Weekly Report for Week Ending February 21, 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

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Past Weekly Reports

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LSC Issues (Reitze)

• The first meeting of the LSC Education and Public Outreach working group met by telephone on Monday.  The meeting focused on a discussion of overall priorities and major foci of the group (developing public, K-12, undergraduate, graduate outreach) as well as short term goals such as surveying LSC outreach activities and EPO best practices, as well as web site development for the new ligo.org website.  A password-protected wiki has been set up for the group to develop concepts, kick around ideas, etc.. - http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/lsc_epo (usual access method).
• The LSC Remote participation committee has developed a survey for the LSC and Virgo Collaborations to assess the needs and desires of the collaborations for effective long-distance participation in collaboration and face-to-face meetings.  The survey will go out in the next week.  In addition, we have chosen "EVO", a collaboration tool developed for this type of application at the March meeting.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

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STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

• ACIGA's revised MOU has been received and is being processed for posting for review.

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.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

• Assisted K. Mason at MIT in making local shipping arrangements for one crate from Lavallee Machine to MIT.
• Assisted J. Heefner with packing, shipping, and preparing a commercial invoice for Prototype Electronics Box to the Birmingham University in the UK.
• Assisted M. Woods at MIT in making shipping arrangements for two crates from LLO to MIT.
• Assisted  G. Billingsley in making shipping arrangements for the UK pathfinder blanks to L3 Communications/Tinsley in Richland CA.
• Submitted a request for the disposal of two LCD projectors and two Computers to NSF.
• Assisted J. Heefner in clearing a shipment from U.S. Customs.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

LSC MEETING PREPARATIONS

• Worked with Mike Pedraza on determining number of power strips required to provide all day electrical support for 200+ laptops.  Measurements of rows to be occupied were taken to ensure that laptops will reach a power strip.  The plan drawn up requires about 60 power strips.  This has been sent to the electrical shop so they can determine the number of portable power units needed to accommodate all the necessary extension cords for the power strips.  Will be meeting with the Electrical shop next week to diagram out where the cords will run and what will be needed to ensure the safety of the participants.
• Coordinated phone, AV, seating, etc. with Dabney to accommodate a short period of the Tuesday Plenary session late that afternoon, due to a public event that evening in Beckman Auditorium, requiring early shut-down of our use.
• Signed a contract with the University Club to provide two dinners during the LSC, one for the full group and the second for the LSC Council.
• All caterers for the various breakfasts, lunches, and breaks have been secured.  All are a bit under budget which will provide us with a bit of buffer for extra expenses that are unforeseen.  To provide all the meals and breaks during the days, we are using 7 different caterers.  This will provide a good balance and variety of food.
• Appointments were set up for each caterer to come to Caltech the week prior to the LSC to do a walk-through of the space to ensure that they know where they will be setting up and serving and to answer any questions that arise (ie., electrical needs, tables, etc.).
• Finalized contract with Dolphin Rentals for large tent canopies, chairs, tables, and chain stanchions for housing 200+ attendees for all breaks and meals.  Received approval from President's office, PMA, and Physical plant for the location on the lawns between Bridge and Millikin.  Will be meeting with Delmy (physical plant) next week to schedule flags placed by water lines on the lawns to prevent hitting the lines when the canopies are erected.
• Met with Security to see what added measures they can provide to ensure all rentals from Dolphin are secured and not stolen, especially during the evening and night hours. Because chairs and stanchions are light-weight and can be easily carried away, this is especially of concern.
• Met with Dot and Norna twice this past week to review the schedule, the rooms needed for various parallel and break out meetings, and review of the hotel room situation.  We will meet again next week to see what is left to be finalized.

