Weekly Report for Week Ending April 12, 2007

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

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Reitze)

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

• The University of Washington was completed with Attachments OPS and Z, and was posted and will be submitted to the DCC.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

• Worked with the French Customs Agency in providing supporting documents to clear the export of a Fused Silica Substrate to VIRGO, France.
• Coordinated the disposal of old monitors.  Account Number LIGO.DAT-1.5.3-NSFLIGO.FY2ON.
• Provided assistance to the Detector Group (K. Mailand) in making arrangements to ship a crate (49 x 32 x 52 600 lbs) to MIT.
• Met with Jay Marx, Albert Lazzarini, and Ed Jasnow to discuss property management for LLO.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

• Processed some LSC presentations that came straggling in this week.  To date, 70 presentations have been received and an additional 32 are still to be submitted.  Final reminders will be sent out tomorrow to those authors still needing to submit presentations.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

• Finished compiling an electronic database of existing paper-based record of incident reports. Each report has been processed into the DCC database, scanned and made electronically available, and captured on the spreadsheet with a hyper link that opens each incident report for instant viewing.  Awaiting more incident reports that Bill finds as he processes through boxes of records from earlier years that might include occurrences that arose during construction at both sites.
• Began compiling notes and changes made to the Safety Plan.  Will compile each of the reviewer's comments into one edited document for Bill to hand out to the safety committee.

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

• Processed MOU's and attachments.
• Scanning Update - Progress continues on scanning of all non-electronic "L" category documents on file.

Update to Current Document Management System (Turner)

Worked through the tutorials for Docushare. Compiling notes and questions.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Kaufman)

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

• For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY Press Here.

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

• Completed change order #18 to Southern Enterprises.
• Completed the orders for LLO and forwarded invoices for processing.
• Coordinated with end users on the equipment maintenance orders with Dynamic Systems. There are still two renewals pending.
• Working on change order #10 to University of Michigan.
• Closed orders and followed up on orders with pending shipments.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

• Completed and sent out monthly report as of the end of March for FY2007 Operations.  [to be reviewed during Excomm Meeting Monday – pel]
• Completed and sent out reports for three discretionary accounts, MIT Grid Account, and the Low Noise Award.
• Worked on Change Request for Labor adjustments for unfilled positions and to adjust FY07 budget amounts.
• Completed the report for the Visitor Award as of the end of March.  The past award has reached its final expenditure limits. A Cost Transfer will need to be prepared to move the overspent amount to the FY07 Award.  Notified Project Accounting to put a hold on the Visitor Award account - LIGO.VISIT/1 NSF.VISITO - so that no additional charges can be made to it.
• Submitted budget realignment request to Project Accounting to transfer budget to the two new fabrication accounts that have now been set up for the Enchanced LIGO Thermal Compensation Systems at Hanford and Livingston.
• Submitted fabrication request for Pathfinder Input Test Masses.
• 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>

• The Purchasing Services Department has changed its policy and will no longer allow non-Caltech employees to submit Supplier Requests to register new companies in Oracle. This change may result in delays in registering new suppliers, which in turn will case delays in placing purchase orders and paying invoices.

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

• The LLO SEC successfully completed its inspection by the Louisiana State Fire Marshal and received their permanent Certificate of Occupancy.  As a result, we will pay the final invoices for the architect, Eskew-Dumez-Ripple, and the construction contractor, Cangelosi-Ward, and close out both contracts.
• Ann Bussone, of the Caltech Office of General Counsel, has reviewed the list of items in Advanced LIGO that may be subject to ITAR/EAR issues.  She has recommended that the list be reviewed by a member of the JPL technical staff, along with a member of the LIGO technical staff, for the purpose of classifying each item, and see what is required for the specific country that is applicable for each item.  In some cases, we may require a license from the Department of Commerce.  We are trying to schedule a meeting sometime next week for the item review.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

Proposal activity for LIGO Continuing Operations (FTY 2009 – FY 2013) included discussions with Finance regarding the indirect model to be used to price the cost estimate.  The task managers also met to comment on the staffing plan through FY 2015.

