Weekly Report for Week Ending April 6, 2006

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, April 10, 2006 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

1.      Announcements

2.      Comments on Weekly Report

3.      LSC Issues (Saulson)

4.      LIGO Lab Operations

  • Administration (Lindquist)
  • Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker)
  • Commissioning (Fritschel), Detector (Coyne)
  • Campus Research Facilities
    • 40 Meter (Weinstein)
    • TNI ( Libbrecht)
    • LASTI  (Shoemaker)
  • Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

5.      R&D and Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)

6.      CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED

  • No open change requests

Special Items:

  • Preparations for Advanced LIGO Review (May 31 – June 2)

Special Announcements:

 

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

  • No site teleconference was scheduled for Thursday, April 6, 2006.
  • There are currently no open action items.  The list of assigned actions updated through December 01, 2005 will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group  (C. Torrie) with shipping of 1 crate to MIT.  Account Number LIGO.PRLAS- 5.16-NSFLIGO.FY02CA.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (R. DeSalvo) with shipping and the preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US Customs Clearance of four accelerometers, two accelerometer drivers, and a balance rod to GALLI & MORELLI in Italy.  Account Number LIGO.TEC-5.16-NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with packing, shipping, and the preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US Customs Clearance of an aluminum cap (old GEO cap) to Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, UK. Account Number LIGO.SUS-5.10-NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
  • Provided assistance to T. Gunter (LHO) with the shipment of five Laptops and three Projectors to Caltech.  Account Number LIGO.DIR 1.1.1 NSFLIGO.FY02ON.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • Nothing significant to report.

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

  • Attempting to get back up to speed after two weeks of personal leave (with very little sleep).  Began processing large batch of presentations from March LSC Meeting.
  • Scanning--Progress continues on scanning of contract closeout files.

 

Week Ending

04/06/2006

In

Out

Packages

13

1

Faxes

28

23

 

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Cronin, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

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

  • Issued purchase orders for various goods and services for individuals at LLO, LHO, MIT, and Caltech. TechMart requisitions are being submitted directly from individuals at the LIGO Livingston Observatory, the LIGO Hanford Observatory, and Caltech.
  • Received the invoice from the University of Pisa and working on completing the order to request for the wire transfer.
  • Received the current A-133 from the University of Florida. The only pending to be received is the University of Michigan, which is still in the works.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Completed report for fiscal year 2006 Operations Award as of the end of March 2006 and posted it to the network.
  • Completed report for Outreach Award as of the end of March, and posted it to the network.
  • Completed report for Visitor Award as of the end of March.
  • Prepared a summary of expenditures for Equipment, Supplies and Subcontracts for the Detector accounts for 1998 to 2002 for Dennis Coyne.
  • 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 LLO SEC remains ahead of schedule due to good weather.  Only the front of the building remains to be enclosed.
  • The contract for Galli & Morelli has been reviewed by the NSF, and the contract was found to be acceptable, but they asked that several flowdown clauses be added.  A review of these clauses by the Office of Sponsored Research concluded that many of them applied to a subaward rather than a subcontract.  The clauses were examined by Dick Seligman and Ed Jasnow, and several were removed.  This revised list was sent to the NSF for concurrence.
  • The costs for the repair of the traffic gate at LLO and damage caused by Hurricane Katrina will be submitted to Caltech's insurance group in the Treasurer's Office for reimbursement.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

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

>Julie Hiroto jhiroto@ligo.caltech.edu

  • Entry of NSF proposal for video instructional materials into FastLane is pending return of Dale Ingram.  Caltech paperwork is being processed in parallel.

>Dorothy Lloyd

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

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

See Advanced LIGO below.

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

Primary effort has been working with Rich Riesen to document the close out of the previous safety audit action items and to prepare the next audit agenda (LLO safety audit is scheduled for the 17th and 18th of April).

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

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by K. Kawabe)

Up until Monday Apr/3/2006 both IFOs were running fine, meeting the S5 target duty cycle (H1 93%, H2 90%).  From Monday on, commissioning activities in coincidence with the LLO commissioning break have been eating up the duty cycle: PEPI, coil driver up conversion measurement, and violin Q measurement, all for H1.  Also new SOHO servo was implemented in H2.

Excavation work for a new bypass nearby LHO has started, making high seismic spikes quite frequent.  This is expected to continue for several weeks.

This week's range and duty cycle update can be found here.

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

L1 Interferometer in S5 (Zucker)

We are in the middle of a commissioning break. Top tasks include rework to HEPI control algorithms, increase of WFS alignment control bandwidth, rearrangement of dark-port and pickoff optics to optimize SNR of auxiliary length sensing, and vibration isolation of the dark port tables to remove spurious seismic/acoustic interactions.  Spectacular progress will be reported next week.

Safety and Security (Riesen)

Found no site nor laser safety concerns this period.

