Weekly Report for Week Ending May 15, 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 & Project

Past Weekly Reports

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LSC Issues (Reitze)

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

• No report (sick).

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

• Assisted G. Billingsley with packing, shipping, and preparing a commercial invoice for six fused silica substrates to SCIRO, Australia.
• Assisted P. King with shipping and preparing a commercial invoice for the Albert Einstein Institute Data Acquisition System to the Max Planck Institute, Germany.
• Created an Inventory report for all capital assets at Livingston.
• Tagged and created property records for two file servers at CIT for the CDS group.
• Tagged and created property records for a Source Measure Unit at CIT for P. King.
• Assisted B. Taylor in clearing a shipment from U.S. Customs.
• Working with A. Koch, Director of Export Compliance, to prepare proper US Customs documentation for the lasers shipped from Germany to Hanford and Livingston.
• Assisted R. Bork with shipping and preparing a commercial invoice for miscellaneous CDS parts to the Max Planck Institute, Germany.
• Assisted J. Ayala, Tax Compliance  Asst. Director, in preparation of Inventory records for FY '02, FY '03, FY '04 and FY '05 for LIGO's Government-Owned assets.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

• Completed processing a large batch of Process Travelers.
• Received a large batch of new MOU Attachments and processed them into the DCC.

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 new purchase order for Lisa Giaime and for Northrop.
• Transferred funds on MIT contract for invoice payment.
• Followed up on pending A-133 certification, which is due from University of Florida.

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

• Completed FY2008 monthly operations report as of the end of April 2008 and posted report on the network.
• Sent out monthly reports for Visitor's program, Outreach program, U.Wisconsin award, Low Noise account, MIT Grid, LSC, I2U2 and three discretionary awards.
• Reconciled MIT Invoice to MIT "Twonk" report for period 11/1/07-4/30/08.  Requested internal modification of LIGO OPs MIT purchase order to expedite payment of the current MIT Invoice.
• Submitted drafts of two cost transfers to project accounting for review and pre-approval.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

>From Bert Cresta (for Salone and Jasnow)

• MIT - being worked on to be sent for approval to the General Council by Rudy Arvizu. 
• UOF - received proposal.  Req prepared by Gina.
• ARES - ready for submittal
• Support Services - in-house processing.  Discussion between Ed and Phil regarding certain contracting personnel becoming CIT employees.
• TRIAD - Requisition approved.  Awaiting entry into ORACLE (PO.
• N-G - same as TRIAD.  Awaiting paperwork (cert) receipt from Northrop-Grumman.

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

• Proposals were received for the core optics fused silica blanks.  The LIGO Lab Bid Evaluation Committee has completed its evaluation the proposals.  Some of the bidders have taken objection to the Caltech terms and conditions.  These exceptions are being reviewed by Ed Jasnow to determine whether or not they are acceptable.

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

• No report (vacation).

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

The following are in progress:

• Analysis of end-of-April Operating costs and end-of-year projections.
• Combined Advanced LIGO – Operations Staffing Plan for FY 2009 – FY 2013 to be presented next Thursday, May 22, 2008.
• Supporting information the FY 2009 – FY 2013 LIGO Operations Proposal as requested by the NSF.

LIGO Change Control Board (Lindquist)

• Change Request CR080004 - Livingston Diode Room Pre Award Costs Budget Adjustments held pending additional information.
• Change Request CR080005 - ARES Project Controls Software Operations Budget adjustments held pending final invoices.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• A Staffing Committee Meeting was held on Monday, May 12, 2008.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

• Continued support to Advanced LIGO review committees.
• Continued participation in review/interview of Advanced LIGO Safety and QAE applicants.

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

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

• The ISI was installed into HAM6 this week. External testing was completed on the unit, the installation fixture assembled, and the table was trolleyed into place. There is more on SEI below, and more pictures posted to the elog (action ones like this rugby scrum)
• A new summary page was made available on environmental disturbances in iLIGO
• PSL components downstream of the PMC were removed, and the new EOM, able to take 35W and provide multiple sets of sidebands, was installed. A brief report and drawing of the table layout is posted here.

HAM SEI/ISI (Joe H., Jeff K., Justin, Jodi, Cyrus, Ski, Hugh, Corey et al.)

