if the fault lies in the board. Meanwhile, Rana is finding various problems with both the demod boards and the PD DC Interface Boards, which are crucial for lock acquisition.
Ben entered the LSC Whitening Interface Board connections at 1X2-2-12 into the ilog.

Lab Infrastructure

Bob cleaned the beam tubes for the PSL enclosure, and Steve is installing them. Should be done by next week.
Steve is experimenting with turning off the HEPA filter in the PSL enclosure during commissioning to see what effect is has on the Mach Zehnder drift and the laser noise.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Since our last report, we have finished installing the ring-damped mirror and re-aligned the interferometer. We closed the chamber, and Akira has taken some preliminary data. Details to follow.

LASTI (Ottaway)

No report.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Yamamoto)

e2e weekly meeting

This week, we had an informal meeting with Kentaro Somiya from AEI to discuss about the modeling of IFO with optical spring.

Scattering noise simulation ( Hiro Yamamoto )

Transfer functions from various injection points (PRM, SRM, ITM(AR and HR side) and ETM) with phase and amplitude modulation to the CR amplitude at the dark port were calculated. The ratio of these transfer functions and the DARM to the dark port CR amplitude signal will be used to set the final requirement of the upper limit of the scattering field back injection. One problem found is that the frequency dependence of the noise transfer function is different from the DARM transfer function. The calculation was carried out without optical spring, because there is no adv.LIGO simulation available which has optical spring and LSC servo to stabilize the system. The effect of the optical spring will be inferred using 40m simulation with optical spring with a minimal LSC servo.

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro Yamamoto, Melody Araya)

At the last optics modeling meeting, several important topics were pointed out, including the loss budget in an arm), for which this SIS can shed a light by simulating a FP configuration. Programming is still going on to fill the lower level ...

40m modeling (Monica Varvella)

Comparison of different open loop transfer functions for the degree of freedom DARM with and without radiation pressure and with and without the MICH loop closed. The DARM stability seems not be affected by the MICH loop. The same comparison has been done for the MICH degree of freedom with and without radiation pressure and with and without the DARM loop closed. In this case the DARM affects the MICH loop not allowing to cross the UGF; probably it is necessary to take into account also the contributions of the recycling mirrors.

Mechanical Simulation for adv.LIGO (Sany Yoshida)

Analyzed e2e modeling of Mode Cleaner transmitted light Yaw motion. Actual DAQ seismic motion recorded at LLO was fed as seismic input to the e2e MC box. HAM table Yaw motion was created in accordance with the model reported last week (i.e., create table top yaw as “floor yaw to table top coupling” plus “additional phase delay on table top due to differential translational motions ’). Power spectrum of the computed MC transmitted Yaw motion has a broad peak in 0.5 1.5 Hz while the corresponding experimental MC transmitted beam Yaw signal (DAQ) has a valley in the same frequency region. Computed MC optic’s yaw motion also has a valley in this frequency region. The reason for this discrepancy in MC transmitted Yaw spectrum between computation and experiment is unknown.

Modeler Coding (Hiro Yamamoto, Bruce Sears)

Hiro modified the fast DRM code so that scattering light can be injected to the side of mirrors facing to inner side of a Michelson cavity. Bruce is improving the box file loading code by utilizing the knowledge of the new box file format.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Brown:

Looking at results of S5 BNS search
Inspiral review duties for S3 and S4 BNS and MACHO - Working on parameter estimation for EMRIs - Wrote a chapter for the book "Workflows in e-Science"

Chatterji:

Performed time shift study of double coincident H1H2 and triple coincident H1H2L1 triggers from the online S5 Q Pipeline analysis through Feburary 1.
Prepared preliminary slides about the online S5 Q Pipeline analysis for the April APS meeting.

Mandic:

I have performed several tests and updates to the S4 all-sky stochastic analysis, including hardware injection error estimates, marginalization over the calibration uncertainties for the all-sky result, study of the frequency dependent theoretical sigma etc.
I have completed several tests suggested by the review committee, and I have produced several figures and tables to be shown at the LSC meeting (and potentially at the APS meeting). I have also posted a new version of the S4 all-sky paper on the stochastic ILOG.