LLO Outreach (Thacker)

4/1  Washington Parish Math/Science Partnership teacher professional development; program plan & execution

4/4  Gilbert Junior High school visit; program plan & execution

4/5  Visit to Springfield High School; program plans & execution

4/6  Frost Junior High program plan & execution

AdL Suspensions and Isolation, Outreach, and Enormous Art (Romie)

Advanced LIGO Suspensions

Working on NSF Review material.

Solidworks on my laptop is badly in need of an uninstall/reinstall. I will be weeding through my 3100 Solidworks files to make file corruption less inevitable, after a fresh install. Currently, my Solidworks Explorer and PDMWorks lock up. Calum has been quite helpful in working around my laptop's infirmity. Dwayne and Shannon are working to install software on a new desktop for me.

Art

Held a meeting about the kinetic art exhibit last week with HPD, the contractor, and the architect, and the designers. We will have a weekly meeting on Thursdays to keep abreast of the progress.

General Computing (Giardina)

  • I finished software installs on Janeen's new PC.  Connected to license server with help of Mike Pedrazza and Shannon
  • changed a users GC password
  • security server Windows XP updates
  • I spoke with Kantech tech support about the bugs we have experienced with the gates.  They told me that we most likely have a wiring problem.  I  will pursue further.
  • other usual user requests and support

LDAS Support (Giardina)

  • ejected tapes for shipment to CIT and imported tapes into L700
  • rebuilt raids on T3-13 and T3-16
  • replaced hdb in node202
  • node2 and node81 were reporting filesystems marked as read-only, reboot seems to have cleared it up.
  • node99 was non responsive.  Removed from rack to troubleshoot and not all LEDs would come on.  Removing the case showed that metal bracket fell across the motherboard.  Will try a new motherboard soon.

Data Analysis (Yakushin)

Storage/Condor/LDAS Admin:

  • Condor was upgraded to version 6.7.18.
  • We resumed using /archive.
  • The attempt to upgrade the firmware on the tape drive was unsuccessful: most likely a hardware problem with the engineer's laptop. We shall try it later again.
  • Working to apply my old database archiving scripts to the segment database.

Data analysis:

  • Continue polishing APS presentation.
  • Continue testing and tuning the coherent waveburst version on S4 data.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

Rolf Bork

Alex has been working with Barker on getting the PEPI control software running at LHO.

DMT

No report

Optic Contamination & Loss

Bill Kells

I am continuing the investigation/analysis of the contamination on 4ITM07, with regard to its particulate nature.  This has expanded to consideration of the general cleanliness situation in LIGO, both now and for AdL.  It is becoming very clear that our combined understanding of LIGO I in situ performance (perhaps beyond what we need to know for LIGO I requirements) is critical to guide AdL.  One new direction in the analysis is to revisit the scans and data we have on AR side absorption, as well as the previous correlation we have seen in scatter vs absorption [points].  For instance if the localized absorption on the HR surfaces is indeed from some "carbonized" dust then we might expect its nature to be quite different on the AR side (~not carbonized, yet present).

Much work continues to pin down the character of the ITM07 loss/contamination.  Previously we have done a couple of OTF scans of this HR surface while simultaneously montioring scatter as well as absorption.  However that was early on (last summer), before we were as puzzled as we are now at the character of the contamination.  We are reviewing the data from those scans to update conclusions.  Also it is evident that an upgrade of the technique ought to be able to determine whether the contamination is "particle like" or "film like".  New measurements to accomplish this are being planned.

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO Commissioning

  • Osamu and Rana are at LLO to help with commissioning activities.
  • Dan is diagnosing the MC WFS's, which Osamu reported to be noisier than before and which Dan suspects were fried by the beam during some work a few weeks ago. He has measured OLTFs of the MC alignment servos, which look ok but he doesn't know what they should be compared to. He and Ben will replace the WFS photodiodes with new ones to see if there's a difference. Ben is currently looking for the stash of YAG444A Quad photodiodes that they used to have at Wilson House.
  • Dan and Monica continue to develop the noise budget software. They are in the process of calibrating the DARM signal using a simple Michelson.

IFO Modeling

  • Monica's e2e model of the full 40m control plant seems to work well. She has measured the OLTFs for all five length control loops. The CARM loop is derived from the signals at POX and POY, and there is an offset (~ 1 pm) from full arm resonance. She is working on undertanding and reducing this. She can now lock all five degrees of freedom, and it maintains lock throughout the 2-second simulation. It takes a good fraction of a second for the fields and the mirrors to reach equilibrium; under investigation.

