The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, February 5, 2007 will be:
(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)
1. Announcements
2. Programmatic (Marx)
- Proposal for blind injections---Rai Weiss
- Status of planning for 1st joint LSC-Virgo collaboration meeting- Joe Giaime
- MOU with RXTE- Erik Katsavounitis
3. Comments on weekly report
4. LSC and Data Analysis (Saulson)
5. LIGO Lab Operations
- Administration (Lindquist)
- Sites (Raab, Giaime, Shoemaker)
- Commissioning (Fritschel)
- Optical and Mechanical (Coyne)
- Control and Data Systems (Bork)
- 40m (Weinstein)
- TNI (Libbrecht)
- LASTI (Ottaway)
- Lab computing (
Anderson
)
- Science Group (Weinstein)
- Enhancements (Zucker)
7. Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)
8. Change Control Board/Technical Review Board Session as needed
- Change Request CR070001, increased costs for HAM-SAS (Coyne)
9. Adjourn main meeting to discuss site and other business issues
Special Announcements: Spokesperson election goes into run-off
Weekly Report Highlights
Two papers were posted internally for the final week of LSC viewing before going onto the archives (and two weeks after, to the journals): the S3/S4 known pulsar paper, and the S4 stochastic radiometer paper.
The first round of the election for LSC Spokesperson was concluded this week. A run off election will be held next week.
Discussions among representatives for Virgo (Benoit Mours, Andrea Vicere, and Thomas Bauer) and the LSC (Peter Saulson, Maria Alessandra Papa, and David Shoemaker) led to a draft block-level schedule for the March Collaboration meeting. Some desired features for future meetings were also listed; they include: continued attention to enabling remote participation, scheduling as much as possible within the "official" days of the meeting, careful planning within each day's schedule to maximize ability to participate from other time zones.
LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)
STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)
MOUs that have been approved and signed off by all concerned this reporting period are listed below (these are now being posted, and will be submitted to DCC):
MOU |
Attachments |
Balearic |
DAT, Z |
Northwestern |
DAT, OPS, Z |
SLU |
OPS, OUT, Z |
Carleton |
DAT, OPS, OUT, Z |
Embry-Riddle, LSU, Stanford and Trinity were submitted to Jay Marx for his signature/approval.
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)
>From: Rod Luna <rluna@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Coordinated the disposal of old monitors and printers. Account Number LIGO.DAT-1.5.3-NSFLIGO.FY2ON.
- Tagged and created Property records for three Sun Computers (S. Anderson @ CIT).
- Continued working on LIGO's Equipment Inventory @ CIT.
- Assisted R. DeSalvo with moving the FTIR machine that came from Italy to the 40M Lab.
DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)
>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>
- The storage racks arrived for the sub-basement. Bill Tyler and I will be reviewing the layout tomorrow to ensure that everything is acceptable with regard to safety.
- More than half of the loose drawings have been identified, marked, and placed in storage tubes.
- Finished organizing all incident reports currently on hand.
>From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Processed MOU's and attachments.
- Processed 1999-2006 Incident Reports for Hanford.
- Scanning Update - Scanning of old Chronological Files is complete. Scanning of old CBI Assembly Records Package files has begun.
Upgrade to Current Document Management System (Lindquist)
The upgrade committee met Friday, January 26, 2007. The committee is assessing two options:
1) incremental improvements to our current system and
2) other “best-in-class” systems.
The next meeting is scheduled for Friday, February 2.
>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Received and reviewed electronic files representing the current DCC system as well as the conversion effort. The first time it was delivered, files were corrupt and unable to be opened. George redid the electronic delivery and, after a review, all appears to be fine.
FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)
>From: "Funaro, Catherine" <Catherine.Funaro@caltech.edu>
>From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>
- Responded to inquiries pertaining to sales tax questions on several orders. Coordinated with the vendors for making the adjustments to our invoices, and made the adjustments on our financial system to reflect the correct tax status.
- Completed the Invoice Attached orders for MIT.
- Working on the change order to REO and several other change orders.
>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>
- Prepared and submitted on-line fabrication and PTA set-up forms for two new fabrication accounts requested by Rich Abbott. Requested expedited processing for these requests.
- Responded to request from Ruth Brambila to check whether a correct expenditure type had been used for a recent purchase. As a result, correction of expenditure type will be made from Supplies to Equipment.
- Worked on schedules allocating responsibility for the verification of employees charged to LIGO accounts for the six month period ended September 30, 2006 to the account managers that the employees report.
- 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>
- Continuing to work with Tom Currier of the Caltech Purchasing Office regarding the amount and type of documentation needed for review of various contract documents. There have been some changes as a result of the recently completed audit of the Purchasing Office.
>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>
- The Source Selection Official (SSO), Jay Marx, has approved the recommendation of the Evaluation Committee for the selection of two vendors for the performance of the Pathfinder polishing of optical substrates for Advanced LIGO. The two contracts will be assembled and are scheduled to be distributed to the contractors by February 9.
- The efforts to get the funds for the I2U2 award from FermiLab continue. Apparently, there is some confusion at FermiLab involving the fact that this is a continuation of the previous effort. The issue is being worked by the Caltech Office of Sponsored Research. Meanwhile, we are paying the subcontract with Eric Myers from risk funding advanced by Caltech.
PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)
Upcoming events include:
- Proposal for Continuing Operations (2009-2013) due to the NSF this summer. We will meet with the NSF for discussions mid-February. I will be publishing a proposed outline for the proposal.
- A total business systems review (TBSR) has been scheduled at Caltech the end of February. The NSF team will also visit the sites. We are coordinating with the NSF through the Office of Sponsored research as to exactly what the NSF wants to do.
CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)
- Change Request CR070001 was submitted by D. Coyne. The request is for additional funds to cover increased Fabrication Costs for the HAM-SAS Prototype. The change request will be discussed during the meeting of the Executive Committee on Monday, February 5, 2007.
HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)
>From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>
- The minutes and action items from the last Staffing Committee meeting are in progress and when completed will be posted on the SC web page.
- Prepared a number of appointment and reappointment memos for various Visitors, Post Docs, and Term Staff.
Quality/Safety (Tyler)
>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu
The remaining "unaudited" LIGO campus labs/facilities have been scheduled for safety audits next week.
On-going communication with Shoemaker, Wilkinson and Lazzarini regard planning and implementation of safety support for AdL.
LIGO
Hanford
Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)
Summary of S5 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by K. Kawabe)
One week of commissioning period resulted in better performance of IFOs, and at the same time provided valuable measurements for the future use.
Commissioning activities
- In H1, DARM to PZT microseismic feedback loop was recommissioned, mitigating the upconversion considerably. As a result the binary range of the H1 got back again to 15+ Mpc level.
- A series of measurements were performed to identify and mitigate lines in H1 and H2. Some peaks were successfully mitigated, and some were identified but unmitigated.
- Various measurements were done to improve the quality of the NoiseBudget for H1 and H2. This includes the WFS to DARM coupling, oscillator phase noise coupling, and the frequency noise coupling. Some of the results are already in the noise budget code, some are still to be done.
- Various calibration related tasks have been done. This includes both photon and, coil, and VCO calibration.
- TCS temperature change for H1 to give less mode hops.
- Radiation pressure effects on ASC were studied. The analysis is yet to be done.
Other things to note
LIGO
Livingston
Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Giaime)
[after 10 days of commissioning and measurements important for Enh LIGO planning, many thanks to the visiting team and the LLO staff for the week's successes. -JG]
S5 status: commissioning week edition. (Valera Frolov):
The interferometer was returned to science data taking on Wednesday after ten days of commissioning. The inspiral range was between 13 and 14 Mpc last night despite the micro-seismic noise being above 95%. During the commissioning period the science data taking was limited by the interferometer work and high level of micro-seismic noise.
Commissioning activities last two weeks:
- The ITM absorption measurements: The thermal lensing in the ITMs was measured by thermally loading one test mass at a time and recording the cool down curve using the beam spot size on the AS port. The cool down was measured after heating the test masses with the laser beam and interferometer in the high power state as well as with CO2 beam and interferometer unlocked. The effect on the thermal lensing in the Faraday isolator was evaluated by an independent set of measurements and found to be small but non-negligible. Another set of ITM absorption measurements was done by monitoring the frequency shift of the test mass solid body eigen modes with the thermal compensation system turned off. To monitor the temperature of the vacuum chamber temperature sensors were installed on the outside of the ITM chambers. The data from the sensors are recorded into the LIGO data frames.
- Antisymmetric port beam characterization: A spare pre-mode cleaner cavity was installed on the dark port and used as a non-confocal beam scanner to evaluate the modal content of the beam. The data will be used for the design of the enhanced LIGO output mode cleaner for the DC readout scheme. The data analysis is in progress.
- Periodic glitching investigation continued during last week but the interferometer noise was not stationary to clearly establish the presence of the extra noise from the automatic backup. The backup is configured not to run during the science mode but it will run every 20 minutes when the interferometer is not in the science mode.
- Improvement of the tidal servo to reduce the test mass coil current. The seismic isolation stack transfer functions of the ETMs were remeasured and the ETMX transfer function was inverted to offload the low frequency drive from test mass coil actuators to HEPI actuators. The work on ETMY tidal actuation needs to be completed. The digital antialiasing filters were installed on the LSC output that feeds the ETM tidal signal.
- The coil magnetometers started working after one of the front end processors reboot.
Other hardware and software issues:
- The mode cleaner angular control stopped working on Friday. The problem was tracked down to the low RF level of the local oscillator. The 33 MHz RF distribution system was rewired to increase the LO levels on the mode clean LSC and ASC. The LSC and ASC signals were rephased and gains returned. The common mode servo also had to be reworked to match the new mode cleaner settings.
- One of the position sensors on ETMY HEPI was found to be broken and was replaced on Thursday. The ETMY HEPI operation in nominal configuration was restored after the sensor replacement.
- The DMT system was successfully upgraded
CDS Computing (Lisa Bogue):
- Worked with John Z. to upgrade the hardware of the primary dmt server.
- Commissioning support.
- Continued hourly glitch investigation.
Safety & Security (Rich Riesen):
- Completed two LLO incident reports.
- Replaced four bad swipe cards.
- Working on LLO property inventory.
- Working on LLO incident reports (dating back to 1998) to be sent to Bill Tyler at CIT.
- Found no site/laser safety concerns this peroid.
LLO Outreach (John Thacker):
- The outreach staff prepared and delivered outreach programs for three groups this week: Baker High School (9th & 12th Grade), Glen Oaks Park Elementary, and Iberville Parish MSP.
- Continued to work on webpage and correlation with LIGO Science and LA GLEs
- Visited BREC-Observatory to provide teacher Professional Development for the Physical Science Enhancement Project
- Delivered Teacher Professional Development to 47 teachers from the LaGear Up Project. Provided 50 slinky "snacks" and lesson plans for the teachers
- Conducted planning telecon with our external evaluator, Inverness Research Associates
- Visited Springfield High School physics class to deliver a lesson on interference
LIGO computing and network security (Roddy)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Reported under General Computing, see below.