• The last week has been focused on Jeff finishing off Test Stand Commissioning last Friday & ISI installation into HAM6 on Wednesday. Also had a local meeting on the Hazard Analysis document for the ISI installation.
• On Monday, the ISI was locked up (seismometers locked, power turned off at the rack, & in-vacuum cabling disconnected), and then moved from the Test Stand to the Installation Cart.
• On Tuesday Joe arrived for Installation assistance. The Installation hardware was installed inside & around HAM6.
• On Wednesday morning the ISI was installed into HAM6 & the Installation hardware was removed from HAM6. It all went very smoothly. Thursday morning Joe & Hugh checked the level of Stage0.

LHO Outreach (D. Ingram)

• LHO hosted another in our series of excellent program/bad weather Astronomy Day celebrations. Roy Gephart and Greg Mendell provided high-interest talks at the 5/10 event. CREHST Museum was present to add a hands-on component. By 10:00 PM the skies were clear enough to view the moon, Mars, Saturn and a handful of stars through telescopes, but thick cloud cover earlier in the evening dissuaded many from coming out for the activity.

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

General Ops (Rusyl Wooley)

• The Diode Room is near completion…final punch list items are left.  We have received the pipe and fittings for the chilled water lines for the new laser.  We have installed the first of two potential solutions for the failed beam tube enclosure seals.  Two joints were chosen….one with ~1-1/2” gap and one with ~3/4” gap.  Next week we will choose two more joints to try out the second potential solution.  We are only replacing the ~9 feet that are directly over the beam tube.  We are looking to find out which material is the best solution and whether only replacing the top 9 feet is an acceptable solution.

eLIGO Commissioning (Valera Frolov)

• The full interferometer was locked on DC path for the DARM control. The input power into the mode cleaner was 1 W (and 50/50 splitter between RF and DC paths). The noise in DC readout mode was comparable to that in RF readout mode at the same low input power level and was about factor of ten above the initial LIGO SRD across the frequency band. [JG: Congratulations to the entire team!]

• The last week DARM excess noise (in RF readout mode) was tracked to the backscattering on the reflected port and to the excess electronics noise in the non-resonant sideband detection chain. The reflected port optical path rework got rid of the scattering noise in all ifo degrees of freedom. The cause of the electronics noise was found to be the low RF level of the local oscillator for 61 MHz demodulation board. The LO level was set to nominal.
• The WFS sensing matrix was measured in the new reflected port configuration. The control matrix was obtained and installed. The interferometer was running very stably in this new configuration. The work on the mode cleaner WFS continues to increase the bandwidth and reduce the PSL beam jitter noise coupling.

Misc (JG)

• There was a severe storm and power outage on Wednesday afternoon.  We successfully made use of two windowless shelter rooms (control and auditorium) during a tornado warning.  (The combination of flash floods, lightening, and tornado warnings made it unsafe to consolidate to one room.)  A brief power outage during the storm necessitated spending much of Thursday recovering detector operation.  No lasting damage has been noted.

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)

• Evaluating the potential mechanism/reason for test mass chamfer damage from the new fused silica earthquake stops employed in Enhanced LIGO (and similar to the design planned for Adv. LIGO)
• As a precaution, the LIGO observatories have instituted new safety protocols in light of the recently reported viewport failure on the Virgo system (viewport reported to be similar to units in LIGO). More analysis and response as we learn more from our Virgo colleagues.

See also Advanced LIGO

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Front end controls: Our front end controls network went down on Monday for unknown reasons (but EPICS controls are suspected). Andrey, Joe and Alex brought it all back and restored the SUS damping, oplevs, etc. On advice from Alex, they restarted the main EPICS control boxes, making it possible to restart the front end.
• Digital cameras: Joe continues to work on testing the digital cameras with PSL pickoff beams.
• Adaptive noise cancelling: Caltech undergrad Caryn is developing different adaptive filters to reduce MC length noise.

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Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

From Akira:

• Last Friday I removed the covering over the TNI vacuum chamber and opened up the chamber with help from Greg. This week I re-mounted the phase modulator sideways for the proper polarization. I made some alignment adjustments and I managed to see some faint flashes of light through the test cavities. I will continue to work on the alignment. I am also working on connecting the mirror mount actuators to the feedthroughs. This is a more permanent solution that will enable alignment adjustment without disturbing the optics table and even adjustments while the chamber is closed.