The monthly NSF report for current operations was submitted this week.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 23.

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

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

Despite several windy days hampering both IFOs, H1 and H2 still performed well. The duty cycle (Thu Apr/5 to Wed Mar/11 2007) of H1 was 83.2 percent with typically 15 Mpc inspiral binary range. The duty cycle of H2 was 80.4 percent with 6 - 7 Mpc range.

Summaries: Range and Duty Cycle update. Tuesday maintenance summary.

Highlights from the LHO elog:

• "30-minutes noise" problem in H2 seems to come back once in a while (here and here). The cause is still unknown, but seismometers seem to have caught something related to this.
• Failure of optical lever for H2 ETMX, which was observed previously in July 2006, was caught again on this week's maintenance day. It looks like some hardware fault (loose solder, broken connector etc.).
• We're again in a period laden with computer troubles. Partial list is here.
• On one particularly windy day, free swinging measurement was performed for both of the IFOs. Frequency of some of the modes were found to have shifted on the order of milli Hertz from the previous measurement.

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

LIGO computing and network security (Roddy)
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Reported under General Computing, see below.
General computing and LDAS admin (Giardina)
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Reported under General Computing, see belowReported under LDAS System Administration, see below Data analysis & computing (Yakushin)
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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)

• IFO commissioning, Electronics, controls, computers:
  • Rob and Sam have been exercising the lock acquisition for the PRFPMI, which has been working well. They had some trouble with the Y-arm violin modes ringing up during lock acquisition, so they adjusted the notch filters on SUS-ETMY_LSC, which quieted them down nicely.
  • Our MOPA (main PSL laser) has recovered most of the power lost during recent "events", and is now hovering above 4 watts. Steve notes that it has small (~0.1 watt) "hiccups" of lost power, recovering in minutes or hours. This seems to be associated with the NPRO pump diode head temperature. We are watching this carefully.
  • Steve is acquiring ethernet cables of appropriate length to move the c1omc processor away from the AS ISC table, since it is generating considerable acoustic noise.
  • Rob is getting the controls software running on our new laptops (with Fedora 6). He's got DTT and dataviewer working, but is having trouble getting EPICS/medm working. In progress.
  • Ben has stuffed the board for the new DCPD, and has worked around the American Capacitor part problem. He just needs to put on a connector, and test it out. We plan to install it into a new vacuum nipple and then into the vacuum chamber in the next few weeks (when we vent to drag-wipe the TM optics).
  • Rob is setting up the new "headless" controls computer, op340m, to run our standard scripts continuously.
  • We continue to have reliability problems with the op540m control computer. Nothing that a weekly reboot can't fix.
  • There will be an AdLIGO ISC meeting at Caltech next week. We will make plans for a redesign of the 40m to test the new proposed RF scheme for AdLIGO.
  • We are planning out projects for SURF summer students.
• DC detection:
  • In the PRFPMI configuration, Rob notes that the noise spectra look the same as they did a few months ago. There is still a 1/f^2 noise from 100 - 1000 Hz, of unknown origin. It is not reduced when coil driver dewhitening is turned on, so that is sub-dominant. Right now, Rob is focusing on understanding and eliminating the forest of peaks in the 1-2 kHz region, which is suspeced to be due to the input PZT steering mirrors.
• Vacuum squeezing:
  • Go and Osamu have been tuning up the squeezer after an SHG heater wire failed, changing the alignment of the SHG. They have gotten back to ~ 3 dB of squeezing at 1 MHz, and are continuing their optimization of modematching, alignment, etc to get to their goal of > 6 dB.
• Lab Infrastructure, Bake lab:
  • We will have 60 sixth-graders from the Hamilton Elementary School visiting the 40m next week.
  • Steve is rearranging the office space to make room for another electronics bench and a whiteboard.
  • Bob is quite busy with large bake loads for LASTI.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

LASTI (Ottaway)