DC Detection and Vacuum Squeezing Development

  • Rob and Sam glued the OMC PZT-mounted mirror bracket on to the OMC, and locked the OMC to a pickoff beam from the main IFO REFL port. They measured the finesse to be ~ 500 (design is ~ 100); the discrepancy may be due to the polarization of the input beam being wrong. They were not able to lock the OMC to the beam from the small crystal laser, due to too much noise on the laser.
  • That laser was sent out for evaluation/repair by Steve.
  • Next, Rob will assemble the output mode matching telescope (OMMT) and align the whole DC readout beamline (PZT steering mirrors, OMMT, OMC, DCPD) together.
  • Jay has completed a draft of the DC readout control system layout and comments have been received. Design of the system and the boards needed for controls should resume next week.
  • Ben reports that the layout of the DCPD Satellite board is nearly complete. He's just adding some annotation and test points, and it will be sent out to PCB Express for fab.
  • Go assembled his second harmonic generator (SHG) in its oven and enclosure, heated it up, and mode matched the PSL-picked-off light onto it. He observes green light. He is having difficulty locking the SHG cavity because of an oscillation somewhere. He put in a notch at 5 kHz, but a big 120 Hz oscillation remains; and there's lots of acoustic noise from the HEPA filter. Work in progress to lock the SHG cavity.

Electronics, Controls, Computers

  • Ben replaced the 166MHz I&Q demod board in the LSC rack. It was used for the AP 166 signal, but was very noisy. Ben was able to find anything wrong. Meanwhile, the SP 166 demod board was put in its place, so Ben returned this board to the SP 166 slot in the rack. Later, he will do a quick measurement of conversion loss, and check it against the other 166MHz board, and the Minicircuits spec.
  • Matt wrote a suite of IFO Test perl scripts for doing automated IFO diagnostics. He tested them at the 40m lab, then he and Vuk went off to the sites to install them. Rana exercised a mode cleaner test script at the 40m, and Rob is writing a new RestoreXarm script that makes use of the new suite. Rana and Rob plan to develop more scripts to test all the various LSC/ASC systems (oplevs, WFSs, IFO length control loops in various configurations).
  • Rob rewrote much of the LSC lock acquisition code to make use of a state vector in which the various elements of the IFO configuration are encoded in bits. This replaces the clunky " Mode 1, Mode 2" of lock acquisition. Rob augmented Matt's IFO Test suite with some code that reads and changes the bits in a lock acquisition state vector, to make it easier to test, diagnose, and drive lock acquisition sequences from scripts. Also, the input matrix code is now part of the LSC code instead of being a separate routine. All of these changes are still under test.
  • Rana installed a new version of StripTool, and used it to monitor the slow drift of the PSL power. This is basically a replacement for having a fancy mechanical stripchart recorder.
  • Steve noticed that the PSL FSS has been drifting out of dynamic range, requiring some jiggling of the sliders. He is documenting the symptoms to diagnose the problem.
  • Our operator control computers have various kinds of problems, and the whole system needs to be fixed up. Rob is compiling a list of known problems in the 40m wiki.

Lab Infrastructure

  • The maglev turbopump failed on Tuesday, and the pressure in the main vacuum rose to 2.3 mtorr before Steve noticed it. This underscores the need for a working alarm system. Steve doesn't know why it failed, but he was able to restart it. The software interlocks closed the main valve and protected the RGA. Meanwhile, the new replacement maglev is ready to be swapped in when needed.
  • Steve has called in electricians to add more AC outlets around the lab (especially near the PSL) for auxilliary equipment (such as Go's squeezer electronics) without having to run long extension cords and power strips. This is the last action item that came up during the safety inspection in January.
  • Bob will be at MIT next week to help with the quad suspension controls prototype at LASTI.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Nothing significant to report.

LASTI (Ottaway)

Double Triple Experiment

This week we successfully installed a loop gain normalization stage that improves the reproducibility of the measurement. In addition to this we clean up the optical train to remove a time varying offset in the PDH signal.

Controls Quad Prototype

Jay, Rolf and Alex have been visiting this week to implement the LIGO controls for the Quad. The Quad is being prepared for installation into the vacuum next week. In addition to this Brett is performing a modal test of the frame.

Advanced LIGO Internal Seismic

Assembly of stage 0 and stage 2 is rapidly progressing with Lee Cardenas's help

Ponderomotive Effects Experiememt

We were able to increase the power going to the cavity by a factor of ~100 by locking at low power,  and increasing the power while locked. We haven't been able to get to the highest optical rigidity possible yet, since our servo becomes unstable at such high rigidities due to unity gain crossings at ~50 Hz that have no phase margin. The highest optical rigidity we've measured is about 6x105 N/m for a 4 kHz optical spring.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Yamamoto)

40m modeling (Monica Varvella)

The open loop transfer function for the PRC degree of freedom has been simulated : this step was the last one for checking the feedback filters.  The 5 degrees of freedom (PRC, SRC, MICH, DARM and CARM) have been controlled reducing the offset shown by the CARM degree of freedom : seismic motions at ETMX and ETMY  been are turned on during the simulation after the system was set to be stable and also the check of opening and close the servo has been performed; no radiation pressure has been teaken into account by now. The lock is stable till to 2s as the time of the total simulation.