Mendell:

StackSlide results for the S4 H1 and L1 data from 50 to 340 Hz are under going review for presentation at the LSC and APS meetings. I am working on these talks and a paper with S4 results using the PowerFlux, StackSlide, and Hough methods.

Shawhan:

Calculated sensitivities for S4 all-sky burst search, incorporating uncertainties from fit parameters and calibration.
Prepared for LSC Meeting and Burst Group face-to-face meeting.

Sutton:

I've spent the week putting most of the finishing touches on the paper for the coherent analysis consistency test presented at GWDAW. The main efforts have been to fix the whitening by training on data excluding the injected signal, setting up simulations to check the whitening and various test statistics, and a lot of editing of the paper.

Weinstein

Continuing the review of the inspiral analysis.
Yet another reading of the LIGO-TAMA BNS paper.
Review of Alex Dietz' GWDAW paper.
Continuing work with Lisa on the ringdown search, including a review of her GWDAW paper.

Yakushin:

1) Continue testing coherent version of waveburst on S4 data; the results will be presented at the LSC meeting;

2) Working on APS slides for my S5 burst talk. The current draft is available at http://ldas-jobs.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~igor/APS.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Maros for Blackburn)

LDAS

LDAS is now using version 4.0.3 of GNU's compiler. This required all programs under /ldcg to be recompiled. On the first night of running, the system was observed to be considerably slower. Looking at what changed, the slowness could be attributed to some debugging code that was committed to CVS. It has since been removed.

An issue remains with flushing data from globus sockets which prevents receiving all commands that were sent in a rapid succession.

System tests were performed on version 1.8.115 of LDAS.

TCLGlobus

Investigation of a rare core dump (once a month or less) revealed a possible logic error with the TCL Channel interface for globus sockets. The library now unregisters the channel from TCL before calling globus_xio_close( ).

Some work has been done to address the memory leak seen. Further testing is required to establish how much of the memory leak has been eliminated with this work.

GRID COMPUTING

Successfully ran Inspiral pipe work flows to completion on three OSG 0.4.0 sites for the first time: OSG_LIGO_PSU, TACC and UIOWA-OSG-PROD.

A problem was discovered with FC4 latest kernel (2.6.15-1.1833_FC4smp) which causes Condor 6.7.17 DAGMan/Condor-G to have problems processing events. Going to revert to version 2.6.15-1.1831_FC4smp of the kernel to find a stable platform.

Attended an ITB telecom related to roll-out of ITB 0.3.6. Attended a VDS telecom to examine a proposal to alter the metadata in GridCat used by vds- get-sites to enable correct worker node path to VDS. Attended a storage telecom on SRM and OSG storage developments.

Successfully validated the Inspiral pipeline work flow with a pre- release of OSG 0.3.6 installed on an OSG integration test host: CMS_BURT_ITB.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

Tried to help isolate problems on LLO's fb1.
Worked on coming up with a better SQL query for LSCdataFind.
Setup LLO /home and started rsync of /archive/home to it.
Started tracking down files that hadn't made it to CIT via LDR.
Freed up a bunch of slots in LLO's L700 tape silo.
Standard S5 L0 frame file ingestion.

(Phil Ehrens)

Various certificate related duties.
Support for LDAS developers.
Ongoing development of integrated monitoring/logging/notification toolset.
Helped move 13 nodes and did a bit of cabling in the machine room.

(Erik Espinoza)

Installed rack mount rails on two racks.
Worked with Stuart and Phil to move 78-90 to second rack.
Submitted bugzilla (RH) for kernel bug 185481 and 185655.
Ordered RMA for CPU's from ASA Computers.
Replaced CPU's on node329, no affect.
Replaced disk1 on node151, back in operation.
Configured temptrax temperature monitoring system. Will put probes in place soon.
Updated kickstart for Ganglia support.
Filled out TAR for CondorWeek.

