The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, June 30, 2008 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

1. Announcements

2. Programmatic (Marx)

3. Comments on Weekly Report

4. LSC Issues (Reitze)

5. LIGO Lab Operations

Administration (Lindquist)
Sites (Raab, Giaime, Shoemaker)
Commissioning (Fritschel)
Optical and Mechanical (Coyne)
Control and Data Systems (Bork)
40m (Weinstein)
TNI (Libbrecht)
LASTI (Mittleman)
Lab Computing ( Anderson )
Data Analysis Group (Weinstein)
Instrument Science (Gustafson)

6. Enhancements (Zucker)

7. Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)

8. Change Control Board/Technical Review Board Session as needed

There are no open Change Requests.

Site and other Business Issues:

Calendar of future Executive Commitee Meetings

LSC Issues (Reitze)

The S5 paper "Beating the Spin-Down Limit on Gravitational Wave Emission from the Crab Pulsar" has been provisionally accepted in Astrophysical Journal Letters (one week after submission!).

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

Met with Calum and discussed engineering processes and docDB. I raised a few issues that he will research and determine if any changes to docDB would be needed to resolve or mitigate concerns.
Met with Norna, Larry, Dot and Wendell from Brown Gym to determine the feasibility of using that facility for the LSC hosted by CIT-LIGO in March 2009. The venue is doable but there are some obstacles that would need to be worked regarding adequate network capability and added expense to bring it up to our requirements.
Met, along with Dot, the Sales Manager and Director of Sales at the Embassy Suites-Arcadia. Explored the feasibility of using this facility for the LSC in March. Was quite encouraged at the helpful and capable staff and the space was more than adequate for our requirements. I wrote a proposal for Albert and Dave Reitze to review.
Did some research into some PDF forms issues.

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

Completed processing talks from the recent LSC/Virgo Collaborations Meeting.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Brambila)

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

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA Press Here.

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

From: Rudy Arvizu <arvizu_r@ligo.caltech.edu>:

The contract for the University of Florida is being reviewed by Purchasing Services. Upon completion of their review, the contract will be forwarded to both the NSF and the Caltech Office of General Counsel.

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

The RFQ for the seismic isolation springs for Advanced LIGO was issued on Wednesday, June 25, with bids due on July 8.
All of the new Purchase Orders for the personnel support contractors are now in place for Advanced LIGO.

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

The contract with Tinsley for the Advanced LIGO Pathfinder optical polishing will be modified to add $7,343.00 to the costs to cover their approved decision to move the cleaning of the optic from their own organization to their subcontractor, ASML. This is a net cost, and is considered cost growth and will not bear any fee.
Ed Jasnow and Bill Tyler have agreed on the Quality Assurance language to be added to all RFPs/RFQs which will require the contractors to submit their in-house QA plans, and how they cover nine specific points, which are specified in the language.
A meeting has been scheduled for next week between LIGO procurement staff and Purchasing Services management to review the division of tasks between the two groups.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

During May, we prepared an integrated staffing plan for Advanced LIGO and Operations. I entered this plan into the Operations budget model for FY 2009 – FY 2013 and re-priced the whole model. I have distributed copies to the task managers for their information and comment. This cost estimate will be the basis of budgets established for next year as well as any revisions of the proposal budget that we may have to prepare for the NSF.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

CR-080007 RevA - This change request returns $180K of budget from the Deferred LIST - Budget not needed column - to be allocated to other task that have identified needs. This was discussed during the meeting of the Executive Committee on Monday, June 16 and no one registered any objections. Therefore, the change request will be sent to the Deputy Director to be signed, and minutes will be prepared and distributed.
CR-080009 - Fred Raab has provided information for a change request that would request budget to cover installation costs in WBS elements 2.8.2 and 3.8.2.
CR-080010 - I will prepare a change request that adjusts the MIT budget to reflect a $170K credit for an indirect rate adjustment.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Distributed a proposed stray light power threshold document to the LIGO Safety Steering Committee for review and discussion. If the safety committee agrees, then the proposal will be recommended to the Directorate for implementation. The proposal was prepared by Peter King and uses maximum permitted exposure data as a basis for establishing the new threshold power level.
(QA) Prepared and distributed request for existing contractor/vendor QA plan information to be included in POs/RFPs.

