Weekly Report for Week Ending September 4, 2008

Past Weekly Reports

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LSC Issues (Reitze)

• The Burst group paper "Search for Gravitational Wave Bursts from Soft Gamma Repeaters" has been submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett.
• Astrowatch makes the front page! The August-September APS Newsletter prominently featured an article on Astrowatch: "Astrowatch Keeps LIGO's Eyes on the Sky", http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200808/ligo.cfm?cs_ LoginTime=171834

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

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STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

MOU	Attachments	Approved
ACIGA	ACF, DAT, LAS, OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z
Andrews University	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z
Balearic Islands	DAT, Z	x
Carleton College	DAT, OPS, Z	x
Caltech Exper. Grav.-Physics Group	SUS, Z	x
Caltech Relativity Group	ACF, DAT, OPT, OUT, Z	x
Columbia University	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z	x
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University	DAT, OPT, SUS, Z	x
Eotvos University	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z
Florida, University of	ACF, DAT, OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z	x
GEO600	ACF, DAT, LAS, OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z	x
Goddard Grav. Wave Astrophys.Group	DAT, OPS, Z	x
Hobart & William Smith Colleges	OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z	x
Institute of Applied Physics	OPT, OUT, Z
IUCAA	DAT, Z	x
Louisiana State University	DAT, OPS, SUS, Z	x
Louisiana Tech University	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z	x
Maryland, University of	DAT, OPS, Z	x
Massachusetts at Amherst, University of	DAT, OPS, Z	x
Michigan Gravitational Wave Group	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z	x
Minnesota, University of	DAT, OPS, SUS, Z	x
Mississippi, Uiversity of	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z	x
Montana Grav. Wave Astronomy Group	DAT, Z	x
Moscow State University	Z
NAOJ-TAMA	ACF, Z	x
Northwestern University	ACF, DAT, Z
Oregon, University	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z	x
Pennsylvania State University	DAT, OPS, OUT, Z
Rochester Institute of Technology	DAT, OUT, Z	x
Rochester, University of	DAT, Z	x
San Jose State University	ACF, Z	x
Sannio, University of at Benevento	DAT, OPT, Z
Sonoma State University	LAS, OUT, Z
Stanford University	ACF, LAS, OPS, OPT, OUT, SUS, Z	x
Syracuse University	DAT, OPS, OPT, Z	x
Texas, University of at Austin	DAT, OUT, Z
Texas, University of at	DAT, OPS, OPT, OUT, Z
Trinity University	OPT, OUT, Z	x
Washington State University	DAT, OPS, Z	x
Wisconsin at Milwaukee, University of	DAT, OPS, Z

 

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PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)

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

For week ending August 28, 2008

• Completed the FY'08 Motor Vehicle Report & OMB A-11 AMVFR Report for the GSA vehicles at LHO and Government-Owned vehicles for LLO.
• Attended Exports Compliance Seminar presented by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
• Assisted M. Barton with packing and shipping eight suspenions subsystem blades to LLO.
• Gathered FedEx shipping documents from 2002 to 2005 to support a refund claim to the California State Board of Equalization.
• Updated Asset inventory dates and locations for equipment located in the computer room, Synchrotron Lab.
• Completed a report for all LIGO/Caltech-Owned property requested by the Risk Management Office.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

For week ending August 28, 2008

• Worked with Gina and Rudy to ensure that RFQs, RFPs and contracts being sent electronically follow the LIGO established protocol.  Bert Cresta and Ed Jasnow have been involved as well.
• Redid two forms for Bill Tyler that revise the current forms in the LIGO Laser Safety Program, as well a general editing throughout the document.
• Met with Mick Flanigan and described the current DCC system as well as a bit of background information of what we do.
• Added a few more incident reports to the spreadsheet and into the DCC.  Still waiting for electronic copies that Bill may yet have that have not been sent to the DCC.  When those are reviewed and added, incident reports should be up to date.
• Compiling the Laboratory publication list for the Annual Report.
• Met with Calum and Melody and worked with the docDB system.
• Continued to revise the LIGO Laser Safety Program document and all associated Appendices.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Oracion)

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

• For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA Press Here.

