Weekly Report for Week Ending April 20, 2006



The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, April 24, 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:

The APS Meeting is this week.  Perhaps because of that, this report is somewhat abridged.


Weekly Report Highlights


LSC Issues (Saulson)


Negotiations continue to finalize the new MOU with Virgo; the most recent discussions were in a teleconference between the LIGO Directorate and Virgo Spokesperson on Thursday 20 April.

At last Friday's LSC Executive Committee meeting (mainly devoted to approving APS talks), we also approved the choice of LSU as the host of the August LSC meeting, and chose the dates of  14-17 Aug 2006 (Mon - Thurs.)

Good luck to all of the speakers at the APS meeting!


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

Received the August 2005 MOUs listed below approved and signed-off by Peter Saulson. These will be forwarded on to Jay Marx for his approval and signature and then submitted to DCC for posting.

MOU

Attachments

GEO

ACF, DAT, LAS, OPT, SUS, Z

Loyola

DAT, Z

Trinity

OPS, OPT, OUT, Z

The Sannio MOU received last week was submitted to Marx for approval and signature.

Carleton, IAP and University of Washington will be signed-off by Saulson after missing information is received.

Working on formatting Embry-Riddle's MOU into the LSC pdf format.

Received and submitted signed-off original to DCC of "Attachment Number 7" of the MOU between Virgo and LIGO.


SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

  • There was a site teleconference Thursday, April 20, 2006.  The following were among the items discussed:
  • Financial Issues - Were experiencing a problem with the LIGO Equipment account and may be switching over to the Caltech Equipment category.  This will require coordination with all and modification of affected procedure documentation.
  • Livingston Science Education Center - Well ahead of schedule.
  • Safety Audit – conducted at Livingston Monday and Tuesday, April 17 and 18; significant improvements over the previous audit were noted and good support from the staff.  No major problems found.
  • Visitors - It is important for visitors at the sites to check in upon arrival especially if their visit necessitated a VISA.  Procedures will be modified as needed to make this more likely.
  • There are currently no open action items.  The list of assigned actions updated through December 01, 2005 (the last update) will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

  • Worked with Property Services to resolve Oracle Problems that affected government purchases from FY'02 to FY'06 (1.6 Mil).
  • Assisted Albert Lazzarini in preparing a loan document for 63 Cluster Nodes and 3 racks going to Washington State University.
  • Tagged LDAS Computer Cluster consisting of 332 nodes.  Account Number LIGO.CITCL-1-NSFLIGO.FY02CA.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • No report.

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

  • Completed processing presentations from the March LSC Meeting.
  • Processed large batch of drawings from ASI.
  • Scanning - Progress continues on scanning of contract closeout files.
  • Activity:

Week Ending

04/20/2006

In

Out

Packages

23

13

Faxes

25

17

 

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Cronin, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

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

  • No report (vacation)

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Prepared summary of expenditures and current commitments for the BSC and HAM chamber accounts for Ken Mason.
  • Worked on updating monthly reports.
  • 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>

  • MIT Subcontract end date extended.  Increased funding in process.

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

  • Ed Jasnow and Jennifer Mertz were at the Livingston site to conduct P-Card training for four members of the LLO staff.  Three of the staff members were present to participate in the training.  At the conclusion of the training, they received their P-Cards.
  • Ed Jasnow toured the LLO SEC to review the construction progress.  The contractor, Cangelosi-Ward, appears to be ahead of schedule and is performing very well.
  • While at LLO, Ed Jasnow contacted the financial representative at DEMCO and concluded arrangements to have them accept electronic funds transfers in lieu of P-Card payments.  This will save a service charge of one and a half per cent on every bill.
  • The purchase of a new passenger van was completed for LLO.  This replaces a pickup truck which was turned in to the GSA.
  • Three copies of the contract for the HAM-SAS were mailed to Galli & Morelli for signature.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

See Advanced LIGO below.

  • The 2nd-half funding for FY06 is approved and in the works at the NSF,
  • The NSF Program Office has approved the Galli & Morelli contract, and it is in the BFA office for final approval.
  • The two-year extension, approved by the NSB on March 31, is in the books and needs only final approval by BFA.
  • The annual GPRA Report targets are scheduled to be entered into the NSF FastLane system in May.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • No open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • A Staffing Committee (SC) meeting was held Monday, April 17, 2006.  The minutes and action items have been posted on the SC web page.  All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page
  • Preparing numerous appointment and reappointment memos for various Visitors, Post Docs, and Term Staff.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

A two-day site safety audit of the Livingston Observatory was successfully completed.  The audit team found that the LLO generally exhibits a safe operation as evidenced by a good safety record.  A few, mostly minor safety related items were identified by the audit team which need to be addressed.  Despite recent hurricanes and on-going building construction, the team noted that the site "housekeeping" was quite good.  A draft audit report will be distributed for comment during the next week.


