Weekly Report for Week Ending August 10, 2006


Past Weekly Reports


There will be no LIGO Executive Committee scheduled Monday, August 14, 2006 due to the meetings of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration scheduled in Livingston next week.  There will be no meeting of the LIGO Executive Committee on Monday, August 21, 2006 due to the Staffing Meeting.


Special Announcements:


Weekly Report Highlights


LSC Issues (Saulson)


On 8-9 August, the LSC held its annual MOU Review Panel meeting at MIT.  The conveners were Peter Saulson, Albert Lazzarini, and Szabi Marka, with intensive support by Dot Lloyd.  The Panel read and commented on Progress Reports and MOU revisions from all LSC (non-Lab) member groups.  It also discussed the report on Lab Research, and used that as a springboard for discussing some issues concerning the overall research program of the LSC.  A group-by-group report was prepared at the meeting.  After final scrubbing, individuual sections will be shared with the groups' PI's.


LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)


STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • See above.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

  • There was no site teleconference scheduled Thursday, August 10, 2006.
  • There are currently no open action items.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

  • Attended the annual Users and Screeners Association meeting in Las Vegas, NV.
  • Worked with NSF Property personnel to add old fabrications to LIGO's inventory.
  • Provided assistance to Peter Shawhan with shippment of ten boxes to the University of Maryland.
  • Provided assistance to the Soft Seismic Group (R. DeSalvo) with shipping and the preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US Customs clearance of a Signal Analyzer to GALLI & MORELLI in Italy.  Account Number LIGO.HSAS-1-NSFLIGO.FY02CA.
  • Tagged and created records for one computer and one server (General Computing group).

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • Worked with George to finalize the conversion database that will be handed over to FileHold by the end of this week for their migration design efforts.
  • Had two status meetings with FileHold's development team to determine progress and address questions and issues from both Caltech and FileHold.
  • Spent two afternoons training on the new "demo" of the FileHold system with the required LIGO functionality.
  • Began preparation for LSC presentation of the new document management system.

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

  • Assisted in preparation for initial training with the new FileHold Document Management system by identifying and gathering a variety of current documentation for upload and input into the new system.
  • All of the latest revisions of the PSI As-Built drawings not in the DCC have been identified.  The next step is to have them all printed and entered into the DCC.  There are approximately 150 drawings to process.
  • Scanning - Progress continues on scanning of contract closeout files.
  • Activity Summary for Week Ending 8/10/2006:

 

In

Out

Packages

17

13

Faxes

21

17

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)

>From: "Funaro, Catherine" <Catherine.Funaro@caltech.edu>

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

  • Working on the change order to GSI.
  • Placed the order for two copiers.
  • Placed the order for the photodiodes shipping from the United Kingdom.
  • Responded to the audit inquiry on the LIGO subcontracts. Compiled the data and submitted the requested information. Responded to audit questions pertaining to the subcontracts.
  • Completed the change order to George Stokes for payment of a pending invoice.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

  • Nothing significant to report.

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

  • No report (vacation)

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

The monthly report for LIGO Operations for the end of July has been submitted to the NSF.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • There are no open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • All files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web page.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Nothing significant to report this week.


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


Summary of S5 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by K. Kawabe)

Duty cycles for the LHO machines this week (Tue Aug/01 to Mon Aug/07) were: H1 90.9 percent, H2 92.5 percent. This is the first time in a long time that the 7-day average of both of the IFOs reached 90 percent.  Seems like the stability of the H1 got better by the replacement of the PMC.

H1 AWG, which is hosting excitations as well as the test point manager for H1, continued to be unstable (for example look at this elog). Since rebooting AWG means one (or more) excursion to the LVEA, we had to terminate the science mode for both IFOs several times, unfortunately.

Also h0cosmic crashed several times and had to be rebooted (example).

S5 highlights from the LHO elog are bulleted below:


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


L1 in S5 (Frolov)

The duty cycle is 70% for the last two weeks due to downtime to diagnose and disable the Mode Cleaner input beam periscope PZT actuators, which were damaged during a power outage two weeks ago. Inspiral sensitivity was close to 14 Mpc when the interferometer was able to lock and was free from the intermittent PZT noise transients.

Activities during the maintenance period included measuring and setting the frequency control loops, repairing the connections for two environmental sensors, and changing frame builder configuration to increase the look back time for trend data.

Safety and Security (Riesen)

Updated the EntraPass display screen on the operators console in the control room. The "desktop" buttons have been relabeled and now show the correct screen selection.

Replacing first aid supplies which have exceeded their expiration dates

Found no Site/Laser safety concerns this reporting period.