(Stuart Anderson)

Helped with analyzing fb1 frame writing problem at LLO.
Started Ganglia on the new CIT cluster.
Submitted several problem reports/queries to the Condor development team.
Helped analyze problem with latest LDRdataFindServer patch and reverted it due to performance problems.
Started staging the S5 L1 RDS frame data into the LDAS-CIT cluster internal disk storage for faster access.
Generated an updated list of S5 files that LDR failed to transfer to CIT.
Helped prep the CIT computer room for acceptance of another 77 Opteron nodes.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

Coordinated power setup to new cluster and servers.
Had new Gigabit Foundry switch installed.
Brought two pcarids from Caltech online.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

Made more layouts for the computing equipment in the new location taking into account the actual constraints of the room under construction;
Scheduled StorageTek/SUN engineer to help us with the tape robot move next Friday;
Scheduled tape drive firmware to be upgraded to RQ.35.405 during next Tuesday maintenance period. StorageTek engineer also recommended to upgrade tape library code to 3.1.0.
Received final quotes for 1 year service contract for the SUN equipment, working on PO;
Installed lscsoft on the nodes on Kipp's request;
Fixed fftw3 rpm on ldas-grid on Kipp's request;
fb1 produced no more frames with incorrect checksum after last week daqd crash and restart; Disk2Disk and create RDS scripts are switched back to use fb1 frames; users are notified that they can resume using /frames;
Made /cluster visible to ldas-jobs on Shourov's request;
Restored data on node209 after its disk was replaced.

(Dwayne Giardina)

Ejected tapes for storage and imported tapes into L700.
Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT and imported tapes into L700.
LDAS external network connection was lost temporarily due to power outage for electrical work in new LDAS room. Internal and framebuilder connections remained up.
Working with Lisa on the 3511 setup.
Preparations for LDAS move to new location.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

Data corruption in the CDS raw LLO frames from the fb1 framebuilder were resolved when the daqd restarted. This caused no gaps in the archived raw data or with RDS generation, since these used good frames from the LLO backup framebuilder fb0. All LDAS services are running smoothing at LHO and LLO.

(Ben Johnson)

Fixing data gaps due to RLS registration failures at Caltech.
Turned on dmt archiving again.
Working on tape catalog program again.
Verified that cronjobs require a valid /etc/shadow entry on the grid machines to operate.
Working on getting PO for $14k Sun support contract for LHO.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

Ordered faster SCSI drives to upgrade GC fileserver
Benchmarking / testing new opteron workstation
Troubleshot desktop
Continuing work on new mailserver w/ imap and ldap
Ordering copper gig-eth cards for enoki and lancelot

Livingston:

(Dwayne)

Finished with installing base image for Janeen's new PC, however having issues with Solidworks install complaining about file missing from disk 3.
Main gate appears to be working correctly, at least for now. Found a loose wiring connection, and replaced a faulty component with one from the side gate. Rich ordered and received replacement and one spare.
One of the Foundry EdgeIron switches in the OSB failed. East side offices were without network connection for most of the morning. Shannon replaced inactive connections on the working switch with those that were from the east side offices.
Removed paper jam in copier, and straightened piece that was causing jams -Temporary power outage for new LDAS room electrical work caused GC network outage in part of high bay building. LDAS lost its connection to outside world, but internal LDAS and connection to framebuilder remained OK.
Other usual user requests and support

Hanford:

(Christine)