FACILITIES

• Finalized the Draft Plan of where each major group will reside when LIGO relocates to Bridge.  Placement of individuals within each group has gone through a 1st draft and will hold there for the time being.
• Created a time schedule showing the order in which groups will be moved.  This was designed to avoid anyone moving prior to that space being vacated.  This can be especially problematic due to a "musical chairs" type shuffle of people already in Bridge being moved to other areas within the same building.
• Met with Alan Rice and JoAnn Hasbach to give an update to where we are in the planning of the allocation of space.  They were both extremely pleased at the progress to date, the proposed layout of the groups, and the detailed schedule of who moves where first, second, etc.  They have asked me to draw up a list of any previous "uses" of a room that will be changed in the coming relocation, ie. lab to office, office to conference room, etc.
• Continued to work with Eric on the list of renovations required prior to the relocation.  Asked Stuart to provide a detailed list of renovations necessary to turn the ECR into part of the computer room.  This was provided the end of last week and will be added to the list of renovations evolving.
• Drew up "to-scale" floor plans of the rooms in the WB basement.  The blueprints received from Physical Plant do not reflect accurately all the actual floor plans so each room has been measured and the "to-scale" plans reflect columns, windows, staircases, electrical panels, etc. that might impact placement of furniture and, ultimately, how many people are actually capable of fitting in the space.
• Delivered a packet of plans and office furniture templates to Rolf for his group.  They've been asked to number the furniture that will be relocated and to fit them into the floor plans.  Any furniture not needed will be listed and given to me so that those items can be reallocated to other LIGO staff as needed.  They will return their office layouts to me by March 14th.

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>

• Closed the contract with Southeastern Louisiana University.
• Submitted close outs to Squid Labs, and Eskew Dumez Ripple.
• Re-directed the mis-delivered chillers to the Site.
• Working on putting the package together for the new contract for Tinsley.

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

• Sent out reports for MIT.GRID, I2U2 awards and posted Outreach Award report for the month of January on the network.
• Working with IMSS to reconcile FY2007 carry forward amount to Oracle.
• 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>

• The re-written Modification No. 4 to the QED contract for Pathfinder optical polishing was reviewed with the contractor by Purchasing Services, and upon agreement, was released to the contractor.

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

• The contract with the Tinsley Company for Pathfinder optical polishing was approved by LIGO management and forwarded to Purchasing Services for signature.  A kickoff meeting with the contractor has been tentatively set for March 7.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

• The end-of-January status report was sent to the NSF.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

• There are no open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• A Staffing Committee meeting was conducted Tuesday, February 19.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

• Providing safety review support for on-going design reviews.

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

LHO Weekly Summary (compiled by M. Landry)

• The 4k vertex was pumped down last Friday.  Alignments of the input optics and test masses were revisted with a nominal low power 0.75W into the mode cleaner (previously in air we were using 30mW).  Input wavefront sensing was re-established.  New camera views, e.g. of the input and output of the Faraday isolator) were obtained.  Our intent is to have a peek down the arms to see if the beams hit the ETMs on Mar 3. Prior to that we need to nail down our best IO, BS and ITM alignments.
• SEI: preparations were made for the insertion of ISI support tubes  into HAM6 (expected Friday).
• Astrowatch kicked off officially on Monday.  H2 is running in the evenings/early a.m. at the hands of visiting grad students.  The duty cycle this week has been about <20%, with a range of ~7Mpc (calibration still to be confirmed).  Locks stretches have been steady, once the microseism seen early in the week subsided.  One main commissioning task is underway in the days: H2 power up and angular stabilization

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

No report.

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)

• Rob gave a LIGO seminar on beyond-Advanced-LIGO technologies, concentrating on new ideas for prototyping at the 40m. His slides are here.
• Alberto has assembled his RFAM monitor circuitry (StochMon) and is connecting it up to EPICS channels, with help from Ben. In the course of that work, the laser accidentally tripped off. It took a few hours to recover and come back up to full power, but it's ok now.
• Alberto goes back to Italy for a few months, this weekend.
• John continues to work on aux laser arm locking, but is running into some serious problems. Work in progress; a more complete report next week.
• Joe is researching and placing orders for new GigE cameras, switches and PCI network card.
• Stefan continues to work on developing an AdvLIGO-like model for 40m prototyping.
• We've been talking to Caltech student prospective SURFs.
• The Tuesday 5.0 earthquake in northern Baja California tripped off our suspension controllers, more than once, but they came back up fine after things settled down in Mexico.