HAM SAS

Last week we determined that the Guralps sensors used to measure the floor motion were not coherent with each other below 100 mHz over relatively short baselines. This meant that our used of these to look for coherence with the excess HAM SAS noise at low frequencies would not be successful. To improve on this situation we changed to STS2s to perform this measurement. We borrowed an STS2 from LHO and installed it along with our one remaining LASTI STS2. With this combination of the 2 STS2 were able to demonstrate that the excess noise on the optics table was partially coherent (~0.7) with both the tilt signal and the translation in X signal of the ground. At  present we are not sure whether this is because the system is limited by tilts that are picked up in both the STS2 and real translation of the optics table or horizontal translations of the ground are somehow amplified.

Quad/Triple Cavity

Using feedback to the laser it was possible to show fringe stretching to about a second. The cause of these lock stretches not being longer was saturation of the VCO actuation signal. Work continues to find out whether this can be improved by improved damping of the suspensions. In addition to this much time was invested in getting the BSC HEPI going for improved isolation.

Lab Infrastructure

A lot of time has been spent preparing to receive and assemble the noise prototype. In addition to this we have been having quite a few computer related issues that we are working with the CDS group at Caltech to resolve.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

Xavier Siemens:h(t), h(t), and more h(t):

• Finalised S5 V3 digital filters for H1 and L1Prepared segment lists and pipeline configuration files (all set up at CIT cluster)Edited LAL and LALApps strain computation code for productionGeneral preparations for gigantic run on cluster to catch up from the beginning of S5 to now. Will be generating about 40TB of data.
• Spent week doing shifts in Lousiana

Gregory Mendell:

• Working with the CW group, I have made some progress towards responding to the latest reviewers comments to the StackSlide/PowerFlux/Hough S4 paper, with other work currently taking up most of my time.

Patrick Sutton:Network Analysis:

• I spent a lot of time figuring out how to construct MDC frames containing inspiral waveforms, for the analysis of GRB070201.  With help from Zweizig and Fairhurst, I made h-of-t frames for 1.4-1.4 and 1.4-10 solar mass inspirals, and circulated them to the bursts group.  These are in a non-standard format in which different injections are written to separate channels in one frame and which cover the same time interval.
• Modified X-Pipeline to be able to loop over multiple injections/MDC channels with a single read of "noise" frame data.  This improves efficiency when analysing the same data repeatedly with different injections, and allows us to analyse the new MDC frames for GRB070201.
• Other:
  • Searching for former S2 authors to finalize the author list for the S2-S3-S4 GRB paper.Recruited scimons for the last two outstanding sets of CIT shifts for the current shift block.
  • Acted as LSC-PP editor for reviews of GWDAW11 proceedings papers by Sung, Chatterji, Whelan.

Eirini Messaritaki:

• I worked with Vibha on her proposal for the SURF project, which involves the detection of eccentric binaries with non-eccentric templates.I worked on coding up the null stream test for the inspiral search.
• I worked on the detection of spinning binaries with non-spinning templates.

Kent Blackburn:

• Attended Cybersecurity Conference for LIGO.
• Reviewed and documented comments for Advanced LIGO CDS requirements and design, focusing on cybersecurity and provided these to Vern Sandberg.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• Held meeting with Duncan Brown to get an introduction to inspiral analysis codes.Wrote RSL script in using vi editor and executed it on several Open Science Grid sites.Attended Pegasus and DASWG teleconsLearned how to run a workflow using the LIGO WorkFlowPlanner after encountering several road-blocks with getting into needed gridmap files on the Caltech LDG cluster.Learned to run simple jobs on OSG using Pegasus. Began working through on-line OSG tutorial at the suggestion of Ruth Pordes and Kent Blackburn. So far have worked through the following sections:
  • Grid introNetwork PrimerGrid NetworksGrid SecurityJob ManagementData Management
  • Labs 1, 2, 3, 4
• Registered for Condor-Week Conference.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID INTEGRATION TESTBED