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


No report.


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


No report.


Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)


CDS

See also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

Rolf Bork

4/13: Began looking into data corruption problems detected on fb1 at LHO.  It look like about 90% of the errors are in data from the fast ADCU on H2. In fact, when the fast ADCUs were turned off over the weekend, no data corruption errors were detected. Alex enabled some diagnostics in fb1 and the fast ADCUs were turned back on during maintenance on Tuesday. Of course, no errors have been detected since (at least as of yesterday). The other change that was made Tuesday was that the Framebroadcaster net was moved to fb0 from fb1. Both Framebuilders run this task all the time, but only one is physically connected to the DMT network at a time. The machine that is connected is subject to retransmission requests from the DMTs, so it is still possible that those requests overloaded fb1 at times. Anyway, we will continue to watch. Barker is also making a list of control computer reboot times to see if the other 10% of errors found (those which include more than just fast ADCU channels) are correlated to that.

4/20: Continued to try and diagnose data problems with fb1 at LHO.  Though we haven't done much except to add diagnostics, there have been no problems noted this week. Dave Barker is writing up a summary of what has been done and will continue to be done to monitor the data.

DMT

No report

Optical Absorption & Scattering Measurements

Helena Armandula

2ITM04 arrived at LMA.  Scatter map measurements of the central 80 mm area will start promptly according to Laurent Pinnard.

Bill Kells

Yet again we have new data on the investigation of our contaminated ITM07 HR mirror. We (again, all the hard work and implementation by L. Zhang) have re instituted (this had been done previously with a less refined and less extensive scanning last summer) simultaneously measuring absorption and scatter during scanning. Thus the correlation between scatter and absorption may be studied.  The importance of this has been brought out from analysis of the recent absorption [alone] scans of ITM07.  They indicate a very irregular, "blotchy" absorption distribution. Unfortunately the density of these absorption "centers" coupled with the resolution of our scans (~150 micron) is just not sufficient to conclude whether there is any uniform film component to the contaminant.  On the other hand, if all the absorption is strongly correlated to anomalous scatter then we may conclude that the contaminant is essentially "granular" in nature.

The correlation scans show nicely that the absorption "centers" which dominate the total mean absorption are significantly correlated with high scatter. This leaves the puzzle of why no background pixels are found with absorption comparable to that of cleaned surface scanned regions (and the fact that SEM scans show only isolated grains of contamination).

One explanation is that the contamination was sub-micron "powder" (smoke?) or aerosol droplets. Deposited, these would have correlated scatter and absorption, yet individually be to small to "see" (at the ~150 micron resolution). The observed scan "blotchiness" would be the result of the "powder" deposition statistics.


40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)


IFO Commissioning

  • Dan and Monica continue to develop the noise budget.  Osamu, having learned about the noise budget program while at LLO for comissioning, is now working with them. They made a calibrated noise spectrum with the FPMI at the DARM port; noise level is at ~ few * 1e-13 m/rtHz.  Noise hunting is just beginning….
  • Rob and Osamu continue to work on alignment and locking scripts, working with the new length control front end code changes.

IFO Modeling

  • Monica can now keep lock on all 5 degrees of freedom in her e2e simulation of the 40m, even with radiation pressure on (she turned up the gain on the MICH loop). She's working on improving the stability. She's developing the AdVIRGO model.

DC Detection and Vacuum Squeezing Development

  • Rob is working on the setup and alignment of the full DC readout in-vac beam line.
  • Ben got the DCPD in-vac electronics board back from PCB Express. He will stuff and test one soon.
  • Ben also got back the DCPD Satellite box PCB, and will also stuff and test this board soon. So far, it fits in the box. That's a good start.
  • Ben is drawing the schematic for the DC Detection QPD Whitening Chassis. He should be able to start laying out the PCB sometime next week.
  • Go and Osamu are designing the pickoffs for injecting sqeezed vacuum.
  • Go reports that his second harmonic generator is putting out 300 mW of green light, with ~ 2 w input pump beam. The intensity is stable to ~ 5%. Evgueny is coming next week with the new OPA.
  • To aid in the in-vac installation of the DC readout and squeezed vacuum components, Steve will assemble a full list of in-vac cabling.