Tried to test the backup network again. It has deteriorated since the last time we looked at it. Now I am unable to ping ESnet and vice versa. Looked like it was a bad connection on the media converter at PNNL, but when that was fixed and I tried to test again the link dropped out the moment I switched to the backup circuit. I've ordered new media converters and PNNL is again trying to clean up the fibers between our sites. PNNL and Charter have a planned 2 hour down time of our primary network sometime on Sat. or Sun., 3/18 or 3/19. They still have not given me a final schedule. PNNL is working with me to try to get the backup network working prior to the planned down time.
Richard installed a new video/audio server in the Auditorium for the LSC. I'll send out an email to lsc-all with the IP address when I know which sessions will be broadcast.
Helped two users run pine to edit their Inbox on the mail server. Several emails with blank headers have been going around and Netscape is unable to handle them.
Setting up for LSC. The projectors won't arrive until Friday morning. Fortunately, there are only two meetings on Friday so I have enough projectors and laptops on site to cover those meetings. I've installed a NAT router for the Auditorium wireless and have setup a third wireless AP in the Auditorium building. I had to set up wireless and wired again in the Staging building for meetings.
The Cisco sales rep came to visit me and promised to send me the names of Cisco partners in WA, but I haven't heard from him yet. I've sent a follow up email. Cisco said they would renew my support contract, but I haven't received any notification that it has been done. I've left phone and email messages. I think I won't replace this equipment with Cisco equipment.

CIT:

(Christian)

Created a Dual Boot system with Windows 64 and 32 bit for Peter's new system. I also installed configured Mathlab to work on both operating systems.
Installed and configured Webcam XP for Dennis - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
Called Dell support to have Phil's motherboard checked and replaced on laptop.
Replaced Mike's old CRT monitor with a new LCD monitor - I replaced Hiro's old CRT monitor with a new LCD monitor.
Re-imaged laptops that were returned to the loaner pool this week.
Worked with Mike P. and Dwayne on getting a new image of Solidworks for installation.
Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Veronica)

LIGO: Investigated a report of a choppy video stream, played with various player bandwidth settings so see how the (mis)match between the default setting and the actual available bandwidth affects the video quality. We normally encode the stream for the T1 bandwidth so it may get choppy over a slower connection. Part of the solution would be to provide several versions for different connections. Installed security patches on the Windows servers. Updates of the CIT and MIT webpages. Continued working on the Elba website. Taped a talk by Sam Waldman and made a set of DVDs for TAPIR, other video editing work. A high-resolution image for a publisher.
LSC: Continued support of the March meeting website and applications. Troubleshooting of the registration and the online credit card payment apps. Updates of the technical papers website and database.
CaJAGWR: Video of the last talk, compressed it for streaming. Website updates.

(Larry)

Working on a number of procurement items. Finally, got the paperwork going for the CISCO maint. contract put in. Ordered a number of tools to help in some of the rewiring we will be working on in the next couple of weeks. Ordered misc. items such as batteries, disks and cables for other groups. Most of the items have already been received and delivered. Still working on the SUN matching grant list. Just waiting for input from one more group. Ordered an update to the streaming video server software.
Reworked some of the cabling in one of the closets. Mainly, in preparation to redo the whole thing and get it cleaned up.
Still troubleshooting the dual core quad cpu box from Monarch. I've been sidetracked on to a number of other items and have not been able to devote any large segments of time to it.
Worked with the group on the streaming video server issue. We discovered that there are settings which can cause problems on reception of the video also, slow connections up to the lowend DSL speeds can have performance issues. New videos will be setup to operate at different speeds. Also, we are setting up a new server and updating the s/w.
Spent a great deal of time performing disk recovery and repair.
Resolved a number of account issues. Setup a new account. Cleaned out a number of e-mail aliases.
Worked the spam filters

Mail Statistics Mar 9-15, 06

Mail Statistics	March 16, 2006
Rejected Messages	31,652
Virus Messages	2,179
Accepted Messages	31,003
Total Messages	62,655

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems, Management

Advanced LIGO Review Preparations

From: Phil Lindquist lindquist_p@ligo.caltech.edu

Positions Summary List – No progress.

LIGO Operations Budget Model (FY 2006 - FY 2008) – No progress.

Projection of Advanced LIGO Operations Costs – No progress.

Project Execution Plan – No progress.