>From: Karl Oracion

For week ending August 28, 2008

• Corrected various charging errors via cost transfers and requested travel expenditure type corrections.
• Started creating monthly report templates for end of August reports.
• Attended Data Warehouse training session focused on creating customized reports.
• Prepared revisions to draft of account structure using OSR format.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

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

• The bid date for the LHO test stand is being revised to extend the date one week.
• The contract for the University of Florida for Advanced LIGO has been sent to them for signature.
• The contract with Heraeus for low OH glass has been signed by the contractor, with some minor changes to the T's & C's.  These will be reviewed by Caltech OGC, and then the contract will be signed.

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

• Two more sets of bids for HEPI seismic isolation equipment have been received.  The bids have been distributed to the evaluation committees, and consensus meetings will be held early next week.
• RFQs for the provision of liquid nitrogen for both sites have been released to companies in both areas.  Bids are due on September 12.  The contracts will be for three years with two one-year options.
• A modification will be issued to the Tinsley contract.  This modification will replace a previous one that has not been issued for additional cleaning.

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

• The bid receipt date for the warehouse improvement project at LLO has been delayed from Wednesday, September 10, to Wednesday, October 1, due to hurricane Gustav.  An addendum was sent to all recipients of the RFQ.
• Adilia Koch and Ed Jasnow worked to release a shipment of parts for the tilt tip mirrors that was sent to LHO from Australia National University.  The problem was that it was addressed to an Australian citizen at LHO who was not allowed to receive it.  Adilia provided the Caltech tax ID number and revised the invoice so the parts could be received.
• The Evaluation Committee for the HEPI actuators completed its review and sent its recommendation to the Source Selection Official (SSO), Carol Wilkinson.  The SSO accepted the committee's recommendations, and a contract for the HEPI actuators will be awarded.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

• Issued request for contributions for the monthly status report that is due to the NSF on Monday, September 15.  Contributions are due to me Thursday, September 11.
• We are in the process of preparing an Annual Report for Current Operations.  Dave Beckett is preparing the primary sections.  We have received a no-cost extension to March 30, 2009.  Funds that will be carried forward will be for Advanced LIGO R&D activities and computing cluster equipment that were part of the original scope of the current cooperative agreement, but were delayed until the start of S6.  A Final Report will be issued by June 30, 2009.
• We are preparing the accounts structure for the new cooperative agreement that due to start October 1, 2008.  We expect to provide the accounts to the Office of Sponsored Research this week.  Once the accounts have been entered into ORACLE, we can start preparing new subcontracts.
• The Procurements Group informed all LIGO task managers that Caltech procurement activities will “go dark” for the end of the fiscal year as of September 12, 2008.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

• There are no open change requests for LIGO Operations.

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Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

• Completed update revisions to laser safety plan appendices, cleaner/better formats ready for on-line implementation. Eventually, the laser incident report form will be replaced with a single LIGO incident report form for reporting all types of incidents.
• Continued working with Mick Flanigan on AdL QA support.

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

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

• DC locking efforts continue. The current noise level in H1 is captured here last Friday, and here mid-week. MICH damping, and the impact of different DC offsets, were investigated. The MICH work and investigations into excess POB I will continue.
• the (redundant) hardware trigger was installed and configured
• the HVAC system was investigated as a source of excess low-frequency noise in the interferometers: previously, the HVAC flow rate was reduced to limit length coupling in the interferometer. Here, the eddy frequency of the turbulence is raised via a screen, into the band of good isolation for the passive seismic system. Also, see this link for other investigations such as chilled water flow rates and acoustic isolation
• controlroom console machines are being upgraded to linux

Astrowatch (P. Patel)

• We had some framebuilder issues over the weekend, which meant that none of the data was recorded and that is reflected in our low duty cycle - 37% uptime and 24% science time
• We also found that the FMY optical lever was a potential hazard and thus we shut it down temporarily, till Kyle and Gerardo found a way to switch it back on without impacting the viewport
• H2 has maintained a range around 7.0 MPc; we hope to continue on this vein for the near future
• See the current issue of APS News for an article on Astrowatch - ML; [ AL note: APS members may view the article on the APS website. ]

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

LLO personnel is recovering from the storm. On Friday Joe Giaime reported:

"Hurricane Gustav passed over Louisiana on Monday, Sept. 1, and did quite a bit of damage; it was the worst Baton Rouge had seen in modern history. We are lucky that LLO's power was restored yesterday. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of today's recovery team, LLO has most of its systems back in operation. We are set to reopen on Monday, Sept 8. For some details, please see my entry on today's ilog."