LLO Outreach (Thacker)

  • Organized the 8/4 face-to-face LIGOSEC Directorate meeting at LLO
  • Presented teacher professional development for ST. Tammany Parish at end-of-summer workshop;
  • Planned Math Science Partnership teacher development program to be presented 8/12;
  • Developed a "Mini-Giant Slinky Snack" - table top version of our Giant Slinky exhibit - to assist in teaching about waves;
  • Established contacts with local High School physics and physical science teachers;
  • Set up luncheon meeting (8/14) with curriculum specialists for Livingston Parish school system with the goal of establishing a partnership;
  • Arranged for two local High School students to conduct project work at LLO on a volunteer basis; will attempt to direct this into a Docent training program;

L1 CDS (Bogue)

  • Ongoing support of S5.
  • Helping out with the LSC.

LIGO Computing and Network Security (Roddy)

  • Attended usenix security conference last week.  Traded notes with a security person from SDSC.  Some good information - especially related to current threats & activity they are seeing "in the wild" there.  Met with RuthAnne while there also.  Learned about some of the CIT security restructuring from her.
  • Worked with Dave at LHO for three days.  We worked on further firewall configuration.  Moved more items into the management LAN.   Ran into some problems on switch configuration.  Will follow up next week.  MRTG conf updates also.  Updated the snort install while there also.  Captured some DMT traffic while there for later offline analysis.  Also discussed sme planning issues with Dave.
  • Reading through some of the papers presented at usenix.
  • Looked into an issue with the trinet data for Szabi.
  • Will need to follow up on a few security items at LHO.

General Computing and LDAS Admin (Giardina)

  • created GC accounts for a few more SciMon camp attendees
  • continued training our spam filter
  • wrote script to check for GC accounts that have 'stale' passwords
  • a few users are having issues with Thunderbird timeouts.  I solved it for a few by setting 'inline attachments' to false.  This didn't help everyone.
  • other usual user requests and support

-         ejected tapes for shipment to CIT, imported and labeled new

-         failed disk in T3-5, replaced with disk from T3-16.

-         unmounted /oldframes filesystem that was located on some of our T3s.  removed corresponding entries from configuration files.  Those T3s are ready to be used for spare parts.

-         added airflow, smoke alarm, and voltage monitors to the LDAS room

-         Disk2Disk and L0 publishing problems earlier this week when d2d was turned off overnight.  L0 publishing was then unable to pick until configuration changes were made.

Data Analysis (Yakushin)

Storage/Condor/LDAS Admin

  • Ordered tape cabinet for the new tapes that arrived last week.
  • Fixed segment replication between LLO and other sites that was down for a while.
  • Changed default matlab version to R2006a.
  • Changed the default multi-byte internationalization setting from en_US to C to avoid the inefficiencies associated with multi-byte character support.

Data Analysis

  • Attended GEO data analysis workshop in Glasgow last week. Gave a presentation about waveburst online S5 data analysis and joint LIGO-GEO S4 and S5 analysis.
  • Studying triggers produced by coherent waveburst on S5.
  • Preparing presentation for the burst f2f meeting.

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)


  • Most of the group’s efforts are reported under the Advanced LIGO project.
  • Received some clarification from FileHold on the nature of their embedded version control system.  More information and thought is required to determine if & how we can adapt our current revision control approach to these new constraints.

See Advanced LIGO


Controls and Data Systems (Bork)


We are trying to address the problem of AWG/TP computer crashes, particularly at LHO.  After some discussions between Sigg, Ivanov and myself, the initial approach we are taking is to use a single TP manager at LHO and move that code to a Framebuilder (has access to both IFO networks).  This is being done for a couple of reasons.  First, the method by which DTT finds testpoints by checking with the present two TP managers at LHO may be a root cause of the problem.  Reduction to one TP manager would would take away this possiblity.  Secondly, by moving TP man to the Framebuilder, AWG/TP manager will be separated and, if the problems continue, will make diagnosing the faulty component easier (is it AWG or TP man that has the problem).  Alex has the new code ready and has been tested here.  We should be ready to try it at LHO during next Tuesday's maintenance period.


40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)


No report.


Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)


No report.


LASTI (Ottaway)


ISI update

We have floated both stages.  We have leveled both stages (both height and angle) using trim masses.  We are currently in the process of learning how to set the locker/stops.  There as an interference in the 1-2 stage stops which required some minor machining.

Quad Testing

All the materials for the heat load test have been collected and prepared.  We will vent the week after the LSC meeting. Also there are now working temperature gauges mounted on the BSC and beam tube to monitor the external temperature's effect on the quad.


CIT Science Group (Lazzarini)


Data Analysis

Mendell:

I have been working on the draft of the S4 PowerFlux, StackSlide, and Hough paper, and will present this with the pulsar group at the pulsar group F2F meeting this weekend and at the LSC meeting next week.

Yakushin:

  • Attended GEO data analysis workshop in Glasgow last week. Gave a presentation about waveburst online S5 data analysis and joint LIGO- GEO S4 and S5 analysis.
  • Studying triggers produced by coherent waveburst on S5.
  • Preparing presentation for the burst f2f meeting.