Mechanical modeling for Adv.LIGO (Sany Yoshida)

Using Mark Barton's Mathematica model, created a State Space Matirx in the e2e format to simulate AdvLIGO Mode Cleaner tripple suspension. This SS matrix will be tested with an appropriate e2e file soon. Also started to revise AdvLIGO quad pendulum model using Mark Barton's updated Mathematica model.

Scattered Noise (Hiro Yamamoto)

Transfer functions to estimate effects of scattered lights injected back into adv.LIGO have been calculated.

The ratio of these transfer functions and the DARM transfer function can be used to set the upper limit of scattered lights.  The result is summarized in LIGO Note T060073-00-E.

Adv.LIGO FP modeling (Hiro Yamamoto)

ASC detectors and frameworks are attached in the QuadFP so that Rana and Osamu can study the ASC in a realistic environment with double chain quad suspension and radiation pressures.

Stationary IFO Simulation (Hiro Yamamoto, Melody Araya)

Still the basic physics components and program frameworks development going. No physics yet.

Alfi (Melody Araya)

Some e2e interface bugs in PR have been addressed.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Chatterji:

  • Drafted technical document describing initial Q Pipeline search of S5 data through 2006 Feburary 1.
  • Continued investigation of framebuilder data corruption.
  • Developing Q transform based parameter estimation.

Mendell:

Updated StackSlide S4 results for the April APS meeting were presented to the reviewers this morning, Thu. Apr. 06, 2006.  The final APS slides will be posted next Tue. Apr. 11, 2006.

Shawhan:

  • Continued working with Laura Cadonati to finalize S4 all-sky burst search results.
  • Reviewed the S2 F-statistic pulsar search paper, preparing for posting on gr-qc.
  • Other pulsar analysis reviewing LIGO Data Analysis System

Sutton:

I've spent most of this week preparing my APS talk on the current status of the burst and stochastic searches.  I implemented a faster version of the NetworkSimulator codes for estimating network false rates in bursts searches, and added uncertainty estimates for the rates.  Maria Principe is using these codes to model the LIGO-Virgo Q- pipeline analysis.  I've also done some development work on the xpipeline coherent analysis package, specifically speeding up (vectorizing) the computation of antenna response values, and writing a first version of the waveform extraction function.  I also met twice with Leo Stein to work on the source localization problem.

Yakushin:

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

Efforts were focused on getting FrameCPP to support the same complement of compression modes as FrameL (PR#1828). To help verify the compression modes, several test wave forms were added. They are saw tooth rising (going from a min to a max value with a constant slope), saw tooth falling (going from a max to a min value with a constant slope), saw tooth peak (going from min to max to min with a constant slope), and square wave (stay at min value for half a cycle then go to max value for the remainder of the cycle). There remains a point of discrepancy for a single test when the square wave data set is being used. It is being investigated.

The test cases that need to be added are 32bit vs 64bit compression and decompression. As data analysis is moving to 64bit systems and compilation, it is important to verify that data compressed on 32bit systems can be decompressed on 64bit systems and that data compressed on 64bit systems can be decompressed on 32bit systems.

TCLGLOBUS

Work is moving forward on the next release of TCLGlobus. Of the 46 functions in the Globus GSSAPI package, 15 have now been tested and documented.  Details can be found at http://tclglobus.ligo.caltech.edu/status-gt-4-0.html.

GRID COMPUTING

Created Pegasus tc.data and sites.xml table for LDAS_GRID to explore using ldas-grid.ligo.caltech.edu as an additional Pegasus pool for work flow analysis. Planning bench mark with Inspiral work flow on this resource in the future.

Installed Condor 6.7.18 on LIGO-CIT-ITB test bed cluster. Successfully executed the Inspiral work flow from a submit host using Condor DAGMan 6.7.18. This fixed issues with submitting jobs in 6.7.17.

Yum updated LIGO-CIT-ITB including installation of kernel 2.6.16-1.2069_FC4

Successfully ran Inspiral pipe work flow to completion on one additional OSG 0.3.6 site uc_t2dev_itb. Ten OSG 0.3.6 ITB sites have been validated to run the LIGO Inspiral work flow. One site doesn't allow the LIGO VO to access resources, and one site has insufficient disk space to run the LIGO binary inspiral test workflow. One remaining site is still to be tested once they have upgraded to the latest Condor release which fixes bugs identified in the current ITB release.

Installed srmcp locally on Worker Nodes of LIGO-CIT-ITB in support of srmcp validation.

Worked with nanohub VO and grow VO validation teams to support validation of their applications.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Worked on bringing up systems/services at LLO after the LDAS equipment was moved to it's new location.  Lots of fibre channel/robot issues after the restart, worked with Dwayne & Igor to sort them out.
  • Met with Sun.
  • At both sites discovered problems with QFS filesystem write performance after deleting large numbers of files.  At LLO, this required us to temporarily use space in /home (which wasn't effected) to store frames.
  • Working on reproducing QFS write performance problem on samtest.
  • Normal ingestion stuff, plus cleaned up from our first unreadable data on a tape shipped to us (from LHO).  I rearchived the data at the site and let the normal process of tape ejection/shipping get the data here, but I had to deal with some overlap from the previous tape (i.e. some data on the bad tape had been ingested).