[AL note: Rusyl Wooley took a number of photos which have been posted]

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 (Adhikari)

• The RF oscillator signal for the FSS was too noisy and the LO power was too low. The waveforms were distorted and there was much feedthrough of switching supply noise. We temporarily swapped it with a combination of a Stanford signal generator and a mini-circuit RF amplifier. Peter Kalmus is designing a new RF oscillator box.
• Now the UGF of the FSS is about 250kHz, a factor of 2 improvement. By setting the relative gain of the PZT path a bit lower than before, the MC finally locks for long stretches of time (easily more than 10 hours). However, we are still unable to increase the FSS UGF up to desired 500kHz. Accordingly, the MC UGF is still low (40kHz). We see many huge 77kHz harmonics in the error signal of the FSS. We think these peaks are limiting the slew rate of one of the op-amps in the FSS servo box. We plan to move the suspicious DC-DC converter near the NPRO crystal to outside of the NPRO box.
• PMC open loop transfer function was measured by Jenne. Now the UGF is 630Hz with the phase margin of 53deg. The bandwidth is still limited by some resonance. Lead brick configurations continue.
• Joe and Eric used the GigE camera to monitor the position of the beam spot on the ETMX and succeeded to move it by a servo to the ITMX. According to Joe's calculation, the camera can measure the position of a beam with a half micron precision if the beam is directly hitting the camera. By monitoring the beam position change by mis-alignment of the mirrors, we should be able to detect a fractional power loss of 2*10^-10 in the 40m arm cavity.

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Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• Greg found the source of the problem with the AOM in the photothermal experiment and has that unit working again. He is still in the process of commissioning and debugging.
• Bill Tyler pointed out that we need to cover windows in all of our chambers, even if they are not supporting vacuum in the near future. Akira and Riccardo talked with Steve Vass, who showed them the design the 40-meter uses, and we will use that design. Fabrication orders have been placed.

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LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

• We have completed the horizontal to rotational decoupling on stage 1. Small misalignments in the displacement sensors can produce small low frequency (where the displacement sensors dominate the control) horizontal to vertical couplings. Since the sensitivity of horizontal seismometers to tilt is proportional to 1/f2 this coupling is a serious impediment to low frequency control. The effect can be minimized with the appropriate decoupling matrix.

Quad Prototype

• No News is Good News

Fiber Pulling-Welding

• Some minor clean up of the workspace area, most of the current work is taking place at Glasgow.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

_________________

Drew Keppel:

• nvestigating the signal loss when using non-spinning template to search for spinning signals associated with the S5 1Yr Low Mass Search.
• working on the paper associated with that search.

_________________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid Computing R&D Team:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• Wrote the agenda for the users meeting.
• Attended an ihope meeting.

OSG INTEGRATION & VALIDATION TESTBED

• No news on status of cluster order this week.

GRID MANAGEMENT

• Continued to provide feedback to the OSG regarding changes to the Management Plan.
• Provided account to charge work permit application fees needed to  hire new grid administrator to Caltech.
• Attended Computer Committee Meeting.
• Planned OSG talk for the LIGO-VIRGO Meeting.
• Investigated and exchanged emails with Pegasus Developers regarding  the Kepler Workflow Toolkit. This has been looked at in the past but was not  very mature. The team recently received three years of funding for  advancements.
• SBGrid revoked LIGO VO for using their resources on the OSG due to  high failure rates seen with the Einstein@Home jobs. This needs to  be investigated further, but is mostlikely related to the mis-  configuration of WS-Gram associated with the OSG 1.0 release. Britta  has been asked by the OSG Project Manager to investigate.

_________________

Antony Searle

• Responding to LSC comments on a paper.
• Ran Bayesian code on BRST3 injection set on H1L1V1 segments of JW1.
• Good position reconstruction achieved in real noise with only 1st moments of theta, phi posteriors.
• Working on outputting full directional posterior plausibility in next run.

_________________

Anand Sengupta

• I continued to finish up coding the various pieces required for bandpassing the templates and testing them along the way.

_________________

Joseph Betzwieser

• Prepared abstract for poster at AAS meeting in January and sketching out plans for a generic targeted continous wave search pipeline.