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Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• This week Greg Ogin started analyzing Andri Gretarsson's ellipsometry data on tantala. Akira is revisiting his idea of rotating the polarization at the TNI to improve the discriminant, and Eric has been getting quotes for new mirrors.

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LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

• We have been working to get damping loops running on stage 2 (proposed loop gains and performance on the Lasti ilog (2/23/08)).
• There have been some computer related delays this week, a disk crash and the MEDM screen needed reworking. We are hoping to get something running in the next couple of days.

Noise Prototype Suspension

• We opened up the BSC this week so that Brett could make measurements on the Controls prototype to see if it exhibits the pitch hysteresis that we have seen on the Noise prototype.
• Brett has also been working to get the local damping running again. There is an interference between an OSEM (reaction chance face I think) and one of the cross braces on the support structure.

LASTI Vacuum System

• Lasti has been vented to allow Brett access into the BSC.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

____________________

Antony Searle:

• Added simple glitch hypothesis to X-Pipeline's Bayesian suite.
• Ran Bayesian X-Pipeline followup on JW1 timeshifted data, on and off triply coincident peak correlator triggers, computing plausibilities of signal and glitch hypothesis.  The simple glitch hypothesis was preferred over the signal hypothesis for this set of real interferometric glitches.
• Preparing presentation for Bursts face-to-face meeting.

____________________

Gregory Mendell:

• Nothing significant to report this week.

____________________

Amber Stuver:

LIGO Research

• Completed a small investigation into an apparent in the factor used to generate h(t) relative to the same factor from the h(f) production.
• Began looking into theory derivations regarding the effect of polarization on the observed SNR ratio given a detection delay.  I have also been in contact with a former colleague regarding work he has done relating to observed detection delays and their meaning for data analysis.  We are considering combining our work for a possible publication.

SEC Work

• Gave control room tours to about 100 students.
• Accompanied Kathy Holt on a school visit to a local elementary school.  Discussed the purpose of LIGO and then EM spectrum in general.

____________________

Pinkesh Patel:

• I have found the segmentation fault in my code and am working to get rid of it.
• Have been taking Astrowatch shifts.
• Working on the paper for the resampling procedure.

____________________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid Computing Group:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT (BD)

• Attended weekly DASWG, Inspiral Coding, OSG-USERS, and OSG-INTEGRATION telecons.
• Attended ihope meeting 2 (plotting) with LIGO scientists.
• Did some troubleshooting with Kent on CRL credential issue seen on local submit host (update VDT, update credentials).
• Trouble shooting with Kent and Gaurang Metha end of file error message during data transfer.
• Continued to look at Python Programming for ihope coding project.
• Meeting with LIGO grad student Drew Keppel to discuss data size reduction of Inspiral Analysis for OSG runs.
• Trouble shooting with: JAVA_HOME environment variable issue (02-21)--re-install osg-client.

OSG INTEGRATION TESTBED (KB)

• Installed VDT-Client package on the OSG submit host (osg-itb-se) to solve a stall CRL credential list problem that has become the default behavior on the OSG.
• VDT-Client was not sufficient to allow Pegasus workflows to be submitted from the submit host so removed it and re-installed full VDT, to enable the gsiftp service on the submit host.
• The Full VDT was still insufficient functionality to run Pegasus workflows on the submit host so reinstalled, this time enabling the globus-gatekeeper service.
• Discovered that the new VDT install overwrote a pointer in the system shell setup scripts that caused JAVA to not be located in Britta's OSG Client. This has been tracked down and a work-around found by not invoking an XTERM on the submit host. This was also tracked down to the file /etc/profile.d/pegasus.sh and has been corrected, but not tested.