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Researched the "prelink" utility and reported on it in the admin meeting.
  • Investigated failures and filed PR's for nodes 4,21,32,42,70,72,124,128,247,274,290 and 312.
  • Installed Solaris 10 update 1 on ldas-usndev1 and sunopteron.
  • Added optional prelink handler to shasum module of log_mon.tcl.
  • Added cluster walking logic to log_mon.tcl.
  • Added new admin commands to log_mon.tcl to allow admin to turn off reporting about a node during servicing.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Finished kickstart server for Hanford.
  • Deployed node using hanford/kickstart and got approval from Ben.
  • Contacted Western Digital for more info on WD2500YD Disks.
  • Removed prelink on cit/kickstart.
  • Replaced WD2500YD disks to WD2500SD on node75, node76 and node77.
  • Looked into various kernel panics.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Upgraded all Lab sites to new security patched Condor version (6.7.18).
  • Staged all the current S5 h(t) data into the LDAS-CIT internal disk storage.
  • Received and initially configured the old LLO fb0 3510 at CIT for eventual integration into the CIT /archive filesystem.
  • Worked with Larry to order an additional small CIT cluster network switch.
  • Found a surplussed Foundry network switch to send to LLO.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Restarted condor to cover root level exploit.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • Condor was upgraded to version 6.7.18.
  • We resumed using /archive.
  • The attempt to upgrade the firmware on the tape drive was unsuccessful: most likely a hardware problem with the engineer's laptop. We shall try it later again.
  • Working to apply my old database archiving scripts to the segment database.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT and imported tapes into L700.
  • Rebuilt raids on T3-13 and T3-16.
  • Replaced hdb in node202.
  • Node2 and node81 were reporting filesystems marked as read-only, reboot seems to have cleared it up.
  • Node99 was non responsive.  Removed from rack to troubleshoot and not all LEDs would come on.  Removing the case showed that metal bracket fell across the motherboard.  Will try a new motherboard soon.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • A couple of problems required more than just routine maintenance last week. A T3 raid box froze, crashing the fb1 framebuilder filesystem, and the NFS fileserver daemon needed to be restarted more than three times, due to a network card problem we think. These were fixed without loss of data, and data archiving and RDS generation are up-to-date and running smoothly again at LHO and LLO.

(Ben Johnson)

  • RLS server at LHO crashed Wednesday morning. Pointed Kevin Flasch to the coredump.
  • Assisting in investigation of "slice" errors in the S5 and A4 data.  Early indications point to the ultra-fast (262kHz) and heterodyned FSR channels as being correlated with the problem.
  • Exported + imported 114 tapes. I used my tcatalog program to find empty cabinet slots for them.
  • t3-9 crashed last Thursday evening. There is still a bad batch of files from this time on /frames/full. Disk2Disk told to copy at that time.
  • Unrelated to the t3-9 crash, Disk2Disk is now running on fb0 as its primary source of frame files. This is due to the suspicion that the "slice" corruption affects fb1 more severely.
  • Replaced Sysconnect NIC in gateway with Sun NIC (both Gig-E). The NIC was the LDAS-side NIC.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

  • Helped out with numerous visitor requests
  • Built XP box for highbay camera experiment
  • Spec'd out backup server
  • Spec'd out small laserjet for adv ligo
  • Undergrad computer support
  • Worked on fileserver upgrade as time permitted
  • Rebuilt maz (cvs/web server) after power failure
  • Looking into backup software (especially the freeware 'bacula' utility as it has windows/solaris/linux support)

Livingston:

(Dwayne)

  • I finished software installs on Janeen's new PC. Connected to license server with help of Mike Pedrazza and Shannon
  • changed a users GC password
  • security server Windows XP updates
  • I spoke with Kantech tech support about the bugs we have experienced with the gates.  They told me that we most likely have a wiring problem.  I  will pursue it further.
  • other usual user requests and support

(Shannon)

Hanford:

(Christine)

  • Working on an amended budget that includes the drastic decrease in yearly ISP expenses.
  • Finished re-building the latest MRTG and RRDTool.  The new MRTG shows the same bandwidth usage as the older one.  I'm still working on installing a CGI that builds the graphs using the RRDTool database.  RRDTool captures data near real-time and can be displayed down to one minute averages instead of the 5 minute averages of MRTG alone.
  • Worked with Larry on going over changes to the new GC AUP.

CIT:

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Videotaped and burned DVDs of the last seminar.  Updates to the Elba website. LIGO website updates.
  • LSC:  Postings of the presentations from the March meeting.  Updates to the webpages of the technical papers. Issues of bouncing email; updates of the mailing lists.
  • CaJAGWR: Videotaped the last seminar by Tarun Souradeep, compressed it for streaming. Updated the website.