General computing and LDAS admin (Giardina)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Reported under General Computing, see below
Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below
Data & computing (Yakushin)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Storage/Condor/LDAS admin:
Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below
Data analysis:
Reported under Data Analysis activities, see below
Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)
See Advanced LIGO
Controls and Data Systems (Bork)
See Advanced LIGO
40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)
- There will be a 40m Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting on Feb 8th 8:30 Pacific.
- IFO commissioning, Electronics, controls, computers:
- Rob, Kirk and Rana have made lots of progress in exploring different paths towards full lock of the PRFPMI using different signals and handoffs. They are compiling a "map" of different paths to help understand what works and what doesn't.
- Their most recent roughly-calibrated DARM noise spectrum gets down to ~3e-17 m/rtHz at ~ 1 kHz, and it is known that oplev and electronics noise will limit us at lower frequencies. Rana is working on improving the oplev filtering.
- Kirk is modeling the PRFPMI with OpTickle to understand why lock is lost when the CARM offset is reduced to zero and the arms approach full power. He's learning that the conclusions depend sensitively on the assumed opticle losses, so he's working to get those right.
- Rana got the 40m frame files mounted on the control computers and supplied matlab scripts to make it easy to display our data on demand.
- Rob is reconfiguring conlog so that it doesn't log a huge amount of data unnecessarily. Pater Shawhan sent some advice on how to delete channels effectively.
- Rob and Alex have started to commission the new alignment servo cpu (c1ass) and ASC software, in preparation for Valera's arrival to get the dither autoalignment system going.
- DC detection:
- Rob use the DC readout signal to control the DARM degree of freedom in a simple Fabry-Perot Michelson (FPMI) with CARM servo (both length and frequency paths). He sees a noise floor of ~ 1e-15 m/rtHz in the 1-4 kHz range.
- Vacuum squeezing:
- Go and Osamu have we realigned and re-mode-matched the interferometer beam to the OPO cavity. They then measured the mode structure of the OPO cavity.
- Osamu tweaked some optics and improved the stability of the SRMI lock.
- Osamu and Go measured the noise floor in the SRMI configuration and determined that it was shot-noise dominated above 40 kHz.
- Eugeniy arrived on Thursday, and he and Osamu and Go relaligned and re-mode-matched the pump field to the OPO cavity and got a parametric gain of about 10 back.
- They are ready to inject squeezing Friday morning. They hope to see a 2 dB reduction in noise above 40 kHz.
- Lab Infrastructure, Bake lab:
- Bob is preparing the 40m for a safety audit next week.
- Bob has recieved an FTIR scanner for testing contaminants.
Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)
Eric met with Laurent Pinard from LMA about the delay of the aperiodic-coating samples. They can provide no timetable for delivery until they can identify source of the problem.
Initial results from Gregg's spot-size measurement are inconsistent, and we are checking those.
LASTI (Ottaway)
General
A review of the LASTI plan for the next two years was conducted on Tuesday with the LASTI TAC.
HAM SAS
The vertical direction balancing began and the total mass on the optics table was found to be 70 pounds too heavy. This could be explained by a random error in the measurement of the mass required at G and M. Unfortunately this required reduction of mass was incompatible with the planned mass distribution for the future triple layout so we completely re-arranged the payload to make it compatible with this stage. We also installed the new vertical stops which fit well. The other thing that we found was that the tilt correction springs were not stiff enough so we ordered new ones which are anticipated to ship on Friday from Italy. We then changed our focus to the horizontal direction. For similar reasons that we found the vertical direction to be overloaded we also found that the horizontal direction was overloaded. We removed all of the counterweight from the stage below the GAS springs and will attempt to tune it with the correct counterweight tomorrow.
Pondermotive
All of the suspended test masses have been coarsely installed and fine alignment is beginning.
ISI
We are expecting the new shims to be in on this Friday (2/2/07). This will allow us to load the ISI to its intended weight load. In anticipation of this we have started to rebalance the payload (there is now 1733lbs hanging from the optics table out of the 1774 lb intended payload).
We (as a group) have now agreed on the best plan for the stage 2 actuators and Laurent has designed a new set of bracketry for this purpose We have also been continuing the stage one compliance measurements. We have found some "issues" with the dSpace DAC, in particular a step of about 1mv when crossing zero. We still seem to have an asymmetry in this matrix that we are chasing.
CIT Science Group (Weinstein)
___________________
Eirini Messaritaki
- Worked with Vibha on the problem of detection of spinning BBH signals with non-spinning templates.
- Worked on the null-stream veto implementation for the BBH search.
- Talked at the TAPIR group meeting.
___________________
Kent Blackburn
TCLGLOBUS
- Mary Lei and Michael Samidi are still setting up ldasbox1.ligo.caltech.edu (64-bit machine) instead of ldasbox4.ligo.caltech.edu (32-bit machine) for running valgrind to investigate LDAS managerAPI coredumps using Globus threaded libraries.
- Still investigating GSI authentication failure on Opteron systems. Michael Samidi is still working on providing more details to Globus team. Bug #4946: (http://bugzilla.globus.org/globus/show_bug.cgi?id=4946)
- OpenSSL memory leaks within Globus Toolkit 4.0.3 has been addressed in Bug #4743 (http://bugzilla.globus.org/globus/show_bug.cgi?id=4743). This issue is work in progress.
- When this bug is included in the next Globus release, LDAS managerAPI memory leaks will be revisited.
GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT:
- Completed local cache setup at Fermilab and STAR_BNL for running HIPE workflow with job clustering.
- Testing several OSG sites (PSU, Purdue_ITaP, UWMilwaukee, Fermilab and STAR_BNL) for meeting the second OSG milestone, running LIGO workflow on OSG with 100 or more CPU slots for one week. Will run 1 workflow/day for a week to all OSG sites.