OPEN SCIENCE GRID MANAGEMENT (KB)

• Reviewed and made suggestions for letter to NSF outlining LIGO's role in the OSG.
• Reviewed and made suggestions for updated GRATIA agreement with the OSG.
• Received letter or reference for OSG Grid Admin position open here at Caltech and passed it along to the LIGO Staffing Committee.
• Posed a question to the VDT developers regarding necessity of having two services available to run LIGO workflows via Pegasus. VDT developers suggest that we look at STORK. This has been added to next weeks telcon agenda with Pegasus developers.
• Passed along request for contact information to the LSC Computer Committee and presented on the topic in today's telecon. No issue with Security Contacts, but CompComm requested LIGO Directorate be involved in the decision for the LIGO VO Manager contact information.
• Discussed establishing a policy for our VIRGO and GEO colleagues regarding access to the OSG grid at the LSC Computer Committee meeting.
• Wrote and submitted sub-committee report for US LHC review.

Drew Keppel:

• Writing a technical document describing the S5 1yr Low Mass CBC search.
• Writing a code summary page for the code review of the S5 1yr Low Mass CBC search.
• Producing a false alarm rate statistic to use as the detection statistic.

____________________

Diego Fazi:

• Analyzing results from the first PTF injection run.
• Working on the implementation of a distance for the PTF intrinstic parameter space.

____________________

Anand Sengupta:

• Presentations and following on action items at the review telecons on trigScan / eThinca.
• Incorporating Michele's comments in the e-thinca draft.
• Finalising plots for spinTaylorT3 injections in hiCBC search.
• Plotthinca party (with Drew, Alan, Britta and Michele).
• Wrote a code to band-pass time-domain templates between fLower=40Hz and fCutOff=appropriate template ending frequency.
• Started and baby-sitting injection runs using these band-passed high-mass EOB templates.

____________________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Proposed abstract for PCGM and preparing presentation.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• The main focus for the past week has been to enhance the reliability and the performance of the diskcacheAPI. To achieve these goals, two tools have been used. The first, valgrind, has been used for detection of memory violations. The second tool, collect, has been used to gather performance information. It has lead to one optimization so far. Use of these tools has revealed a stability issue related to the code responsible for preventing hung NFS stat calls. This one is being currently investigated and appears to be thread related.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Stuart Anderson)

• All of the equipment (including 7 palets of tapes) have arrived for the new data archive system. The tape drives where installed in the tape robot today as well.
• New FC switches where installed and passed initial testing for use by the new frame archive filesystems.
• Added CondorView to the Observatory clusters to provide users and administrators with additional cluser utilization monitoring tools.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• One p/s ok but surge control not functioning; moved 6 nodes to new power strip (prob. from power issue).
• Cluster remained on (mit backup power kicked in, no apparent disruption to cluster other than above).

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• LDAS is archiving astrowatch data as specified in LIGO-M080011-00-M, VIR-006A-08.  I am implementing automated monitoring to check that conlog "UP" segments are being archived, and my current checks shows everything is working as it should.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Updated tubera (solaris 8 in prep for 10); repartitioned os drive; added 140GB scsi to mirror /export.
• Performed live upgrade to solaris 10. Will reboot this w/e to see if solaris10 boots. Sent fix of ilog lib file to hanford (older ilog entries displayed without <pre> formatting)--seems to work.
• Solidworks issues; worked with our var; reformat some nova fs (out of inodes).
• Power issue in bldg. nw17, cds raid server dead (rom error) -- added new disk to cds for restore.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• Kantech controller reset, troubleshooting various issues with the front gate, appears to be OK now.
• Canit spam filter had a bug, applied recommended fix and all appears well.
• Replaced tapes in the GC library and ran a full backup.
• Set up Staging Building conference room for Ansys training.
• Re-imaged a laptop to be added to the SEC checkout pool.
• Meeting regarding changes/additions to the Inventory control system.
• Applied a few of the recommended changes to the ICS.
• Installed fiber patch panel in Staging Building communications closet, to complete the fiber pull next week.
• Created a new GC account for a user.
• Sent a Mac PowerBook for warranty repair.
• Assisted a user with a broken Matlab install.
• Installed PolyCom PVX, to test later today.
• Assisted a user with Comsol.
• Ordered a new plotter.
• Purchased a 5 seat license for Mekentosj Papers.
• Other usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap.