Electronics, Controls, Computers

  • Rob, Rana and Monica found that the frequency setting on one of our RF signal generators (the 199 MHz) was set wrong by 20 Hz, making the 199 MHz demod signals completely wrong. This must have happened since the last time any serious locking work was done, ~ 1 month ago.
  • Rob and Rana found some problems with the common mode servo board which were producing wierdness in the transfer functions. They changed some resistors and the board now behaves as expected.
  • Ben and Rana brought the MC Servo, CM Servo and DCPD parts over to the 40m on Wednesday. They plan to get together on Friday to figure out the installation wiring and module needs. The plan is to install the MC servo board by early next week, and then possibly move on to install the new CM servo board.
  • Ben is preparing an order for some YAG-444-4A WFS QPDs to replace two broken MC WFS PDs, and to also have some spares for the 40m, and the sites.
  • Steve notes that the PSL appears to be losing power, 10 % over the last 24 days. not clear if it's in PSL or downstream. He will put another independent PD after the PSL but before anything else.
  • Steve continues to make plans for a mezzanine optical table in the PSL enclosure as a new home for the MCR beamline (much reduced path length compared to the present).
  • Steve got a quote for the repair of our crystal laser: $1000. Meanwhile, we will use the autocollimator and hold off on this repair until we're sure we need it. Steve and Mike will set up the autocollimator for full alignment of the DC readout beamline.
  • Larry fixed the root password on our new operator's computer, op540m, and also fixed su (more precisely, sudo) on op440m. We're working down the very long list of things that don't work on our operator computers.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)


No report.


LASTI (Ottaway)


This week we were still vented to air for the completion of the installation of the quad

Double Triple Test (Laurent Ruet)

I installed the classic damping feedback, I also improved it a bit to increase the phase margin while keeping the noise transmission low.  I also installed the modal damping. Both controls match a 10sec settling time requirement and work fine.  I then took some measurement you can see on the ILOG. I am going to spend the rest of the week working on the estimator and the modal control to see how to improve it or at least understand it better

http://emvogil-3.mit.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=lasti&task=view&date_to_view=04/20/2006&anchor_to_scroll_to=2006:04:20:10:48:21-lruet

Quad Suspenion Installation

Mark, Brett and Janeen, with support from Predeep, Ken, Rich and Myron are working on finishing up all in-vacuum tasks for the quad prior to a Friday deadline for closing up the BSC chamber.  Earlier in the week, we spent a couple of days trying to determine if the optical table was level and after trying about 6 different methods, we determined that the data collected and the risks addressed pointed toward a level-enough table.  We've replaced the magnets that broke off.  The electrostatic drive feed through is installed and the wires installed in the connectors.  They'll be hooked up tomorrow, as they'll be in the way today.  This morning, we worked on aligning the global control osems on the penultimate mass, in X and Y.  We'll spend the afternoon aligning the other osems. We will also get the eddy current dampers ready today.  The electronics and cables are all hooked up and checked out. The osems are all reading correctly from the right places.  An LED failed on the face 3 OSEM of the main chain, which still has to be replaced.

Laser Amplifier Upgrade (David H)

The initial results with the CEO laser amplifier were very disappointing.  Significant beam jitter was observed on the transmitted output. It appears that this likely as a result of a mechanical instability of the rod in the laser head as opposed to fluctuations in the laser pump diodes.  We next intend to determine whether this is caused by turbulence in the laser head or from pulsations from the chiller unit of the laser.

HAM SAS

We are starting to obtain quotes for the clean room for the Y-end HAM, which is the HAM that the HAM SAS will be installed in.


Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)


Simulation and Modeling (Yamamoto)

AdvLIGO Mechanics (Sany Yoshida)

Continued working on e2e modeling of Advanced LIGO Mode Cleaner triple suspension. By including the state space matrix generated by Mark Bartton's Mathematica code into the previously built e2e triple- suspension code and injecting white noise to the input port corresponding to suspension point yaw degree of freedom (DOF), computed transfer function from the suspension point yaw to all DOFs (x, y, z yaw, pitch and roll) at all three stages. The results are currently being analyzed.

40m Modeling (Monica Varvella)

The investigation of the in-lock state showed that the XARM is resonant not only on the carrier (as it should be and as it is the case for the YARM) but also on sidebands. This could cause a leak of few percent in the arm power: under studying. Implementing new LSC code for the in-lock state.

e2e at LLO (Melody Araya, Hiro Yamamoto)

Melody, Hiro, Tom and Shannon worked together to resolve the problem in installing e2e at LLO.  Some gnu software was too old, and software installation was placed in an unusual path.  Now the latest simulation engine and GUI are available at LLO.

alfi (Bruce Sears, Melody Araya)

One new addition is a sticky note, which corresponds to comments in text based source codes.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Brown:

  • Mostly working on some Tapir projects this week
  • Reviewed inspiral group talks for APS meeting and made some changes to my own
  • Gave a colloquium at Whittier College
  • Helped Stuart with a few Condor issues and met with Albert and company to plan Condor week discussions

Chatterji:

  • Writing a first draft proposal for an initial data exchange and mock data challenge on 3 hours of single detector LIGO, GEO, and Virgo data.
  • Identified a possible 3 hour set of LIGO data for this exchange (password required).   http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/ligovirgo-enote.pl?nb=lvmdcreal_data&action=view&page=3
  • Finalizing APS talk on Q Pipeline analysis.
  • Installing QScan on a dedicated QScan machine at LLO.
  • Learning about the Open Science Grid as a possible resource for the X Pipeline fully coherent burst search.