• Worked with Pegasus engineering team on dynamic cleanup algorithm characterization, completed all tests required for analysis.Provided support for Britta Daudert including interface to Caltech RLS/RLI engineers on setting up access control list, setting up defaults for LIGO work flow planner and explanation of interaction between Pegasus planner and other infrastructure components.Tested ws-gram enabled nanoHIPE workflow on the following sites: FNAL_GPFARM_TEST, IUB-VTB, UC_T2DEV_ITB, TTU-TESTWULF and OUHEP_ITB. Three  sites are still running the workflow at present and one site, TTU-TESTWULF, has completed the workflow. One of the sites was not able to run the workflow.Reconfigured the ws-gram Java container that supports the service on LIGO-CIT-ITB with twice the memory as recommended by the Globus developers.  Starting a large number of ws-gram submissions in a small time interval can still bring down the ws-gram service even with the additional memory.
• Attended DASWG, ITB, Pegasus, VDT and OSG attributes working group telecoms.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT

• Filed quarterly Caltech PI report to the Open Science Grid Management.Wrote an article on the International Partners Sessions chaired at the Open Science Grid Consortium Meeting in San Diego for the International Science Grid This Week newsletter.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software (Lei)

• (ML) cmonClient - cvs changes for PR3138 and closed out: handling list of list in resources by removing extra list put in by blt column entry when value is retrieved.(ML)  genericAPI - updated the text wrapping code.(ML)  Documentation:
  • Updated documentation on upgrading to DB2 fixpak 14.Fixed PR 3141 - by having a hyperlink for each regression test to the PR itself.
  • closed PR 3105 - use of exec inside ldas by documenting areas inside ldas that uses exec.
  (ML) Testing: Performed system test for ldas 1.8.511.
  • lsync core dumped after catching SIGTERM signal to terminate. Updated lsync.tcl to wait for threads to finish before terminating due to signal but not possible to call C++ (getThreadList) inside signal handler.regression PR2946 failed during the run but ran ok when run separatelyRDS Verification failed but passed when /archive and /data were removed from mount points.
  • after DB2 upgrade to 8.2.7, metadata did not show any big improvements in job throughput.  frame and diskcache detected a slight increase of 1.3% from QFS patch.
• (ML) Other:
  • Installed db2 fixpak 14 on ldas-dev metaserver.  Jobs ran ok.
  • Updated db2utils to display the DB2 version and patch level and made current links to ldas release test results.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

General Computing (Wallace)

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.eduAdvLIGO LSC/ASC design using FP arm model with quad suspension (Osamu)

• As a result of simulation for AdLIGO arm cavity, we noticed that pitch motion of end test mass is excited by coupling from length controls on bottom three masses. To avoid this excitation, we need to implement frequency dependent filter for all three masses, which should have flipped shape of measured TF from each three length control to test mass pitch motion. We have just started working on it. It may be useful to find requirements for angle motion, and real experiments for LASTI triple-sus cavity and AdLIGO in future.

Static IFO simulation (Hiro)

• Summarized the re-evaluation of the loss due to microroughness, and its implication for adv.LIGO mirror specification (T070082-03-E). Gave a summary talk about the loss due to scattering at the telecon of the coating group (G070240).Writing LIGO note "Geometrical and diffractive loss : BS and FP" T070052, along with necessary code development to finish the document. The main topic are the (1) effect of the finite size and thickness of BS w/ and w/o flats and the size of RM, (2) thermal effect on the beam shape in FP, and (3) use of asymmetric FP (ROCITM > ROCETM, wITM<6cm, wETM>6cm) so that the beam size on BS is smaller.Explained the use of the simulation tool to John and Yanbei's company. 
• When running the code to demonstrate the use, I found that the field in a mesa beam cavity using concentric design resulted in a normal gaussian shape steady state mode when the cavity is locked. When the cavity is not locked, the beam shows a flat center. This may indicate that the locking process (standard error signal is used) prefers normal gaussian rather than the mexican hat beam shape. This is very preliminary, though.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

• Continued the optimization of the AdvLIGO Mode Cleaner?s length sensing control gain setting. We are in the spring break this week. Due to the power down for a routine maintenance, our activity was very limited.