Hanford

(Christine by Larry so it probably is not complete)

• Setup a couple of new laptops.
• Worked on mail server.
• Worked on documentation and work list for the person that will be doing the sysadmin work at the Observatory.
• Showed Larry and Mike where equipment was located, performed a walk-through with them and went over the todo lists.
• Regular user support.

Caltech

(Veronica)

• LIGO:  Seminars -- Taped the 02.19 seminar and put on DVD per a request from Ron Drever.  Troubleshot a LAAC application for thesis submission. Various web updates/user support.
• LSC:  Ongoing web support of the March meeting.  Continued work on the website redo.  Updates of the database of technical papers, other web related updates.

(Melody)

• E2E Support: Assisted Sany and his students with Java/Unix and ALFI/E2E questions.
• LAAC: Finished implementing and testing Apache user management functions done through mediawiki.
• New DCC: Started installing DocDB on the new DCC server.

(Christian)

• Riccardo Desalvo - Configured COMSOL with new network license.
• Mike and I tested multiple conference units for the LSC meeting.
• Minor tweaks on the unit in the display case.
• Re-imaged laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
• Britta Daudert - Installed Adobe Acrobat 8 and Norton AV on Britta’s laptop.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

• Worked on some of the logistics for LSC conference. Going over things with Linda & Dot by doing a walk through, measuring, and doing a count on equipment for Beckman Auditorium, Dabney Hall, E/B, WB, and Millikan. Figuring out how many outlets it is going to take per row.
• Worked on a server that went down this box looks like it is having a software issue with SUN AMD chipset Ultra 2100. Centos thinks that there is a hardware issue with the hard disks. Multiple SCSI errors that keep popping up. I have looked I ended up backup the work that is being done and am looking into how to get Centos to work with this type of equipment. We may have to load Solaris.
• Wilson House: Power outage that cause some of the computers over in the Back house to problems booting up. Almost had to reload windows but was able to recover using some utilities to recover the OS.
• Trouble shot a network problem in Cindy's office. This turn out to be network connector RJ45 problem. After putting on new connectors everything was fine.
• Worked on some printer issues on the 3rd floor of W/B. This turned out to be a paper jam.
• Setup Marilyn Wright with email on her personal laptop and over utilities for her to grant her access to her office workstation while on travel.
• Worked on more documentation for the LSC setup.
• More testing on the DHX 9000 Polycom. Larry mentioned there is an option to broadcast using the EVO system, something that I need to look into.
• LHO: Going over with Christine on her daily sysadmin tasks. Finished up some projects Christine was working on. There is much more work that needs to get done out that way.

(Larry)

• Worked on P-card reconciliation. Mostly tracking down paperwork for the charges. No new procurements were made but there is now a growing list of h/w, s/w and contracts.
• Worked with Christine on transitioning the work she has been doing to others. Also, working on the logistics on covering the GC sysadmin work at LHO until a replacement is found. Christine also went over items and did a walk-through with Mike and I.
• Assisted in a couple of computer setups and cleanups.
• Worked with Christian on resolving some Comsol issues. Another module for the product is in the process of being ordered as well.
• Performed a number of tests on the different video conferencing systems. We now have Xmeeting, netmeeting and the polycom solution all working together. There a some quality issues. Having the right h/w and enough bandwidth is a big factor.
• Regular user support.
• Spent time on the logistics for the upcoming conference. Still a lot of items to work out there.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Sanichiro Yoshida <syoshida@selu.edu>