- Still testing full HIPE at LDG CIT cluster with job clustering with a new Pegasus property to enable sysmlinks and third-party trasnfer at the same time.
- Still testing Tcl script for moving LIGO GWFs from CIT repository to UCSD SRM server.
- Still working on SRM problem at UCSD with Karan Vahi. The problems are submitting srmcp jobs using Condor-G fails and missing a single quote surrounding SRM URL in the submit script.
OPEN SCIENCE GRID VALIDATION TESTBED
- Added LIGO-CIT-VTB to gridscan and GridEx monitoring frameworks.
- Attended VTB telecom to prioritize bugs discovered during Virtual Workshop.
OPEN SCIENCE GRID INTEGRATION TESTBED
- Chaired ITB meeting on ITB 0.5.2 status and processes.
- Validated Two ITB sites with nanoHIPE application.
- Upgraded OSG submit host to Condor 6.9.1 for expanded HIPE workflow testing.
- Added GridEx stats and BDII and WS-GRAM status columns to SiteValidationTableITB052.
- Installed a new jar file and tested a fix for a memory problem caused by CEMon.
- Revised draft of a paper for IEEE conference presentation.
- Attended weekly DASWG, LSC Comp Comm and Pegasus telecoms.
OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT
- Continued working with Institutional PIs and Fermilab on the OSG Statements of Work.
- Began working on presentation for OSG Joint Oversight Team (DOE/NSF) meeting in Washington DC in two weeks.
- Wrote Summary Report for US LHC Computing and Software Review and distributed to other committee members for review and feedback.
___________________
Gregory Mendell
___________________
Duncan Brown
- Spent most of the week comparing numerical relativity and post- Newtonian waveforms.
- Continued with S3 SBBH review.
___________________
Patrick Sutton
- I've spent the past week coding a pipeline script for running the "x-pipeline" coherent analysis in triggered burst searches (such as for GRBs). I got it functional with help from Duncan Brown. The script is in python and uses the Glue libraries. When supplied with a GRB time and position, the script fetches segment lists, finds frames, and prepares all of the other input needed by the x-pipeline package. It also writes the dags for sending jobs to the cluster. Next week's goal is to run a full GRB analysis.
_________________
Igor Yakushin
- Continue working on online coherent waveburst infrastructure. Currently implented: a) automatic trigger production; b) postproduction of each separate job including trigger publishing, plots, coherent event display and qscan of loud events. Things that remain: summaries per day, per science segment, for the whole run.
- Per reviewers request investigated the 16 loud injections that were not found by the coherent waveburst: http://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~igor/loud_SG235Q9a. The majority of the events were not found because they were in such a sky position that the signal was strong at LLO and weak at LHO which resulted in failure of waveform consistency test. 3 injections were not found presumably because of the constraint likelihood algorithm pecularities.
Laboratory Computing (Anderson)
LDAS Software (Maros)
Trying to get LDAS to be tolerant of hung NFS file systems (PR#3015) continues to be problematic. Using a pool of threads has eliminated the memory leak under Solaris but causes the API to terminate due to an uncaught exception shortly after the hung file system is detected.
The editing and displaying of multiple line descriptions for resources (PR#3098) continued this week and is very near completion.
System testing of LDAS was done using version 1.8.439 of the software. The regression test pr1705.tcl failed in a known manner. Work on this issue completed this week.
Running of dcmangle from cron has been fixed by fully qualifying the path to the tclsh which should be used.
DB2 on ldas-test had to be restarted as metadata jobs stalled after 4 days of running.
LDAS System Administration (Anderson)
Caltech
(Dan Kozak)
- Helped (mostly babysitting) with Sun's effort to get our X4600M2 working again.
- Sent boilerplate email to lindy ("your jobs run faster with ClusterData(TM), which you can find with LSCdataFind" [with an example]).
- Did some consulting with Igor at LLO before/during/after his 2nd (and successful) attempt to attach new JBODs to his /home 3511s.
- (Mostly) worked with Sun (and more helpfully, Stuart) to get the Common Array Manager (6140 admin software) working in both GUI and command line versions. Having succeeded at this, I've started trying out different configurations and learning how the software works.
(Phil Ehrens)
- Various and sundry certificate related support tasks.
- Carted a lot of hardware between Synchrotron, Bridge, and Millikan.
- Wrote a set of ipfilters rules for the triple interfaced machine ldas-test, which I am currently testing. Thanks to Ben for his excellent wiki notes.
- Discussed implementation details of new MOU management web interface and infrastructure with Dorothy Lloyd, Albert Lazzarini, and Stuart Anderson.
- Ongoing work configuring log_mon server marfik.
- Did some minor cleanup of network and service configuration on various LDAS machines which were failing to run cron tasks or unable to send email.
(Erik Espinoza)
- Worked with Sun to determine root issue with x4600M2.
- E-mailed condor-admin about x509 forwarding.
- Gave condor admin a limited acct for debugging purposes.
- Cleaning Synchrotron 215A.
MIT
(Fred Donovan)
- Data11 needs a complete backup and array rebuild; Mounts ro, 2 disks (p4, p5) sector errors.
- Replaced/returned 4 ata drives (warranty).
Livingston
(Igor Yakushin)
- Successfully connected JBODs to 3511s and upgraded firmware on both. No problems were observed after the system was brought back. Running media test on JBODs.
- ldas-grid crashed again. Booted it to older kernel which worked fine for us before. Asked Murali to track and kill the process that unsuccessfully tries to connect from PSU to ldas-grid machines at LLO and LHO once per hour in case it has something to do with the crashes. Serial port connection did not show any kernel messages near the time of the crash.
(Dwayne Giardina)
- Help Rich locate some LDAS equipment during an inventory check.
