Weekly Report for Week Ending August 31, 2006

LSC	Administration	Hanford Observatory	Livingston Observatory
Optical & Mechanical	Controls and Data Systems	40 Meter Facility	TNI
LASTI	CIT Science Group	Laboratory Computing	Adv. LIGO Development

Past Weekly Reports

There will be no LIGO Executive Committee meeting scheduled Monday, September 4, 2006 due to the holiday. The next Executive Committee Meeting will be scheduled Monday, September 11, 2006.

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

There has been a lot of activity this week on preparing institutional pre-proposals for NSF's program called Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE.) Within the Directorate there was some discussion of pulling together an all-LSC data analysis proposal to support integration with Virgo, and several LSC institutions expressed interest in such a plan. In parallel, though, there are several independent efforts to submit PIRE proposals. After much discussion, it looks like the best way forward is to see which of the independent proposals make it through the institutional selection procedure (no institution can submit more than three PIRE proposals, and at some institutions the competition is fierce.) After that step, we will attempt to harmonize competing proposals to best serve the needs of the LSC.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was scheduled Thursday, August 31, 2006. Issues discussed are covered below.

There are currently no open action items.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

Provided assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula) with shipping and the preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US Customs Clearance of one 3"dia x 1/2" thick glass substrate to the University of Western Australia (L. Ju). Account Number LIGO.OPT - 5.4 - NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
Reported to NSF the projected Vehicle Cost Data on Government-Owned vehicles for 2006, 2007 and 2008.
Assisted the CDS group (R. Abbott) with shipping and the preparation of a loan document for a Dynamic Signal Analyzer to Logic Plus Inc. in San Luis Obispo, Ca. Account Number LIGO.TEC-1.3-NSFLIGOFY02ON.
Created Property records for the Audio Precision Analyzer @ LHO.
Provided assistance to Mike Pedraza in shipping a package to ASA computers. Account Number LIGO.DAT-1.5.3-NSFLIGO.FY2ON.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

Spent most of the past week involved in review of the functionality requirements for the new DCC document system from FileHold. Several "fix-its" were identified and are in the process of being fixed by the development team at FileHold.
Spent time working with Dennis, Rich and Todd on the Engineering needs with the new system, identifying possible work flows and working current processes into the new paradigm.
Had 3 teleconferences with Ian at FileHold securing answers raised during the review as well as getting input as to possible solutions for issues arising.
Began to flesh out a deployment and training strategy for the new system.

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

No report (vacation).

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA Press Here.

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

Issued the order for the lasers for Hanford.
Issued the purchase order for Custom Metal works for the LIGO Livingston Observatory.
Working on finishing up the change order for Kaufman.
Made arrangements for the return of equipment to Newark which will be upgraded to a better system.
Completed change order #14 to Southern Enterprises and submitted to the vendor.
Placed purchase orders for goods to be delivered to Caltech and the sites. Issued the order for the pulse generator and the spectrum analyzer.
Completed change order #3 to Eskew Dumez Ripple and submitted to the vendor. Received the current Certificate of Insurance.
Completed change order #17 to Promec and submitted to the vendor.
Trained a new user on placing orders and requisitions in TechMart.
Researched the status of purchase orders over 90 days and took care of changes on the status. Closed out purchase orders.
Placed the purchase order for the print and website for teachers resource.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

Updated the report for the Outreach Award to account for revised data on estimate to complete.
Assisted Gina Salone with the analysis of Northrup invoices.
Requested correction of expenditure types for several purchases charged to fabrication accounts that used the equipment expenditure type in error.
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 inspection of the LLO SEC went well, with a very minor punch list resulting. The only major item regards the certification of the water pumps for the fire system to accommodate the fact that LLO is not hooked up to city water.
A new drawing for the front lettering for the LLO SEC has been received from the architect, and will be installed by a subcontractor for Cangelosi-Ward. Determination of who pays for this additional work is pending.
Deliveries are beginning for the parts for the LLO SEC outdoor wall exhibit. The schedule shows five weeks for the assembly and installation of this exhibit.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

The NSF has approv4ed our Annual Report for LIGO Operations. This clears the way for funding come October 1 as soon as the NSF gets the funds. Currently working on the budgets for FY 2007.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

There are no open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for October.
The minutes and action items from the August Staffing Committee meeting 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.
Prepared numerous appointment and reappointment memos for various Visitors, Post Docs, and Term Staff.

Processed time sheets and submitted to payroll.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

No report.

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

Summary of S5 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)

Duty cycles for the last week were: H1 81 percent, H2 90 percent, and ranges were typically ~14Mpc on H1 and ~7+Mpc on H2. However there were notable problems with H1, due to glitching in the PZTs associated with the input beam. Ranges and duty cycle suffered from the glitching. The problem was traced and then the PZT board was swapped (more links on this investigation below). The glitches appear to have vanished but we're watching to see if this holds long term.