Grid research (Blackburn)

TCLGLOBUS:

The VDT developers undertook their first attempt at adding TclGlobus to the VDT package this week. Alain Roy reported problems with building TclGlobus 1.3.0 at their site. We are working with him to track down the source of the problem, although the problem has not been seen on our hardware here at CIT.  One possibility is that the versions of Globus being used by the VDT team is different from the standard distribution available directly from the Globus developers.

Investigated the possibility of adding an option for Tcl channel to use gridmap file as a way to authorize X.509-based client. I've added several GSI functionalities to handle this case based on reading XIO-based GridFTP server source code and it's still not working.

Worked with Kent Blackburn on one page flyer on TclGlobus to be handed out at the Open Science Grid Consortium Meeting during the demonstration of Advance Workflow Tools for LIGO.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID:

Updated grid-mapfile on our OSG-ITB testbed cluster's head node with new VORS certificate in order to support polling by VORS cron job.

Successfully partitioned the S5 HIPE DAX workflow into six partitions in order to test the functionality of a VDS utility: partitiondax. 

Determined that the first partition of the S5 HIPE DAX produced by the partitiondax utility is sufficiently large as to run out of heap memory while the workflow planner is running on a 2 GB x86 platform. Worked with the VDS engineering team to better characterize the source of the memory consumption.

Delivered a version of site_verify.pl modified by the VDS engineering team that tests for the installation of the vds components, to the OSG Integration Testbed working group chairs for incorporation in a future ITB release.

Worked with Michael Samidi on bug fixes and extensions to the LIGO Work Flow Planner based upon feedback from LIGO scientists and the Griphyn-LIGO face-to-face meeting.

Worked with Kent Blackburn on one page flyer on the Graphical Workflow Planner Application to be handed out at the Open Science Grid Consortium Meeting during the demonstration of Advance Workflow Tools for LIGO.

Attended the weekly OSG Teleconferences of the Virtual Data Toolkit, OSG Integration Testbed and Virtual Data System. Attended a teleconference on the evolution of the Science Grid This Week newsletter into an international newsletter involving CERN and EGEE.

Worked with Paul Avery on the agenda for the Communications session which he and I will chair at the Open Science Grid Consortium Meeting.


Laboratory Computing (Anderson)


LDAS Software Systems (Anderson for Maros)

64-bit testing on Solaris continues to run extremely well and this week focused on fixing and opening a large number of fairly small bugs:

  • (ML) cmonClient:

-         PR 3023: add -timeout to client gt_xio_socket call with a value defined by new resource variable ::TCLGLOBUS_SOCKET_TIMEOUT. Need to test on tandem-iv when it is ready for ldas.

-         Finished PR 3036 - queue up graph prints to output only 1 banner.

  • (ML)  cntlmonAPI:

-         PR3023: add -timeout to client gt_xio_socket call with a value defined by new resource variable ::TCLGLOBUS_SOCKET_TIMEOUT.

-         Closed PR2917 add cntlmon resource vars to support tclglobus fixed for 1.8.0.

-         Working on PR 3038 - all user cmd test fails to run abortJob when using username/password.

  • (ML)  diskcacheAPI:

-         Wrote PRs for lsync cache mismatch with diskcache.

-         Closed PR2919 -  ::DEBUG_THREADS 0 in LDASdiskcache.rsc.

-         Closed PR2921 - non fatal dt update log messages recorded as red balls.

  • (ML)  frameAPI:

-         Fixed PR 3046 by adding passing md5sum output directory to thread call reduceRawFrames_t and included Greg's test example in regression test pr2953.tcl.

  • (ML)  managerAPI:

-         Closed PR2918 - need extra environment vars in manager to boot cntlmon with tclglobus.

  • (ML)  genericAPI:

-         fixed PR 3043 - manager leaks manager key reporting an exception.

  • (ML)  Testing:

-         Performed system test for ldas 1.8.263.

-         All test passed as before except for lsync which is still unable to see RDSVerify and some /scratch directories in the lsync cache.

-         Ran Greg's createRDS loop test on dev but got intermittent failures due to frame thread callback sometimes fail to find .tmp file - PR 3040.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Compressed a bunch of Alexander Dietz' condor files.
  • Came up with a script that generates du -k style info from a samfsdump file.
  • Gave Dwayne instructions about how to decomission /oldframes at LLO (phase I).
  • Physically counted available slots in the CIT silo and was thus able to calculate the total number of usable slots as 5581.
  • Set up /archive/meta shadow tree at LHO/LLO to contain .md5 files and other metadata about the filesystem.
  • Labeled another 100 tapes at CIT.
  • Collected figures on how much disk space would be freed by releasing different amounts of least recently accessed data in CIT's /home:

/home bytes not accessed in 6 months:  285GB

/home bytes not accessed in 4 months: 2.73TB

/home bytes not accessed in 3 months: 3.28TB

  • Checked that the fibre channel switch heartbeat blinks amber on all 3 of our Sanbox2 switches, i.e. this is correct behavior.
  • Discovered a problem with .md5 files at LLO (the files were being updated by two different processes, resulting in a few garbled lines).  I've fixed the garbled lines in the copies at CIT and Ben has implemented a lock file for Disk2Disk to prevent this from happening.