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

Records of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

RODA to Eliminate the Photon Actuator from the baseline (M060032-00) is being signed
A draft RODA to eliminate OSEM sensors for global control OSEMs in the quad (lower 3 stages) is being reviewed

Requirements/Design

Held a systems meeting to discuss relaxed HAM isolation requirements (Peter Fritschel) and optical layout status (Mike Smith, Dennis Coyne, Luke Williams); synopsis here

Interface Issues

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

Nothing significant

Vacuum Compatibility

Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

Seismic Isolation

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

Agenda for the weekly SEI telecom, Friday, March 10, 2:00 pm Eastern, 1:00 pm Central, 11:00 am Pacific time

BSC SEI status, w/ new targets : Ken/ Dennis

Ken has redesigned the displacement sensor target to make use of the thinner high-purity aluminum that we have been able to buy. We will have these made, with the request that they polish the face flat after bolting it to the holder.
Ken has spoken with Ken at ASI regarding the intended use of the blade test fixture, and learned of the purpose of several features shown in ASI's drawing. The test method should be reproducible, albeit requiring a empirically-derived scaling factor to learn the true force. We decided to proceed with assembly and spring testing.
Hardness tests performed on blades and rods.
Blades deformed by 0.004" during hardening.
Joe Hanson at LLO will set up to assemble and test the pods. Ken will send the internal cable, and Jay will send a GS-13 updated circuit board.

BSC work, adaptive modeling and FIR (Rich M)

work concentrating on SUS debugging

ETF platform work

Thermal testing (Brian)

Three thermal sensors plus reference resistor installed in ETF platform's stage 1, and vacuum tests performed. Changes at the several milli-degree level seen when 0.06 dSpace units DC offset turned on. Normal operation at Stanford needs an rms value of about 0.1 dSpace units.
Up to 50 mK change seen on the support table over 10 min test, and about 10 mK at the actuator.
Follow-up work with hour-long tests (to probe full time constant), indicates that the 0.06 dSpace units current should cause 35 mK, implying the normal operation power should result in an actuator temperature change of 0.5 mK.

tickle testing (Matt)

Automatic diagnostics development system (i.e., tickle testing) progress shown here.

Frame damping (Tarm/ Brian)

1 mm thick small square of dyad epoxied between frame and buttress beam, photos here. 60 Hz frame resonance's effect on rX response reduced by factor of 8 or so, as seen here.
Next up: adjust size of damping layer to look for an optimum. The layer currently in use has a k of 5e5 N/m, and if this is implemented (probably by the SUS group) we would need to find a bellows that is less stiff than that.
There is also the question of how and whether the buttress would fit in current table layouts. It might be difficult.
It also appears that the unbolting and rebolting of the lower structure resulted in a factor of ~4 Q change and a half hertz frequency change. Attachment bolts are rubbing in their through holes, and they found that retightening the bolts in situ upped the Q to nearly its old value.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Working on information for Carol & Dwight in preparation for the NSF Review in May.

Sent around a preliminary schedule of discussions for the SUS Workshop at LHO next week. Participated in the RAL readiness review yesterday. Participated in the meeting with Brian Lantz about damping options for the quad structure. Participated in an interview with a mechanical engineer for a position at Caltech with

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

This week I made major revisions and additions to the instruction manual that Calum and I have been preparing for the quad controls prototype. It will be released shortly as T060039-00. I also released (<http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~mbarton/SUSmodels/>) a lot of modeling stuff that I've been working on:

A new version of the modeling toolkit with a fix for a numerical precision issue that's been plaguing some of the new models.
A new version of the quad model that allows for lateral compliance of the blades. This is the first version of the model to give really good agreement for all modes of the controls prototype with all as-built parameters (even the finicky fundamental pitch mode), and is now the preferred version for most purposes.
A new version of the quad model with both pitch and lateral blade compliance. This turns out to be of academic interest only, because the blade torsion effect is negligible (about a 2% perturbation of one higher pitch mode).