Some highlights from the LHO elog are bulleted below:

There were no lock losses despite 250 people on site for a public event with the TriCity Astronomy Club. Weekend sensitivity to seismicity was likely due to the transport of a sub reactor.
links to standard summaries: Tuesday maintenance, range & duty cycle, IFO maintenance
H1 suffered mystery lock losses, leading to the observation of twitching of the MC as of over a week ago. This was later tracked to the PZT.
truck events were studied, including the effect at 6Hz on H1 and associated upconversion into the gravity wave band
violin RMS was tracked over Jun/Aug: we still have the ~factor of two smaller lines than expected, and there is variation from line to line, but given lines are stable over this time-frame
PulsarMon showed occasional jumps in the the time-to-reach the Crab spindown; this was seemingly shown to be a wandering line, source unidentified, although similar events have been previously attributed to pumps/chillers.

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

No report.

Optical and Mechanical Systems (Coyne)

See Advanced LIGO

Most of the group’s efforts are reported under the Advanced LIGO project.

Dennis Coyne and Rich Abbott have continued to help evaluate the new DCC FileHold application customized for LIGO.

The most significant remaining issue to be resolved with FileHold is the generation of an appropriate URL to a document. There may be some fundamental limitations to the FileHold application (based on security concerns we’re told) that make the URL link awkward. With the URL and some other fixes/issues identified the balance of the application meets functional requirements.
We are currently revising the file hierarchy, defining supporting source file format/types, revising the technical & engineering document types.
Next we’ll (1) think through some work flow process scenarios (for possible implementation after the transition to the new DCC application) and (2) develop a manual for engineering use of the new DCC (i.e. guidelines, rules, good use/practice, policies).

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO Commissioning, Electronics, Controls, Computers

The EPICS database for the new MC board had some problems; Ben fixed it, and Sam checked out that all controls and readbacks seem to work correctly.

IFO Modeling

Monica presented the status of her work on e2e and at the 40m, in a meeting with her Virgo colleagues Patrice Hello and Fabien Cavalier, who were visiting earlier this week. Her talk is here. She is working on LIGO reports on her mirror velocity measurements and her work on the MC WFS Guoy telescope and servo diagonalization. She returns to France next week.
Osamu has been working with Kentaro on modeling of new RF control schemes for AdLIGO, validating with Optickle, Finesse, Corbitt-code. He also did a study comparing different arm cavity g-factors to reduce the severity of alignment instabilities.

DC Detection and Vacuum Squeezing Development

We planned to vent for installation next Tuesday, but we're not ready with the 2nd TT PZT. We got a spare one from LLO, but they want it back. We await delivery of two TT PZTs from Piezo Jena. Word is, we'll get one (the repaired one) sometime next week; so we'll postpone venting until that is received and checked out.
Rob and Sam are assembling and aligning the in-vac optical beamline on the clean bench. the only hitch was a missing mirror clip. Ben made one, and Bob cleaned it (twice). They're now starting on the OMC assembly, electronics, alignment.
Status of controls electronics for DC readout: Ben has completed an updated draft of the system wiring diagram. Computer, PCIX IO chassis, ADCs, DACs and REFMEM are all in hand and under test by Rolf & Alex. AA and AI boards are assembled and under test. QPD whitening board is stuffed and Ben will test it soon; he'll use a new LIGO Rack Mount Chassis which will be ordered soon. DC satellite box and in-vac DCPD amp are in hand and in use. Rich is still working on the PZT driver boards.
Ben changed to different opamps on the DCPD amplifier board to get lower overall noise, did a functional test, and updated the schematic.
Ben and Steve installed the DCPD amplifier board into the vacuum nipple, filled it with krypton, and sealed it up. Rob will test it on the clean bench in preparation for installation.
The new rev of the QPD Whitening board is stuffed now, and ready for testing. Ben will write a test procedure, then it can be tested in the back shop.
Ben cut the cans off two GAP2000 PDs that we can use in the vacuum DCPD.
Rich chose, and ordered, some Kepco high voltage DC power supplies for the PZT drivers for the OMC and TT mirrors.
Steve is preparing the lab for DC readout installation. He has cleaned out two small electronics racks and cleared out the cabling; the racks are ready.
Riccardo continues working on balanced PDs for the squeezing experiment. He assembled his circuit on a breadboard and set up an optical system. He then measured the relative QE of 12 PDs, (ranging from 82-87%, in good agreement with expectations), and estimated the errors. He also measured the angular dependence of the result, and found it to be roughly flat out to 60degrees. His PCB design has gone an iteration with Chris Wipf, and is ready to be sent out to PCB express for fab. Ben will help with that.
Go and Shally designed and built a spectrum analyzer for the squeezing experiment. It is now completed and tested, now being integrated into system, with help from Riccardo.
Go is now realigning the squeezer optics to reestablish squeezing with the new spectrum analyzer.
Go is working on two papers describing the squeezing experiment.