- Tape eject and shipment.
Hanford
(Greg Mendell)
- I have verified today, as I do on a routine basis, that LDAS data archiving, publishing, LDR transfers, and RDS generation are up-to-date at the sites and at CIT. I have also sent Keith Riles a report on brief times both framebuilders have been down recently at LHO, due maintenance work and yesterday's power failures at LHO. The times are then used to generate data quality flags that indicate missing data. I have also started work on the next release of the LIGO Data Grid (LDG) client and server distribution.
(Ben Johnson)
- Working on serving up/pre-parsing the frame cache file via shared memory. Since Python doesn't do things like shared memory, I am writing up a C-based core to do this.
- Walking through Matlab setup of compilation (specifically for BurstMDC) with Keith Thorne; he is showing Malik, and I am listening in.
- There was a power outage on panel A (the old panel) in the LDAS room at LHO, Jan 31 2007. It turns out that we were over the 125A/circuit limit for some time. Probably the new JBODs and X4600M2 pushed us over the limit. In the coming days (a.k.a. next Tuesday), we will have to rebalance the power load across the 6 circuits. There is be enough capacity in the room to do this.
- I have successfully used clusterstage.pl to copy RDS_R_L1 data to the nodes. There are still a few kinks, but it has successfully been used.
- Organized meeting last week with LHO admins. Went over LSC V.O. discussions that occurred at the DASWG meeting.
- Working out firmware differences between the various 3511s on site. Mainly for JBOD attachment to the /home disks.
General Computing (Wallace)
MIT
(Fred)
- User accounts ,mailing lists, etc. equipment cleanup; solidworks
- Graphics card for 2xopteron
- Getting Pci 4port esata controller & enclosures; disk space is tight
- Got some Misc parts, fixed K.'s laptop (fan), fedora6 & mmcalendar install for testing.
- Bit more on squirrelmail
Livingston
(Dwayne)
- changed some more alarm setting on the kantech server
- staging building printer ink cartridge replacement
- added a host to the GC savepack in arkeia
- installed Vista on a test machine, testing various software compatibility
- spam filter cleanup
- other usual user requests and support
(Shannon)
- Removed the temporary switch on the new GC subnet.
- Added VLANs to the GC switch in the CUR and moved the new GC machines to it.
- Moved the LDAS connections to the new switch in the new building.
- Reviewing some documentation from last year related to the risk assessments and also the computing policies.
- Made travel reservations to VA for the NSF meeting.
- logs, conference calls, usual maintenance, etc
Hanford
(Christine)
- The new UPS system was powered up on Tuesday. I have started moving equipment. The new disk system has been built and is ready to build the file systems. The clone of the main NIS+/file server has been built.
- Looking in to a problem with Excel spread sheets being sent in email arriving un-readable.
- One of the laptops I recently ordered seems to have a bad fan. The keyboard gets very hot on the right hand side. Called Dell support to get it fixed.
- Investigated a vulnerability with the Cisco IOS on the router and switches. There is a work around that Cisco is recommending for my version of the IOS. The IOS on the new router is not vulnerable, so I will try to get moved over to the new router ASAP.
- Attended a meeting of the LHO Sys Admin to hear about Ben's week long DASWG/LSC Comp Comm meeting at CIT. Ben told us about the Virtual Organization being proposed. Also discussed moving the CDS NDS proxy off fortress and on to the LDAS gateway.
- Created two more user accounts for LSC members.
- Set up a new laptop for a user.
CIT
(Bruce Sears)
General iLog maintenance (user adds, keyword adds, systems work, etc.)
(Veronica)
- LSC: Most time spent on the setup of the registration application for the March meeting. The application on our end is up and running. Caltech Finances are working on setting up an account for us with BofA, which is merchant service provider for running an online credit card payments gateway. According to them it will be in another day or two. Once this part is complete, we can go ahead and start running online registration and payments at the same time. Updates of the database of technical papers, publications, email lists, other misc. web updates. Posted several files from the November meeting, which were just recently sent to DCC.
- LIGO: More work on homepage redo. A write up on how to post files in users public_html directory, hope this will encourage people to use this way to share large files rather than email to ease the its load. Website updates and user support.
- Additional work in B/A server room (19) which included mounting servers, running network cables, and remounting a network switch. I came across some problems with UPS.
(Mike)
- Moved some servers that were configured in my office into the B/A server room (18). I also ran additional networks cables to connect these servers to the network. In this server room I did a lot of clean up work.
- Did some research on Solid Works issues we were having. This came across when Janeen Romie had some permission issues when trying to make some changes to a drawing.
- Freed up some disk space on our end of month Ghost backup server repository. I ended up moving 2006 ghost images to a USB backup drive. I will be burning these images too DVD or to Tape when I have some free time.
- Ran end of month backups on all critical NTSRV's.
- Other misc. sys admin tasks.
(Christian)
- Florence Kaufman- Installed and configured Thunderbird email program with imp settings and transferred all of Florence¹s emails and settings from Eudora.
- Ricardo Desalvo- Created backup of Riccardo¹s files to external drive.
- Rebuilding Amaldi web server after many attempts to fix permission issues.
- Checking the display case laptop for heat problems. I think the fans are going out.
- Working on installing, configuring and testing Microsoft Vista with Office 2007.
- Worked on the Spam Filters with Mike and Larry.
- Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.
(Larry)
- Worked a number of small procurement issues. I will start working on some orders for monitor replacement and laptop replacement next week. Helped Gina resolve a couple of procurement issues.
- Worked with Veronica on a couple of different web issues. Worked with Veronica and Bonnie on web setup for the LSC meeting. Still a number of items to work out but they have things under control.
