Weekly Report for Week Ending February 7, 2008

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

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LSC Issues (Reitze)

• Nothing significant.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

The table below shows the MOUs and their attachments that have been approved and signed off to date by both the LSC Spokesperson and the LIGO Laboratory Director.

• ACIGA is still under review.
• Sannio revisions have been received, and are in the process of being posted for review by the Review Panel.

  ---

  PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

• Assisted Christian Cepeda with shipping two boxes from CIT to Dell, OH.
• Attended a meeting with Jay Marx, Albert Lazzarini, Phil Lindquist and Finance personnel to discuss the NSF BSR (Business Systems Review) draft report.
• Assisted Helena Armandula with the packing and shipping of a small vacuum chamber to MIT.
• Continued working in writing exports and imports procedures.
• Gave a presentation on Property Management and shipping procedures to the site administrators.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila, Oracion)

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

• For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY Press Here.

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

• Working on the routing of change orders to CSIRO.
• Routed LSU subcontract.

>From: Karl Oracion <koracion@ligo.caltech.edu>>

• Attended site administrators' visit meeting and presented a brief overview of Caltech LIGO financial systems.
• Continued expenditure analysis, invoice review, budget review and data entry for January 2008 monthly operations report.
• Tested new Discoverer workbooks to retrieve financial data.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

• Modification to the QED contract for Pathfinder optical polishing is being re-written by Caltech Purchasing.  Since the modification has been entered into the Oracle system, Gina Salone contacted QED and gave them a verbal authorization to proceed with the work.

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

• The contract with L3 Communications SSG-Tinsley for Pathfinder Optical Polishing was sent to the contractor for signature on Tuesday, September 5.  Upon receipt of their signed copies, the contract will be executed by Caltech.  A kickoff meeting will be scheduled shortly after execution.
• Ed Jasnow conducted two days of meetings with the site administrators, Bonnie Wooley of LLO, Terry Gunter of LHO, and Marie Woods of MIT.  The administrators were briefed on financial systems, travel, procurement, visitors, document control, property, and safety.  Additionally, they went through "train the trainer" sessions on the TechMart and P-Card systems, so they will now be able to train site personnel in these systems.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

• The end-of-January report for the NSF is due next week.  I have issued a request for contributions from the usual authors and am collecting contributions.
• The NSF provided a draft report for the Business Systems Review conducted last August.  We are preparing responses.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• No report.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

• Presented safety and injury incident information at the Site Administrators meeting.
• Starting preparations for second LIGO Lab-wide safety meeting.
• Continued safety review of Enhanced and Advanced LIGO hazard analyses, assembly and installation procedures.

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

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

• 4k IOO work is nearing closeout.  It was discovered this week that the beam was clipping on the wire-protection baffle in front of MC2.  The beam was recentered on mode cleaner optics and the result was an MC transmission in excess of 91%.  The overall MC transmission has historically been understood to be about 70%, so the clipping relief (and other mitigation effects such as the earlier swap of a static and lossy steering mirror, clawing back 7%) appears to have significantly improved throughput (one has to assume the clipping has been present prior to this IOO work, but otherwise it is difficult to account for the difference in transmission).  The beam has been further centered on MMT3 and the RM, and the REFL beam returned at HAM1.  The RM bias relief work was completed on Monday.  Given the current alignment of the input optics, we still require a large bias on the RM to return the REFL beam, so we await the coming pumpdown to nail down a preferred alignment that yields spots on the ETMs, and confirms RM and ITM pointing.  Our expectation right now is that we will pump down on schedule early next week, and have a peek down the arms in about 2 weeks, provided the water-load into the beam tubes is acceptable for short openings.  Remaining work underway to reach that point includes IOO closeout such as the extraction of the beam transmitted through MC2, and a survey of MMT2 and MMT3 pointing for beam-centering purposes, plus a check of alignment on the AS port, given our best effort at ITM alignments.
• Gatevalves were opened on MX, allowing the 2k IFO to be relocked in acquire mode.  Wavefront sensing cannot be engaged yet as it drives the machine out of lock; work here was preempted by several days of high winds.
  