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

Bob is cleaning the plate fixture parts, CES has completed additions to the large plates, they are going to plating tomorrow, and final assembly may be complete by the end of next week. We have purchased a smaller assembled lift table, for the LASTI work in early April. Minor modifications will be made to the table, a shipping crate for the fixture, and table, will be ready by this Friday.

From: Ben Abbott <abbott_b@ligo.caltech.edu>

LED failures:

I am waiting for the LEDs that failed at LASTI on Thursday to arrive so that they can be sent back to Honeywell with the others. Once they are received at Honeywell, they will all be autopsied, and if the cause of failure can be identified I will try to make the LED boards that I have fail in the same way. This should determine if the new LEDs are more susceptible than the old LEDs to the perceived failure mode. It will also, hopefully, indicate what should be changed to stop the failures in the first place.

Misc:

I have finished up the layout of a back panel for the PCIX effort. It should be back from Front Panel express tomorrow.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

Although all the nails are not quite in the ITM07 "postmortem" coffin, A few outstanding conclusions persist (and are being rapidly sharpened).

1. Our (actually L. Zhang performing all the diligent instrumentation) most refined "absorption scans" of the contaminated ITM07 surface give a mean sampled area (~ 1 cm²) absorption of 12 ppm. (Note that we have come to realize that the "absorption scan" method we employ is not physically equivalent to the mean surface heating which a LIGO cavity beam would induce. The heating beam size and vacuum /or/ air environment can make crucial differences depending on the nature of the contaminant).

2. A different ~ 1 cm² sampled area of the same mirror, but simply cleaned, and then scanned in exactly the same manner gives a mean absorption of only .6-.7 ppm. In this respect ( to cleaning) ITM07 responded to cleaning similarly to the in situ cleaned H1 ITMy.

Of course, like all examined optical surfaces, ITM07 (which has been sitting around in lab air for months) has a lot of surface "dust" particles on it. Note that, if totally absorbing, only ~ 10 (10micron)² per cm² could cause the affliction we found in H1. We easily see (with a microscope) this [gemetrical] level of "dust" ! However due to the details of our absorption scan technique (step size an irregular ~ 100microns. Probe heating beam dia. > 100microns, and other factors) it has not yet been possible to absolutely conclude that the scan mean absorption of 12 ppm is entirely due to distinct surface "dust". At this point is appears that there very well may be an anomalous [quasi] uniform component (say ~ 1-2 ppm) as well.

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO Coatings

Procured preliminary quotes / designs for the storage cases and the transit cases of Adv. LIGO mirrors. We'll review the designs to see that they meet Adv. LIGO requirements within a few weeks.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

I went over the risk assessment materials again. An updated basis of estimate was forwarded to Dwight.

Thanks to Christian, Mike and Larry for getting the DSP computer up and going. I managed to talk to someone at Xilinx that had a sympathetic ear about my software adventures in getting an evaluation copy of their system generator software. Registration for getting a copy involved being stuck in an infinite loop on their webpage. The software promised to have a nice interface to Matlab. That sorted all that remained was to install the software, or so I thought. After many installations of Matlab, caused by some rather oddball characteristics of Xilinx's software, it would appear that the software does run. I think the problem is that most of their software development takes place on Linux platforms even though a large fraction of their users are Windows based, as the error messages encountered had a distinctly Unix flavour about them.

Auxiliary Optics

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

VERTEX LAYOUT

A preliminary Zemax layout of the 2K IFO was added to the vertex layout file in PDM Works vault.

Luke Williams from UFL has loaded the proposed stable recycling cavity IO beam train into the PDM Works vault. He is developing a conceptual layout of optical lever beams for all the suspended optics in the IO beam train.

SLC

Hiro is still working on obtaining transfer functions for scattered light noise in the ADLIGO RSE configuration with the optical spring effect.

AOS COST

The AOS cost figures have been updated and are being sent to Dwight Carter. I am working on the schedule and the risk assessment.

Controls, Data systems

No report this week.

Other Laboratory R&D

No report this week.

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