- Worked with Christian and John Z. on resolving a couple of issues on the computer for the display case. The s/w problems have been resolved and now the fan needs to be repaired.
- Worked with Christian and Veronica on the amaldi server problem.
- Worked with PMA and others on a variety of room issues. The power and air-conditioning for the computer rooms is being worked on by campus, presently they are still gathering information. The move to another storage room is waiting on a safety check. Mike and I have moved equipment on from the second floor offices into a central location in preparation of vacating that office.
- Worked with Mike on getting computers moved and some of the cleanup in the computer rooms.
- Finished up a preliminary rsync of home accounts to the new server and cleaning out the old accounts. This process is taking more time than planned but is progressing.
- Started monthly backups.
- Setup a couple of new accounts. Cleaned up a number of account configurations
- Worked the mail servers. Worked the spam filters with Mike and Christian. We had a slight dip on e-mail and spam messages for a couple of days but as of today things are backup to the normal numbers. Ran a few more tests on the new mail servers and hit a problem with one of them. I still have to check it out to see what caused the glitch.
- Working a couple of DCC issues. There were problems getting some data moved and burned to DVD but that should be resolved soon.
Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)
Advanced LIGO Systems
From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu
Modeling and Simulation (Hiro Yamamoto)
e2e weekly meeting
Sany Yoshida explained his work implementing the modal control for the triple pendulum using e2e. Osamu and Hiro suggested various investigations and improvements to resolve some unknown issues.
AdvLIGO LSC/ASC design using FP arm model with quad suspension (Osamu)
Osamu has improved the locking algorithm and found that the threshold velocity can be up to 160 nano meter / second, from the old estimation of 70 nano meter / second. ETM ESD force is assumed to be 100 micro N.
Static IFO simulation (Hiro)
Hiro is working on the simulation of the coupled cavity code. This will be used to make the effect of the BS size on the SRC performance.
Melody is improving a database class used in SIS.
Modeler - e2e simulation engine (Hiro, Bruce, Melody)
Bruce is keeping working to develop and cleanup the code and class structures for implementing the UserDefinedPrimitive.
Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)
(Quave)
Attained stability with pseuedo-frequency control filter, and began incorporating length sensing control filter as described in LIGO note T970218-02. There was a problem with the merging of the old model and I'm not working that out so that the frequency & LSC can be used at the same time.
(Yoshida)
Continued e2e modeling of the modal control (ref. L. Ruet et al, LIGO-T050197-00) for AdvLIGO MC triple suspension. By modifying the estimator and control filters, the system is now stable. At this point, only the Yaw DOF is modeled with an impulse signal injected to the suspension point as the disturbance. The top mass Yaw motion from the plant is sent to the estimator loop where the Yaw motions of the other two masses are estimated. The control loop feeds back the actuation force only to the top mass. With the current gain setup, the common mode (all three masses yaw in the same direction) peak at 1.1 Hz is reduced by two orders of magnitudes (as compared with the free hanging case). However, the other two peaks at 2 and 3.5 Hz (mode 2/3, or the lower/middle mass yaws in a different direction) are not reduced. Further analysis will be conducted.
ALFI : e2e front end (Melody, Bruce)
Melody updated alfi front-end for supporting the UserDefinedPrimitive, including modifications based on Bruce's feedback.
CDS Prestabilized Laser
From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>
AdLIGO PSL
I have been working on the PSL safety plan and writing up the document. Currently I am having some trouble tying all the loose ends together but most of the document has been written. Various calculations of the maximum permissible exposure levels were completed in order to figure out the laser safety eyewear requirements and other associated requirements.
Some Beckhoff Automation components have started to drift in. A meeting with the local Beckhoff field engineer that was scheduled for last week was waived off at the last minute. Apparently Justin Timberlake is one of their best customers. Unfortunately the key component is still some weeks away.
Seismic Isolation
From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu
Single Stage HAM Design
- HPD provides weekly reports on the progress of the design.
- Mechanical design - 45% complete
- Analysis - 63% complete
- PDR in Boulder - completed
We have sent HPD a CD containing the HEPI models and drawings of parts of the BSC isolation system which will be used in their design.
BSC ISI Testing
- New blade and flexure shims have been made which will allow us to add the full payload and to improve the tilt coupling of stage 1.
- Rod Luna is working with Galli & Morelli to ship the air bake furnace we purchased with the SAS isolation system to Livingston to air bake the large BSC isolation parts.
From: Brian Lantz <BLantz@stanford.edu>
The SEI telecon notes
Friday, Jan 26, at 2 pm eastern, 1pm central, 11 am pacific, etc.
Announcements
- Charlie's visit to LASTI went well.
- Had many useful conversations, showed him the equipment, got a better appreciation of the issues of installation. He got to see HEPI, still waiting on the SolidWorks drawings of HEPI. Saw the elevator, talked about the PSL beam.
HAM contract status - Table flatness
Maybe Norna/ SUS group can take a look at the table flatness issue. There seem to be 2 issues:
- local distortions of the table can induce deformations in the triple frame and cause deformations.
- different tilts of the table can cause the optics to hang in differnt places.
Actuator modification
There will be a meeting with PSI next Mon
(note: the meeting was held on 1/29, it went well, the info sent to them, and comments on the meeting will be posted in a separate entry)
Borescope
- The gradient lens borescope is OK as is. Let's get one.
Progress on the BSC compliance measurements
- These measurements are still confusing, the cross coupling not consistant. The std dev in the cross coupling terms from one measurement to the is about the same size as the size as the avg. The errors within each meausurement are much smaller than this, so Rich suspects that there is some systematic effect which is causing confusion. Most likely candidate is temperature, and Rich will try to look into this, as well and hook the temp monitor back up.