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Numerous x509 certificate management related activities.
  • Assisted Mary Lei with some LDAS debugging related to a rare case of manager API key leakage into log files when a machine was rebooted with running API's on it.
  • Added video card and configured 24" monitor for quark, a compact Optiplex GX280 machine requiring a short card backplane key.
  • Tested use of PCI video card for dual-headed operation on Dell Optiplex GX520 - this was a total failure since the computer would not boot with the card in the PCI slot.
  • Cleaned shop-vac from Synchrotron 215A and returned it to service.
  • Arranged with Rod Luna for disposal of on PC and one 19" CRT.
  • Ordered tape storage cabinet via TechMart for Dan Kozak.
  • Upgraded samtest to Solaris 10 u2 via upgrade path.
  • Wrote modified version of grid-prox-init script that checks the expiration date of the user's cert and emails them if their cert is expiring soon or has already expired. Tested but not deployed.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Installed node500, ran ctcs testing for 3 days.
  • Setup iommu kernel option test

-         271-280 - iommu=noagp

-         281-290 - iommu=noaperature

-         291-300 - iommu=off

  • Parsing through CIT Security scan.
  • Tested Postges full vacuum.
  • Joined tail end of CIT/Condor telecon.
  • Found bug in log_mon.rsc.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Started testing a candidate replacement memory for the LDAS-CIT cluster.
  • Working with the Condor development team on a number of open LIGO issues, many of which will be resolved in the next release due out in a few days.
  • Met with Sun Microsystems representatives to discuss future storage technology.
  • Staged all of the S5 Burst-MDC frames into the LDAS-CIT cluster node scratch space for faster parallel I/O access.
  • Helped get the LDAS diskcacheAPI based version of LDRdataFindServer running at MIT.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • Ordered tape cabinet for the new tapes that arrived last week.
  • Fixed segment replication between LLO and other sites that was down for a while.
  • Changed default matlab version to R2006a.
  • Changed the default multi-byte internationalization setting from en_US to C to avoid the inefficiencies associated with multi-byte character support.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT, imported and labeled new tapes.
  • Failed disk in T3-5, replaced with disk from T3-16.
  • Unmounted /oldframes filesystem that was located on some of our T3s.  Removed corresponding entries from configuration files. Those T3s are ready to be used for spare parts.
  • Added airflow, smoke alarm, and voltage monitors to the LDAS room.
  • Disk2Disk and L0 publishing problems earlier this week when d2d was turned off overnight.  L0 publishing was then unable to pick until configuration changes were made.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

  • I have added the new LDAS createRDS option md5sumregexp to the RDS generation driver scripts. This option allows the user to set the directory where a file with the md5sums of the output RDS frames is kept, in relation to the directory with the frames. Working with LDAS, the option has been tested on the LDAS development system at Caltech. No changes have been made to the production system running at the sites that are reducing S5 data. I will be giving a status report on S5 RDS generation at the LSC meeting next week.

(Ben Johnson)

  • Added a lock file to Disk2Disk. This should help prevent more than one D2D script, of a single type, from running at the same time.
  • Added new location for the md5sum file in Disk2Disk as well.
  • Changed locale and default matlab path at LHO.
  • IPFilter: Working up instructions/FAQ on ipfilter. Creating site-specific ipf filter configurations. Tested ipfilter with zones (only works in global zone, but can filter individual zones' IPs).
  • Compiled list of mismatched h(t) md5sums (LHO-only).

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Larry for Keith)

  • Preparing things for the replacement Sysadmin.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

  • created GC accounts for a few more SciMon camp attendees
  • continued training our spam filter
  • wrote script to check for GC accounts that have 'stale' passwords
  • a few users are having issues with Thunderbird timeouts.  I solved it for a few by setting 'inline attachments' to false.  This didn't help everyone.
  • other usual user requests and support

(Shannon)

  • attended usenix security conference last week.  Traded notes with a security person from SDSC.  Some good information - especially as related to current threats & activity they are seeing "in the wild" there.   Met with RuthAnne while there also.  Learned about some of the CIT security restructuring from her.
  • Worked with Dave at LHO for three days.  We worked on further firewall configuration.  Moved more items into the management LAN.   Ran into some problems on switch configuration.  Will follow up next week.  MRTG conf updates also.  Updated the snort install while there also.  Captured some DMT traffic while there for later offline analysis.  Also discussed sme planning issues with Dave.
  • Reading through some of the papers presented at usenix.  Looked into an issue with the trinet data for Szabi.
  • Will need to follow up on a few security items at LHO.