Lab Infrastructure, Bake Lab

Steve checked that particle counts in the back clean room (where the DC readout beamline is being assembled) are near zero.
Steve plans to add more fore-pump power behind the main TP1 maglev turbopump to avoid overheating during pumpdown. He received some vacuum hoses to make these mods.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No report.

LASTI (Ottaway)

HAM SAS

The first draft of the LASTI test plan was completed and will be circulated on Monday for general comment from anyone who is interested. The test plan will be circulated to those on AdvLIGO SUS and SEI email lists. If anyone else is interested please contact Dave Ottaway for a copy.

Quad Report

We have finished up working in the chamber and Lasti is now under vacuum. The resistors and thermistors for doing the thermal loading test of the suspension have been installed. There are pictures and descriptions on the Lasti ilog, 8/30/06.

The "interference issue that we were experiencing on the reaction chain has been cleared up, the cabling for the electro-static drive were under tension. They have been disconnected for the time being.

The main eddy-current damping has been reinstalled on the reaction chain.

The blade eddy-current damping on the upper intermediate mass has been removed so that a comparison between the two chains (with and without blade ECD) can be made.

ISI

We ran into some problems with the tooling that is designed to position the actuator coil relative to the actuator magnet/body. It was only correctly positioning the coil in 2 out of 3 dimensions. Once we figured out a better procedure we proceeded and have installed 2 corners (8 actuators). We have released and rebalanced stage 2 and started the modal testing.

We have found a design problem in the actuators that has resulted in 3 damaged actuators (2 large, 1 small) that is currently being evaluated. This involves how the actuator leads attach to the coil windings.

CIT Science Group (Lazzarini)

Data Analysis

Brown:

Worked on LIGO EMRI parameter estimation project
Writing and editing LIGO EMRI project paper
Worked on numerical relativity simulations
Worked on LISA supermassive black hole data challenge
Helped Lisa with some ringdown search issues
Provided segment database support for Igor

Chatterji:

Prepared glitch group report for 2006 Aug 24 - 27

http://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~shourov/reports/glitch/glitch_report-20060824-20060827/

Prepared glitch group summary for weekly S5 run call

http://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~shourov/reports/glitch/WeeklyDC_20060820-20060827/

Continued preparation for S5 Q Pipeline analysis. Updating condor submission scripts to handle new Q Pipeline layout.

Dupuis:

analyzing data in a narrow frequency band around Crab pulsar with first 9 months of S5 data
investigating distributed FFT algorithms for long data sets
writing code to calculate F-statistic using intermediate heterodyned time series from the time-domain search

Mendell:

My data analysis work for the past week was to do a few calculations for the pulsar group, comparing times Einstein@Home analyzed the S4 data with the times hardware injections were running, and checking a few equations. Once this is finished, I will return to work on the final draft of the S4 PowerFlux, StackSlide, and Hough paper.

Yakushin:

Generated S5 waveburst triggers with 5 second time step for time shifts between LLO and LHO to be used for the final background extimate in the analysis of the first few months of S5 (up to April 2). The tuning of the thresholds is currently done using 3.125 second time step.
Making plots that show daily background rate for waveburst triggers.
Investigating why some injections for SG70Q9 are not found.
Presented an LLO lunch talk about triggered and untriggered burst search last Friday.

Grid Research (Blackburn)

Integration Testbed Activity

Determined that NFS-Lite configured at CIT_ITB_1 moves the startup directory specified in the Condor submit script from the InitialDir specified by the VDS planner to an unspecified place in a subdirectory of /tmp. So NFS-Lite breaks the locations specified by metadata locations specified by VORS (and GridCat). NFS-Lite is only installed at a few OSG sites at present.

Determined that site BNL's ITB site has $OSG_GRID mis-configured. Am working with the site administration on reconfiguration.

Assembled IP address, additional rack server, and ethernet switch as components for a future validation test bed (VTB).

Validated two ITB pre-release installations of OSG 0.5.0. with the 940 DAG node LIGO Workflow test.

Workflow Development Activities

With Michael Samidi's assistance, determined that a small partitioned HIPE job can cleanup storage in the N - 2 partition, when the Nth partition is executing. The latest hurdle is there are 4 bad GW files which prevent the completion of partitioning workflow.

Tested VORS with vds-get-sites and determined more testing will be needed.

Met with the VDS team in a weekly telecom and worked toward a plan for generalizing partitioned HIPE cleanup.

TclGlobus

Resolved TclGlobus unit test failure on 64-bit platform related to the callback script never gets evaluated inside Tcl interpreter. The problem description as follows: Tcl_GetByteArrayObj() is taking int as one of the parameters and TclGlobus is passing long to specify the length of the actual buffer.