- Rich comments that the glitchiness and variablilty of compliance may explain the "rubbing", but the low Q of one corner in the TF measurements may indicate othewise, and needs to be revisited.
- If there is not rubbing, but just temp effects, we will declare victory and move on, since this is exactly the sort of thing which the displacement sensors are designed to correct.
- Rich/ Pradeep also measured the location of the 3 spring tips, to see if the the springs were all acting the same way. The biggest tip difference is about 10 mils out of a 2.4 inch sag. This is OK.
New Shims
- The new shims should be in next week, will install and go to full load.
- Brian Pepper (undergrad at LASTI) will be turning the matlab code used to calculate the "corrected" shim size into a user friendly product. (yeah!)
Stage 2 actuator movement
- Brian has gotten cold feet on the calculation, and wants to put in the full riser, rod, riser, spring calculation. Laurant says the answer had better be less that 1.9" or it won't fit.
(Note, this calculation is now done, and in the log, it is 1.835 inches)
mock pod electronics
- Ben Abbott is finishing up the SAS electronics and will work on this next week.
real pods at LLO
- Joe Hanson ordered hardware bolts etc for pod assembly.
- Joe Hanson to start looking at glovebox. The glovebox is cracked and sealed. Is this OK? - Brian O will talk with Joe G.
- Brian O is writing up the clean pod procedure.
Shyang modified the controller program to make it more robust. New program drives the motor longer,
made a motor locker cycling locks/ unlocks 50 times, now it works better.
- This will be tested on several GS-13s before set into a final version.
- It will be tested on every GS-13 before the GS-13 is put in the can.
- If the GS-13 doesn't lock/ unlock successfully each time, it is not clear what will do done.
STS-2s
Brian to send email about STS-2s to Joe.
cleaning
- Joe Hanson wants another vacuum bake oven
- Joe Hanson and Brian O to look at the cleaning spreadsheet
- 9 large plates look like they can be air baked in the new oven which can be put at LLO.
Seismometry and Corner station SPI
- Tarm spread the EBS by about an inch, which moved the natural freq. of the mass down to about 0.8 Hz. Nice.
- History:
last quarter - 3 Hz
Jig gave 1.5 Hz natural freq
1 " spread gives 0.8 Hz.
From: Ben Abbott abbott_b@ligo.caltech.edu
All new activity since last weekly is written in red.
40m:
DCPD
- Have finished the new DCPD schematic and pcb layout. I await feedback on the schematic that was sent out to interested 40m people.
HAM-SAS:
Custom Electronics chassis: (# needed + #spares)
- LVDT Driver (2 + 1) -2 Installed the spare is stuffed, but needs boxing and testing
- LVDT Interface (2) Installed
- Stepper Motor Interface (2 + 1) - Installed
- Coil Driver Interface (1) - Installed
- QPD Whitening (2 + 1) - 2 Installed, 1 spare here, needs testing and boxing.
- QPDs (4 + 1) - 4 in electronics lab, 1 is just a bare board and I'll keep it for a spare board.
- Guralps Interface (1 + 1) - 1 installed, 1 built but untested.
- AA Interface Rev 4 (1) - Installed
- AA Interface Rev B5 (1) - Installed
- AI Interface Rev 3 (1) - Installed
- Coil Driver (4 + 1) - Installed
- In-Vac Breakout boards (2) Installed
Commercial Electronics:
- Opteron Processor (1) - Installed
- Stepper Motor Driver (4) - Installed
- I/O Chassis (1) - Installed
- Power Supplies (2) - Installed
Miscellaneous:
- In-Vac Accuglass cables (13) - Installed
- Guralps cables - Specialty cables from Guralps Instruments Ordered 12/21 quoted a 30 day lead, but they now say that they should arrive 2/2.
- Special cable connecting the LVDT 25-pin Witness board connector to the 9-pin ADC connector - Installed
- There were 5 L-COM cables that were still needed to finish the electronics installation. I ordered these yesterday, and they should be delivered to Alberto this morning.
ISI:
- ISI Interface - (3 + 1) I continue to work on the schematic.
- GS-13/L4C Emulation Module - I've started on the schematic, and will send it around for comments this week. If all goes well, I'll send it to the boardhouse soon.
- GS-13 Boards - (many) 15 boards came back from PCB Express. They'll get stuffed sometime soon, and delivered sometime thereafter.
- Coil Driver - (3 + 1) (Mohana) - The Coil Driver board has been stuffed and in test. The new interface board is at PCB Express, and will arrive on Monday. The metalwork is finished and looks fine. Work is near completion on the front and back panels, they'll go out today for fab.
- STS-2 Emulation Module - Mohana has started to look at requirements for this board.
- GS-13/L4C Control Module - I've begun thinking about this module, but no progress has occurred so far.
- STS-2 Control Module - Mohana will start thinking about this module after she gathers requirements for the Emulation Module.
Suspensions
From: Janeen Romie <janeen@ligo-la.caltech.edu>
Enhanced & Advanced LIGO
- Provided drawings to Phil Willems for a ring heater shield and mounting assembly. These items are needed for the quad noise prototype testing at LASTI.
- Concerning the OMC, Mike Gerfen from CES dropped off sample materials of the same configuration as the OMC structure to his subcontractor to weld and test for full penetration. He reports that they hope to have that started yesterday. No status yet today.
- Having daily meetings with Calum & Chris on OMC design.
- Working on detailing various parts for the OMC. Sam Waldman is here at LLO till tomorrow morning, so I'll bring him another iteration of an earthquake stop bracket that will be out of the way of all of his optics and beams near/on his OMC optical bench.