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LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

• We have removed and replaced the broken actuator coil. The new coil is has a path to ground ~80kOhms which shouldn’t affect its operation.
• We have been having some trouble getting the fine actuators reinstalled correctly and are currently working on the problem.
• We have been installing a set of six in vacuum L4C’s on optics table to be used as witness sensors.

Fiber Pulling and Welding

• Further testing of welds has been done. We have been able to demonstrate welding 3mm stock rod with ground flats onto the weld test horns. Alan Cumming and Mark Barton have been visiting to setup the profiler, which is now done.
• We have improved the implementation of the linear encoder on the fiber pulling machine to give 4x greater resolution. A linear encoder has also been added to the feeding arm of the machine to give an accurate overall length. Some initial work on shaping the CO2 beam has taken place with a view to controlling beam diameter and power density for welding. Monitoring of the desiccant storage box is so far showing it should be relatively easy to achieve 10% humidity, and perhaps possible to reach 5% though direct correlation of humidity to fiber strengths is unknown.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

________________

Lisa Goggin:

• Completed and successfully defended her thesis.

Congratulations, Dr. Goggin!

________________

Antony Searle:

• Testing, optimising and integrating fast Bayesian all-sky sine-Gaussian search [https://geco.phys.columbia.edu/omega/browser/trunk/src/wimportance.m].
• Writing documentation and advocacy material for the fast Bayesian all-sky search, including more work on PRD-targeted Bayesian paper [http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/cgi-bin/cvs/viewcvs.cgi/matapps/src/searches/burst/coherent-network/doc/bayesian/?cvsroot=lscsoft].

________________

Chad Hanna:

• Britta and I got a version of the inspiral pipeline (ihope) that allows one to create mixed workflows on local resources and resources across the lsc data grid.  We are working to make it more robust so that other members of the CBC group can begin to try it out.  We anticipate a collaboration with Adam Mercer who recently started at UWM.
• I have finished the run of h(t) and h(f) noise comparisons between 100-300 Hz for H1.  Joe and Amber and I will begin processing the data and automating  a way to extract time and frequencies at which h(t) and h(f) noise has significant differences.

________________

Amber L. Stuver:

LIGO Research

• Continued work of V3 h(t) validation.  Chad and Joe are running all of the jobs to gather data from the entire S5 run for H1, H2 and L1 and I am doing the post-processing.  Currently, we are doing a coarse analysis of the h(t) noise [FFT(h(t))/h(f) using 60 sec averages] to diagnose poor quality strain data.  I have been working on the best way to visualize the large amount of results from this analysis.  Joe, Chad and I agree that the best way of going about this is to produce a pseudo-spectrogram with the ratio plotted against time and frequency.  I am also applying the SLOPE burst ETG I redeveloped for my dissertation to automate finding poor strain segments - I trust this method better than my eye.  I'll share some of the results next week.
• I was going to present my work regarding the detection delay of a candidate GW event and its SNR ratio and possible extensions of this work for efficient source location determination to ExTrig this week, but h(t) has taken priority.  The presentation should be next week now.

SEC Work

• Gave public tour to 15 elementary school students, 5 seminarians, a family of 3 and 2 senior citizens.
• Gave control room tours to ~100 students and a group (~10) of LSU grad students who will be working the the SEC for something (I'm not sure on what but John is working with them).
• Started a literature review for a new research project I want to start in the SEC with Lisa Szechter from Tulane.  As long as nothing comes up, I should be meeting with her on the 22nd.

________________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid Computing Group:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• Wrote agenda/minutes for LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
• Attended LIGO-Pegasus, Inspiral Coding, Daswg, OSG-USERS, and OSG-INTEGRATION telecons.
• Updating DASWG project page OSG-LIGO

IHOPE Activities

• Troubleshooting ihope on ldg --> head and tag 32 bit binaries submitted from Dev1 -->datafind fails.
• Fix: export _CONDOR_DAGMAN_AUTO_RESCUE=FALSE.
• Held several meetings with Chad to discuss ihope changes to enable pegasus runs on LDG (OSG)

E@OSG Activity

• Agreed to take on leadership of E@OSG project from Warren Anderson.
• Install missing perl module StatusBar on osg-itb-se, submit approximately 50 E@H jobs remotely to TTU_ANTAEUS; 15 succeeded, the rest fail. Currently troubleshooting.
• One E@OSG job submitted remotely to UWM failed.