Encountered another problem when running TclGlobus FTP client unit test on 64-bit Solaris platform (sparc). There is a race condition between two channel functions, control and data channel. This issue is still under investigation. This issue doesn't show up on 64-bit linux opteron.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

Efforts continued with getting LDAS compiled 64bit for Solaris 10 opteron and Fedora Core 4 opteron. The DB2 software for Fedora Core 4 opteron has been installed. All but one of the unit tests have passed for Fedora Core 4 opteron. The one failure is being investigated with the current speculation that it is a rounding issue. For Solaris 10 opteron, all unit tests have passed for the lib subdirectory. Build rules are still needed for tcl and tk as the configuration macros supplied by the software authors claim it to be an unsupported platform.

To fix the LDAS account management software, the cntlmonAPI ignores trailing garbage from the account management cgi script. The source of the extra characters is still under investigation.

The diskcacheAPI now informs the manager of the diskcache's cache file name.

The ligolwAPI no longer generates a background error of not finding cid var when an object arrives after job cleanup.

The LDAS system tests were done using version 1.8.284 of the software. New failures this week are several regression tests that complain about corrupted frames. The lsync test continues to fail.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

Continued to repack tapes at LLO.
Moved the first batch of tapes from the CIT silo into shelf storage. The data on the tapes is all from engineering runs. Scanned the barcodes of the tapes, but haven't yet worked with Ben's catalog script.
Finished checking the provenance of Xavi's h(t) frames.
Had Ben start writing .md5 files to /archive/meta at LLO. This is now complete at all locations.
Ejected L1 tapes at LHO for data that had been dual copied into the cluster. Used the /var/sam/tapeusage (such as it is) script, which will eventually help sort out the Venn diagram of what data is on what tapes.
Copied Keith Thorne's latest Burst-MDC files from the CIT cluster into /archive/frames and made sure they were on tape.
Sorted out the RLS cert problem that caused LDR to stop scheduling files for transfer from LHO to CIT.

(Phil Ehrens)

Upgraded Solaris to 10u2 on sunbuild, ldas-test, dataserver-test, and ldas-dev. All upgrades went without incident. Note that it is not necessary to configure networking when doing an upgrade unless the upgrade script specifically prompts for it, and in that case it will have the values filled in auto-magically anyway.
Ongoing x509 certificate related tasks. Lots of host and service certs are expiring at this time, and I'm trying to get a better understanding of the whys and wherefores of cert install locations in the interest of reducing the number of known locations (just down from 54 to 53!) to a tractable number.
Converted all apache servers on Solaris to used the bundled Solaris version of Apache and the Solaris service management facilities. The only problem has been with ldas-cit, where the configuration of the server is unusual. Work on ldas-cit is ongoing.
Further development of rulesets and features for log_mon.tcl, which currently lacks only a robust startup method before it can be distributed. Use of this tool at CIT has been extended to cover all machines in the ldas-cit, ldas-dev, and ldas-test systems as well as the desktops on the 6th floor of Millkan and a few machines that are not integrated into groups. The reports generated for the nearly 400 machines visible to the script have been reduced to a reasonably benign flow without sacrificing visibility into any issues.
Applied for and received blessing from the DOE certificate management authority to issue host and service certs for all domains which have heretofore required the issuance of certs related to LIGO data flow and analysis.

(Erik Espinoza)

Configured MRTG to track temperature of CIT Data Center.
Tested returned node from SuperMicro with 6 diff ram stick configurations.
E-mail'd Christine Barker instructions for NIS+ on FC4.
Testing "expect" script to re-index tables in PostgreSQL db for Quill.
Responded to Condor Crash @ CIT 8/29/2006 & 8/30/2006:

- Cleaned up duplicate Rescue Dags.

- Notified users via daswg.

Sent details of node329's mobo to ASA, requested RMA for mobo.
Spoke with Sean@ASA about outstanding RMA's:

- 16 Sticks of Ram

- 6 HD's

Spoke with Bruce Allen about Einstein@Home configuration, will be tweaking in the near term.
Submitted CDS/LDAS Security doc to Stuart.
Crashed nodes:

- node329 - Sun Aug 27, 2006 - Considered marginal board

- node264 - Thu Aug 31, 2006 - Rebooted via IPMI

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

Diagnostic boot on the old dataserver revealed bad memory DIMM. Since this machine is no longer under service contract and since one has to insert/remove 4 DIMMs at a time, I removed 4 DIMMs reducing the total memory from 4 to 3 Gb.
Showed Dwayne how to do diagnostic boot and use minicom to capture the results.
Configured a test segment database on the old dataserver.
Experimenting with the test segment database to figure out how to make the changes requested by Keith Riles.
Node37 got frozen today. Rebooting fixed the problem for now.
Enabled firewall on gateway.