Mendell:

I will be traveling to the APS meeting, April 22-25, to present preliminary Stacklide S4 results. I will be working to finish those results by June.  I am also working to generate version 1 (v1) SFTs for the Einstein@Home S5 search using data from the beginning of the run up to the middle of March. I am also working to phase out v1 SFT generation, and get version 2 (v2) SFT generation running again at the sites. I plan to start publishing v2 SFTs by the end of next week, for transfer to CIT and tier II centers, after I return from the APS meeting.

Shawhan:

  • Prepared for APS Meeting.
  • Updated channel lists for viewing archived data with DTT.
  • Collected and summarized computing needs of the Burst Group (with Erik K).

Sutton:

Most of my time this week has been spent on the xpipeline network analysis package.  I implemented in matlab a function for producing Lazarus BH merger waveforms based on an analytic approximation in the original Lazarus paper (Baker et al PRD 65 124012).  This form avoids the discontinuities that are present in the discretely sampled waveform supplied by Baker that has been used in bursts simulations to date.  I finished the main improvements in power spectrum estimation in xpipeline.  The new method is based on the LPEF (whitening filter) coefficients, and handles lines much better than the old version.  I'm now testing cross-correlation timing estimates in xpipeline for narrowing down the region of the sky that needs to be tested for consistency with a GWB.

Yakushin:

  • Continue preparation for the APS meeting.
  • Running QScan on online waveburst triggers.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

Work has started on timing out certain system calls to prevent deadlock situation. The first system function to have this timeout will be lstat in the diskcacheAPI.

Fixed and cvs changes for Utilities page rebuild frame cache function reporting error with missing variable ::cntlpasswd if globus connection is used.

Corrected the issue where cntmon was unable to reboot a utility if the utility's log file was missing (PR#3010). In addition, more debug purple logs to proc readsshPipe to detect why a script invoked by cntmon quit.

System tests were done using version 1.8.154. The tests depended upon seeing /archive. With its removal from the development system this week, the necessary frame files were moved to the /scratch file system.

The putStandAlone test script would sometimes fail to insert the correct lstring length in the ilwd for database insertion (PR#3012).  This has now been corrected.

Reviewed the significant changes in the frameCPP code between the current version and the version being used in the framebuilder. These were reported to Alex and the LDAS group.

TCLGLOBUS

All unit tests for the GSS-API have been created and verified to work.

Unit tests for the XIO attributes have been completed (PR#6, PR#9 and PR#10).

An issue with the XIO Tcl Channel was discovered which prevented the cancellation of the XIO timeout. Correctly using globus_xio_attr_cntl() instead of globus_xio_handle_cntl() resolved the problem.

GRID COMPUTING

No production activity. Waiting on hierarchical inspiral pipe code from inspiral analysis team.

Reported problem with Condor-G/DAGMan/glibc2.3.6  to Condor team that causes DAGMan to abort. No response has been received from the Condor administrators in four business days.  Will review costs and benefits of obtaining Condor source code until Condor team is willing to support Fedora Core 4. In parallel, a delegation from LIGO will address the support issues with Condor management at a meeting with the Condor PI on April 27-28.

Attended burst analysis meeting to explore feasability of supporting the burst analysis on OSG. There workflow is significantly less complex than the binary inspira and should be easily ported.

Worked with SRM team lead to clean up drm.rc configuration file for supporting SRM in OSG 0.4.1 release.

Attended OSG telecom on OSG 0.3.7 validation results.

Reviewed draft document outlining the validation of OSG software stacks for pre-release candidates. Gave feedback to authors addressing the phase of development for which this document would be most meaningful and reached agreement that this is a provisioning phase document as opposed to an integration phase document.