OSG INTEGRATION AND VALIDATION TESTBED

• ITB-testing round 2: Can't run at LBNL, CIT:  nsf-lite: $OSG_LOCATION <-- $OSG_GRID location issue is between Compute Element (CE) and the local Worker Nodes (WN).

GRID COMPUTING MANAGEMENT

• Organized and lead monthly OSG Council Telecon. Settled on a date and venue for the next OSG Council Face-to-Face meeting. Settled on a date for the next OSG All-Hands Meeting. Minutes are now posted on the OSG Council website.
• Began working with Bonnie at LLO and Ruth to plan for the next OSG All Hands Meeting which will be at LLO first week of March next year.
• Held second telecon for the "At-Large VO Representation" sub- committee of the OSG Council. Handed off leadership of the sub-committee to Shaowen Wang as the appointed chair. Requested the definitive list of VOs participating in OSG for interviewing by the subcommittee. Minutes are now posted on the subcommittee's website.
• Communicated with Dan Smith regarding VISA issues for an applicant for the Grid Administration Position to understand what the laws were and what actions needed to be taken in this particular case.
• Wrote a recommendation to the LSC Computer Committee as the chair of the SCAT subcommittee regarding the auditing of services at all LDG sites.
• Worked closely with LIGO and LSC communities to understand and respond to weak keys generated throughout our grid communities by a flawed library in Debean, ubuntu, etc distributions. Will be contacting the OSG regarding this as well.

________________

Gregory Mendell:

• Not much data analysis work to report for the past week, though I spent a little time discussing searches and sensitivity estimates with graduates students visiting LHO for astrowatch.

________________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Completed re-run of the Crab search and injections to determine upper limits using the newly approved DC calibrations for h(f) and h(t).

________________

Anand Sengupta:

• 8 condor jobs have finished. they are all high-mass searches and I am now plotting the figures. this would give us the handle on mass dependent chisquare tuning.
• The computational cost analysis of trigscan clustering has been looked into. the scaling relation has been deduced and can be seen at <http://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~ anandss/trigScan/ts_computationalCost.eps>.

________________

Diego Fazi:

• Carried on investigations on kludge distances in the PTF intrinsic parameter space.
• Estimated the background trigger rate for PTF with SNR threshold 9, from the first month of S5 full data.

________________

Kipp Cannon:

• Continued working on flare review.
• Spent monday and tuesday working with Duncan Brown on a variety of infrastructure issues of concern for inspiral post-processing including the use of "coinc" tables in inspiral trigger files and some performance problems in the LSCsegFind client and server.
• Telecons:  inspiral coding, daswg, condor-ligo, s4 string review.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• Efforts continue on the latest version of frameCPP. Currently all but two unit tests pass for the entirety of the LDAS code base. Efforts to enhance the documentation of the API has also begun.
• Some user jobs that have quiet failures are being analyzed and corrected. The first one identified is a rare condition where a user's output takes longer than two seconds to write to disk. The user's job in this case had already been flagged as successfully completed. The first attempt at solving this problem resulted in the jobs timing out.
• The installation instructions for DB2 9.1.0.4 on Solaris 10 AMD opteron have been updated.
• While running the nightly loop tests, two new errors were observed. The first was jobs timing out in the datacondAPI while trying to write user output. The second was jobs in the frameAPI timing out just before the writeFrame thread is detected as complete at the TCL layer. Both are under investigation.
• System testing was done using version 1.9.290 of the LDAS software base. All system tests completed as expected.
• Week long testing on ldas-test was not done this week as the system was unavailable for the majority of the week.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

• More work on archiver.cmd config at CIT (ongoing).
• Moved data from /archive/backup to /backup.
• Verified that GC backups being written to /backup/GC are making to (LTO) tape.
• Monitored and restarted LDRTransfer a few times.
• Fixed broken GEO segment publishing (got certs sorted out, then made the script executable).
• Sent off information to Scott Koranda about RLS crash to pass along to the Globus developers.
• Helped with planning for site storage changes.
• Worked on getting RLS pool attribute sorted out for Chad and other Pegasus types (ongoing).