(Dwayne Giardina)

Ejected tapes for shipment to CIT, imported and labeled new.
Ejected 116 tapes for shelf storage, imported and labeled new.
Switched instances of apache2 installs to the one packaged with Solaris 10.
Restarted createRDS scripts Tuesday during maintenance, possibly unnecessary.
Housekeeping, organizing LDAS parts, manuals, etc.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

The work for the past week has focused on keeping LDAS services running at LHO, while we fix problems with RAID boxes, publishing meta data, and the web server. The problems have been minor and not caused any loss of data. Overall LDAS services continue to run smoothly at LHO, as they have throughout S5.

(Ben Johnson)

Ejected first 95 directories worth of Level 1 RDS data (or about 60 tapes).
Put IPFilter firewall in place at LLO.
gateway@LHO is now running Solaris 10 release version of apache.
t3-23 shut itself down for an unknown reason. The unit came back up after a powercycle, and missing raw frames were copied from backup framebuilder.
Continuing to investigate testpoint manager + framebuilder corruption.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

Nothing to report

Livingston

(Shannon)

Trouble shooting a Solaris 10 x86_64 system. Sun has not been much help. The initial suspicions have proved to be incorrect, so I am still trying to diagnose the exact cause of the system lockups.
Looked into an issue with the IDS at LHO. Turned out that a misconfigured sendmail daemon had been filling up the log partition on the loghost. This in turn caused issues with several other things, including the IDS.
Putting together a system for a MySQL server. Will have Dwayne install the OS/software once I get it built. Several issues with it so far. Had to order an adapter cable, etc.
Set up a global directory for "lscsoft". John Zweizig has ownership and has agreed to maintain the software for now.
More pouring through IDS logs...
Reading more documentation on BGP, which will need to be set up in the next couple of days for initial testing with Charter.
Set up auditing on a Solaris 9 GC host. The plan is to roll out auditing across all of LLO GC, but initial testing is needed to determine disk usage, configuration details, etc. Will also document and pass on to Dave as we are planning on this for CDS also.

Hanford

(Christine)

Tried again to get the Fedora C4 NIS+ client working. Re-installed the OS again, followed all the instructions from Erik, still won't work. I can run all the niscat commands on all of the databases, everything looks good, but I can't login with a NIS+ username.
Hope to finish the cybersecurity vulnerability spread sheets this week. I've spent most of the week working on it.
Helped a new long term visitor get settled in. He brought his own laptop and desktop, both Linux.
Helped another visitor get the printers set up on his laptop.
Started budget planning for next FY.
Requested quotes for a new router from several sources.

CIT

(Mike)

Finished up loading our new SQL server. After working out many hardware issues I was able to get this server up and running. I now have the SQL server software for DCC running on the new server.
Worked the third floor network closet, mounting network switches, and re-cabling all network cables. Christian gave me a hand with this.
Ghosted all NTSRV's EOF backups. Christian gave me a hand with this to get him familiar with backups.
Working on loading a new Linux server.
Continued work on Spam Filters.
Other misc. user support, work in B/A server room, plus other sysadmin tasks.

(Veronica)

LSC: Updates of the database of technical publications. Updates of LSC-related mailing lists. Posted belated presentations from last meeting.
LIGO: Video editing for Vladimir Braginsky. Image editing permissions for NSF and other publishers. Updates of the website. User support for AdvLIGO Project office. Tracking down a shipment of videotapes of SciMon from last meeting, it's supposed to arrive today.
CaJAGWR: Website updates.
Project Science: Website updates/user support.

(Christian)

Mike and I relocated and organized two network switches on the 3rd W/B.
Ran monthly ghost backups on all NTSRV's
Stocked printer cartridges that were delivered to LIGO this week.
Working with HP support to configure new printer/scanner that is going to be station at 3rd W/B.
Continue working on the system that is going into the display case.
Worked on the Spam Filters with Mike and Larry. Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Bruce Sears)

-iLog Maintenance: (0.5 days)

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

(Larry)

The procurement cycle continues. Still making a number of procurements for new arrivals and projects. Wrapping up the SUN maint. contract and checking on a couple of the s/w contracts that are due to expire. Still working on getting more disk space for the home accounts.
Getting the broken quad dual core cpu unit ready to be shipped back. The system is to be upgraded and repaired. Hopefully, when it returns we will have a viable system to use.
Assisted Mike with a number of different projects he has been working on. Mostly, helping him trouble-shoot some of the problems he has encountered.
Working with the group on the system going into the display case. We have the h/w working and now we are down to the s/w installation.
Still signing out SURF students. Also, signing new people in.
Setup a new mailman account and have received requests for a couple more.
Working multiple calendar manager issues. We will start testing a product that may be used as a replacement for the existing calendar system. However, we will be upgrading the existing system to the latest version so we can get a good comparison of the products.
Assisted a number of students in trouble-shooting different items. Still working on a matlab environment problem with one of the students.
Started the monthly backups.
Worked with Mike and Christian in rearranging some of the equipment in the computer room. This is being done in preparation to re-cable a number of machines.
Worked a number of e-mail and spam issues.