Lazzarini: A number of LIGO people will be in Madison for the a Condor-users workshop.  We will take advantage of this to hold a one day "Condor-LIGO Summit" with the Condor team on 28 April. We have developed an agenda to discuss issues and long range planning as LIGO increases its grid infrastructure use.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Continued work on samtest characterizing problem when large numbers of files in a QFS filesystem are deleted.
  • Dealt with mysql/RLS crash at CIT due to full /.
  • Normal ingestion stuff, plus cleaned up from a problem where some LLO tapes had both copies 1 and 2 on them.
  • Repacked tapes at LLO after 4 tapes of data were strewn across 56 tapes.
  • Continued to try to close the gap on L0 files that haven't made it to CIT in a timely fashion.
  • Ejected tapes for shelf storage at LLO.
  • Worked with Dwayne & Igor on tape drive problems at LLO.
  • Registered data copied to CIT cluster in RLS (ongoing, almost done).
  • Did some planning vis a vis using old CACR tapes at the sites (labels, etc.).

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Added new feature to log_mon to detect syslogd failure and to restart and report when failure is detected.
  • Added new anti-spamming features to log_mon.
  • Added condor job reporting feature to ssh failure detection code in log_mon.
  • Various grid certificate related tasks.
  • Updated wiki documentation.
  • Worked with LDAS developers on a variety of LDAS specific issues.
  • Performed various cluster maintenance tasks.
  • Investigated various strategies for making use of multiple x509 certs under a single Apache instance. Practically any model that can be imagined is supported, including multiple named virtual hosts on the same port but with per-virtual-host certificates.  Documentation is pending.
  • Some issues still exist related to user auth for cron initiated grid tasks. I am currently working on this.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Node Issues - 326 Currently Up, 2 headed for ASA,

4/13 node120 - Kernel Panic

4/13 node122 - Kernel Panic

4/14 node255 - Kernel Panic

4/16 node54 - Disk 2 died, replaced

4/17 node283 - System Powered off without warning.

4/18 node227 - Kernel Panic

4/19 node31 - Kernel Panic

4/19 node148 - Kernel Panic

4/19 node37 - Kernel Panic

4/19 node75 - Kernel Panic

4/19 node159 - Kernel Panic

  • Assisted David Meyers w/ Fedora-Ligo repo for OSG.
  • Requested info from Supermicro about BIOS Changes, signed NDA.
  • Working with Sean and Kingston for diagnosing Machine Check Exceptions.
  • Updated wiki page for IPMI.
  • Creating wiki page for 'ldas-kickstart'.
  • Will finish Livingston kickstart shortly.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Investigating remaining Opteron node failure modes.
  • Quantified Opteron memory performance for multiple configurations.
  • Successfully negotiatied the use of ~1000 unused 9940 tapes at Caltech by LIGO.
  • Installed and started testing the latest version of SAM to see if it helps with the occasionally performance slow down after deleting a large number of files.
  • Collecting Condor information for the Condor-LIGO summit meeting next week.
  • Announced the availability of S4/S5 L1/L3/h(t) frames on disk in the CIT cluster.
  • Tracking the remaining odd gaps in S5 data that failed to transfer to CIT due to various publishing/RLS/LDR bugs.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Helping spray data to nodes.
  • Replaced harddrive in node48 (failed).
  • Rebooted ldas-grid to bring in line with Caltech.
  • Installing Imagemagick on cluster per user request.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • On Monday fb1 produced corrupted data during the period 829337888-829343360.  LDAS used fb0 data for archiving and RDS creation.  After Alex rebooted fb1, the problem disappeared.
  • Tape drive 44 was repaired.
  • Tape drive 46 got broken.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT and imported and labeled new tapes.
  • u1d8@t3-9 failed, replaced with u1d7 from spare T3-13
  • unpacked remaining new tapes from boxes and placed them in storage cabinet.
  • fb1 crashed and restarted Tuesday.  verified frames were valid and no gaps existed in /archive/frames.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

I am generating version 1 (v1) SFTs from h(t) data from the beginning of S5 up to Dec. 17, 2005 at CIT. After Dec. 17, 2005, h(t) and v1 and version 2 (v2) SFTs have been generated at the sites. The v1 SFTs up to middle of March will be used in by Einstein@Home. I am also working to restart v2 SFTs generation at the sites, now that h(t) generation is beginning again, and phase out v1 SFT generation. The v2 SFTs following a specification that will allow them to be published and transferred from the sites to CIT and tier II centers using LDR. I should have this running by the end of next week (after returning from the APS meeting).  Also, occational RLS errors during the LDR transfer of data causes some gaps the RDS data downstream.  I am working to fill in these gaps, and ways to prevent them in the future.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Resolved issue of segment webpage mirroring. Pointed user to Caltech's segment database dump. http://server/segments/S5
  • Informed Martin Hewitson about use of LSCdqInsert utility used by LIGO for data quality publication. He and Keith Riles have arranged to meet next LSC meeting.
  • Assisting with data corruption effort. So far, the pre-2nd commissioning corruption has not been seen. I plan on working getting a diagnostic scan of all archived data to flag potentially corrupt data.
  • Publication scripts are now using the 'locked' attribute to record the IFO injection mode. 'locked' == injection-only-mode.
  • Published H1 and H2 1st month h(t) data at Caltech. Greg is creating SFTs from them now.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:

(Keith)

  • MIT cds network and system support work
  • solved automounter problems with ldap
  • working on NFSv4 issues between linux and solaris
  • reinstalled windows laptop for overburdened scientist
  • patched new windows laptop
  • continuing research on Bacula backup utility
  • researching OpenVZ virtualization support for Linux

Livingston:

(Dwayne)

  • protel upgrades for Ken, Mike, and Rusyl
  • setup Thunderbird on a PC for Ed Jasnow to use while he was here
  • pcard training
  • auditorium PC and sound system are doing weird things. further investigation required.
  • other usual user requests and support

(Shannon)

  • Worked with Dave Barker Thursday-Saturday last week implementing a new router, IDS, loghost, MRTG, etc. at LHO CDS.  Very productive three days there.  Still adding features and rulesets.  The router seems to be working well and the hardware is more than adequate, CPU usage so far has been very low.  Need to get the IDS to generate some statistics.
  • Moved chestnut.ligo-la to a rack.  This will more than likely be its permanent home now since the fans are too loud to remain in the control room.  Still discussing the long term plans for this machine with Shourov.
  • Installed Solaris 10 x64 on a X2100.  I am going to use this for testing with LDAP on GC.  I think I am going to have to resurrect the NIS+ to LDAP conversion from the back burner.  More desire lately to have Linux GC clients again, chestnut.ligo-la included.  I will try to get LDAP installed in a Sol 10 zone and document the process.
  • Sent around the new AUP.  Already received about 10 replies.
  • Working on getting quotes for a backup ISP (Charter Communications) for LLO.  Fiber build-out is high.  Trying to work solutions to reduce the installation cost.  The monthly rate is average for 10 mb service.  Will circulate the official quote once I have all the details worked out.
  • More monitoring of IDS software, patches, etc.
  • Couple of firewall changes this week at LLO, ssh allowed to a couple of hosts, etc.
  • Worked with the  software licensing folks at CIT to find out some details about Auto Cad.  We used to have a site license that covered everyone.  Unfortunately that does not apply anymore.  I will have to purchase four copies at $300 each from Caltech now.
  • Ordered a new PC to assign to Sany.  The LIGO PC he is using is ancient.

Hanford:

(Christine)

  • Sun technician came out and replaced the re-called power supplies on 5 SunBlade 1500s.
  • Still working on the PR to buy more disks and an upgraded backup system.
  • Arranged for Dell technician to come out and replace the mother board on a laptop that had memory read errors.
  • Started re-building/upgrading another older laptop for the loaner pool.
  • Spent a little bit of time working with Richard to figure out a secure way to provide internet services for a group at the Rattlesnake Ridge Observatory.
  • Started collecting all the MAC addresses from the site computers to start securing our wireless network.
  • Sent out an email requesting everyone read the new Computer Use Policy and sign off on it by sending me an email.  Also, there is a copy in the Control Room for Scimons to read and a copy in the Visitor Handbook.

CIT:

(Veronica)

  • LSC: Updates of the presentations database of the March meeting.  Updates of the June meeting website.  Updates of the mailing lists and the roster database.
  • LIGO: Elba website updates.  User support.  Assisted Julie with the setup of Jay's website.  Worked with GariLynn and Bill Kells on making still images from the Hanford beamspot scatter footage.  Burned a DVD of one of the LIGO talks for the TAPIR group.  Website updates.
  • CaJAGWR: Website updates.  Taped and compressed for streaming the talk by Nergis Mavalvala.

(Christian)

  • 3flr W/B - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
  • Stocked printer cartridges that were delivered to LIGO this week.
  • Rod Luna - Working on upgrading Rod from Windows 2000 to XP.
  • Reloaded laptops that were returned from Hanford to the loaner pull  this week. I've also updated two laptops with the latest Microsoft  patches that are going to MIT.
  • Continuing working on updating all of the visitors' workstation this week.
  • Reloaded visitors' workstation that was compromised this week.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

  • Finished up the PDMWORKS replacement server. Users are now working off the new server.
  • Ghosted DCC & PDMWORKS servers.
  • Tested Microsoft critical updates with GC, and Engineering software.
  • Ran critical updates on all NTSRV's.
  • Freed up DHCP IP numbers on 114 subnet.
  • Continued work on spam filters, searching for false positives.