(Christian)

  • Installed the latest Microsoft Office patches on Helena's laptop.
  • Created a backup of Ken's workstation.  Millikan - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
  • Working on replacing Linda's wireless card on her laptop.  Also, I've created a backup laptop for Linda to temporarily use so I can format and reconfigure her current laptop.
  • Continuing research on finding a particular backup software that can work with different operating systems.So far we have a couple that do work and are inexpensive.

Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

  • Worked most of this week configuring a new rack mount server to run with 64bit version of Server 2003 to run with DCC database software. I ran a test loading the 64bit version of the software, but came across many hardware compatibility issues that require a lot of time to get the 64bit OS loaded. After getting the OS to run I loaded the SQL server software which I came across many issues trying to connect to synergy database.  This now confirms that DCC software will have to run on the 32bit version of server 2003. I have a few more tests on ways to backup this server before we put this server into production.
  • Called in to Dell's tech support, for Linda Turner's laptop. This required a lot of time on the phone going through many diagnostic tests trying to get her laptop to work, before they would send out a replacement part to correct the issue.
  • Continued work on the spam filters searching for false positives, and adding some additional rule sets.
  • More than usual onsite misc. user support, that consisted of networking, software, email, dhcp, and printing issues.
  • Recovered some Solid Works files for Calum Torrie. We are having problems getting the vault to recognize these files as solid works drawings. This is an on going project.

(Larry)

  • Continue working procurement issues. Ordered more items for the different groups.  Presently. going over SUN equipment items to be purchased.  Waiting for some of the conference equipment to get back so I can purchase a new projector and a bulb for one of the old projectors.
  • Worked with Albert and Christine in modification for the new AUP that will be going out in the near future.
  • Resolved a couple of e-mail issues. Mostly modifications to aliases and cleaning up lock files.
  • Rebuilt a couple of SUN connections. Also, moved a LIGO computer back on to the LIGO network.
  • Went through the last of the machines that had been hacked in last months incident.
  • Assisted the DCC in a number of postings and modifications.
  • Worked with Mike a little on the testing of the new servers.
  • Went through the Monarch machine again. Still can't find the problem.  They are suppose to be sending out a new mother board but I've not seen anything from them.
  • Resolved a network problem. We had a couple of processes go south on some machines which basically caused a DOS attack on one of the servers.  Once the machines were reset things were fine.
  • Resolved a few file issues for different people.
  • Went over conference logistics with others in the GC group. Just trying to improve the conference support.  This will be a continual process as the conferences/meetings increase in size and frequency.
  • Finalized the backups for the home accounts and finished up the backups for half of the servers. Just a few more to go.
  • Continual work on user accounts and spam filters

Mail Statistics for March 30 - April 05, 06

Mail Statistics

April 6, 2006

Rejected Messages

34,373

Virus Messages

1,865

Accepted Messages

18,454

Total Messages

52,827

 

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems, Management

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

Systems

from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

Records of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

  • Nothing new

Requirements/Design

  • Submitted a request to the Vacuum Review Board (VRB) to remove the vacuum bake of the LVEA and VEA chambers from the ADL baseline plan and cost estimate. After much email discussion the VRB has agreed. A RODA to document this decision is in preparation.
  • Discussions on particulate contamination experience in initial LIGO (LSC session and a special OWG meeting 3/31) have culminated in some funds being set aside in the Facilities Modifications/preparations (FM) subsystem to implement a clean air shower in the test mass (at least) chambers. Much more definition of requirements and conceptual design work is required before we can begin to implement. See also Bill Kell’s report under initial LIGO regarding contamination investigation of ITM07.

Interface Issues

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

  • Nothing new.

Vacuum Compatibility

Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

  • I have been working with Ken Mailand on the assembly of the Quad Adjuster Platfrom. Helping to keep everything on schedule for the trip to MIT next week.
  • I cleaned and baked some magnets for Helena.
  • I cleaned some tooling for Calum.
  • I have been getting together all the tools, spare parts and modified parts that Ken, Calum and I will need at MIT next week.
  • I am repairing the OSEMs that Myron shipped from MIT and will take them with me to MIT next week.
  • I have been cleaning up old scan data files and saving them to CDs.

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

  • Testing continues on the flexible cable and “white cable” in two separate cavities. The 3rd cavity is still not yet in operation.

Advanced LIGO Project Management

from Carol Wilkinson

Preparations for the NSF Review of Advanced LIGO

Preparations for the NSF Review of Advanced LIGO, scheduled for May 31, are progressing. We are slightly behind schedule but can finish in time with some concentrated effort. Subsystem leaders with assignments to complete should make this effort a high priority in order to meet the deadlines. Work is continuing on updating the Basis of Estimates and the Work Breakdown Structure descriptions.

Project controls personnel and subsystem leaders are preparing breakout session presentations for each subsystem for an internal review that will be held from late April to early May.