More highlights of recent work are found in the elog:

• handwringing over an additional overnight of vent time for MX appears to have been unnecessary - a comparison of pumpdown rates shows the behavior of MX and MY was very similar.
• the current good transmission measured in the 4k MC corresponds to an average loss per mirror of 65 ppm, reconciling reasonably well with recent absorption measurements.
• archiving Astrowatch: tests are underway to ensure data are retained correctly, automatically when appropriate, and manually when requested.
• It has been extremely windy.

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

Enhanced LIGO progress (Valera Frolov):

• The antisymmetric beam was aligned on the top periscope using the HAM4 HEPI and on the lock acquisition PD. The corner Michelson interferometer was locked.
• The mode cavity cavity pole was measured by taking the transfer functions from the laser intensity stabilization servo excitation point to the light intensity variation in two places: before and after the mode cleaner. A single photodetector was used in this measurement to cancel the photodetector response. The cavity pole was found to be 2.8 kHz which is lower than the previously measured value of 4.3 kHz. he pole cavity measurement will be done by a ring down technique to understand possible systematic errors.
• The data on mode cleaner absorption was collected using the mode cleaner optic eigen mode frequency tracking. The initial look at the data indicates that the absorption is lower than was measured last summer possibly due to the drag wipe cleaning of the mode cleaner optic. The analysis of the frequency drift due to the LVEA temperature variation is under way.
• The ISCT6 table was relocated into the clean room next to the HAM6 chamber. The OMC cage was assembled and put on the table with a dummy load instead of the OMC cavity.
• The OMC cavity was also received  and examined for visible damages. It appears to be in good shape.
• The OMC and ISI rack mounted electronics were installed and cabled. The OMC satellite electronics were  installed, cabled and tested next to the clean room.
• The cold water traps and ion pumps were open. The vacuum in the vertex is around 4e-8 torr. We plan to open the gate valves to take a peek down the arms.

CDS Computing (Lisa Bogue):

• Continued commissioning support.
• Working on a bug in my ldap server whereby users cannot change their passwords.
• Installed ligoDV 1.7.
• Working on compiling secure NDS (sends) beta for solaris.

Cleaning/Baking (Tom Evans):

• We have finished baking viewports for HAM 6 and are starting to bake an assortment of OMC counterbalances and screws.

LLO Outreach (John Thacker):

• Developed and delivered program for gifted students at N. Live Oak Elementary School.
• Updated calendar for spring and scheduled teacher develop programs (MSPs) for this summer.
• Developed program and compiled materials list for teacher Professional Development in Monroe, LA.
• Gathered materials for construction of tabletop demonstrations (known as "snacks") Developed and compiled program materials and activities for MSP.
• Developed program and materials for Teacher Training session for Baton Rouge Area Teachers of Mathematics session.
• Prepared and mailed pre visit packets for March school visits.
• Completed NSF annual report.
• Compiled list of Next Phase (proposal) Activities.
• Uploaded school visitors pictures to website.

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 analysis & 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)

• Joe is working on GiGE camera interface, which can now be run on all linux based machines in the 40m. Working on getting capture rates up (currently can sample a beam and save the images at about 12 Hz). Also working on some basic matlab functions to analyze the beam images. Camera has currently replaced the PMC transmission video camera.
• Stefan has a "Bork-space" digital control system working in AdhikariLab, and has used it to lock the PMC to the 35W laser (operating at low power, so far).
• Alberto is waiting for parts to assemble his RFAM box, which filters four different RF frequencies.
• Steve and Bob are baking out our repaired RGA head and will be checking it out this week.
• John now has optical fibers running from a laser on the SP table to the end of the y-arm, and has coupled it in to YARM through ETMY. He has coupled ~75% of the light transmitted from the y arm, through the fibre, back to the SP table. He's still looking for FP flashes, and is setting up a PDH system for aux arm locking.
• Rob continues to work on full interferometer locking. He's debugging double-demod signals, and is also exploring other (differential-demod) signals for locking the central part.
• David has shipped two tip-tilt mirror suspensions to LLO for the DC readout chain.
• Phil Ehrens has set up an SVN archive as a versioning repository for the 40m code base. Alan is populating and debugging it.
• Construction of the IST building continues to generate large amounts of vibration noise at the 40m during the day, but we are surviving. Rana's BLRMS monitors are providing very useful information.
• Rana met with representatives of a new geology faculty member who wants to set up a large system in CES (the big building that the 40m wraps around) to study flows of rocks, sand, etc. Just the kind of thing we like to have next door.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• Nothing significant to report this week.