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

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

Plenty of people visited LHO this week, either for eLIGO commissioning, the PAC, the management meeting, or some combination thereof. Commissioning on H1 included relocking stability and beam centering work, OMC assembly in the optics lab, TCS reworking in the optics lab and LVEA, and ongoing ISI commissioning. We have a nominal 2-week vent date in mind for July 21, including ITM realignment, IO work, baffle installation and realignment of the output Faraday and 50:50 beamsplitter there.
Four new SURF students are on site: Dorota Grabowska, Jaclyn Sanders, Justin Cohen, and Stephanie Erickson
HAM6 ISI work: dampling and control loops are closed on all six degrees of freedom. The blend frequency demarking the displacement sensor/GS-13 crossover are high (1Hz), to be moved lower to about 0.1Hz (if possible). Tilt has been diagonalized out of the controls. The remaining big task is sensor correction, or low-frequency feed forward

Astrowatch (J. Slutsky)

Weekly lock stats here
We are consistently getting between 6.5 and 6.9 Mpc range in powerup, modulated by seismic noise, and have few glitches, except during H1 alignment

LHO Outreach (D. Ingram)

LHO welcomed three teachers this week for six-week summer RET internships; Keith Plewman (McLoughlin Middle School, Pasco), John Kerr (Pasco High School) and Mark Buchli (Liberty High School, Issaquah, WA)

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

No report received

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)

Lock acquisition: Rob, Rana, and John continue to work on reducing the CARM offset using a DC signal (SPOB DC). They were able to get up to arm powers of around 30 (where a single arm cavity lock is a power of 1) before instability set in and we would lose lock for, as yet, unknown reasons. They are trying different techniques to get around the problem. John tried using REFL_DC as the error signal for CARM rather than PO_DC, but found that it didn't work any better so he went back to PO_DC.
Auxiliary laser locking: Masha and John are setting up a laser and Mach Zehnder to study fiber phase noise. Works as expected without the fiber!
PSL: Yoichi found problems with the frequency stabilization servo controls, and traced it to a broken op amp on the FSS servo interface board. He replaced it and fixed the problem.
Mode cleaner: Jenne, Rob and Yoichi were having trouble locking the mode cleaner, and traced it to a flaky cable in the MC servo box. They replaced it and now the MC is back to locking routinely.
Absolute cavity length measurement: Alberto made cavity length measurements using cavity sweeping. As expected, the result inevitably has an ambiguity depending on which resonance do we take as an upper sideband. In order to resolve this ambiguity Steve and Koji performed a primitive non-optical measurement using a tape and photos, obtaining 38.48+-0.03 m and 38.67+-/0.03 m for the x and y arms, respectively. Koji is setting up a system for measuring the absolute lengths much more accurately, using precise scans of the FSR frequencies. In preparation for installing the system on our AP table, he made a nice annotated picture of all the beam lines on the table.
Noise budget: Max continues work on his port of the noise budget code to the 40m. John is estimating contributions to the MC length noise.
Adaptive noise cancellation: Sharon is learning about different methods for applying adaptive filters to improve the Mode Cleaner lock. She is exploring parameters for our adaptive FIR filter.
Cameras: Joe an Eric set up a camera to view to the ETMX scattered light. Point scatters are clearly seen. Eric is writing beam profile analysis code in C to determine the beam position and width in x and y. IT works well for beams incident on the camera, but not so well for camera views of scattered light from in-vacuum optics. He is working on some signal processing techniques to clean up the high-frequency scatter noise.
PEM: Rana revived the EPICS alarm handler, and adjusted the levels of several alarming channels to not alarm. He has instructed everyone to not ignore or turn off the system. It alerted him to excess particle count levels. He histogrammed the cumulative dust levels over the last year and set the yellow and red alarms at the 95th and 99th percentile levels.
PEM: Max is working on resurrecting the Bartington magnetometer.
Beam dumps: Steve continues to measure scattering off of wedged black glass and curved SS traps as a function of postion and angle.
Safety: Steve led a lab safety walkthrough for Becky, Jenne, Max, Koji, Masha and Sharon.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Eugene Evans (SURF student):

On Monday, Akira and I obtained a LWE 126 laser from Liyuan, and I integrated it into the TNI interlock system. We also found the lab notebook of Sinead Quin, who had worked with the cavity I'm using. On Tuesday, I found an online guide to mode-matching, along with some MATLAB scripts, which I've further modified to perform the mode-matching between the laser and the cavity given the length of the setup, the cavity dimensions, and beam diameter measurements (still to be taken). However, the script is not working completely at present. Also on Tuesday, I discovered that the BeamScan head is broken in some way, as the scanning drum will not turn; Akira is looking into sending it back to the manufacturer for repairs. In the meantime, we'll find someone to borrow one from. Later, Akira and I assembled the isolation stack for the cavity and put the entire assembly into the vacuum chamber, and found a turbo pump for the chamber as well. On Wednesday, we sealed the vacuum chamber with the 10 inch window flange and the turbo pump hose. I then laid out 2 mirrors and a periscope to direct the beam into the cavity; I got very little transmitted beam, probably due to nonoptimal alignment and the absense of mode-matching.