(Phil Ehrens)

• Installed CentOS 5.1 on my own desktop machine.  A number of issues were noted:
  • I rely on console applications for much of my work, and the terminal emulator and fonts which I relied on formerly were not available without some reconfiguration.
  • Screen locks cannot make proper use of the NIS+ password auth mechanism for unlocking, so once locked, they required a kill to be unlocked. I haven't found a satisfactory workarund for this yet.
  • The CUPS configuration daemon did not detect the printers on the 6th floor of Millikan. I had to provide a handmade printers.conf file.
  • Gnome settings were incompatible. All old settings had to be discarded and new ones configured.
• Continued work on creating "golden" node configuration on node500 for deployment of CentOS 5.1 on cluster nodes. 

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Data4 problems w\ 3ware array; 1 bad disk, couldn't see another, rebuild of reiserfs (rebuild-tree); one sata backplane connector needs replacing (order one on ebay $15); ordered 2 supermicro 8X sata controller cards for solaris pcraid (@ $100 ea), (sun HCL hardware).

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• The tape robot got broken last week. On Monday Roger replaced the arm and it seems to be working fine again.
• We had severe thunderstorm this Wednesday and there was a brief power outage that rebooted the nodes and metaserver. Other LDAS servers and storage survived fine.
• I have just noticed that fb0_frames was not so lucky and there are a lot of error messages in the log about fb0's 3511 resetting itself periodically.
• Traced that part of the problem that GEO publishing stopped again was due to ldas-cit certificate line removed from grid-mapfile again. Also Dan found that the executable permissions were removed from the script for some reason. Another problem was that when Duncan and Ping switch from S5 to A5 run label for GEO and introduced version 4 of the GEO Science segments, the corresponding state vector was not mapped to "Science" segment type in the database and as a result LSCsegFind could not see the segments (as "Science" type). Now the publishing is running fine again.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• I have verified that minute trend and second trend data are up-to-date at LHO, LLO, and CIT, and that astrowatch data is up-to-date at LHO and CIT.  In the past week I have also worked on LDG 4.6, on further requests for RDS generation, and replaced a failed drive in a 3511, and performed other routine sys. admin. tasks.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Installing new conference room pc to replace older dell (evo).
• Some work on jonathan's desktop -- ram, matlab.
• Added duplex print support on ligo (lobster2/nameko2).
• Some lho backup work.
• Ran dpwd.pl script for ligo accounts, no bad keys found.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• LLO VPN testing, with changes made by Mike Pedrazza and finding a few missed settings on client side all is now well.
• More site gate issues.
• Replaced the DVD drive in a Mac for a user.
• GC tape library drive needed cleaning.
• Started preparing to put fans in the top of the GC racks in the CUR.
• Running PCA on more Solaris machines, script now resides in shared filesystem.
• More PRISMPM testing with Mike Pedrazza, using VPN and shared drive, it is slow.  Using RDESKTOP it is much faster.  RDESKTOP is limited to two connections however.
• Our list server needs to be placed on a UPS. power outage brought it down, and after restarting had to resolve some issues before it was functional again.
• Ran a scan on LLO GC user directories for vulnerable ssh/ssl keys.
• Other usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap.
• LLO mail summary for  9 May 2008 - 8 May 2008:

  Rejected:  16,714 (5 containing virus)

  Accepted:  7,019

  Total: 23,733

Hanford

(Larry)

• Minor user account changes.
• Working on the SSL scan.
• Still working on some documentation.

(Mike)

• Cleaned dhcp items.

Caltech

(Mike)

• Reloaded a windows laptop a user that had a corrupted OS.
• West Bridge 3rd/2ed printers swapped out toner cartridges. I restocked our supply shelves with a big order of toner cartridges that came in.
• Continued work on Alcor ADVLIGO server, setting up new user accounts to login to prismpm. Also setup user accounts on our VPN server to allow these offsite users to access Alcor. Setup an .exe for users to unzip to their local computer, for login purposes to alcor. I also setup a webpage giving instructions for users to setup their VPN connection, to access the PRISMPM software. Did some testing with Dwayne@LLO on the setup.
• Worked on a security/permission user access issue on alcor. Larry gave me a hand with this.
• Installing additional software on a sun workstation.
• Worked with Dwayne on VPN server setup.
• Worked with Greer S. on an email issue. I have moved him over from Eudora to Thunderbird and setup imap for him. I corrected other issues that came up when transferring email from local computer to his home account.
• EVO: Setup two meetings and ran some more tests with Larry. There are still some problems with remote users. The phone bridge seems to be an issue as well. There are more testing needs to be done.
• Worked with Helena Armandula regarding an email issue. This turned out to be a migration issue from Eudora to Thunderbird.
• Other misc. user support and sysadmin tasks.