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LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

• We have stage two running again and are taking a round of system ID to characterize the suspension cage/ISI interaction.
• If the interactions are acceptable from an SEI control point of view then we can give the UK team the OK to start the purchasing process. I m hoping to have some data posted on the LASTI ilog by Monday.
• We have also been reassembling stage one, that is should (hopefully) be done today.

Noise Prototype Suspension

• Work continues on the blade clamping issues. Brett has made more measurements and they are being compared with the test set up at RAL. We are planning to break vacuum and redo some of these tests on the controls prototype.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

________________________

Kent Blackburn for the grid computing team:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• Wrote agenda for weekly LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
• Attend DASWG, CBC Code development, OSG-USERS and OSG-INTEGRATION telecons.
• Preparation for LIGO-Pegasus F2F meeting:
  • Participate in creating the agenda
  • Update Wiki information
  • Wrote ppt presentation: LIGO Inspiral work-flows on OSG
  • Wrote ppt presentation: Pegasus and LDG
  • Wrote report on SRM and WS-GRAM effort on OSG
• LIGO Application Activities on OSG:
  • GOC Ticket STAR_BNL closed: Condor upgrade on gatekeeper was needed
  • Troubleshooting with GOC  TTU_ANTAUES
  • Troubleshooting UWMilwaukee
• LIGO Activity on LDG:
  • LLO issue resolved: port 2119 was closed
  • ldg_submit_dax testing on LDG; now running at cit, lho, llo, not running at uwm_nemo
• Learning basic Python programming.

INTEGRATION TESTBED FOR OPEN SCIENCE GRID

• Continued to look for candidate for opening here at Caltech. A request to visit Caltech was extended to strongest candidate after favorable telephone interviews by both Kent and Stuart. No word back from candidate confirming visit yet.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT

• Reviewed annual report for funding agencies. Made several changes.
• Attending Joint DOE/NSF LHC review this week.
• Contacted several individuals from other communities about participating in the LIGO Grid Applications Workshop next week at ISI.

________________________

Antony Searle:

• Finalising main Bayesian burst paper for submission PRD.
• Planned with X-Pipeline stakeholders a Bayesian followup on JW1 dataset for Q-Pipeline and/or peak correlator triggers, testing detection and pointing performance.
• Refurbishing X-Pipeline followup search code.

________________________

Pinkesh Patel:

• Working on inputing the Resampling code in the current F-Stat code. I have managed to input the pre-processing part into the code and hope to be done implementing the whole thing in a week.
• Working on a test script, which will be used once resampling is input completely to test it with the current setup.

________________________

Amber Stuver:

LIGO Research

• Presented work on determining a likelihood of a candidate GW event based on its detection delay and observed SNR (or effective distance or hrss, etc) ratio.  I am moving on with this work to translate the presented results (http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~stuver/research/delayRatio) into a python function so it can be included in the follow-up pipeline.
• Spoke with Myunkee Sung on the current work that has gone into investigating the calibration factor used in the production of h(t). I will be picking up this investigation with his help to determine the effects these factors have in producing some concerning artifacts.