- Fielded various questions from Carol & Dwight. Had a telecon with Carol on Thursday afternoon about SUS schedule milestones. Worked with Helena and Jay on their schedule status input.
- Working with Florence on transfering costs from the LIGO.PRCIT fab account to the LIGO.ALOMC fab account which is ready for charging.
- Continuing with discussions on whether a face-to-face meeting is required for the SUS group on or near the March LSC. It's Norna's call, but it seems we may not need a conference room for this.
- Yesterday, discussed with Norna the priorities for SUS and the work coming up in the near future, including prototype test requirements for all prototypes. Participated in the LASTI planning meeting yesterday.
- Working with Gregg Harry on getting some LOS quartz wire standoffs to him for noise testing. Looking for anyone who might have violin mode Q measurements for an SOS.
From: k mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu
Adv. LIGO
- The CES shop is continuing work on the LASTI tooling assembly.
- The elevator linear drive setup should be ready next week, for a run test of the complete control circuit. I'm assembling the lift table and the 5 axis fixture this week, this task should be complete by 2-9.
Core Optics
From: Bill Kells kells@ligo.caltech.edu
Besides the usual incremental progress to get further lab scatter measuremnts, to better understand why our (LIGO I ) TMs scatter so much more than anticipated:
- Participated in visit meetings with CSIRO folks and J-M Mackowsky on the latest insights into coatings. BUt this was mostly mechanical property oriented, so reported elsewhere.
- I have completed (at least to my satisfaction) a study of the "drift" effects on PI. That is, it has worried me for some time that all the existent analysis is exactly static (the defining parameters), where as we know for sure T and thus g factors, acoustic res freqs, etc. are wandering with time. Of course this is slow, but then any instability exponentiating times are also long (100- 1000's of sec). Of course a huge range of possible parameters (Qs, R values, frequencies) enter in so its not possible to quote a single go/no go bottom line. However the basic conclusion appears to be that plausible drifting is not fast enough to quench a typical chance resonance triggered runaway (to a manifestly problematic level.....some judgement required !). Quench simply means that the relevant parameters quickly enough drift off the narrow resonance required in the first place for R>>1. But, anticipated drifting (and hear a lot more data on acousto drift rates would be needed) is not far slower than would be needed to quench. So, for instance, it is not crazy to consider shecemes which deliberately dither some sensitive parameter. We already know changes in [arm cavity] g factors (due to dRoc/Roc) large enough to quench are much smaller than relevant anywhere else in the instrument (that is why we consider quasi statically adjusting g factors via TCS to avoid particular PIs).
From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu
Adv. LIGO
Contamination Control Plan
- Met with Phil Carey, from JPL's Cleanroom Engineering and Compliance, who has experience with high precision optics. He was in charge of the handling of the Chandra X-ray Observatory optics. He will help in the development of testing steps to check vacuum and assembly processes and their impact on particle generation. I am in the process of getting a work order generated with the Technical Facilities Group at JPL.
First Contact Testing
- LMA tested several optics before and after the application of the First Contact film. Their results are similar to ours, they did not find evidence of absorption or scatter increase after the film was removed from the surface. As soon as an electronic document is delivered, I'll place it in the DCC.
Adv. LIGO COatings
- On Tuesday, we had a very successful meeting with CSIRO and LMA representatives. After discussing the many possible coating options to decrease coating mechanical loss while preserving the optical properties required, the consensus at this time was to have LMA pursue enhancements to the known Ti doped Ta2O5 coatings and for CSIRO to refine their Ti doped Ta2O5 to see if they can reproduce LMA's performance. The possibility of researching other coatings is still open. Other issues, such as scatter, were also discussed.
Auxiliary Optics
From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu
SLC
- The new AOS baseline is to suspend the cavity beam dumps from the BSC optics table. The elliptical baffle, arm cavity baffle, and cavity beam dump will have sufficient vertical and horizontal isolation when suspended directly from the BSC optics table; they do not need any damping to enhance the isolation.
- Ken Mailand is investigating the use of Kapton-coated copper wire for suspending the elliptical baffle, arm cavity baffle, and cavity beam dump. This material may provide enough damping to recover from earthquake events.
OPTICAL LAYOUT
I completed a preliminary layout of the stable recycling cavity (without a lens in the ITM CP). The following benefits were obtained:
- eliminates the BS PO mirror and telescope
- reduces the BS wedge from 2.0 deg to 1.66 degrees
- reduces the ITM wedge
- the PRM and SRM are still needed in the optical path to provide a wedged element for steering the elevation of the IO and Output beams: however, they are passive, non-reflecting elements and can be hard-mounted to the HAM optical table.
The RC PO beam is obtained by transmission through the back of the PRMT2 mirror. A "raw" dark port beam is obtained by transmission through the back of the SRMT2 mirror.
CP LENS
Using a 40 m EFL compensation plate will cause beam steering of the IFO input beam. A 1 mm lateral translation of the RC beam at the ITM will result in a 100 mm lateral steering of the IFO beam at the ETM. This will require a lateral alignment accuracy at the ITM on the order of 0.1 mm, which seems impractical. The same problem was encountered by VIRGO, when they added a lens element to the PRM and made it the last lens element of the input mode matching telescope. I believe they have subsequently eliminated the lens element in the PRM.
From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>
ITM Absorption Measurements at LLO
I'm still crunching the data collected last week and this week- we will need a direct measurement of the TCSY power from the table with 300 mW central heating requested. This can be done at the next Tuesday maintenance break.
Input Optics
From: Dave Reitze reitze@phys.ufl.edu
IO - Dave Reitze (UF)
Modulation (Volker Quetschke, Luke Williams)
Stable recycling cavities (Muzammil Arain, Guido Mueller)
For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini or Phil Lindquist