Hanford

(Christine)

  • Set up two laptops to be used by outreach for an I2U2 workshop.  Created a new account for a remote participant in the workshop.
  • Still working on the vulnerability assessment document.
  • Still trying to get the Linux NIS+ client to work.  Turning off the Linux firewall allowed me to list the NIS+ databases, but automount is not working and users can't log in using NIS+.
  • Received a call from PNNL, they are going to have a power outage on Aug 19th and 20th.  I have scheduled time with ESnet on Tues. Aug 15th to try again to get the backup network working.  The Cisco engineer thinks it is a problem with the way ESnet is advertising our IP space.
  • PNNL is planning a complete power outage which means that both our backup network and primary network would be down.  Jim at PNNL is trying to find a fiber pair from a different building in the hope we can run our backup network through there during the power outage.
  • Responded to two requests from remote LSC users: one required a reboot of the LSC sandbox computer which had become so hung I couldn't even login from the console; the other was a problem with the seismic vault datalogger which turned out not to be a problem on my end.
  • Helped a user set up a MAC laptop for his LSC talk.
  • Patched the guest Windows computers.
  • Continued setting up new computers.

CIT

(Mike)

  • Continued work on DCC servers.
  • Started loading a Sun workstation for the control room.
  • Finished up loading additional software for Bruce Sears new Sun workstation.
  • Attended a few DCC meetings. Continue working on the new DCC server.  Still a few items that need to be worked out.
  • Ran critical updates on a few of NTSRV's.
  • Showed Christian what is going on with our NTSRV's. He finished up the critical updates on the rest of the Servers.
  • Work on maintaining the mail servers with Larry.
  • Continued work on Spam Filters.
  • Fixed a printer in 40Meter.
  • Some work on the DHCP server, freeing up expired IP numbers.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Website updates.  Continued working on the database update application for LAAC, website updates.  DCC demo meeting.  Addressed an issue of permission to use LIGO images for an online educational course.
  • LSC:  Installed a webpage for presentations at the upcoming Collaboration meeting.  Updated the database of papers for review.  Updates of the LSC-related mailing lists.
  • Project Science:  Website updates/ user support.

(Bruce Sears)

iLog Maintenance:                    (0.5 days)

General iLog maintenance (user adds, keyword adds, systems work, etc.)

(Christian)

  • Dorothy Lloyd- setup and configured Dot's home cable modem in order for  her to login remotely and work from home.
  • Mike and I installed the monthly Microsoft patches and all  Windows 2000 and 2003 servers.
  • Millikan - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
  • Worked on the Spam Filters with Mike and Larry.
  • Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support. A lot of support for the SURF students this past week.

(Larry)

  • Working a number of procurements. Purchased another couple of notebook computers for different people. Purchased a unit to be used in the display case if it works out with the LIGO s/w.  Received a engineering workstation, the software is being installed on it.  Received a backup DCC server. This unit will be a clone to replace one of the older DCC servers that we have in-place.  Ordered a number of different s/w pkgs. and licenses.  In the process of updating a couple of maint. contracts.  Purchased a number of misc. items for different people.  Assisted Gina in resolving some procurement issues. Still working on a Primavera contract problem for the Advanced LIGO group.
  • Continue working with the different SURF students. We still have students and visitors coming in. All needing account setups.
  • Working with the DCC group on the new s/w pkg., mostly attending meetings. The group as a whole attended a 3 hour training meeting on the  FileHold package.
  • Minor work on some documentation. Mostly reviewing the security documents that others have sent in.
  • A lot of equipment shuffling, this will continue as we upgrade items.
  • Usual user support including file restoration and account modifications.
  • Continual work with the mail servers. We still have a number of people using it to transfer large files and suffering through spam storms both external and internal. When the new DCC system is in place we will lock down the file size and presently working on the internal spam problems.

Mail Statistics for Aug. 03-09, 06

Mail Statistics

8/10/2006

Rejected Messages

31,515

Virus Messages

1,771

Accepted Messages

26,633

Total Messages

58,148

 


Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)


Advanced LIGO Systems

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

See also:

AdL Systems wiki web page

AdL Systems email archives

Records Of Decisions or Agreements (RODA) status web page

  • Held a systems meeting. Principal discussion topic was Osamu’s and Hiro’s E2E modeling of lock acquisition and angular alignment of the AdL Fabry-Perot arm cavities with full photon pressure (G060367-00). Results indicate that lock acquisition can be achieved at power levels of a few kW in the arms and lock can be maintained while the power is increased to full (~800 kW). Shot noise limited angular noise seems higher than it should be in the simulation; being investigated.
  • Provided further guidance on non-destructive evaluation of aluminum welds for UHV use to RAL for the quad structure (to be included as an update to the Generic Requirements and Standards for Detector Systems, E010613-01).
  • Reviewed, with Riccardo DeSalvo, Flomerics preliminary computational fluid dynamics results of a particulate flow/concentration analysis of the BSC in-chamber, laminar air shower concept (a concept proposed by Riccardo DeSalvo; see pg. 14 of G060130-00)
  • Set the preliminary agenda for the Optomechanical layout face-to-face meeting scheduled at LSU/LLO just after the LSC meeting, Thu 8/17 late afternoon and Fri 8/18 morning. Reviewed status on the AOS and optomechanical layout work with the groups.
  • Continued work to finalize the ETM wedge angle (with Mike Smith)