SEC Work

• Went on a school visit with Kathy Holt to speak with ~12 3rd through 5th grade gifted students.  I presented the 'gravity blanket' to introduce the concept of space-time and how it relates to gravity and gravitational waves.
• Spoke to a reporter from the Hammond Star Daily (Wed. of last week) about the science that is done at LIGO and took him and that day's school group on the control room tour and the exhibit hall free play.
• Including the school group mentioned above, I gave control room tours to ~50 students.

Other

• Attended the 'Graduate Education in Physics: Which Way Forward?" conference at the American Center for Physics in MD on 31 Jan to 2 Feb 2008.  While there, I presented a poster on the expectations grad students have with regard to their graduate experience.  This was well received by the represented physics departments.  I was vocal on my and other graduate students' experiences during the panel sessions and was pleasantly surprised at how well received my views and opinions were (to the point that I was sought out by individuals during breaks and meals).  The poster I presented can be viewed here:

  http://www.ligo-la.caltech.edu/~stuver/papers/StuverPoster.pdf

________________________

Gregory Mendell:

• I have been working on some checks for an internal review of the Einstein@Home S4 paper.

________________________

Kipp Cannon:

• At Columbia U. doing SGR "Flare" paper and pipeline review

________________________

Anand Sengupta:

• Babysitting the S5 high mass search with --ts-scaling-factor=0.01. The run is almost done.
• Created new entry in the S5 Time-Domain notebook related to the trigger rates, horizon distance and template banks for the high mass search <http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/enote.pl?nb=iags5tdfindchirp&action=view&page=61>
• Closed a bug in LAL. <http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/cvs/viewcvs.cgi/lal/packages/noisemodels/src/LALInspiralWaveOverlap.c.diff?r1=1.23&r2=1.24&cvsroot=lscsoft&sortby=date>
• Writing scripts to automate coire procedure.

________________________

Diego Fazi:

• Running the first PTF search with spinning injections.
• Analysing results from the 1-month PTF search on playground data with a new clusterization method.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• The pacman rules for LDG have been modified to build globus, pyGlobs and TclGlobs for Solaris as 64-bit objects. With these modifications, the tandem system tandem-ii successfully used certificates to submit an LDAS job and get the proper response.
• In the diskcacheAPI, the resource variable ::MOUNT_PT_LOOP_INTERVAL_MS was added. The resource variable ::PRESTAGE_DATA_UTILITY was removed from lsync.rsc.
• System testing of LDAS was done using version 1.9.192 of the software base. Modifications to dbException resolved all the errors that had been seen for this test. There continues to be an issue of running createRDSTest_S3 in parallel with datacondMDC.
• Work on converting the datasocket test for inclusion in the standard System testing.
• Week long testing using ldas-test ran version 1.9.195 of LDAS and used tcl sockets. Only datacond no such symbol errors.
• The nightly test report was modified to show 5 decimal points of accuracy for the percentages passed, failed and rejected.
• Work continues also on converting the documentation system from perceps to doxygen.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Phil Ehrens)

• The usual GRID user certificate management tasks.
• The usual host and server cert management taks.
• Created web home for 40m related web services on dziban.  Subversion version control added to 40m web services.  Services currently available:
  • https://40m.ligo.caltech.edu/svn/40m
  • https://40m.ligo.caltech.edu/elog
• Soon to come:
  • https://40m.ligo.caltech.edu/wiki

  (All are protected password-protected).

• Evaluated various web-based svn browsing utilities.  All current generation svn browsing utilities rely on Subversion being built with "SWIG hooks" for one or another language. Since the existing svn installs were not built this way, none of these packages succeeded in displaying the repository content. New versions of svn will be built with the hooks enabled.
• Began to create network install framework for CentOS5 Linux to be installed on desktop machines and cluster nodes. Framework is based on the existing FC4 framework installed on ldas-kickstart.
• Node196 continues to generate ecc errors on cpu 2 4, at the rate of one per day for the last 6 days.  I will replace the memory dimms for CPU 2 on node196 today.
• NO new fan failures have occurred within the last week.
• Ported changes made to LDAS diskcacheAPI to lsync.tcl script. These changes should put an end to the failure of some directories to update correctly AND speed up scanning of large numbers of ::MOUNT_PT entries significantly.
• Shipped Sun 880 video card scavenged from old dataserver-dev machine to Greg Mendell.