Mail Statistics for Aug 24-30, 06

Mail Statistics	8/31/2006
Rejected Messages	33,248
Virus Messages	1,090
Accepted Messages	30,198
Total Messages	63,446

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Systems

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems, Management

from Dennis Coyne

Systems

See also:

AdL Systems wiki web page

AdL Systems email archives

Records Of Decisions or Agreements (RODA) status web page

Nothing significant to report

Vacuum Compatibility

Vacuum Preparation & Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

No report (out sick)

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:

We have encountered with a situation such as the output signal was not as stable as before. As we have pursued to find the cause, we have lost the cavity lock, then we went through a complete new re-alignment BUT that did not solve. As we suspect of the malfunction of one of the equipment, we found that the this "old" function generator was the cause. We brought another function generator and finally we were able to lock the cavity again and we are now optimizing its power output with a good gaussian (TEMo,o) mode. Now, The new sample, stepper motor is in the cavity. The cavity is locked. We were taking measurements and we'll continue taking every day for absorption and ring down.

Scatter/Absorption Test Measurement:

We have started the scatter measurement for a witness 1.00" mirror. Later, this same mirror will be covered with a protective film (“First Contact”) by Helena. After 1 week of exposure, we’ll remove the film and then take new measurements and compare with the previous measurements.

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Modeling and Simulation (Hiro Yamamoto)

e2e weekly meeting (Mark Barton + X)

On August 30th, 10am, the first e2e meeting organized by Sany and Osamu started. Mark Barton gave a talk summering the update of his suspension modeling work. This time, the main focus was the update of the triple suspension model, comparison of quad blade vs double blade performance with different wire spacing. The talk is G060490. Mark's work is available now in www.ligo.caltech.edu/~e2e/SUSmodels/

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

Peter asked me to check positive g-factor case which has 54.4km of ROC for both ITM/ETM instead of 2076m for negative g-factor. As a result of simulation, it appears that the positive g-factor is less stable due to additional slope(equivalently less phase margin) around unity gain frequency. And furthermore, yaw differential mode has a dip around 2Hz, so that design of feedback filter might be more complex.

Static IFO simulation (Hiro)

It was found that the calculation of a stationary field fails due to some degeneracy. This was solved by reducing DOF, which also accelerated the convergence of estimation. Locking code was generalized to handle generic case.

Modeler Hiro, Bruce, Melody

A new module is being developed, which can accept any kind of inputs and can generate any kind of outputs using C++ code as the setting. This one is an enhanced version of FUNC_X, combined with the template based primitive architecture. Now is a design state, both modeler and alfi.

Fast simulation of Dual Recycled Michelson module with modes (Hiro, Keiko)

The formulation to calculate time evolution of fields with spatial mode in a composite optical system is very complicated. The goal is to calculate fields in DRM keeping the linear term of various quantities, like position of masses and phase of fields. In order to find a good strategy, a FP system is used at first.

Last week we develop the formulae of the modal model approximation. In this model, the values such as the light fields or the mirror reflectivities must be expressed as the matrix forms due to the multiple modes. In order to calculate the light field in the time domain, some matrix products which has the n times summation should be dealed with. It makes the calculation very long. We expanded this n times summation using Taylor-expansion. If we take only higher order, the calculation time can be shortened. We are going to validate this expression numerically by comparing with the formulae without any approximations.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

(1) E2e modeling

(Yoshida)

Continued e2e modeling of Modal Damping AdvLIGO MC Triple suspension. The test results on the plant SS matrix in the e2e format (i.e., free hanging triple sus) has been confirmed to be reasonable by Laurent Ruet (our e2e model is based on Ruet?s simlink model). Constructed e2e models of estimator and control loops and tested with the above plant model. The test run indicates that the system is unstable. The problem is currently being investigated.

We had an e2e telecon. Mark Barton presented updates on his e2e AdvLIGO triple suspensions.

Andrew Kinchen (Southeastern e2e group?s new member) set up a new account under our on-campus unix machine (specifically used for e2e modeling). He encountered some configuration problems, which will be solved soon. He started to learn basics of alfi and modeler.

(Quave)

Problems concerning compatibility issues with Virginio's matlab and statespace syntax were solved and the SS is now being integrated into an e2e box. Apparently the binary matlab files can only be run on Matlab version r2006a using an x86 processor. We are currently having trouble getting modeler to use the statespace generated, but upon further investigation I expect it to be useable and integrated with our current table model soon. The notebook file sent by Mark Barton to generate the back reaction force for the triple sus mathematica model was used to generate a new statespace including this parameter, but currently the E2EExport.nb is not working properly. The reason for our problems is assumed to be caused by problems running mathematica remotely. Sany will run the mathematica model on LIGO computers with direct mathematica installations, and if this not not solve the problem I will modify E2EExport.nb soon to correctly output e2e usable statespace.