Vacuum Compatibility

Vacuum Preparation & Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

  • I have finished baking scanning and packaging the conflats for Ken Mason. They will be shipped Thu 8/10.
  • I will begin scanning the re-bake of the twisted, shielded, 25 conductor, kapton/PEEK cables that did not pass on the first scan, 5/10.

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

Cavity # 1: OTF Lab. at W. Bridge: No Change.

[Still measuring absorption & total loss on wire sample daily. Ready for new sample.]

Cavity #2: No change

Cavity #3: OTF Lab at Lauritsen Room 38: No Change

Still measuring absorption & total loss on stepper motor sample daily. We will continue taking measurements until the test is completed.

Scatter/Absorption Test Measurement:

Testing the system after the change to the new 1 W HeNe.

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Modeling and Simulation

AdvLIGO LSC/ASC design using FP arm model with quad suspension (Osamu, Hiro)

We had a talk at the ALIGO sys meeting, and we got information that initial LIGO has 1e-14rad/Hz shotnoise with 0.5-1mW input, but E2E resulted 1e-14rad/Hz with 25mW input for AdLIGO setting. E2E should show 5 times less noise. Under investigation.

For the investigation of a FP cavity with AdLIGO parameter, Electronic noise on WFS PD is being implemented. Preliminary result tells us that it is pretty tight to operate with low power(1kW) with the electronic noise which is adjusted to full power(0.7MW). We might need test mass control for both ETM and ITM or high/low gain WFS.

40m Simulation (Monica)

Adjusted the demodulation phases for POX33MHz and POY33MHz for the 40mInLockState package: each end mirror has been dithered to estimate the mixing angle for the two error signals. No offset has to be added anymore in the control system to get the in-lock state.  The stability of the control system in under investigation.

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro)

Code implementations are going, no interesting physics.

LLO mode matching (Hiro, Sany)

The mode mismatch was at LLO was investigated.  The loss of power due to mode mismatch is proportional to delZ^2, where delZ is the displacement of the waist position of the input beam relative to the correct waist position.  With delZ 350m, the loss due to mismatch is 3.5%. Using the loss of 10%, delZ is calculated to be 600m.  With the help of Sany, now calculating what the offset of MMT2 should be to correct this offset of the waist position.

Modeler (Hiro, Bruce)

Modeler (e2e simulation engine) is being modified so that the number of input and out ports can be changed using alfi. (alfi front end is done already)

Mechanical Simulation for Advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

(1) E2e modeling

Continued our e2e study on frequency noise due to Mode Cleaner length fluctuation. Using a PSL beam with a finite line width (about 3 kHz FWHM) as input to our LIGO I MC model and the SimLIGO’s standard floor motion as input to our LIGO I HAM stack model, computed the frequency fluctuation of the MC transmitted beam. The obtained power spectrum indicates that the frequency fluctuation is on the order of 10-4 Hz/rtHz at 0.1 Hz, going down to 10-5 Hz/rtHz toward 0.8 Hz, back to 10-4 Hz/rtHz at 1 Hz, stays leveled till 1 Hz, and steeply going down to 5x10-8 Hz/rtHz at 20 Hz. In 20 Hz ? 100 Hz, the fluctuation appears to stay at the level of 5x10-8 Hz/rtHz. Note that in this computation, the MC length was locally controlled (there was no feedback from the arm). The frequency fluctuation at 100 Hz approximately corresponds to the arm length fluctuation of 10-18 m in common mode. We appreciate precious advice by Hiro.

(2) Outreach

The whole group (Sutton, Anderson, Norwood, Parkinson and Yoshida) started to review/edit the lab procedures that Sutton and Anderson drafted last week for six LIGO SEC exhibits (Giant Slinky, Standing Wave, Variable Length Pendulum, Pipes of Pan, Hot Light Exhibit and Soap Bubble Interference). We are planning to complete the review/edit in two or three weeks. Sutton continued designing lab procedures with Snacks (toy versions of LIGOSEC exhibits). This time, she started to design several experiments in the field of electricity and magnetism.

ALFI : e2e Front end (Bruce, Melody)

Grouping and layering of objects are being implemented.

Seismic Isolation

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

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

The Two stages have been leveled to within .0015. We have had trouble with the stage 1-2 locators not fitting properly and had to remove them for machining. A stop on the stage 2 interfers with being able to center them.  Next week Fred Miller will be attaching the actuators, making temporary cabling, and attaching a MEPI controller in preparation for modal testing. This will complete the assembly of the ISI system.