_________________

Pinkesh Patel

• I fixed a frequency shift bug in resampling.
• Working with Joe to get the code running on the crab search.
• Helped Berit and others in Germany understand the code.

_________________

Kipp Cannon

• Aspects of inspiral template bank optimization/implementation.
• Inspiral coincidence record keeping/post-processing tools.
• Items related to review of s4 cosmic string review.
• Ttelecons:  daswg, cbc coding, s4 string review.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• All issues with the frameCPP library that hampered its use in the DMT have been resolved. Working with Alex Ivanov, a subtle issue with frameCPP was discovered in how it is used in the frame builder. Work is currently under way to address this issue.
• Efforts are also under way to start implementing the proposed version 8 frame specification.
• Some new frameAPI code is being tested. It dynamically reads the thread information instead of depending upon a locally created array of threads.
• Throttling of the nightly loop tests on ldas-dev has been removed as the debugging version of the memory allocator is no longer being used.
• System testing of LDAS used version 1.9.408 of the software. There was a core dump in both the frameAPI and disckcacheAPI during the system testing. All efforts to reproduce either of these core dumps has failed.
• Two more of the regression tests (pr2824.tcl and pr2946.tcl) have been converted to use the System Test framework. These changes are in CVS and will be part of the System Testing this week.
• Both build and ligotools continue to be modified to work with the X509 certificates. Peter Shawhan is involved in the validation process.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

• Called in opterondata-dev hardware problem to Sun.
• In partial response to the last opterondata-cit crash I reconfigured the machine to use MPXIO on the metadata devices (the HBA ports are still dedicated to metadata only, but now are restricted via fibre channel soft zoning rather than by disabling MPXIO on those ports).
• Sent simple T10KB performance numbers (/bin/time dd if=/dev/zero of=<drive> and iostat) to Bruce Wexler and Robert Schroder at Sun to try to get an idea where the bottlenect might be.
• Talked to user isogait about using data from tape again (ongoing).
• Discovered that LHO's FrCheck failure was due to 6140/FC problems.
• Called in morbo crash (SAM+NFS problem, we think).
• Coordinated installation of 8 new T10KB drives in our SL8500 silo.
• Weekly check of frame files in CIT cluster showed no new bad frames.

(Phil Ehrens)

• Tested new Samsung-chipped DIMMS from SuperMicro on   cluster node 500. Discovered that node500 has a mobo hardware issue with the right DIMM bank (cpu 2). Swapped the Samsung-chipped DIMMS to node321 for further testing.
• Node323 is producing a large number of mce errors each day, but has been up for 66 days and is not reporting any problems in spite of running under continuous high load.
• Replaced fans in nodes 180, 185, and 197. Details can be seen on the Cluster_Fan_Replacement wiki page.
• Upgraded the new desktop machine "garrak" to 2Gb of real memory. This is a 3.0GHz Prescott CPU machine.
• Investigated the use of Kerberos as an authentication method for webservers. Doing this allows the use of the username/password data from the roster for secure web access.
• Installed ldg on bosco for Britta Daudert. Investigating configuration of ldg for using bosc as an osg submit host.
• Installed CentOS 5.2 and Nvidia module on m90, a new desktop machine with an nvidia high performance GPU.
• Added several new svn repos to the server on the machine vcs.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Nothing to report; except received the thumper (as you know), and will try to get it going asap.
• No news on move-in to bates center yet.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• I am working to make sure we get all the astrowatch data into the LDAS archive at LHO and CIT, after last weekend's crash of the old CDS framebuilder filesystem.  After extensive testing, we have now switched at LHO to using the new CDS framewriters fileystem at LHO as the primary source of data.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Mostly purchasing for end of year: quotes for latptops, new lasti cds server, etc.
• Troubleshooting lasti computer serial port issues (vacuum  measurement device...).
• Reinstalled xp (remove vista) for new laptop; some bad disk issues (Ken, Stephany).

Livingston

• No report because of hurricane Gustav.

Hanford

(Larry)

• Worked with Richard M. in troubleshooting the network. Also, took care of a couple of server problems.
• Modified a couple of accounts and mail aliases.
• Ordered more equipment for the site.
• Still working on getting a new GC Sysadmin for the site.

(Mike)

• Continued work on managing their dhcp server.
• Flushing out spam daily that is trapped in mail spool.
• Ran backups on ADVLIGO server updating our server here at CIT.