(Stuart Anderson)

• Condor upgraded to vesion 7.0.0.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Condor upgraded to vesion 7.0.0.
• Set up (fully) configured compute node kickstart installs of centos5 from ldas-kickstart (post install scripts add: condor, ip, gmond, smartd, /usr1 directories, nfs mounts, etc) -- /tftpboot/data/node.centos.ks file. pcraid array from caltech doa -- tried swapping parts from other non-working pcraid array ... moved smartd monitoring web from gar to ldas-kickstart.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• Upgraded Condor to version 7.0.0.
• Replaced 40 old L0 tapes with blank ones.
• Committed changes to the segment database to CVS.
• Writing a document describing changes done to the segment database.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• Upgraded Condor to version 7.0.0 at LHO.  Tested the script that finds conlog "UP" segments for astrowatch.  In addition, I am working with LDAS to prepare for filesystem upgrades.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Tweaked ligomail.mit.edu.
• Purchasing (duplex flatbed scanner.
• A/V stuff) misc. desktop issues.
• Added wake-on-lan to backup scripts for xp machines;(as they tend to be shut down at night...).
• Nnessus scan (ok).
• olycom setup tested ok.

Livingston

No report.

Hanford

(Christine)

• Purchased more new laptops for users.
• Finished setting up two new MAC laptops for users.
• Setting up new accounts for Astrowatch students and other student help.
• Patching the DHCP server and DHCP.
• Provided a local IP address for a new copier/fax/scanner machine. Blocked access from off-site to this machine in the router access list.
• Updated the ruleset files for the email spam filters. Looking into problem with new types of spam not being blocked by the filter.
• Started documenting everything to turn over to Larry prior to my departure.

Caltech

(Veronica)

• LSC: Ongoing support of the March meeting. Setup/troubleshoot of the online payment form.  The app is in live mode.  Additional tweaking of the registration form, per Gregg Harry.  Updates of the database of technical papers.
• LIGO:  Web updates /user support.
• CaJAGWR:  Video taping /processing of the last two talks.  The website is hosted by ITS and is reaching its disk quota limit, I'm looking into possible solutions.  Website updates /user suppport.

(Mike)

• Worked on some email issues with Linda Turner's account.
• Re-cabled network switch plus activated all additional ports down in W/B sub-basement.
• Looked for a computer that was misplaced that had some network issues. This was an old surf students LINUX box that was not being used. After finding this computer I pulled this off line and surplus it.
• Started working on a Wilson House replacement server.
• Trouble shot some network glitches that users were having. This turned out to be a network switch issue.
• Other misc. user support and sysadmin tasks.

(Melody)

• LAAC:
  • Testing the user and group permissions on the webpages.  Students are able to edit only their own pages while advisors can edit everything.
  • Testing the wiki login using Apache authentication.
• New DCC:
  • Reading up on docDB documents (install and design specifications).

(Christian)

• Configured two loaner laptops this week.
• Stocked printer cartridges that were delivered to LIGO this week.
• Called Dell support to have two hard-drives replaced.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Larry)

• Worked a number of procurements. In the process of purchasing new workstations and notebooks for different people, now that we know what is going to be shuffled around. Checking on the pricing of multiple video conferencing systems.
• Assisted in the testing of a number of different IP conferencing tools.
• Still a number of items to test out.
• Working with Hanford on a variety of logistical issues with GC.
• Worked on some modifications to the computer room. Still have a number of items to cleanup and swap out.
• Working logistical issues in relation to the LSC/Virgo meeting coming up.
• Still working on configurations of some of the edge switches.
• Assistance to various users.
• Working on a couple of documentation projects.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Static IFO simulation (Hiro)

• Hiro attended the workshop to discuss about the choice of Michelson cavity architecture. It was demonstrated that the signal is more stable with the stable  cavity, but may loose several 10% by using Marginally stable cavity. The effect of wedge angle was shown to be not negligible.