(Larry)

  • Worked a number of procurement items.  Wrapped up reconciliation for the P-card system. This time it went pretty smooth except for the large number of items needing to be put in.  Delivered a number of other misc. items.  Started SUN order, Dot is now working on the PO from the received quote.  Checking on new projectors and laptops for a future order.
  • Assisted the DCC with various documents to be posted.
  • Assisted Mike on a couple of his projects. It looks like he now has his arms around them and things are going forward.
  • Worked on some more documentation.  The new AUP is out and I've been fielding questions on that document.  So far the response has been pretty good.
  • Spent a little time working on my to-do list for the 40M. Still a number of items need to be worked on.
  • Went over some logistical issues with different people concerning the NSF review. Right now things are looking pretty good.
  • Worked on a number of user accounts e-mail aliases.

Mail Statistics for April 13-19, 06

Mail Statistics

April 20, 2006

Rejected Messages

17,474

Virus Messages

1,814

Accepted Messages

7,848

Total Messages

51,672

 


Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Advanced LIGO Systems, Management

Preparing for the baseline review; kicking off the HAM-SAS fab effort.

Seismic Isolation

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

Advanced Ligo Seismic Isolation Assembly Status

Stage 0 assembly is complete and we continue to work on the assembly of stage 2. Progress has been slow due to the installation of the SUS quad prototype into the BSC chamber at LASTI. The test stand is now available to us for the overall assembly.

We are still waiting for several parts which make up the kinematic lock, spring, and actuator assemblies from Limerick Machine. These are the last parts needed and are not holding us up right now.

The Adv LIGO SEI Cost Estimate has been updated for the current baseline of (5) single stage HAM isolation systems. This estimate was based on shop quotes of detail drawings created by Corwin.

Richard Mittleman has measured several of the stage 1-2 blades using the calibration fixture designed by ASI. We are finding the springs slightly "softer" than predicted and are planning

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

HAM-SAS Fab weekly report

The NSF approved the contract to Gailli & Morelli for fabrication of the mechanical/structural components of the HAM-SAS system which will be tested at LASTI.

  • Riccardo DeSalvo and Dennis Coyne visited Galli & Morelli to kick off the fabrication effort, discuss minor corrections/changes to the drawings and visit their facilities, as wella s the facilities of Tecnoinox (the welding subcontractor).
  • Galli & Morelli have machined or water-jet cut about half the parts. The quality of the work to date looks good.
  • Weld samples (using the same piece part geometry of our support table) will be provided soon to LIGO for sectioning and photmicroscopy to insure weld quality and full penetration.
  • Plans for preparing a clean space and installing a soft-walled clean room within the Galli & Morelli facility were discussed. Plans for cleaning (by another subcontractor) were also briefly discussed.
  • One of the GAS filter base plates will be cleaned, baked and FTIR sampled and then sent to Caltech to evaluate for cleanliness.
  • A weekly telecon with Galli & Morelli (represented by Chiara Vanni) and LIGO will be set up (likely Wed 9:30am PT).

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Working at LASTI on getting all in-vacuum tasks for the quad completed prior to the noon deadline tomorrow.

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I'm working on a lower quad installation arm concept, and will send out an email for comments and input.  Its specifications and limitations some based on earlier requirements in Oddvars file.

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Optics

LMA

The next coating run with LMA will try to demonstrate that the Advanced LIGO absorption requirement of 0.5 ppm can be achieved on a doped Ta coating

CSIRO

On Thursday, April 20th we have a telecon scheduled with CSIRO to discuss an optimized SiO2 doped TiO2 coating.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

Yet again we have new data on the investigation of our contaminated ITM07 HR mirror. We (again, all the hard work and implementation by L. Zhang) have re instituted (this had been done previously with a less refined and less extensive scanning last summer) simultaneously measuring absorption and scatter during scanning. Thus the correlation between scatter and absorption may be studied.  The importance of this has been brought out from analysis of the recent absorption [alone] scans of ITM07. They indicate a very irregular, "blottchy" absorption distribution. Unfortunately the density of these absorption "centers" coupled with the resolution of our scans (~150 micron) is just not sufficient to conclude whether there is any uniform film component to the contaminant. On the other hand, if all the absorption is strongly correlated to anomalous scatter then we may conclude that the contaminant is essentially "granular" in nature.