Greg Ogin:

Eric [Cahoon] and I set up a basic Michelson interferometer to see what kind of acoustic noise we would be facing. We got good fringe visibility, but our output varied rapidly enough that we decided we are going to need to lock to the side of a fringe. Eric has started reading up on control theory, and I've ordered parts for the rest of the experiment and started thinking about a locking circuit.

Zach Korth (SURF student):

This week, I have been doing an assortment of moderately related activities. Our optical table arrived on Monday, and so we (Tara and I) began doing preliminary “educational” procedures in preparation for the actual OpLev experiments we will be conducting later this summer. We started with measuring intensity fluctuations on a quad-cell detector in response to transverse displacement. We were going to continue doing these mini-experiments, however, the beam profiler we need in order to do so is inoperable. We are currently in queue to borrow one from another lab. In the meantime, I have been studying the OpLev Simulink model for the quad suspension, in an effort to help Eric Black and Eric Gustafson demystify it somewhat. The hope is that once we have done this, it will be relatively easy to generalize to the other suspension models (i.e., triples, doubles). I have also been studying feedback control (G. F. Franklin); I am nearly done reviewing frequency response, after which I will begin looking at state space methods (which, I believe, are also being studied by Greg). Whenever I have some free time from these activities, I have also been playing with Zemax, in the hopes of becoming familiar enough with it to help Mike Smith plan the OpLev layout for Advanced LIGO.

Eric Cahoon (SURF student):

Greg and I have been working on getting the first version of the Michelson interferometer set up for the thermo-refractive and thermo-elastic noise cancellation experiment. We have collected most of the instruments we need, and ordered the specialized ones such as the 10.64 micron mirrors with a metal layer between the substrate and the coatings. We have also made some quick calculations of the beam waist and divergence to decide what sort of lenses we would need to have the appropriate spot size on the mirrors and on the photodetector. We have gotten a Michelson set up on the table, and are able to see fringes from it, but after noticing how unstable and sensitive they were to air currents and movement, we decided that we would need to lock the arm lengths after all. We have begun devising a locking system and are currently in the process of measuring the transfer functions of the piezo and the photodetector. In addition, Greg has given me some material to read on feedback control of dynamic systems, and some problems to work through involving multi-layer films.

Akira Villar:

This week Eugene and I worked on putting the reference cavity in its vacuum chamber. We have it ready to pump down now. We obtained a NPRO to use for the experiment and we are in the process of mode matching it to the reference cavity. I also removed a mirror from the TNI for Liyuan to measure the scattering. This time he will have the flat side to measure. The beamsplitter in the TNI does not split power evenly between the two test cavities. I did some tests on it and I discovered that the power splitting is sensitive to the angle of incidence. I am now adjusting the angle of incidence to split the power more evenly. I measured the transmittance through the mirrors at 1064 nm. It is 240 ppm.
Tara is between quals and is studying furiously for the quantum test in July.
Eric Black is at Hanford this week.

LASTI (Mittleman)

No report received

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

________________

Antony Searle:

Supervised SURF student Sam Schoenholz's production of Bayesian glitch model posterior evaluator.
Looking at Omega whitening and interaction with search modes.
A C++ Bayesian signal model posterior computation implementation completed, testing and other components remaining.

________________

Drew Keppel:

Getting the upper limit calculation code ready to run for the S5 1Yr Low Mass CBC search.
Having discussions with people at UWM about the FAR statistic.