Modeler : e2e simulation engine and ALFI : e2e front end

(Hiro, Bruce, Melody)

• Last week, Bruce visited Caltech to transfer his work to Melody and John. They discussed mainly about the implementation of UDP and about the documentation of UDP for users and programmers.
• John is preparing to develop a revised version of PSD module.

Mechanical Simulation for advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

• Richard and I worked on e2e simulation of AdvLIGO Single Stage baseline HAM seismic isolation. We looked at the FIR filter (posted by Wensheng Hua at the SWG log on Dec 16, 2003). This filter will be put between the ground displacement and the Single Stage HAM seismic isolation model to simulate the HEPI. At this point, we used Matab to compare ground displacement before and after this filter (using a typical ground displacement simulating the LHO ground motion). We have confirmed that the filter reduces the ground displacement in f<0.2 Hz (by a factor of 50/20/10/2 at 0.01/0.05/0.1/0.15 Hz). More detailed analysis is under way.

Prestabilized Laser

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

• A first cut at the preliminary design document has been made.
• Things are underway to procure the DAQ hardware for testing the 200-W laser at the AEI.
• I have been working on a document outlining the laser safety eyewear considerations and preparing material for the laser safety aspect of the next all-hands on safety meeting.
• The EnL laser that was supposed to be at Hanford already was stuck on the mountain pass between Seattle and Richland due to the prevailing weather.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

ELIGO

• Completed the first round of CDS equipment installation/test to support the OMC at LLO. Rich will be returning to LLO the week of Feb. 18 to continue testing.

AdL SUS

• Pre-production test plans for the UIM, PUM and Top coil drivers have been written.
• Top coil driver tests should be complete 2/7. The results will be summarized in a report which should be available for review by 2/15.
• UIM coil driver tests are being done at LHO and should be done by 2/12.
• PUM coil driver tests will be started next week and should take about 1 week to complete.
• Additional sat amps have been received.
• A spare UIM driver and monitor board have been received and are being assembled into a LIGO style chassis.
• Control signals for the triple suspensions have been received from Stefan. These signals will be used to generate the dynamic range requirements for the AL triple sus electronics. The noise requirements are complete. The full requirements for the triple electronics will summarized in a document and be available  for review following the completion of the quad electronics testing and evaluation.

AdL CDS

• Testing of the Innovative Integration DSP board was sidetracked by a disk failure on the test PC. The PC has been repaired and the testing restarted.
• LHO is reviving their test stand and will try to confirm the test results for the General Standards ADCs and DACs.
• General Standards is pursuing a new module design that utilizes an 18-bit ADC in a PCIX and/or PCIe form factor. Availability is TBD.
• Received our first full PCI Express (PCIe) I/O chassis. Units in the field now have a PCIX bus with 6 PCIX slots for our ADC/DAC/Binary I/O modules and a single lane (2.5Gbit/sec) fiber up/down link to the computer. New unit has 8 PCIe slots with an 8 lane up/down link (20Gbit/sec, cable or fiber). We also have a PCIe switch on order that should arrive soon. This equipment/configuration (CDS AdvLigo baseline) will allow the connection of multiple computers and multiple I/O chassis into a star fabric, with any computer able to map any I/O card, regardless of which I/O chassis it is in, and allow low latency communications between computers (250nsec (worst case, plus any long haul fiber delays) for short data bursts, such as the control signals we presently send around between various realtime processors). All of our present ADC/DAC cards are directly compatible (move the ADC/DAC PMC modules from their present PCIX carriers and move them on to a PCIe carrier). A more delayed presentation will be given on this architecture at next week's CDS meeting.
• Still working on code to use Infiniband as a possible choice for bulk data movement, such as Data Acquisition. As part of the testing, Alex is using the raw data, received by a Framebuilder, and broadcasting this to multiple data receivers at rates to 950MByte/sec. The receiver computers are taking in the data and providing realtime NDS services to NDS client software, such as DTT/Dataviewer/ligoDV. One reason to test this configuration is that we would like to off-load NDS from the FrameBuilders, such that their only task is to record data and not serve data as well, which they presently do. A brief presentation of test results and configuration will probably occur at the CDS meeting week after next.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