(2) Outreach

(Sutton)

I have completed editing the procedure manuals for the Giant Slinky, Standing Waves, Hot Light Exhibit, Pipes of Pan, and Variable Length Pendulum. They have been sent to Dr. Norwood for final review.

(Norwood)

The pilot program to bring pre-service teachers from Southeastern to the LIGO Outreach Center begins this semester, with three trips planned to expose the teachers to seven (7) of the displays. These pre-service teachers are Elementary Education majors enrolled in the physics departments PHYS 142 class, Elementary Physics. Thirteen students are enrolled, and are scheduled to visit the Center. Six (6) manuals written to guide the pre service teachers through the displays have been vetted by a team of three Southeastern professors, two in-service high school teachers, one pre-service teacher and one talented high school student. After these visits, the pre-service teachers will critique those manuals and critically assess the utility of the LIGO Outreach Center as a resource for elementary school teachers.

(Gersch/Perez, Holden High School Science Teacher/Senior)

We have made several videos of Gravity's Rainbow and were successful in loading them into the software program. Only three points were able to be made with the digital camera because it only has about 15 fps and the ball is in the air only about .4 s. Some of the results are close to the experimental data we have.

(Anderson, St. Thomas Aquinas High School Science Teacher)

Edited the lab manual for the Interference in soap bubbles exhibit. Worked on a "snack" version of the "Snake pendulum" for the classroom use.

AdvVirgo Model (Monica)

The AdVirgoFP package has been tested and ready to be delivered. It allows to acquire the lock of a Virgo-like arm cavity using a laser power of 150W and the control on the reflected signal of the cavity; the transmissivity for the input mirror is T_itm=0.005 while for the end mirror is T_etm=10^-7.

[ Hiro : Monica uses a simplified model for the Virgo arm, 7m single suspension for SUS, no limit of the actuation force and only linear DOF. This conclusion that advVirgo arm can be locked with 150W input needs to be examined more carefully to understand how practical it is.]

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

BSC Sesimic Isolation Assembly and Test

We have found problems in the coils with two of the large actuators and one of the small actuators. The large actuators contain shorts between the windings and the case and the small actuator has had the wire to the coil winding break off. We are looking into the cause of the problems with PSI and at different options which will allow us to continue our testing.

Considerable time is being spent writing assembly and installation procedures.

From: Ben Abbott abbott_b@ligo.caltech.edu

I have made changes to the schematics for, and re-layed out the PCB for the ADC Interface Chassis to accommodate a recent addition of 3 witness LVDTs.

The HAM-SAS Test plan came out on Wednesday, and in it, significant additions to the electronics system are listed. I have begun to change my drawings to reflect the additions, and am starting to look at procuring, or making the additional electronics modules.

I've finished the HAM-SAS in-vacuum breakout board. Some research on in-vacuum circuit boards is still needed, I'll make some calls soon.

From: Dennis Coyne coyne@ligo.caltech.edu

Minutes of the 30 Aug 2006 Meeting

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Held a meeting on Monday about bonding and wire break off approaches for all optics. A number of actions were assigned and research is ongoing.

Held an AOS suspensions meeting with SUS folks, Mike Smith and Chris Echolls. Actions were assigned in preparation for a full-day work session at Caltech on 11 Sept.

Putting some Solidworks files on the vault and generally cleaning out my Solidworks directory.

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I'm using 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 majority of the installation arm parts are in the CES shop, several have been completed, I'm working on the and cavity beam dumps for Mike Smith.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu

This was a half week for me: was in NY last week. However it has been overdrive/crunch time to finish up the SURF project I comment on previously. This has been successfully wrapped up (with an initial report in draft and to be offically submitted within ~ 2 weeks). This has been about a full cavity field PI simulation covering every single acoustic mode relevant for AdLIGO (some 9200 modes to 90 kHz). The massive survey entailed gives an informative overview of the issues (e.g. that only a few modes would be potentially unstable for any instantaneous config. "snapshot"). On the other hand it gives a nominal answer to the question K. Thorne possed on whether there could be significant non-cavity resonance constributions. Of course, as with any such "big" simulation there is much more obvious to do "next", and several limitations and caveats.

Its been a very nice piece of work (much thanks to the super hard working student, Hans Bantilahn, whom I had). He intends to continue working on this during the coming year (as a Senior at Carlton Coll.).

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO Coatings – CSIRO

Last Thursday we had a telecon with CSIRO; future coating runs were discussed. We agreed that the next runs will be: a Ti doped Ta coating following the guidelines on the paper soon to be published and a single layer of fused silica on which to measure the fused-silica mechanical loss.