________________

Amber L. Stuver:

LIGO Research

Continued (and almost completed) noise comparison investigation for V3 h(t) validation. Just to recap, I have been looking at the 100-300 Hz spectrograms (60 second time bins) of the FFT(h(t)) to h(f) ratio. I've redeveloped SLOPE (a Burst ETG) to run on the 2 dimensional data and return the time bins with excess SLOPE energy (sum of the measured slope/threshold slope for triggered pixels). Plotting the excess energy vs. bin strength rank yields a knee in the triggers at about the top 1000 triggers for all of S5 (in H1 and L1 each). It is these top 1000 triggers in each detector that I am investigating further. Since Chad's strongest pixel in every 12 hours method has shown that these time bins are associated with glitches in other data channels (and therefore not a calibration issue but a data quality one) I have associated my top triggers with the nearest neighbor of Chad's triggers and found that (for H1) 19 of my top 100 triggers, 177 of my top 500 triggers, and 505 of my top 1000 triggers cannot be associated with one of Chad's. There are several reasons for this. First, Chad's results give the strongest pixel every 12 hours. Therefore, even if there are several data glitches within that time effecting the spectrogram, only the strongest pixel will be reported. Also, my method integrates the strength of pixels within a time bin; so while no one pixel may be significant, multiple pixels can add up to be in my SLOPE method. Conversely, a single strong pixel my be strong enough to be reported by Chad's method, but may not have other significant pixels to contribute to the excess energy needed to be reported by SLOPE. Bottom line, I expect that my unique triggers are attributable to data quality issues and not calibration issues. I am currently setting up Q Scan jobs to confirm this and should be done with this next week.

SEC Work

Gave public tour to ~30 people.
Submitted the ASP proceedings (by the EPO) to the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3764.

________________

Kent Blackburn for the LIGO Grid Computing R&D team:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Wrote agenda/minutes and lead LIGO-Pegasus telecon .
Wrote agenda and lead OSG-USERS telecon.
Attended LIGO-Pegasus, Inspiral Coding, DASWG andOSG-USERS telecons.

EINSTEIN@HOME ON THE OSG APPLICATION

Deployment attempted at NWICG_NDCCL, fails with: globusrun-ws -s error, have contacted In-Saeng to troubleshoot.
Deployment at LIGO_UWM_NEMO, run fails --> no outgoing network connection from WNs, working with Brian Moe to resolve.

IHOPE BINARY INSPIRAL APPLICATION

Successful run at Nebraska, AGLT2, CIT_CMS_T2.
Testing new pegasus feature: transfer of Pegasus executables, as part of work-flow. This would remove the requirement for having server side pegasus tools at GRID sites - a real improvement that LIGO has been pushing for with the pegasus developers for some time now.
Updated DASWG OSG-LIGO pages for running application.

OSG INTEGRATION AND VALIDATION TESTBED

OSG 1.0 was released and announced to the public last week. The integration team is calling for a telecon today to discuss the various issues that were caught by productions sites as part of the upgrade that were not seen in the testbed.

GRID MANAGEMENT

Have arranged an interview with a strong candidate for the Grid Administrator later today.
Working on a subcommittee to evaluate the impact of new CA bundle to VDT software stack by the OSG. This is also of interest to the LDG. Briefed the LSC Computer Committee on the changes and will be discussing them in this week's SCAT subcommittee telecon.
Discussed longer term goals for cluster vs grid computing in this week's DASWG meeting. Promoted idea that true grid transparency for the end users should be what we in the LSC should be requesting from the computer science communities. This seemed to be well received in the DASWG forum and will be discussed again in roughly a month's time, following several tests that are being performed at UWM.

_______________

Diego Fazi:

Computed background trigger rate after the first coincidence stage for PTF and compared it with SPA.
Started modifing the injection code in order to be able to specify the orientation between spin and angular momentum of the injected waveforms.

_______________

Anand Sengupta:

Wrote and circulated a detailed road map for the S5 high mass search <http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/ ligovirgo/cbcnote/JointS5/080623190513S5HiCBCPlan_for_the_ S5_high_mass_search> and also <http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/ligovirgo/ cbcnote/S5HighMassCall20080619>.
Explained the CBC inspiral searches and high mass search in detail to new graduate student.
Mentoring Satish Sreshtha - looking over his Matlab codes etc. Detailed plan for his project discussed and outlined with Sanjit Mitra.
Plotted the H1H2 eff distance cut for high mass search.

________________

Gregory Mendell:

Nothing significant to report this week, as I have been busy with the upgrades of the LDAS filesystems at LHO.