Caltech

(Veronica)

• LSC:  Continued work on the ligo.org redo.  Implementing the changes submitted by Dave Reitze before the final release later this month. Working with Dave Beckett on some new content for the new site. Positive feedback from Dave about the new website.  Assisted Dorothy with the MOU web application, implemented modifications to the application per Dave Reitze's request.  Updates of the database of technical papers.
• LIGO:  Addressed the issue of updates of the ligo website with Jay and others.  Updates of the roster database, PAC website, other web-related updates /user support.

(Melody)

• New DCC:  The DCC numbering scheme has been implemented in most of the code. Still need to put this change in a few places.

(Christian)

• Working on new Unattended Windows Xp with SP3. The new XP Unattended dvd will include: Windows XP SP3, Norton AV, Exceed 7, F-Secure, Firefox 3, 7-Zip, Thunderbird, Spybot, Office 2007 and Adobe Acrobat 9.
• Helena Armandula - Created backup image for Helena's laptop.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

• Loaded a new high end engineering workstation for Calum, this build includes SolidWorks, Ansys, Algol, GC software, and transferring over his data to this new computer.
• Installed some engineering software for a new user. I also showed this user how to use some of the GC tools that were loaded on his computer.
• Updated IP database with new computers that were pushed out to users.
• Called in a SUN server due to a faulty power supply.
• Barry Barish: Worked one of his backup laptops. This included replacing the hard disk and recovering his data then trouble shot many software issues. This was a project.
• Ran end of month backups on all critical NTSRV's. This also included installing critical updates that were pushed out by Christian.
• Worked on clearing out Spam that is trapped in the mail spool. This is a lot of work due to LLO's site being down which has many legitimate mail trapped in the mail spool.
• Christian and I ran cat 6 network cable to ECR for a faster connection to accommodate the EVO setup we have in this conference room.
• Worked with few users setting them up to use talitha as their samba server rather than Sirius which provides a much faster connection.
• Other misc. user support and other sysadmin tasks.

(Larry)

• More procurement items. Mostly misc. items for different users. Still need to order a couple of boxes for different groups. Finalized a couple of maintenance contracts and still have a few more to do.
• Setup a couple of new accounts and assisted the users in the setup of their machines for their specific needs.
• Backups on home accounts were performed. Still some more work to be done in that area.
• Work on a couple of different server issues.
• Updated patches on a couple of client boxes.
• Assisted on a couple of DCC issues.
• Worked with Mike on a DHCP issue. We are assigning mac addresses to specific IP addresses for more people.
• Working on various web related items with different groups.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

From Carol Wilkinson

Project Controls

• Three Advanced LIGO Change Requests (ACR) are in process for review by the AdL CCB:
  • The Advanced LIGO change request for a stable recycling cavity has been approved and is circulating for signatures.
  • ACR for changes in the UK delivery of BSC suspensions. Recent schedule changes need to be incorporated into baseline. Delay of several months on delivery has impact on time phasing of US and UK staffing levels but not on overall schedule. Also, UK provided promised training during development cycle instead of assembly phase. Expect an increase in US staffing costs of ~$100K.
  • ACR for delay in PSL delivery schedule of 200 W lasers by 6 months. Uses schedule float and does not impact project schedule.

Procurements

• Note: No procurements can be placed between Sept. 12 and the end of the month due to end of the fiscal year activities.
• Contract negotiations for the HEPI actuator assemblies have started.
• RFQ’s for several SEI HEPI procurements and for FMP assembly clean rooms are out for bids.
• Bid times for the SUS test stands and assembly tooling and the LLO storage/cleaning facility renovations have been extended to accommodate contractors who may have been impacted by hurricane Gustav.
• The RFQ for LHO shed renovations is being prepared.
• The Univ. of Florida has returned a signed contract for AdL IO work.
• Project controls has started work on the Acquisition Plan for 2009, with approximately 30 procurements >$250K. Subsystem leads are being asked to review and update their sections. The plan will be submitted to NSF for approval before October 1.

Progress Updates

• Progress updates for August were due August 27. Accomplishments and variance analyses are due by COB Monday, September 8. Please have reports turned in by that time to allow timely preparation of the final report due September 14.

Meetings & Reviews

• The Monthly Progress Reporting Meeting will be on Thursday, September 11 at 8:30 AM PT. Subsystem leaders or their delegates need to attend.