A new design has been made for the power screws on the spring installation tooling. The ASI design could only be used once and the screw would seize. We have ordered hardened screws, with and without silver plating and nuts with nitronic inserts.

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

Brian Lantz to give LSC talk on two topics: 1 stage HAM and ETF progress.

Rich to give LSC talk on BSC prototype work.

BSC SEI status

Both stages are suspended on their springs in approximately the correct place!

The capacitive displacement sensor for stages 1-2 and 0-1 seem to require working offsets of 0.25 mm and 1 mm, respectively, based on the current installation at MIT.  On the bench, the working range appears to be good.  This will get resolved as soon as people get home from various trips

Jay, Rolf and Brian met at Stanford to prepare specifications for the new control software.

Dan DeBra, Ken and Dennis brainstormed on how to rework the spring installation fixture to prevent its rapid demise due to galling.  Ken will order some Silver-plated threaded rod and also study other options.

Stanford

Nice new results from the platform, to be presented at LSC meeting.

Some problems with ADE built-in digitizer in the seismometer experiment.

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

ISI

Rolf, Jay, and I met with Brian Lantz on Monday to discuss the ISI electronics.  Some good progress was made.

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

Minutes for the 9th Aug HAM-SAS telecom

no meeting next week (G&M closed & there is the LSC meeting)

Inverted pendulum alignment problem fixed

  • added leveling adjustments to the base support (test stand)
  • built & installed the length compensators/adjusters
  • disassembled everything, found 2 flex joints were for calibrating counterweights not for the full load (25 x less stiff)
  • replaced flex joints with proper units and now the inverted pendulum platform behaves normally

-         Could add a full payload test at G&M (not part of the current plan) -- do we want to do so? Ric & Dennis to discuss & decide

-         Should have Dave Ottaway confirm that LASTI has the full payload mass for use in vacuum (optics table of course, plus stainless steel masses (such as the BSC stack masses removed, et. al.), plus triple pendulums, etc.)

FTIR machine has arrived -- to be set up. will rely upon Soldi to obtain ultra-pure grade isopropyl alcohol

Ric posted a few photos of the parts & assemblies on his web pages:

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/HAMSAS/assembly%20photos/

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/HAMSAS/cleaning%20photo/

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~desalvo/HAMSAS/final%20assembly%20IP/

cleaned part to be shipped to CIT for cleanliness testing

-         CIT to loan spectrum analyzer, or G&M to rent, or loan from Virgo? Ric to pursue

installation cart fabrication nearly completed, except the lifting parts

need to build a clean lifting fixture to be used iwithin the clean room (high priority for Chiara)

Ric plans to go to G&M ~9/1 to continue support to the assembly

Dennis has approved the use of the bearing in the installation jigs (after cleaning in isopryl alcohol) with a sheet metal shield around the bearing to protect possible inadvertent transfer -- can't see, feel or smell any oil/grease

status of LVDT driver? blank board was to be delivered on Friday -- plan is still to build the unit in Italy -- latest status not known

G&M to ship coils to Virginio at CIT for calibration & test

shims (PEEK) will need to be made/changed to adapt to modified GAS filter (set point is higher)

Suspension

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I'm using the latest information from Ian and working on a lower quad installation arm shop drawings, also a 'conveyor' version to be used at the LASTI site.  The existing fixture has been disassembled, the table and parts will be plated next week.  I'm working on the DLC mounts, the PO Telescope, and cavity beam dumps for Mike Smith.

Core Optics

From: Gregg Harry <gharry@ligo.mit.edu>

We have finished measuring the 65/35 silica doped titania/silica coating from CSIRO.  It gives a mechanical loss of about 1.8e-4, averaged over the coating.  This coupled with its Young's modulus which is very similiar to the silica substrate makes this coating almost as good in thermal noise performance as the titania doped tantala. Plus the silica doped titania coating has already demonstrated 0.5 ppm optical absorption.  If the index of refraction of the silica doped titania could come up about 10 percent (possibly with a small amount of tantala dopant?), this coating would be better than the baseline titania-doped tantala coating.

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

Mostly last day and night push to get the SURF project finished with solid results. Its down to the wire, but appears we are getting very revealing NEW insight into the PI phenomenon. We are surveying (thanks to massive computer power !) all the acoustic mode resonances existing in the ideal AdL TMs (ie perfectly homogeneous, exact right cylinders) to ~80kHz (i.e. just beyond the 2nd arm FSR).  Since we are not primarily concerned with reproducing the "single cavity mode" resonance cases already investigated by the Australians and Russians, the miriad tuning differences which will distinguish the actual TM acoustic modes are not significant in our study.

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO SUS

Assembled a spare ECD, it will be shipped to LASTI on Friday.