________________

Kipp Cannon:

Working with Ashley King on sky location reconstruction with the inspiral pipeline.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

This week the metadataAPI was modified to address the issue of core dumping when running the dbperformance system test (PR#317). Also, it was discovered that the metadataAPI made unnecessary multiple requests for querying data from the database. This should improve query performance.
The client application cmonClient had several modifications. First, it only prompts a single time for resource diffs (PR#3287). It remembers the version of the software so the installation of a newer version will again prompt the user if diffs exists. Also, if the environment variable GLOBUS_LOCATION is set, the default behaviour is to use Globus for communications.
With basic support for Version 3, 4, and 6 frame specifications back in frameCPP, the full complement of nightly loop tests has resumed. The current job rate is 1500 jobs per hour. The metadataAPI has had times of getting stuck because of mutex issues and has also core dumped. Problem reports for each of these cases have been filed and they are being investigated.
Extended testing on ldas-test continues to use version 1.9.321. The only issue seen has been some "no such symbol" errors from the dataocndAPI.
This week, system testing will resume.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

Verified new Burst-MDC files making it to tape at CIT.
Did planning and prep for LHO visit, including packing up a network switch, FC HBAs and fibres to bring with.
LHO site visit:
- Got a complete and valid samfsdump of /archive.
- Created a new /archive using the 6140 and samfsrestored /archive into it.
- Set up new ZFS based /export and rsync'd the old /export to it.
- Created a new /frames from 3511s, tested it's performance and set up CDS with a fibre connection to it and the /etc/init.d/samfs.handle-nfs-exports script.
- Did some racking/unracking/reracking of equipment in the LHO LDAS machine room.
- Probably some other stuff...

(Phil Ehrens)

This week the SURF students arrived in Millikan, and sat down at the keyboards of four computers that had not been touched for a very long time. The machines Algenib, m90, garrak, and ldas-sundev1 are all defunct. I was able to shuffle parts around and get three working machines, and now all SURF students have usable desktop machines.
Ongoing work on the Beta release of the MOU Review Software.
One additional fan failed in the cluster this week. * Node323 continues to show large numbers of MCE errors without displaying any untoward effects. Node157 and node319 are also showing abnormally large numbers of errors. I beleive that all these error reports are erroneous, and that some class of benign phenomena is generating these reports.
I have been negotiating with Emerson for a service contract for maintenance of the three Liebert units in 215A Synchrotron.
A desktop computer and high performance video card for GPU based numerical computation study was setup for one of the SURF students. The power supply shipped with the computer was inadequate for powering the video card, and a 600 watt power supply was purchased and installed.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

Upgrade to condor 7.0.3; ordered mainboard ($69) for solaris x86 pcraid.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

To learn more about the reasons for the recent RLS crashes, added debugging statements into LSCfileAdd.py at LLO to find what commands sent to RLS caused problems. So far RLS has not crashed yet.
Published to LDR BRST1_S5_R3, BRST2_S5_R3, HSG7_S5_R3, HCAL_S5_GAMMA, HCAL_S5_DCOFF, HCAL_S5_NOM. In addition some of them had to be copied to /archive.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

I have been working with Stuart Anderson and Dan Kozak on the upgrade of the LDAS/LHO filesystems.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

Hardware/software problems tintagel -> fresh install fedora9.
Installed ligowiki on dell box.
Installed ilog user mgt interface lho.
Working on new ilog reader.
Some network cabling.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

More MATLAB and LIGOTOOLS installs and troubleshooting on Ubuntu install.
Cleanup of second floor office area.
Reset password on a GC account.
Created a couple new GC accounts.
Replaced a failed UPS in the MSR GC rack, including restarting and troubleshooting various failures with the building controls servers.
SEC/DOCSHARE network troubles, resolved with Shannon's help.
Installed gcc 4.2.0 on desoto.
Other usual/unusual user support requests.
Cleared spam trap.

Hanford

(Larry)

Worked a number of procurements including some license renewals. Have a few more license renewals to take care of. Purchased another PC. Placed an order for a MAC. Still need to setup some of the new equipment that has been received. Received the SUN equipment for Shannon.
Spent time assisting visitors and new users. There were a number of visitors at the Observatory attending various meetings and working with multiple groups. The SURF students and school teachers also arrived, for the most part assistance for them was for specific problems they were having with different applications.
Worked on a couple of the servers. The license server may still be having some problems. The case may be that it just doesn't have enough licenses. The mail server had some minor work done on it. The spam filters had been updated but they still need some work. Synced the clock on a couple of the servers and started the service on them.
Worked on a new EVO server for the conference room. The server is ready but after some discussion we will get it put on a cart. The unit has been tested out but is in storage until we can get the cart and instructions setup for it.
Worked with Dave B. moving equipment around.
Had a number of meetings with different groups, covering resumes, new equipment and services, removing old equipment.
Modified accounts and aliases as well as some cleanup on the systems.
Worked a couple of items with Mike concerning remote support.