Modeling and Simulation (Richard Williams and Sany Yoshida)

• With the great helps by Hiro and Melody, we rewrote the code for the HEPI model using FUNC_X primitive. (The HEPI model we made last week was partly using Matlab. With the use of FUNG_X primitive, we can model HEPI with e2e only.) We confirmed that the result with the FUNC_X  primitive is identical to the previous result with Matlab (by comparing the spectra of filtered ground motion obtained with the Matalb code and FUNC_X). For the e2e computation, we are currently using the same time step as the FIR filter coefficient was made (with Matlab). We are planning to include a down sampling mechanism in the e2e model so that the time step for the e2e computation can be smaller than the value corresponding to the FIR filter coefficients.

E2E Weekly Meeting

• Kiwamu Izumi (a grad student working at TAMA with Osamu Miyakawa) reported on their recent progress in guided lock on TAMA 300. They looked at transmitted light through the ETM to estimate the ITM/ETM velocity due to seismic disturbance (by looking at the fringe-to-fringe interval) and applied counter force on the ITM to reduce its velocity. Then they waited for the next fringe corresponding to the slower optic motion due to the counter force to lock the cavity. Kiwamu reported that currently the success rate of locking the cavity with the high seismic disturbance level in Tokyo is 30%. Kiwamu's slides are posted under the e2e home page.

E2E

(Melody Araya)

• E2E Support: Assisted Sany and his students with Java/Unix and ALFI/E2E questions.

(John Cortese )

• I continue to work on the PSD  problem that I described last week.
• I also met with Professor Vaidyanathan of the Caltech EE Department to discuss some signal processing issues that arose during a previous project with Hiro.

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

From: John Worden <worden_j@ligo-wa.caltech.edu>

• LHO Diode room is complete except for flooring. The AC is operating but with almost no load. Pipe bridge is onsite and being prepped for install. Piping and cable trays to follow. LLO is almost ready to bid their diode room.

Prestabilized Laser

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

• The TwinCAT/EPICS interface is up and running.
• Work continues on the PSL interfaces document, along with the preliminary design document details.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

CDS ELigo Activities

• Rich and Charles are at LLO this week helping to install/test OMC electronics and cabling.
• Have had discussions with several people in several groups over the past week, and gave a presentation at yesterday's CDS meeting, on how to restructure the DAQ for ELigo.  Primary driving  force is the continued/increased interest to open up the CDS Network Data Server (NDS) to Ligo/LSC members over the internet. Without DAQ modifications, this data traffic would have direct, adverse effects on the site FrameBuilders. So, after discussions with Stuart, Daniel, et al, I believe we have agreed to the basic DAQ architectural changes which will allow NDS to be opened up without effecting the DAQ system. Since most of the software necessary to support this change already exists, we hope to have a test system together and running in the lab within a few weeks.
• As part of the DAQ change, the computers which write frames will change from Sun Sparc to x86 (Opteron) machines. Stuart and J. Zeizig agreed to run some frame compression tests such that we can properly spec the compute performance we need.

CDS AdvLigo Activities

No report.

AdL SUS

• The prototype Top Driver supplied by the UK has been tested and a draft of the test report is complete. It will be circulated to a wider audience next week.
• The UIM driver is being tested by LHO.
• The PUM Driver tests have been started and should be complete by next week.
• The initial Sat Amp has been returned to the UK so that it can be upgraded to the newest version.
• The spare UIM driver and monitor board have been installed in a LIGO style chassis and will be returned to the UK so that they can examine it.
• Triple Electronics requirements development will be started when testing is complete.

AdL PSL

• Placed order for ADC cards for full up PSL controls build at AEI. Other electronics also on order/in build process with goal of having equipment ready to ship by early April.