LMA

The next coating with LMA, due in about 3 weeks, will be applied to a 3" dia. substrate. The coating formula that gave the best mechanical loss will be tested for absorption to see if the Adv. LIGO requirements can be met.

Testing of First Contact continues. A 1" fused silica mirror will be tested for scatter after the film is pulled from the mirror's surface a week after the application.

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

For a mixture of input polarisations, the polarisation filtering provided by a pre-modecleaner was measured. When operated in the low-finesse mode, the low signal levels proved to be troublesome despite plenty of pre-amplification and the use of a lock-in amplifier. The best power attenuation measured was 45 dB. When operated in the high-finesse mode, the cavity losses were such that the throughput was rather poor.

Work on the digital filters with the DSP came across a limit with the fixed floating point representation used, so that a copy of a Simulink model could not be used. This is only a problem with filters that involve low frequencies, which the intensity stabilisation does.

Electronics, Controls, Data systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

AdvLigo

/CDS Infrastructure/

(Rolf) With two experimental systems (Ponderomotive and Hannover PSL test bench) now having control cycle requirements of 128KHz, I started more timing tests with our new controls architecture. The code for both can easily run in the time allotted for this rate, but I needed to further test the ADC input to DAC output times. The test is run by feeding a square wave into the ADC, have the computer read that data, then send the signal back out to the DAC. The ADC input and DAC output signals are then compared on a scope. The minimum time I was able to achieve with our standard 200KS/sec ADC and DAC was about 12usec. Without introducing a lot of phase delay, this is only suitable for a system running at 64KS/sec max, more comfortably 32KS/sec. We also have a 2MS/sec combination ADC/DAC module available, that I have now begun testing. A quick measurement indicates a time of about 8usec. I want to do some I/O code optimization, similar to what was done for the 200KS/sec ADC, which could buy me another 3-4usec, which would allow this module to be used in a 128KS/sec controller. These tests were all run with the ADC/DAC modules in our PCI-X and PCI Express I/O expander units. I discovered during the testing that individual I/O read/writes took almost 3 times longer using the PCI-X version than using the PCI Express version. I plan to run the tests again with the ADC/DAC directly in the computer (no expander) in the next few days.
(Alex) Now that we are running on multi-core processors, working on our software that generates code from Simulink files to produce multiple threads that run across the available processors.
(Rich) Received the second prototype LIGO Rack Mount Chassis from the metal shop. It looks great. I am doing one more set of design changes to simplify manufacturing and assembly. The first order for 20 or so units will go out soon. Worked with Jay to design a "standard" LIGO power regulator board for use in the new chassis

/Seismic/

(Ben) I have made changes to the schematics for, and re-layed out the PCB for the ADC Interface Chassis to accommodate a recent addition of 3 witness LVDTs.
(Ben) The HAM-SAS Test plan came out on Wednesday, and in it, significant additions to the electronics system are listed. I have begun to change my drawings to reflect the additions, and am starting to look at procuring, or making the additional electronics modules.
(Ben) I've finished the HAM-SAS in-vacuum breakout board. Some research on in-vacuum circuit boards is still needed, I'll make some calls soon.
(Jay) Additional boards and chassis for 8 more capacitive position sensors are being assembled.
(Jay) Ordered 3 more racks and replacement rails for LASTI HAM SAS and DC power systems.
(Jay): Designed replacement coil driver chassis to be used for Triple SUS to be tested with HAM SAS. It coul also be used for the Squeezing Experiment.
(Mohanna): I have sent the prototype version of the Adl SEI Coil Driver Board to the PCB express. It is using the 10A, LM12 operational amplifier. The spice does not exist to do the simulation. During my test I will measure the transfer function and other characteristics to determining whether it would be an ideal high current op amp to consider in the seismic fine, coarse actuators.

/ISC/ (Rich)

Received the parts I ordered for a modulated laser to use in the test and evaluation of ASC photo-detector elements. Received additional diodes from the manufacturer, so we now have duplicates to test.
Started research into in-vacuum sockets for mounting photo-diodes on standard vacuum conflat flanges. Accu-glass is looking into this for me.

40m Lab

(Rich) Chose (and ordered) some Kepco high voltage DC power supplies for the DC readout experiment.
(Ben) The new rev of the QPD Whitening board is stuffed now, and ready for testing. I have to write a test procedure, then it can be tested in the back shop.
(Ben)We put the electronics into the clean vacuum nipple, and filled it with krypton. I then sealed the nipple, and it is now ready for installation.
(Ben) I cut the cans off two GAP2000 PDs that we can use in the vacuum DCPD.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: John Miller <miller_j@ligo.caltech.edu>

Livia and John

We have constructed an optical lever and written a data acquisition program to retrieve the data. We are now able to measure tilts and record mode shapes simultaneously rather than using a calibration. We are working with Juri Agresti on simulations to verify our new results.

Yumei

Writing report of all of my work in Caltech.

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