Cost estimates were frozen on April 5. The end result is about $1.5M higher in base year 2006 dollars than desired, so some judicious trimming in a few specific areas will occur. Contingency analysis continues with the Monte Carlo simulations for determining schedule and cost contingencies.

The NSF is recommending a higher inflation factor than has been traditionally used. This has lead to an evaluation of the escalation factor that will be used by Advanced LIGO. We may present the NSF review team with our preferred escalation factor and ask the review team to recommend the best option.

The Risk Management Plan is under review. The risk plan includes a risk registry of potential events and mitigation efforts that will be tracked throughout the project lifecycle. When the plan is approved, a Risk Management Team will be formed and subsystem leaders will receive risk management training.

The Project Organization Chart has been reviewed by site managers and personnel in lead roles are being assigned. A transition plan to move personnel from operations to the project and back is in the early stages of planning.

The Project Execution Plan is still in very rough draft form and needs some intensive work. Those who were assigned responsibility for sections should work with Carol Wilkinson to complete their assignments by April 12. The most critical sections are those on LIGO and project organization and management, cost and schedule, and risk management. Efforts will be concentrated on those areas to complete a draft by April 14.

Progress Updates

The next update will be for the period March 1 through April 30, due by May 5, unless project controls and subsystem leaders are too busy preparing for the NSF review. Progress update files will be posted on the web and notices will be sent to subsystem leaders in advance of the due date.

Meetings & Reviews

Future near term planned meetings & reviews are indicated in the table below.  Changes since last report are listed in blue. Late or critical items are in red.

 

Date

Sub sys.

Review

Topic(s)

Enabling event(s)

Schedule motivation

Status

Jul 11-13,      ‘05

SYS

SYS Mtg

CDS infrastructure & HAM Isolation Req’s

 

 

Report in progress

12-Jul, ‘05

SUS

PDR, Review 2

Electronics req & design; Focus is on the front end electronics (UK) -- limited Digital controls/electronics (US) review

 

 

Report in progress

~Oct 05

SYS

PDR, Review 1

Engineering & Implementation ('generic') Requirements;
Interfaces
Revised Optical Layout
Optomechanical Layout

completion of generic requirements definition; completion of first draft of ICD; revision to optical layout; establish integrated opto-mechanical equipment layout

timely system level definition enables/helps define subsystem reqmnts & design

 

~ Nov 4, ‘05

SUS

SUS PDR

Review 8

Ribbon/Fiber/Ear/ Bonding PDR

Completion of the ribbon, fiber, and ear and fabrication and bonding design and processes

 

Report in progress

~Dec 05, ‘06

SYS

PDR, Review 2

CDS Infrastructure
Stable Recycling Cavities
Lock Acquisition
Modulation Scheme
Power Induced Instability

Sufficient CDS requirements & concept work (also 7/11-13 mtg)
E2E Modeling for AL
40m Progress on Acq. & Mod.

CDS Infrastructure is key to subsystem electronics req.
Stable cavity is key to IO MMT design

 

~Jan17. ‘06

SUS

SUS PDR Review 9

Wires for MC Triples

 

Timely report to allow progress on MC triple final design work

Report in progress

~Jan 06

IO

PDR Review 1

PDD, Faraday Isolator, RTP-based modulators

SYS PDR?

 

 Work delayed on

FI, allows more

systems to be

reviewed

~Feb 21 , 06

SUS

PDR, Review 5

Triple design

Available SUS/US staff

Enable SUS/US final design phase

 Delayed as Quad controls PT takes preced.

~Feb 22, 06

AOS

AOS DRR/CD

Review 1

Stray light control, PO mirror and telescope, optical lever, initial alignment system

SYS PDR?

Delay stray light control review until other systems can be reviewed at the same time.

Delayed from Oct. to allow review of

add. systems.

~Mar 06

IO

PDR Review 2

Mach-Zender, Adaptive mode matching, Mode Matching Telescope

Determination of whether a stable recycling cavity will become part of the AL baseline; SYS PDR 2

 

 Waiting for stable

RC decision

~April 11, 06

SEI

HAM isolation req’s review

Isolation requirements in HAM chamber

 

Need before reviews on single stage stiff system and SAS

Delayed by preparations for NSF review

~April 13      ‘06

SEI

CDR on single stage HAM SEI

Evaluation of single stage ISI design against revised requirements

HAM Isolation req’s review

Need for NSF baseline review in May

Delayed by preparations for NSF review

~April 06

SUS

PDR, Review 6

quad controls prototype test results
ribbon process/design

completion of LASTI testing; may need to have partial review with quad PDR before end of testing

timely incorporation into final design effort on the noise prototype

 

~May 06

COC

PDR

 

 Metrology, Handling fixtures, Coating, Cleaning Process, Optics prelim. design

SYS PDR?

 

 

~June ‘06

SUS

PDR, Review 3

Quad design

Completion of the quad controls prototype assembly; installation at LASTI

timely transfer, to RAL & UB efforts, of lessons learned from the controls prototype

 Delayed until shipping to LASTI.