AdL Timing

• Received a block diagram and some supporting documentation from Szabi on Tuesday for the AdL timing system. I need to go over it in the next few days and get back to him with questions, comments, etc.
• Work continues at LHO on the timing distribution prototypes.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

LLO HAM SEI ASSEMBLY

• We are now attempting to test the assembled HAM-ISI at LLO. We've had several problems with the electronics. In particular two flavors of PEEK cables from Accuglass had the wrong pin assignments. This resulted in blowing a fuse in the coil driver boxes, and in locking the GS-13 sensors too tightly. In order to diagnose the problem we dismounted and fixed two horizontal GS-13 pods. We were able to unlock the other pods in situ, although we are now
  trying to verify that we can unlock them from either the rack room, or at least from the vacuum flange. We also fried two capacitive position sensor boards, but we are not sure how (perhaps when the +18V supply tripped off). We are getting replacements from LHO, which should arrive Friday.
• We are hoping to install next week if we find some missing riser brackets and providing no further problems arise with the electronics/front-end.  - Brian O.

LHO HAM SEI ASSEMBLY

• HAM6 doors are being removed for External SEI hardware installation.
  Cleaning and staging hardware for upcoming SEI/ISI HAM assembly.  An updated schedule for LHO has been posted on the SEI ilog   http://ligo.phys.lsu.edu:8080/SEI/1121  - Hugh R.

WORK AT STANFORD

• We've installed the new Trillium 240 on the floor by the Technology Demo next to the ground STS-2. Quick look shows reasonable agreement in the time traces. We're stuffing some AA boards from Ben Abbott so we can feed the signal into the new control computer.
• Also putting the Tech. Demo back into single stage mode for Jeff Kissel's visit next week to learn about platform control.
  - Brian L.

HAM SEI DOCUMENTATION AND DESIGN UPDATE

• A significant update to the HAM ISI Assembly procedure has been posted to the mLIGO wiki: http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/mLIGO/Seismic_Isolation  - Andy S.

BSC SEI DOCUMENTATION AND DESIGN UPDATE

• The "as-built" models of the BSC ISI at LASTI are just about complete and are being uploaded to the PDMWorks vault at Caltech.  A couple more models to verify (spring shims) and a couple physical parts to measure (spring pre-load tooling) and this should be complete. - Stephany F.

Adv LIGO HEPI

• A meeting was held at LLO to review the HEPI documentation, meet with suppliers, and prepare for the upcoming final design review. - Ken M.

Suspensions

From Janeen Romie and Norna Robertson (romie_j@ligo-la.caltech.edu, nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu)

HAM Suspensions for Advanced & Enhanced LIGO

• Output Mode Cleaner Suspension: Mike, Derek & Chris Echols, along with Tobin, Sam, Rich & Chub, and Calum & Norna remotely, are working on the OMC suspension in preparation for installation next week. Sam and company are working on the OMC, getting if fully assembled, locked and characterized. Chris was unavailable for the clean build of the OMC suspension before it left Caltech due to jury duty, so it was good for him to cast his eye over the suspension to double-check the small details. We moved the upper wires' lower clamps to a nominal position on the intermediate mass. We adjusted the movable mass in the T-section of the intermediate mass to a nominal position. We removed the extra mass on one end of the metal mass and moved the tablecloth over to one side and things looked really good. The intermediate mass was very level and the metal bench looked more level than before. More importantly, the parallelism of the horizontal planes of metal bench cg & the intermediate mass cg was better than it has been since it left Caltech. We spent a bit of time trying to center the wires in the holes in the metal bench, but the discs with the wires are still slipping in the metal bench holes. Since that will not be a problem for Sam's bench, we left it at that. We mounted the osems so Tobin could work on the controls.
• Recycling Mirror Suspension: The blades have gone out for RFQ. Calum & Greer are working on blade platform fea to confirm stiffness. Greer is also working on the blade assembly drawings. Bob is working on the layout for the angled clamps. He will be working on modifying clamps associated with the middle wires.
• Input Mode Cleaner Suspension: Luke gave us the baffle information for the baffles he designed for the input mode cleaner. He put them in the PDMWorks vault, so we'll put them in our Solidworks model for review and analysis.
• SOS suspensions: Dave Reitze has confirmed that they would like to use BOSEMs for the IO SOS suspensions, so the design will be modified to accommodate them.