(Mike)

Added additional ip numbers to their DHCP pool to accommodate visitors.
More than usual monitoring on DHCP server freeing up ip numbers that were not being used to insure all onsite/visitors/PAC users were able to pick up a DHCP number.
Work on adding a few mail aliases.

Caltech

(Veronica)

LIGO: Web support of PAC meeting. Usual maintenance/upkeep.
LSC: Ongoing work on the ligo.org redo. Updates of techpaper databases, other web updates.

(Mike)

Loaded a PDMWorks server to test out a different naming convention on current and future projects.
Loaded server 2003 for testing SolidWorks 2009 beta1 on going project.
Setup LINUX for a new staff member. Stuart gave me a hand with this. There were some issues with the auto mounts and iptables.
Work with many surf students on their user accounts, software and some hardware issues.
EVO setup and testing with Larry.
Tested out some LINUX backup software with Christian.
Loaded a 2003 Terminal server. Server 2003 out of the box comes with 2 remote desktop connections, which is only supposed to be used for administration. Loading Terminal server enables more than 2 users to connect via remote desktop and cuts down on bandwidth, because only mouse movements and keyboards strokes are going through the network. This is an on going project.
Setup additional user accounts.
Loaded an additional 2003 server to start testing Solid Works 2009. "On going project."
Rebooted all NTSRV's to install windows security updates and restart services.
Other misc. user support and sysadmin tasks.

(Melody)

New DCC: Continued work on the content search for the new DCC.
Integrating Perlfect search with the docdb code base.

(Christian)

3flr W/B - Configured 3 new systems with Mathematica and Mathlab for new Surf Students.
Toner cartridge replacement - 3flr W/B and Albert Lazzarini's local printer.
Did an inventory on printing supplies.
Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Larry)

More procurement work. Ordered more equipment and finished up a maintenance purchase. Received a couple more renewals that need to be done in the near future.
Worked on SURF and new hire items.
Regular user assistance but all done remotely.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

From Carol Wilkinson

Project Controls

Rudy Arvizu has joined the LIO Business Office as a second contracts administrator. He comes to us from the Caltech procurements office and brings a wealth of experience in contracting and Caltech procurement procedures.
Three Advanced LIGO Change Requests (ACR) are in process for review by the AdL CCB:
- ACR to delay the production of SEI BSC internal isolation system (ISI) while the actuators are redesigned and tested. The HAM ISI final design period is being shortened due to a need for only minimal design updates and the HAM production will move forward in time to maintain overall project schedule. The change also includes the decision to assemble the HAM and BSC ISI serially rather than in parallel. There are no scope changes involved. A letter will be sent to NSF through the Office of Sponsored Research to request a change in production milestones included in the AdL cooperative agreement.
- ACR to incorporate the changes due to the decision to go to a stable recycling cavity is in process. Equipment costs are expected to increase by ~$400K, which is within estimated contingency. NSF will be notified of the changes.
- ACR for the new scope for building renovations to accommodate in-house cleaning stations. New cost estimates including the cleaning stations require all of the associated FMP contingency. A decision to add new back doors to the LVEA’s at both sites will likely be delayed until a later date in the project when the project financial state has evolved further.

Procurements

Still waiting for NSF approval to award the contract for project controls support and for the core optics glass blanks.
The award package for the University of Florida is expected to be submitted to NSF for approval on Friday 6/27.

Progress Updates

Monthly Schedule progress updates were due June 25. Subsystem leads who have not yet reported need to provide updates to Dwight Carter.
The Project Monthly Report was submitted to NSF on June 13.
The first Quarterly report to NSF is due July 30.

Meetings & Reviews

The next monthly status meeting will be on Thursday, July 10 at 8:30 AM PT.
Advanced LIGO reported to the PAC at the meeting June 24.

Advanced LIGO Systems

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

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

Operations Activities:

Nothing significant to report.

AdL Project-Funded Activities:

Reviews: For a list of reviews, see the main AdL wiki page.
Prepared and presented an Adv. LIGO technical status talk (G080391-00) for the Program Advisory Committee (PAC).

Technical Review Board (TRB): see the TRB log

Vacuum Review Board (VRB):

As part of the TRB/VRB evaluation of the safety of our viewports, have calculated stresses for the borosilicate/kovar viewports. Currently evaluating lifetime with fracture mechanics parameters.

Configuration Control:

Nothing significant to report.

Design:

Nothing significant to report

Interfaces:

continued working on definitive SPI interface and gold thermal shield interface (as alternative to gold barrel coating) definition for the quad suspension
circulating RODA for review/approval on decision to have a single fiber pulling facility located at LHO. Fibers needed at LLO are shipped in special containers as needed for installation
See the RODA status pag e and the Interface Control page.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro)

Hiro and Bill worked to study the mirror surface aberration and loss using SIS. SIS was improved to make the analysis easier, and the error handling is now more friendly.