ALFI : e2e front end (Melody, Bruce)

• Working on the front end to support the user defined primitive (corresponds to mex file support of matlab).

CDS Prestabilized Laser

From: Peter King <pking@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Assembly of the lab prototype 35-W laser was completed.  The output power and beam quality are both good and reproducible.  Even when a cooling problem occurred because of a plumbing fitting not being connected properly, the amplifier recovered when the problem was fixed.  This in turn revealed a minor software problem which has since been rectified.Transfer functions involving the intensity actuators have been measured. The acousto-optic modulator used handled the 35-W beam without any problems, although a prolonged period of exposure was not undertaken.A couple of discrete op-amp topologies for transimpedance amplifiers have been tested and their performance measured.  The noise performance at 10 Hz has been pretty good, certainly better than most off-the-shelf op-amps available.
• I have seen the diagnostic breadboard in operation.  It's proving to be a handy tool.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.eduLasti (Rolf/Alex)Investigating CDS problems at Lasti this week. So far, found a couple of things:

• HEPI timing slave power supply was bad/erratic, causing HEPI code to suspend waiting for ADC signal; replaced. This also had the adverse effect that HEPI timing was being used to clock the FrameBuilder, which would also then stall.Systems are set up for max of 32 test points. Recent combined tests on HEPI and HAM SAS (latter uses some HEPI TP for Guralp data) with >32 causes it to crash. We have new code to increase this limit and also to avoid error when >maximum TP are requested. However, this code needs to be loaded into all Lasti systems at the same time, so we will wait until a convenient time.
• Alex has managed to compile a version of DTT with the debugger enabled. This should help us debug DTT problems at Lasti.

AdL SUS Noise Prototype (Jay)

• The UK designs are progressing and the UIM coil driver board design will be sent out for manufacture on 4/13.Preliminary design of the noise prototype system and rack wiring is complete.
• Design of the whitening and interface boards will be started following OMC and Tip-Tilt.

OMC Suspension (Jay)

• The system wiring diagram is complete.The modules and chassis we have on hand, ready to go are-- coil driver, sat amps, AA chassis, IO chassis, ADC interface, DAC interface, timing interfaceStill needed are-- SUS receiver, timing slave, AI chassis. The SUS receiver is being fab'd, AI chassis is waiting on the interface board which is being fab'd. The timing slave and a master has been requested from LHO. In the meantime, a software trigger mode for the system can be used for initial test and checkout.The ADC and DAC have been received.The rack and power supplies from the sync lab will be used in room 56. The movers have been contacted abuot getting the rack to the room. We need to order an operator station similar to what LHO is now testing.A draft of the controls requirements document has been written and reviewed by Norna.Simulink model of the software should be done next week.
• The network will not be ready in the basement for about 1 month. We can run without it, but it will be awkward.

Tip-Tilt equipment for ANU (Jay)

• The equipment needed for ANU includes:
  • 2 ea AA chassis- boards, parts and panels redesigned and on order.
  Boards being sent out for stuffing.
  • 3 ea AI chassis- boards, parts and panels redesigned and on order.
  Boards being sent out for stuffing.
  • 3 ea Sat Amp- boards and parts on order2 ea SUS receiver- boards and parts on order
  • 8 ch Coil Driver- boards stuffed, panels on order
• IO chassis components- boards and parts ordered for ADC adapter, DAC adapter, Timing InterfaceComponents should be ready for shipment by 5/26 assuming no major procurement issues.

AOS

• We may be in need of another CDS test system to support AOS prototyping here at CIT. Mohanna is investigating further.

ISI (Ben)

• ADC Interface Rev6  and STS2 Breakout box- The boards are back, and I stuffed one set as a model for the others.  The remainder are in the back shop ready for stuffing.
• ISI Interface I sent the schematics to Brian Lantz for a quick looking-over last Friday.  I'll give him a call tomorrow to find out what he thinks.

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For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini or Phil Lindquist