Advanced LIGO Systems

From: "calum torrie" <ctorrie@gmail.com>

• Test Mass - Modal: We now have a set of command scripts that allow the results from a modal analysis of a test mass to be automatically written into a ASCII text file. The text file includes the node number, node location and displacement of both the barrel and the face in X,Y and Z. The current limitation of the script is it only allows 19 parameters to be written at a time e.g. Z displacement of the face for 19 modes. I am also working on extracting the modal mass from the mass matrix.
• DOC DB: Melody and I this week worked through a number of files I had loaded to the vault and tested / checked a number of features related to document number, signing, replacing documents and reference & related documents. We also met with Linda to discuss a number of concerns and to summarise a number of items related to the proposal for linking DOC DB to PDMWorks. 
• SEI - Modal & Harmonic: We now have a modal and harmonic model of a solid "dummy" SEI system that includes a spring / damper representing a pneumatic isolator. This has been tested and the results compared to a simple MATLAB model. I am currently working on extending this model to include a model of the ground motion.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

COC

• The PSD of the advanced LIGO pathfinder optic polished by CSIRO was compared with that of LIGO I optic measured at CIT. The PSD of the PF optic was ~10 times larger than that of LIGO I optics. The same discrepancy was observed when LIGO I optics were examined by comparing PSDs using CSIRO data and using CIT data (for the same optics). This is summarized at advLIGO Wiki COC_Modeling, together with some issues to be answered.
• A new prescription is being investigated to specify the mirror surface aberration for the wave length region > 5mm. The PF optics PSD seems to show steeper slope than that of LIGO I, and the requirement of RMS may not be appropriate. A combination of surface mode expansion with beam size gaussian weight and loss table calculated using FFT each mode is studied.

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro)

• SIS analysis to quantify the comparison of beam size effects are still going. To be finished soon.

Safety

From: David Nolting   dnolting@ligo-la.caltech.edu

• No report this week – recovering from Gustav.

Quality Assurance

From: Mick Flanigan flanigan_m@ligo-wa.caltech.edu

• Continuing to test defect tracking software platforms this week.
• Submitted final revision of QA Requirements for Suppliers to review team this Monday, anticipate loading approved doc to DCC early next week.
• QA team is participating in the review of several bids for HEPI components this week.

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

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

• Assembly Clean Room bids are due next week; we have answered a number of vendor questions so there appears to be good response. Drawing packages were sent to Caltech so that the LHO Staging Building package could go out, hopefully this week. A draft of a Parts Washer RFP is in the works.
• There may need to be extensions on LLO work as contractors/bidders will be recovering from the storm fallout.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

• BSC ISI Actuator Design: The models and detail drawings for the large actuator assembly re-design are complete and sent out for quote. I now have the models for the small actuators from PSI and am working on the models and drawings for the small assemblies.
• SEI Project Activities: The quotes have been received for the HEPI crossbeam foot. The bids are to be evaluated by a committee on Friday. A purchase order has been issued  for the L4-C seismometers.  ~Ken M.

Suspensions

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

From Norna Robertson (working in Glasgow for three weeks)

Operations Work

HAM Suspensions for Advanced & Enhanced LIGO:

• Nothing significant

BSC Suspensions for Advanced LIGO:

• Work continues on documentation for the beamsplitter fabrication readiness review with target to have all documentation in place by end of this week. The review is provisionally scheduled to take place over the next couple of weeks.
• Regarding electronics, a document summarising the number of channels to be built by the Birmingham group is in preparation.
• Comments were provided on the UK Scope document which has been updated.

Project-Funded Activities

• Comments were provided on the Adv LIGO Supplier Quality Requirements draft document.

Core Optics

From: GariLynn Billingsley Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu

Development

• Tinsley has submitted an ETC including a request for additional funds.  The request is in line with expectations.

Project

• We have received a signed contract from Heraeus, they had not heard back from us on their T&C exceptions, so sent the signed copy in order to get things moving.

Auxiliary Optics

From:   Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

ADLIGO

Work Under Project Budget

• OPTICAL LAYOUT: Mike revised the ZEMAX layouts for both the folded and non-folded stable recycling cavity IFOs to allow a range of motion of 100mm for the PR2 and SR2 mirrors and 200mm for the PRM and SRM, to handle manufacturing tolerances in the ROC of those mirrors. Luke is in the process of updating the Solid Works layout.