Time Domain Simulation (Melody, Sany)

Sany tried to install the latest e2e at Solaris 10 system at LLO.
Melody helped Sany and his students to compile and install successfully.

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

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

Nothing to report this week.

Prestabilized Laser

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

Operations

Wrapped up the proposed laser incident threshold level document. It is before the safety committee for consideration.

Project

Nothing significant to report.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

AdvLigo Project

SEI (Ben):

The re-design of the 8CH Valve driver is now just about complete. The functionality is the same, but the layout and multi-channel schematic are now up-to-date. I am now working on its bill of materials, and front panels.
I will also come up with the bill of materials and panels for the STS-2 Interface chassis that I laid out a little while ago.
Although a full decision has not yet been made, it seems that the inductive position sensor will be quiet enough for AdLigo. With this in mind, I have started looking at the Pier Interface chassis as the next chassis to be modified.

SUS (Jay):

Orders for the ADCs and DACs required for the BSC tests stands at LHO and LLO have been placed. Orders for additional components are in the works.
Wiring diagrams for the BSC test stands are complete.
The UK group continues to work on the Quad pre-production drivers for use in the BSC test stands.
Software for the BSC test stand has been started.

AdvLigo R&D

SUS (Jay):

Generation of the final requirements for the SR and PR triple suspension electronics is on hold for input from Peter Fritschel, Stefan Balmer and others. Right now it appears as though the noise current requirements for the lowest stage are below what can reasonably be achieved. Possible solutions include weaker magnets, few coil turns, different control schemes, etc.
UK design work on the PR and SR triple electronics is on hold for the final requirements.
Components for the LLO RM test stand are on order or in production. Wiring diagrams are 90% complete.

In-Vac Cabling (Rich):

Sent sample to UK of the new B-OSEM, in-vacuum, micro-dsub connector. Got feedback from Stuart Aston saying he likes the connector. Got pricing and delivery from manufacturer and forwarded it to Stuart.
Worked with Chub and Bob on the in-vacuum characterization of the B-OSEM. Goals are to characterize outgassing and electrical performance. A test is underway to measure the LED characteristics vs temperature.
Finished and posted 3 papers on in-vacuum electronics techniques that were used to develop the ELIGO OMC and Adligo Suspension components.
Working with some of Norna's students on measuring stiffness of cabling used in the OMC.

RFPD (Rich/Mohana):

Finished the prototype RFPD design and on hold for the PCB layout.

ELIGO

OMC (Jay):

The first prototype of the new satellite amps (PD whitening included) have been received and one unit is being stuffed for test. Testing should start next week.
Have been testing the electronics again for the LHO OMC installation.
Got DCPD preamplifier boxes back from the welding outfit, and now they must be tested again prior to being cleaned and baked.

OMC (Rolf/Richard M.):

Setup Sun4600 to be the OMC computer at LHO. This configuration has the computer in the MSR and I/O chassis by HAM6 and the long fiber interface is working. The latest Matlab files were collected from LLO to test the new system here (as far as the I/O cards). OMC electronics are expected to arrive and be installed week of July 7.

TCS (Mohana):

Working in the next revision TCS Electronics design for the LLO installation.
Finished up the wiring schematics for LHO.

DAQ (Alex, Rolf, Barker, ...):

New DAQ computer configuration installed at LHO. Testing of new separate data broadcaster, FrameWriter, and NDS computers (all x86 based machines) is in progress. Last major hurdle is to get DMA drivers debugged to get data from older 5579 reflected memory. network. Reading data from 5565 reflected memory network and Myrinet, writing data to LDAS, and getting data from new NDS machine(s) seems to be working thus far.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

Continued testing of the HAM at LHO/LLO and BSC at LASTI.
Project: HEPI procurement activities and preparation for a second phase of HEPI review.

SEI Activities and Progress at LHO:

Rich Mittleman and Jeff Kissel are at LHO this week helping with the single stage HAM development. Brian L. has created a plan for additional development and training with the extra time given to us by the enhanced LIGO group.