BSC Seismic Isolation Assembly and Test

• The BSC isolation system is re-assembled and operating. Rich is resetting the actuator gaps. We are waiting on modifications to the quad blade clamps before proceeding with the integrated testing.
• Stephany and Ken are updating the BSC solid model with design modifications made to the LASTI structure and changes we have been compiling on the advligo wiki:
  http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/BSC_ISI_Design_Change_List
  In addition there is a list of 7 larger design improvements which are under consideration.

Single Stage HAM Assembly and Test

• Hugh and Fabrice are at LLO this week assisting in the assembly of the single stage HAM. Assembly of the external structure is nearly complete. The HAM structure assembly is waiting for GS-13's and miscellaneous hardware. The installation of the HAM ISI is scheduled for next week. We are still hoping that this will happen towards the end of the week.
• Fabrice has completed the installation assembly, hazard analysis, and analysis documents and completed a DCN which is currently circulating.

Suspensions

From: Norna Robertson <nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu>

• OMC-SUS: Provided Rana with information on the matrix linking OSEM sensing signals to degrees of freedom, and information on damping filters and gains as used during tests at Caltech.
• Started organising two upcoming reviews:
  • LASTI review - to take place during the LSC-V meeting at Caltech, on Tuesday 18th or Wed 19th at lunchtime (TBC).
  • Enhanced LIGO - review of proposed magnet swap for the ETMs ( to replace NdFeBo with CoSm magnets). Date of review: sometime during the next couple of weeks (TBC)

From: Janeen Romie <janeen@ligo-la.caltech.edu>

• Output Mode Cleaner Suspension: The OMC suspension with its metal bench is on the table next to HAM6. We are going to align it today, with the magnets & osems. A problem has been found with the osem wiring for 2 osems, that Sam & Rich will address when they come back here Feb 19th. Chris Echols will be here that week as well. Sam's bench is here as well, on the same table. We have two bake loads needed for reworked parts. Tom Evans will take care of them here. One is stainless, the other is aluminum.
• Recycling Mirror Suspension: Nothing significant to report.

From: k mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

• Sam's OMC task, required 2 of the HAM table top mounts be modified 13 tall and 2 short; these and 5 HAM table side beam dumps are complete and were given to Bob to clean and bake.
• Two purchase part flexure mounts needed to be disassembled for Sam to check their usability after clean and bake process.
• I'm working on an end station beam dump, metal material,  to be black porcelain coated and suspended, for Mike Smith. Samples and specifications of three materials that are recommended for this process will be tested.
• The black glass pieces for the Ham mounts have been cut to size and arrived at CIT , Bob will clean and bake them some will go out for a 1064 ar coating.

Core Optics

From: GariLynn Billingsley <Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu>

• QED is moving forward on the repolish of the pathfinder.
• Tinsley has the contract for signature
• COC PDR documents will be available by 7-8 for review

From: Liyuan Zhang <zhang_l@ligo.caltech.edu>

• The HR absorption measurements of all the six chamber witness samples (1" in diameter mirrors) from LHO have been done. While three of them are basically clean,  the other three ones show extra absorption, from 8  to 30 ppm.  All the extra absorption is mostly caused by point-like absorbers. The particle sampling on the surface is underway for further analysis.

Auxiliary Optics

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Muzammil:

• We are working on the stable/marginally stable cavity design comparison. Specifically different loss mechanisms in the stable cavity design are being investigated.

Luke:

• Finished design of prototype arm cavity baffle (AOS).
• Beginning new SPRC IO layout in solidworks.

Rodica:

• Exploring ZEMAX software for ghost beam tracking.
• Measurements of reflected and transmitted power in s and p polarizations of a TFP to understand power looses in the anti-refl beam in H1.

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