Work Under Operations Budget

• SLC: Mike is doing a final check on the revision of the SLC conceptual design document. The document will be published shortly. Ken is tracking down the "good" source for polished stainless steel without swirl polishing marks. He is updating the parts drawings for the ELIGO AC manifold baffle prior to DCC release.
• OPTLEV: Eric B. is developing a servo model to help determine the requirements for using the optical levers for angular damping of the IFO mirrors. Tara is analyzing the pointing requirement for lock acquisition. Riccardo received cost estimates for fabricating a prototype optical lever pier out of steel. Robt. Schofield is continuing to make measurements of the movement of the End Optlev piers. Giovanni is making measurements to quantify the effect of air path turbulence on the angular noise of the Optlev transmitted beam in the CIT test.
• ETM SUS: Chris is completing a design for the ETM Suspension prototype that will be built and used to determine eddy current damping characteristics. TCS Peter F. presented a preliminary layout (made by Sam W.) for the ETM transmission monitor with the Arm Length Stabilizer beam path. Aiden and Phil will devise a way to use the arm length stabilizer path for injecting the ETM Hartmaan beam. Phil is in the process of analyzing the effect of a partially thermally shielded ITM barrel.

ELIGO

• SLC: Ken contacted the polished stainless steel baffle fabrication vendor, who confirmed there were two separate mills who supplied him with mirrored stainless steel. One of the mill's material exhibited swirl polishing marks after the oxidization bake, and the other did not. Ken is looking into ways to specify in the future that the fabricator use only the approved supplier. Ken is in the process of formatting the Eligo flat AC 'manifold' baffle parts drawings for the DCC and PDM works.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

eLIGO Comissioning

• Work has been done on the ISS characterization for the eLIGO PSL:
  • ISS beampath alignment
  • RIN measurements of the in-loop PD (SensPD) and  out-of-loop PD (MonPD)
  (Antonio - last week)

• Preparation for PSL (power control) commissioning work at LHO. (new dual TFP mount)

Advanced LIGO R&D

• Mode cleaner (MC) thermal effects have been investigated using ELIGO data. The data are not complete yet but can be extrapolated, with the conclusion that the Advanced LIGO MC will work with the expected MC coating absorption.  Work on development of Optickle model for Advanced LIGO configuration is ongoing. (Muzammil)
• Work on AdvLIGO modulators is ongoing. Also work on the parallel (Mach Zehnder) modulation apparatus. (Volker)
• Work is ongoing on the mechanical design for the  DKDP ring heaters. (Luke)

Advanced LIGO Acquisition

• Some changes are being made on the AdvLIGO blank specifications to account for consistency with drawings and among batchs. There are some needed changes to drawings also These are the fInal steps in preparing bid packages for blanks purchasing. (Rodica and Luke)

Prestabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

Operations

• Nothing significant to report.

Project

• Fabrication of a pre-modecleaner servo is near completion. Some delays were encountered because not all the leaded components were on hand. The missing ones have been ordered.  The servo will be sent to the AEI for the prototype testing.
• The performance of the functional prototype at LZH is now being monitored and logged.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

Timing System (Szabi)

• Hardware tests finished for all boards of the optical timestamp distribution system, including Master/FanOut(Front/Back), Slave, DuoTone interface, and Time Comparator interface boards. Detailed test documents were developed for all of these. Test documents were exercised on real boards. Short term end-to-end tests indicated that performance is up to specs for the prototypes. Boards are transferred to Columbia labs as Imre Bartos returned from LHO and Maxim Factourovich arrived to campus. The students are setting up long term end-to-end test system in the lab and will be writing final documentation during the next few weeks.
• There is a request for an additional $15K for the last set of prototypes. /(Note: While I had not anticipated the need for another set of timing prototypes, there are sufficient AdL DAQ R&D funds available to cover this. So, I will tell him to proceed with the clear understanding that there will be no further R&D funds available.)/

DAQ

• All comments are now in from the PDR reviewers. I am busy compiling these and developing a set of viewgraphs to address these in a PDR meeting being scheduled for the end of next week. /*Note, however, that I am on standby to fly to LLO to help them recover CDS systems once they have power restored and this may change the timing of this PDR meeting*/.

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For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini

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