BSC Suspensions for Advanced LIGO

• Quad noise prototype: Work is still ongoing on understanding the pitch alignment problem with the quad noise prototype at LASTI. There is evidence implicating blade clamps and wire clamps, and a hysteresis effect is seen. Riccardo has seen hysteresis in his low frequency suspensions, which may be a similar effect.
  The good news is that it looks like the quad/ISI structure interaction is acceptable (i.e. can be managed in the ISI control system), so the design of the quad structure can go ahead unchanged.
• BOSEMs: The first review meeting took place this week, when the committee got together to go through comments and questions on the documentation provided. An integrated and edited set of comments and questions has been circulated to the design team.

Suspensions and Isolation Working Group (SWG)

• The monthly meeting was held on 15 Feb. Reports and summary can be found on the SWG elog.
  

Core Optics

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

• SYS has formalized the decision to have all recycling mirrors and core optics be made of fused silica.
• The steering mirror from LLO HAM1 chamber has been scanned for the HR absorption in an area of 10x10mm. It shows an uniform absorption of about 25 ppm plus some higher absorption points, as linked below. This is the first time we observe this kind of high uniform HR absorption on the LIGO I mirrors. While the contamination on the 1" witness mirrors from LHO is easily removed by wiping, the high absorption on the steering mirror from LLO can not  be changed by wiping and cleaning of First-contact.
  http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~lzhang/LLO/sm1_sum_1.pdf
  http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~lzhang/LHO/bsc1-nd_sum_1.pdf
• Did not find any beam spot signature on the center using a cross pattern.
  There is another steering mirror from before mode cleaner (too high transmission) coming to UFl from Hanford.  This may also be a candidate for absorption measurement.
• We plan to investigate possible charging from use of First Contact (TM)
• The COC PDR is underway. 
     * http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/COC_Preliminary_Design_Review
• Heraeus will have a rep. at Caltech Thursday the 28th at 11am to talk about substrates.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

IFO LAYOUT

• Mike has revised the ZEMAX layout for the folded stable recycling cavity. The same BS horizontal wedge of 0.8 deg and ITMX horizontal wedge of 1.2 deg are compatible with the folded geometry. Mike is documenting the new locations of the IFO mirrors based on the latest layout for the stable recycling cavities.

SLC

• Luke has finalized the preliminary design of the LASTI arm cavity baffle using the SW sheet metal design approach. He and Ken are searching for suppliers of enameling steel for porcelainizing. Ken will try to get a sample from West Coast Porcelain so that we can clean and bake and perform an RGA outgassing test.
• Ken is proceeding with the preliminary design of the ELIGO manifold baffle to be black porcelain coated. Samples of materials that are recommended for this process will be tested. 

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

• We are still looking into the feasibility of using fused silica for all the signal recycling cavity mirrors. We have developed an analytical solution that can be used to simulate the effect of a ring heater on these optics. (Muzammil)
• Continued with ASC calculations. (Guido)
• Investigated the influence of the mounting of the RTP crystals on their piezo resonances. Will compare teflon-based mount with a harder ceramic-based mount. Also working on the laser for a coating-damage test experiment using our 100W IPG laser. (Volker)
• Preparing drawings for ceramic EOM crystal mounts.  Also  examined possibility of using Birmingham OSEMs on SOSs. (It will be difficult, but is not impossible.) (Luke)

eLIGo IO

• Fit checked tip/tilt mirror suspensions.  (Luke)
• Working on the details of cameras for viewing the eLIGO IO.  (David, Kate, Muzammil, and others)

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