Adv. LIGO Coatings

An RFI was drafted and sent to CSIRO, REO, MLD, LMA and ATF; the objective is to assess the interest of the vendors in providing Adv.  LIGO coatings as well as budget and time required to get ready to handle the large substrates.

Auxiliary Optics

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

LAYOUT

Hartmann Probe Beam - Alternative paths for the ITMx and ITMy Hartmann probe beams were created in ZEMAX. The Hartmann ITMx beam in introduced through the AR side of MMT2 and is expanded by an input lens and by MMT3, on-axis with the main IFO input beam; this will require transmission through the HR and AR surfaces of MMT2, and reflection from the HR surface of MMT3 @ 670nm wavelength; both surfaces of the BS must have minimum reflectivity @ 670nm wavelength. The Hartmann ITMy beam is introduced through the AR side of OMMT3 and is expanded by  OMMT2 and OMMT1 on-axis with the main IFO output beam; this will require reflection from the HR surfaces of OMMT2 and OMMT1 @ 670nm wavelength. One benefit of the alternative beam paths is the elimination of the off-axis parabolic beam expanding telescope for the Hartmann ITMy beam. One off-axis parabolic beam expanding telescope per IFO is still needed for receiving the ITMx PO beam

PO TELESCOPE

I visited the production facility of the Tydex, J. S. Co. at the Federal Research and Production Centre at Sosnovy Bor, near St. Petersburg, Russia. I was satisfied that they are a viable source for off-axis parabolic mirrors for the PO telescope. They use a computer controlled grinding and polishing method for producing single, off-axis parabolic mirrors, rather than making a large master and cutting out off-axis segments as is done by SORL their US competitor. Their quoted price is considerably lower that SORL.

SLC

I am in the process of modeling some of the stray light baffles in SW and importing the STEP models into ZEMAX.

Input Optics

From: David Reitze <reitze@phys.ufl.edu>

UF Report (Dave Reitze)

Alignment Sensing/Stable Recyling Cavities (Guido Mueller/Muzammil Arain)

  • Calculated 10-mode amplitudes for all alignment degrees of freedom for Advanced LIGO (baseline and stable recycling cavity) for mode matched and mode mismatched cases.
  • Studied options to increase Gouy phase difference between ITM and ETM signals.
  • Verified Signal loss in baseline Advanced LIGO interferometer in mode mismatched case.
  • Revising adaptive mode-matching manuscript based on LSC review

Mechanical Design (Luke Williams)

  • Adjusting SolidWorks layouts for aligo IO section (stable & unstable layouts)
  • working on plan for split quad photodiode for alternative alignment sensing photodiodes
  • preparing questions on design issues for Faraday isolator telecon with IAP

Electro-optic Modulation (Volker Quetschke, Wan Wu)

Complex modulation - Succeeded in controlling AFG3252 directly from matlab. This allows to directly program the function generator with arbitrary, matlab calculated waveforms. Using the function generator together with two HF amplifiers in a "complex modulation" scheme allowed the creation of a single (one sided) 17MHz sideband on the carrier.

EOM phase/amplitude noise - Characterized the NPRO beam jitter noise using the Quad photo detector. Working on the common mode noise rejection measurement; the idea is to substract the noise from carrier-carrier beat note out of the carrier-sideband beat note to get the information about the modulation index variation.

Controls, Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

  • We had a successful AdvLigo CDS workshop last week at MIT. The meeting minutes are still being compiled.
  • Jay, Ben and myself went to visit with Brain Lantz at Stanford on Monday. The meeting went well and we came away with the information necessary to continue design of the ISI controls. We did not have time to go into detail on the control theory and specific filters/transfer functions. We will have a follow up meeting on this later.
  • Most of the engineering staff has been busy putting together task lists and schedules for all of the CDS group activities, with particular details for the next six months to a year on Lasti and 40m prototypes.  AdvLigo CDS infrastructure designs and improvements, aired last week, are also being incorporated into the list. I hope to have a compiled list and schedule by next week.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>

Livia, John

We have continued our efforts to confirm previous mesa beam tilt measurements. The alignment of the cavity has been improved and the finesse has risen by 20%. Mode shape is better but lock is still unstable. Analysis of current results seems to confirm our expectations.  We will now begin implementing a PDH locking scheme in preparation for power recycling.

Marie

This past week I pulled out the frequency and attenuation factor from all of the fits we have so far.  I then made plots of the Q-factor vs. the frequency for the glassy metal spring at room temperature, 30 degrees C, and 40 degrees C.  Comparing the plots and talking with Riccardo, I plan to remove some of the mass already on the spring and retake data to try to find what we are looking for.  We are also in the middle of collecting data at 50 degrees C.  I also visited LHO on Thursday and Friday which was a great experience.

Michael Koyfman

This week, I have been working on fitting the graphs for the anti-spring oscillations, specifically maraging steel at 30 degrees Celsius and the glassy metal at 40 degrees Celsius.


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