June ‘06

AOS

AOS DRR/CD Review 2

 Thermal Comp., Photon drive

SYS PDR?

 

 Moved forward

 for timely finish

of AOS CDR’s

~Mar 07

SEI

HAM Critical Design Review

Recommendations w.r.t. HAM prototype development based on ETF results, single stage analysis, and SAS results

 

Delay timely decision on proceeding with SEI/HAM prototype

 Delayed from Aug.

TBD

SUS

PDR, Review 7

BS, FM/ITM SUS design
RM design
non-cavity SUS

design work completion (has yet to start on FM/ITM, not mature for RM)

 

 

 

Advanced LIGO Review Preparations (Lindquist)

Positions Summary List­Updated to reflect information provided so far and reissued.

LIGO Operations Budget Model (FY 2006 - FY 2008) ­Updated to reflect information provided so far and reissued.

Projection of Operations Costs during Advanced LIGO­No progress.

Projection of Operations Costs Post Advanced LIGO Construction­No progress.

Seismic Isolation

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

Advanced Ligo Seismic Isolation Prototype Assembly Status

We have received all the machined parts for stage 0 and completed the assembly. We are in the process of assembling stage 2. http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/~kmason/SEI%20machining/stage%200%20Assembly/

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

 

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Working on NSF Review material.

Solidworks on my laptop is badly in need of an uninstall/reinstall. I will be weeding through my 3100 Solidworks files to make file corruption less inevitable, after a fresh install. Currently, my Solidworks Explorer and PDMWorks lock up. Calum has been quite helpful in working around my laptop's infirmity. Dwayne and Shannon are working to install software on a new desktop for me.

From: Calum Torrie ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu

 

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I'm working with Calum Torrie on site installation tooling for the quad suspension.

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

 

From: Jay Heefner jay@ligo.caltech.edu

AdL SUS Quad Controls Prototype

  • The LIGO-based controls for the quad controls are now installed at LASTI and testing of the system is in progress. The system should be fully operational by the end of the week.

AdL SUS Electronics

  • A drfat of the design requirements for the UK provided quad coil drivers has been completed. It should be ready to send to the UK group by the end of the week.

40 M OMC Controls

  • A draft of the system layout has been completed and comments have been received. Design of the system and the  boards needed for controls should resume next week.

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

Installed new Quad suspension controls this week at Lasti. After encountering a few problems with parts shaken loose during shipping, we are now up and running. The new system includes a PCI-X I/O chassis, a dual Opteron realtime front end computer, a dual Opteron Framebuilder and new anti-aliasing and anti-imaging chassis. The EPICS and realtime front end code that is running was all automatically generated from a Simulink model file using our new code generation software.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

 

From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>

 

Input Optics

From: David Reitze reitze@phys.ufl.edu

Modulation (Stacy Wise, Volker Quetschke) -  SW continues testing of the prototype parallel (MZ) phase modulation scheme.  The Mach-Zehnder interferometer is locking to the required stability, and tests of the output optical spectrum, residual differential motion, and frequency noise are underway.  VQ is working on synthesis of sidebands spectra free from intermodulational cross products using complex modulation.

HPTF@LLO (Ken Franzen, Simon Stepuk) - We received the Faraday Rotator from Caltech (from the bake-out); it will reassembled to undergo further testing. During visual inspection we found that the inner surface of the magnet contained a residual white power, perhaps due to some corrosion.  We measured the magnetic field to be within 5% of the value obtained before the baking. However, our measurement was performed with a different device, so we can't be certain if the field changed during the bake-out. Also, we have succeeded in modifying the data acquisition and control LabView program of the IPG 100 W fiber laser.

AdvLIGO/iLIGO Upgrade EOM/Faraday Isolator review (Dave Reitze) - We have received the report from the review committee on the FI and EOM and are drafting responses to the action items.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

The beam pointing specification for the power stabilization photodetector was calculated.  This assumed that the suspended mode cleaner would perform to specification and not introduce any additional beam pointing.  The levels were taken from T020027-00-D for a hot cavity.  Other numbers were based on the beam pointing coupling experiments done by Patrick Kwee and Frank Seifert from AEI.  The beam on the power stabilisation photodetector should not wander outside a 400 micron diameter centered on the optimal spot on the photodetector in order for the beam pointing to be negligible.

Otherwise I am still working through the Xilinx training materials.

Auxiliary Optics

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

SLC

Hiro has determined the transfer functions for light injected into various ports in the ADLIGO RSE configuration without the optical spring effect. I am in the process of using that information to analyze the scattered light noise in ADLIGO.

TCS

Phil and I have a preliminary design concept for injecting Hartman sensor beams into the IFO to sample the wavefront distortion due to heating of the ITMs, ETMs, and BS. I have made a preliminary layout in ZEMAX of Hartman telescope beams for sampling the ITMs in the non-folded IFO.

Controls, Data systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

 

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu

 

 

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