BSC SEI Documentation and Design:

The new polyimide has been ordered for a test run of its use on the coil of the ISI actuators. It's being delivered directly to PSI and will hopefully be an improvement over the current- i.e. easier to use and less susceptible to flaking. It has a two week delivery time. This will hopefully coincide well with the availability of the test bobbin currently being used for an experiment by one of the summer undergrads here at MIT.
The PO has finally been released to PSI for the new small actuators for ISI. With this done PSI will officially start work on this long lead items and also will deliver a Solidworks model to fit into the re-design of the actuator brackets.
We've taken another look at the smaller items on the long BSC design change list in order to make a good schedule to get these items done by the PDR. Many of these changes will mean an update to the build procedure document as well. ~ Stephany F.

SEI Project Activities:

We are still awaiting approvals to send out an RFQ to shops for the actuators. This will result in a 2 month delay to our schedule.We have met with suppliers of both eddy current and capacitive position sensors in an attempt to find a sensor with less noise for HEPI. Both types are approximately the same cost with the capacitive sensor having somewhat less noise. ~Ken M.
The re-design of the 8CH Valve driver is now just about complete. The functionality is the same, but the layout and multi-channel schematic are now up-to-date. Work has started on its bill of materials, and front panels. We will also come up with the bill of materials and panels for the STS-2 Interface chassis that was laid out a little while ago. Although a full decision has not yet been made, it seems that the inductive position sensor will be quiet enough for AdLigo. With this in mind, we have started looking at the Pier Interface chassis as the next chassis to be modified. ~ Ben A.

Suspensions

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

Operations Work HAM Suspensions for Advanced & Enhanced LIGO

OMC:

The blade vendor has sent two blades to us for characterisation that were shot peened to fix their radii. These blades were ones they had made surplus to our order and had been rejected. Preliminarily, it appears as though one was reworked well and the second, not so well. We've asked the vendor to clarify some questions on the process differences between the two. The good news is that the shot peening process does not seem to affect the spring rate or the hardness of the age hardened blades. We are going ahead to have 4 of the OMC lower blades shot peened, keeping 4 others in reserve. We are also investigating an option to reuse existing IMC blades.
Two SURF students have joined us for the summer. They are going to look at the effects of electronic cabling on the (mechanical) isolation of the OMC bench.

RM:

Documentation is ongoing. Our primary engineers are departing this week, so work is transitioning to the engineers at LLO. They're already starting to organize the items to procure and fabricate.
Triple pendulum electronics requirements continue to be worked on. There is a tight schedule to get these to the UK.

BSC Suspensions for Advanced LIGO

We have two quotes for the metal prisms for the compensator plate.
Work continues on getting parts made and techniques refined for doing the monolithic suspension.
RAL reported they have now resumed work on the beamsplitter prototype and anticipate having a full suspension assembled in a few days time.
The monthly SWG telecon was held on 20th June. Minutes were posted to the SWG elog.

Project-Funded Activities

Document on first article builds for the UK suspensions has been circulated for comment.

Core Optics

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

After carefully baffling stray light and improving the beam dump, the CASI noise level has been decreased to its electronic limitation. With one REO 1" mirror and integrating in the same bandwidth as that of the integrating sphere, the preliminary result shows about 7 ppm scatter loss, which is consistent with results measured by the integrating sphere for the same type of mirrors. More work is needed to decrease the signal jump during aperture switching and increase the dynamic range.
Measuring the scatter from an LMA coated optic is a high priority. Thanks to Akira's help, one TNI mirror is available and being scanned on RTS bench for its flat side scatter, of which both sides are coated with the optimized coating.
We are awaiting confirmation of T&C from Corning before sending the blank contract to Corning for signature. The Heraeus contract is still in review at NSF, this is the second week. Reviews can take up to one month. The schedule has been revised accordingly.

Development

The action item list from the COC preliminary design review has been completed and is posted on the Advanced LIGO wiki page for the COC Preliminary Design Review.

Auxiliary Optics

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

ADLIGO

Work under Project Budget:

IFO Layout: Luke is updating the latest stable recycling cavity optical layouts into solidworks.

Work Under Operations Budget:

TCS: Aidan and Phil are at LHO installing the upgraded TCS system.
SLC: Mike has revised the Matlab stray light calculations for the stable, non-folded IFO. Preliminary results indicate that the present concepts for baffles and beam dumps meet the ADLIGO requirement.
OPTLEV: Riccardo inspected optical lever piers at LHO, and observed large resonances in the HEPI support piers that are also used to support the BS and FM optical levers. This may be even more problematic when HEPI is operating. Zach made some simplified layouts with optical lever beams as an aid in learning how to use Zemax. He is working with Tara to learn the characteristics of the quad detector used for the optical lever receiver.