The correlation scans show nicely that the absorption "centers" which dominate the total mean aborption are significantly correlated with high scatter. This leaves the puzzle of why no background pixels are found with absorption comparable to that of cleaned surface scanned regions (and the fact that SEM scans show only isolated grains of contamination).  One explanation is that the contamination was sub-micron "powder" (smoke ?) or aerosol droplets. Deposited, these would have correlated scatter and absorption, yet individually be to small to "see" (at the ~150 micron resolution). The observed scan "blotchyness" would be the result of the "powder" deposition statistics.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

I spent some time in trying to get the Xilinx system generator software to talk to Simulink.  After some time, I was able to use simulate a filter design in software but encountered some problems in getting the hardware co-simulation completed.  The error messages and logfiles from the Xilinx software are not exactly informative. For example: "ERROR: Xst:1817 - Invalid target speed '-10'" was the result of using a pull-down menu to compile code for the DSP.  The option to change flags manually is not provided for.  After going through a bundle of documentation, the meaning of the error message is that the device files were not installed correctly and that a separate software package should have been installed before the system generator software was installed.  Naturally enough, there was no mention of the installation order in the installation documentation.a  Not that it made any difference since the problem is still present even when the software is installed in the correct order.  From the Xilinx support database, other people have experienced.

Auxiliary Optics

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

LAYOUT

Chris Echols, a new mechanical engineer on the LIGO project, is in the process of updating the BSC and HAM chamber solidworks models for the ADLIGO vertex layout assembly.

The Zemax optical layout has been revised with the output beams exiting from HAM2 (moved in front of HAM1), and HAM5 (moved behind HAM6).

TCS

After discussion with Phil Willems, I modified the wedge angles on the ITM compensation plate and the ITM COC as follows: 1) the ITM has a symmetric wedge of 1.074 degrees on the AR and HR sides, for a total wedge of 2.15 degrees. 2) The compensation plate (CP) has a 5 min. wedge to eliminate etalon effects. The ITM PO beam is taken from the AR surface of the ITM. This was done so that the first surface of the CP and the HR surface of the ITM are essentially parallel--this allows the use of the Russian interferometric technique for sensing the thermally induced aberrations in the ITM optical assembly as an alternative to the Hartman sensor, if desired.

WBS

The AOS WBS dictionary is updated.

Controls, Data systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

Continued work on our Simulink code generator. I've had to add support for more features in order to be able to produce the code for the Lasti Hepi system, which is far more complicated than the quad suspension code. The key items remaining are support for the watchdogs and polyphase FIR filters. I hope to have the watchdog ready by Tuesday and Alex is working the new CDS standard FIR filter feature. The latter may or may not be ready for the planned Lasti install the week of May 8.  If it is not ready, we will stay with the hardcoded version used in Ligo for now.

One possible concern is that there was no watchdog feature defined for the quad suspension controls or a connection of that signal to the new Hepi system. I've asked Barker for info on how the suspension watchdogs work on the Ligo aux crates as a starting point. I will still need to work out with someone how the quad watchdog should be implemented. Communicating that trip signal will then still need to be implemented. We have done tests communicating between front ends on the new network, but, other than between front ends and the Framebuilder, have not yet implemented a standard communication feature in our software (haven't had time).

The computer and PCI-X I/O chassis for Lasti Hepi are due in tomorrow or Monday. The back panel necessary to modify the I/O chassis should be ready by then as well.

I ordered a GPS network time server that also has a 1pps output.  This unit will replace the existing VME GPS at Lasti, with the 1pps signal used to drive the new timing system. The network connection will be used to time synchonize all of the computers on the CDS network.

Since we plan to remove the remaining VME equipment on our next visit, we need to replace the existing VME ADCU. Jay is putting together a new interface chassis w/4pin LEMO and BNC connectors to interface to our new PCI-X ADC modules. This unit will connect the existing PSL signals to our new system and provide a number of BNC connections for general purpose use.

Had a telecon with Joe Giaime and Brian Lance about the ISI installation at Lasti. Brian is to get me his Simulink files to start working out the controls software. We are also trying to figure out what the schedule is for ISI controls installation. I believe that was deferred until our next meeting on Wednesday while Joe tries to sort that out.

We have not had a lot of time to devote to the Ponderomotive experiment controls. Alex had a first cut at the code running. It barely makes the 64KHz minimum cycle requirement (running on one cpu). We are attempting to further split the code over multiple CPUs, but need to work more on the synchonization issues (the synchronization semaphores seem to take too long ie 1usec). The 1usec may not seem that long, but when we want to get to 128KHz (<8usec cycle time), every usec counts.  So, we are continuing to look at ways to save time. One quick way would be to turn off the 16Hz decimation filters associated with every CDS filter module (for EPICS output). When we run several hundred filter modules, with each one having this feature, it consumes several usec (about 4usec in the quad controls, which has 96 filter modules).

We have been given the go ahead to order the equipment necessary for the DC readout system at the 40m lab. I haven't yet had much time to devote to this. I have ordered a Sun V40, but not much else.


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