(Veronica)

• LIGO: Ongoing work on the websites for travel, PAC, and GWIC.  Usual upkeep/support of LIGO web applications.
• LSC:  Updates of the database of technical papers.  Other web-related updates.

(Melody)

• New DCC:  Working on the initial requests for changes in DocDB to prepare it for alpha testing. This should yield a preliminary set of requirements for the project.

(Larry)

• Still working a number of procurements. Received most of the SUN equipment and it is distributed. Just received the Dell workstations. Need to order a couple of notebook computers for different people. Distributed misc. items that have been received. Resolving some discrepancies on the p-card charges. Working a number of licensing renewals.
• More testing on the EVO system as well as setting up different meetings. We've found that some phones have issues on the phone bridge but overall it does work well. Still testing things out on the MAC side of the house. More people have become interested in using it and with the existing group now using it, we should setup a demo on how to used the equipment in the conference rooms.
• Assisted Mike in troubleshooting some issues he with a couple of different projects.
• Setup another mailman account.
• Updated dns tables.
• Began setup of a new server.
• Removed a number of old items and turned them over to property.
• Maintenance work done on existing servers.

(Christian)

• New Windows backup server- SyncBackSE is the client software that is configured to connect everyday and make differential backups. There are now a number of users using the new backup system.
• Toner cartridge replacements- 3flr W/B and 6flr Millikan.
• Continued testing Office 2008 this week.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

from Carol Wilkinson

Project Controls

• The AdL Acquisition Plan for procurements >$250K was submitted to NSF through the Office of Sponsored Research.
• The first Advanced LIGO Project Monthly Report, LIGO-M080065-01-P, was submitted to and accepted by the NSF.

Procurements

• A meeting was held with CIT Procurement Services to acquaint them with the project procurement plans and needs and to discuss ways and means to expedite processing and approvals of procurement awards.
• A Subsystem Procurement Kick-off meeting for HEPI seismic assemblies was held between subsystem lead, procurement coordinator, and project management  to work out procurement strategies and approval needs.
• The bids for Core Optics glass blanks have been received and are being evaluated.
• The contract for MIT sub-award is working its way through CIT Procurement Services as fast as possible.
• Contracts for the University of Florida and the project controls support team are ready for submission.

Progress Updates

• The next progress update will be due on May 28.

Systems

From: Dennis Coyne <coyne@ligo.caltech.edu>

From: Peter Fritschel <pf@ligo.mit.edu>

Operations Activities:

• Reviewed and approved ISI installation hazard analysis.
• Reviewing EQ stop induced damage of the TM chamfer in eLIGO.

Reviews:

• Supporting or conducting the following reviews simultaneously, all at various stages of completion:
  • HEPI FRR: held first committee meeting. Reviewed and approved localized stress risers in maraging steel springs.
  • E/ITM Glass FDR/PRR: Committee meeting to be 5/20.
  • E/ITM Mechanics FDR/FRR: Report/follow-up pending.
  • Participated in COC fused silica blank bid evaluation.
  For a list of reviews, see the main AdL wiki page

AdL Project-Funded Activities

Technical Review Board (TRB):

• Initiated Arm Length Stabilization TRB.
• Initiated Gold coated TM and CP TRB.
• see the TRB log

Vacuum Review Board (VRB):

• Have asked the VRB for clarification regarding the prohibition of free-machining stainless steel (303, 303Se) from the vacuum system. Hardware and certain pre-existing equipment may be permitted.

Configuration Control:

• Nothing significant to report.

Design:

• AOS/SYS issued optic coordinates and cavity lengths for the small wedge angle (~0.08 deg) layout for the H1 interferometer. This layout will be checked and then reviewed for adoption as the baseline layout.
• To ease SUS integration of the TM optic into the quad suspension, it would be preferred to have the AR surface normal to the cylinder axis (rather than symmetrically wedged as is the current baseline). Mike Smith issued a report with an analysis of the retroreflection due to the TM flats and barrel for the case where the AR surface is normal to the cylinder axis. The magnitude of the reflected field in the retroreflected 'patch' appears to be tolerable (under review).
• Worked on a more detailed final design phase plan to be issued this week for the review committee.
• Reviewed latest quad/ISI coupled dynamics model by RAL. Still does not match LASTI test results for first resonance. Looking into localized optics table attachment compliance as a possible explanantion for the discrepancy.

Interfaces:

• Considering SEI's request for additional separation between adjacent HAM chambers, to improve crossbeam stiffness.
• See the RODA status page and the Interface Control page.

Advanced LIGO Systems

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro)

• Based on the discussion with Muzzamil who visited Caltech last week, the SIS code was revised.
• One practical change is the treatment of the field propagation through substrate. This is now consistent with the ABCD matrix of [1, L/n; 0, 1].
• Second is the change of the modal model base tracking which is more consistent with Muzammil's code.
• Some of the modal model calculation by Muzammil was compared with SIS last week. The comparison is going after fixing above mentioned two issues now that more direct comparison is possible.
• Another change is the handling of the thermal distortion effect. 
• When finding the self consistent thermal state, some process handled manually before is now done automatically.
• Melody helped Hiro to build a distribution tar file of SIS source code.
• The design of the full advLIGO simulation is going.

  Facilities Modifications and Preparations

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

• Building layouts are largely complete and the focus has moved to defining the portable cleanroom details - e.g. How large should the crane access be?
• Also looking at budget to see if we have exceeded the original scope and estimates.
• Refining package for infrastructure preparation procurement readiness review.

Prestabilized Laser

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

Operations

• Still trying to get to the bottom of the retina damage threshold level. I have not been able to find a single number for this so far, even for a single wavelength.

Project

• Unfortunately the hardware shipped to the AEI incurred a customs-related delay, so things took a little longer than expected.  A number of operating system-related problems have crept up in setting up the computers to run the various front ends wanted here at the AEI.
• The hardware at LZH is about to be moved to the centre's new cleanroom laboratory space.

Control and Data Systems

From: Vern Sandberg <sandberg@ligo-wa.caltech.edu>

Operations Work:

Seismic:

• Examining noise and sensitivity of inductive sensors used in HEPI in comparison to the capacitive position sensors used in the ISI.

Facilities:

• DC Power: Discussions with industry representatives on power conversion technologies and distribution for our DC distribution within the LVEA and end stations.  Started development of tests, specifications, and a hardware test stand for evaluating and comparing different DC distribution systems.

SUS:

• Completed draft of test requirements for Triple Suspension Electronics.
• Finished the test and evaluation report of UK Satellite Pre-production electronics.
• Began in-vacuum test of custom design cable harness.  It will be tested to confirm the use of vacuum certified epoxy.

DAQ:

• Continued work with General Standards on a solution to the recently observed overvoltage problem in their ADCs.
• External magnetic field measurements of prototype ADC/DAC-boxes for noise made at LHO.
• Continued work on code in the FPGA in the timing master module of the advLIGO time-distribution system.  The Revision B daughter cards were sent out for fabrication.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

Operations Work:

• SEI Activities and Progress at LHO: Visitors assisting at LHO this week are Jeff Kissel and Joe Hanson. Test Stand commissioning has been completed
  The installation fixturing was installed  around HAM6 on Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning the ISI was installed(!)   Installation fixturing was then removed completing the ISI installation. ~Corey G.
• BSC SEI Documentation and Design: We have started to redesign the BSC using the actuators designed for the single stage HAM. These actuators have double the gap spacing to eliminate rubbing and a terminal block connection in place of the potted junction. In addition we have identified numerous problems with the mounting brackets and locking bars which may require a redesign. ~ Stephany F.
• SEI Project Activities: The FRR review committee is focusing on the actuator, spring, and pump station assemblies to allow us to proceed with these long lead procurements. A new procurement plan with recommendations which will improve the performance are being considered. ~Ken M.

Suspensions

From Janeen Romie and Norna Robertson

(romie_j@ligo-la.caltech.edu, nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu)

Advanced LIGO Suspensions

Operations Work:

• HAM Suspensions for Advanced & Enhanced LIGO: OMC SUS for LHO. Remake of parts formerly made in 303 steel is still underway. The blade manufacturer is having difficulty meeting the tolerance on the radius of curvature of the blades which were due to be delivered this week. Both of these items may impact our current schedule for delivery of the OMC SUS to LHO in late June..
• BSC Suspensions for Advanced LIGO: LASTI quad. Local control is now running on the quad. The push is now on to get the ISI ready to go under vacuum after which Rich estimates they will need a month of tests on the ISI before we would take the quad out. Preparations for doing the first monolithic assembly are going on in parallel. Last week Mark Barton and Alan Cumming from Glasgow were at LASTI getting various pieces of hardware working including the fibre profile and bounce tester. Alastair Heptonstall is working on the welding. There are problems getting enough light intensity due to beam divergence and it may need a telescope to bring the beam size down.

Project-Funded Activities:

• Norna visited RAL to see progress on the beamsplitter triple pendulum suspension and discuss a full agenda of items with Justin Greenhalgh and Joe O'Dell. She also had a meeting with Ken Strain at Glasgow.
  

Core Optics

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

• Ops - Q samples are at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for "before" measuring of Q. They will then be sent to CSIRO to join other samples for a silica coating run designed to clarify our understanding of mechanical loss in thin film silica, and especially the role of thickness and annealing.
• Project - We have quotes from vendors for glass that are being reviewed now.

Auxiliary Optics

From:   Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>

Project-Funded Activities:

• IFO Layout: Mike distributed to the SYS & AOS groups the latest coordinates of the recycling cavity optics for the non-folded, stable cavity IFO layout with 0.04 deg BS wedge, 0.08 ITM wedge, and 0.04 CP wedge. He has begun the layout of the folded IFO with the same wedge angles.
• COC Wedge Angle Effects: Mike calculated the retro-reflected field into the arm cavity from the corner formed by the COC flats and the COC AR surface, for the case where the AR surface is perpendicular to the barrel axis, and the axis is tipped by the wedge angle. The reflection from the flat injects approximately 1E-7 relative amplitude out-of-phase field into the arm cavity mode. A note describing the calculations was sent to the SYS & AOS groups, T080120-01.

Operations Work:

• ETM Telescope Suspension: Chris , Virginio, and Mike developed a concept for suspending and damping the ETM Telescope and output bench. Chris is working on the implementation in SW.

eLIGO SLC:

• Luke has completed the preliminary design for the HAM5 baffle. The baffle weights 130 lbs, and may require a special adapter fixture for the fork lift. He has oversized the holes for the beams to allow for the uncertainty in the beam location.
• Ken completed the design for the Manifold flat baffle and made shop drawings. Drawing have been sent out for quotes. Some of the material for fabrication has been delivered to CIT;  some of the brackets are fabricated. The goal is to have all brackets ready by the end of the month for cleaning. The large flat baffle may be too large for the CIT air-bake oven; ifo so it will be sent to LLO for cleaning and baking.
• Ken worked with Luke regarding the source for the folded baffle material and fabrication shops.

eLIGO TCS:

• Ken designed the wedge corrector for the TCS polarizer, made assembly and parts drawing, and sent the drawings to the shop for manufacture.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Advanced LIGO development

• We have finalized the recycling cavity paper and have sent for review.(Muzammil)
• We are researching heater and insulator materials for DKDP segmented ring heater. (Luke)
• Scattering analysis in IO components is in progress.(Rodica)

eLIGO Installation and Commissioning

• EOM install at LHO is underway. A defect was discovered in one out of the two modulators constructed. This appears to be a dust particle embedded under the AR coating of the RTP crystal. This crystal was removed from service, and will be replaced with a crystal at UF. The defective crysal will be returned to the manufacturer for rework. (Volker)
• At LLO, work is onderway on commissioning of WFS and interferometer in general, including:
  • design and implementation of new REFL table layout.
  • new WFS sensing and control matrix, (Kate)
• MC thermal analysis is ongoing. It shows that with the current finesse, the coating absorption levels at LHO are unacceptable. (Muzammil)

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For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini