Weekly Report for Week Ending October 2, 2008

Past Weekly Reports

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LSC Issues (Reitze)

• The third LSC-Virgo meeting of the year took place in Amsterdam last week, with 194 people in attendance. In addition to updates and progress on the LIGO, Virgo, and GEO detectors, instrument science and analyses, the LSC-Virgo community heard presentations on developing an opening data policy and on establishing collaborations with electromagnetic astronomers and particle astrophysicists for burst searches.  The LSC Executive Committee and Virgo Steering Committee held a joint meeting to discuss the merits of an open data policy and its impact on Virgo as well as to consider the question of external collaborations. The LSC Council also engaged in an enlightened discussion about the merits of an open data policy followed by a spirited debate on how we should go about developing external collaborations.  The Council approved a vote to allow the Burst group to initiate processes for developing formal collaborations with 4 external collaborations passed overwhelmingly.
• Also at the meeting, the LSC Executive Committee approved the CW group early S5 all-sky observational paper "All-sky LIGO Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves in the Early S5 Data".  The paper has been posted to the ArXiv: http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0810.0283 and is intended for submission to the Physical Review Letters.
• Following the main meeting, a meeting of the chairs of LSC and Virgo data analysis, calibration, detector characterization, data analysis software and computer groups took place at Nikhef to address a number of issues, including progress on S5/VSR1 analyses and papers, preparations for S6 and VSR2, LIGO-Virgo integration.  It has become evident that stresses exist within each group in trying to carry out this broad set of activities. The purpose of the meeting was to objectively examine and analyze how each group functions, to develop an understanding of internal and external stresses that compromise the ability to work efficiently, to identify bottlenecks in generating observational results and develop methods to overcome them, and finally to develop methods and insights for improving how the group functions.  A report of the meeting will be issued shortly; all felt the meeting was worthwhile and beneficial

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

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	x
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	x
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	x
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 Brownsville	DAT, OPS, OPT, OUT, Z	x
Trinity University	OPT, OUT, Z	x
Washington State University	DAT, OPS, Z	x
Wisconsin at Milwaukee, University of	DAT, OPS, Z

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

• Continued working with Property Services reviewing the FY 08 year end report for Government Property.
• Assisted P. King with requesting proper classification for a pre-mode cleaner servo and a Eurocard cage to be exported to the Max Planck Institute, Germany.
• Assisted G. Billingsley in making shipping arrangements for the Corning fused silica blanks (9) from Canton, NY to CIT.
• Had a Teleconference with Teresa Pierce, NSF Property Administrator, and discussed  the disposition of Initial LIGO elements upon decommissioning for Advanced LIGO.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

• Focused mainly on processing LSC-Virgo Collaboration talks from last week.  The majority of the talks have been processed.  Currently working on the face-to-face meetings portion.  This appears to represent only a small percentage of remaining documents to be processed.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Oracion)

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

• For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY Press Here.

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

• Working on the financial reports for the end of the fiscal year.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Arvizu, Jasnow, Salone)

See also Advanced LIGO

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

• The RFP for tiltmeters has been released to three contractors, two of whom are Italian.

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

• Extensions are being prepared for several contractor personnel prior to their possible conversion to Caltech staff.  These involve personnel from Triad, Support Services, and Northrop Grumman.  It was anticipated that these conversions would have taken place prior to October 1.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

• Submitted the Annual Report for FY 2008 LIGO Operations to the NSF.
• Submitted the GPRA reports for FY 2008 LIGO Operations to the NSF.
• Sent out a request for contributions for the end-of-September monthly report for LIGO Operations.  This report is due to be sent to the NSF on Wednesday, October 15, 2008.  I have requested inputs by Friday, October 10.
• Prepared a first cut staffing head count for LIGO staff at Caltech.

CHANGE REQUESTS (Lindquist)

• There are no open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• No report.

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Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

• Working with Linda Turner to develop a new Incident Report form for LIGO. This form replaces two Incident forms, one for laser incidents and one for all other incidents.  The new form still has a few "bugs" that are being worked on, but it is now in use for LIGO incident reporting with favorable comments.
• Discussion at the Safety Steering Committee with regard to work alone situations and what a person should do if a "problem" arises.  Consensus is that supervisors/managers must remind all personnel (frequently, at weekly staff meetings, etc.), that if a person doesn't feel well or feels "strange", that they should contact somebody and ask for help and not try to "tough-it-out" and hope that things will get better.  If this is not possible, then call 911 or "pull" the fire alarm to summon help.  Working alone after hours in labs or with hazardous materials should not be permitted, these kinds of work require a "buddy", i.e., more than one person involved.

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Computer Security (Singer)

• Reviewed monitoring and incident response capabilities with security team.
• Draftred revised memo on incident monitoring and response.

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

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

• Late last week, the IFO was still recovering after the Wednesday power outage. An oscillation was observed in MMT2. The source of the oscillation is not understood, but pulling cards from the associated rack eliminated the noise.
• As we move towards higher power in H1, TCS power through the ZnSe windows will also increase. A design was drawn up for secondary viewport protection at the TCS inputs into the vacuum.
• The reference cavity transmission on H1 has been trending downwards and is slated for a realignment.
• TCS progress: layout on TCSY was completed this week, including alignment onto the test mass. The laser has been running continuously for over a day now. TCSX too was aligned. Only final alignments and ISS work remains.
• ISI transfer functions to check controllers after the OMC installation were obtained. The work was slowed owing to CDS and Matlab instabilities, but we now have the data. We next move to sensor correction.
• stochastic and equinox event studies were posted to the elog, along with a recent a 60Hz one, which took advantage of the recent power outage to confirm that fully half of the 60Hz on the EY test mass comes from remote, transmissive sources.

Astrowatch (P. Patel)

• H2 works again, now that we power-cycled the QPD on the FMY OpLev. We discovered this looking through the suspension coils on DTT. It's been superb since, and currently has been in power up for about 19 hours uninterrupted. [D. Atkinson]
• We have been down most of the week due to problems with the FMY optical lever after the power outage. But we have fixed that since Tuesday and now have been running at the pre-power outage level of 7.0 MPc
• Satya has left us after a couple of months of work and we thank him for this service

Outreach (D. Ingram)

• LHO Outreach continues to participate in planning the program of study for the Tri-Cities STEM-focus high school that is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009. The program of study team will write final recommendations in October for consideration by the school's supervising board.

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

General Operations (Rusyl Wooley):

• We had the bid walk-through for the repair of the beam tube enclosure.  Bids are due on Monday.  We awarded the contract for the facility modifications required for Advanced LIGO to Cangelosi - Ward.  We expect them on site in a couple of weeks.
• We also opened the beam tube valves.  The x arm is open all the way to the end station.  We closed off GV10, GV1 & GV3.  This allowed us to put the cold traps on the y arm while still keeping the x arm open.  We were unable to keep both arms completely open.  We just don't have the pumping speed to keep up with tremendous hydrogen load.  I should be able to open the y arm tomorrow.  Unfortunately, we suffer from having no pumps on 5 miles of beam tube during the hottest two months of the year.

LLO CDS Computing (Keith Thorne):

• Keith was working remotely from Pennsylvania.  He will be back next week for good.     Work concentrated on documentation in CDS Wiki (jumpstart, LDAP)   .
• The problem with AWG excitations was traced to lack of NTP  servers (llo1 died on Sept 10th, llo2 on Sept 17th).  Likely related  to incorrect date on TrueTime GPS (which was corrected this week  by Doug) Rusyl recommended we wait until the CDS admin is  back on site to do the NTP server daemon restarts.

eLIGO Commissioning (Valera Frolov):

• The ISS PD saturation was fixed by reducing the light in the ISS path. Both out- and in-loop laser intensity noise on the PSL table is back to nominal.
• The OMC hardware shutter was upgraded. The OMC readout and driving electronics is being characterized.
• The ITM eigen mode tracking data was analyzed to evaluate the absorption. The resulting 2-3 ppm ITM absorption is consistent with the measurements during S5 before the optics were drag whipped.
• The ETM force to pitch decoupling was remeasured. The comparison to pre-magnet swap gain values shows a few per cent difference.
• The HAM6 ISI commissioning was hindered by CDS problems with awgstream/ntp this week.

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 also Advanced LIGO

Homestake Mine

Jan Harms, Angelo Sajeva, Vuk Mandic, Riccardo DeSalvo

Installation

• Built three seismic stations, at 300, 800 and 2000 feet in the Homestake's mine. Each with a strong concrete pad connected to undisturbed rock, and double or triple thermal, acoustic and air current isolation for the instruments, separate DAQ computer hut.  Each instrument hut is equipped with thermometers, barometer, hygrometer, triaxial magnetometer.  Found necessity for future of adding a microphone, micro-anemometer, O2 and CO monitors.
• The 800 ft station is still waiting for AC power from mine.
• Computer DAQ operational at 300 and 2000ft level, ready for installation for the 800 ft level.
• Fibers and cables pulled to all huts for computer connection.
• 300 ft operational.
• 2000 ft vertical connectivity (down the shaft) operational, horizontal connectivity (fiber) having problems with media converters, changing type, hopefully soon fully operational.
• Presently data harvested periodically from the 2000 ft level by DVD, by remote control for the 300ft.  Remote control harvesting at the 2000ft level as soon as media converter problem solved

Instrument Tests

• Installed STS-2 on the 300 ft level and monitored for several days.
• As soon as the 2000 ft level got ready moved STS-2 and two trillium 240s (on loan from nanometrics) in huddled configuration on the 2000 ft station.
• Very careful installation, learned many tricks from Nanometrics on best prectices.
• Data acquired with nanometrics' Taurus DAQ for ~ a week, then switched to our PC based DAQ.
• Moved STS-2 at the 300 ft level and left the two trilliums at the 2000ft level for ~ a month.
• Will return to return the Trilliums to nanometrics at the end of the test month.
• Comparative data between STS-2 and Trillium being analyzed.
• The 2000ft station appears to be within a factor of 3 from the quietest known places at low frequency.
• For details of activities, and a list of the many people that helped, see Angelo Sajeva's LIGO seminar G080475-00.

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Adhikari)

• Lock acquisition: The full lock of the DRFPMI was achieved in the non-springy side of the detuning. It is possible to lock the DRM to the springy side, but it does not hold long. Higher order mode resonance is under suspect. Will try to slightly change the sideband frequencies.
• PMC work: The new 18.3kHz resonance, which prevented us from increasing the UGF, was found to be associated with the way the PMC is sitting on the base. If it is pressed too hard to the base, the peak becomes larger. We took off the brick from the PMC and jiggled the PMC to find a good place where the peak disappears. Now the PMC gain can be made much larger. Spectral measurements show that acoustic peaks are also reduced.
• ISS work: The relative intensity noises of the ISS error signal and the out-of-the-loop monitor PD were measured (3e-8@100Hz). The UGF of the ISS is currently 22kHz. We want to increase it to around 60kHz but the CS drive saturates when the gain is increased. The CS saturation was caused by large high frequency (100kHz-1MHz) noise in the error signal. It is probably switching supply noise. Since our ISS board is old and bad, we are looking for a new ISS board (or cut a new one).

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Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• Greg returned from Amsterdam, where he gave the TNI update last week. Akira has been getting quotes for mirrors.

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LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

• We have spent most of this week working on stability issues. Fabrice has experimented with a number of things to see if they produce the change in frequencies of the ISI/Quad modes. It looks like we have eliminated HEPI position, ISI position and thermal effects due to the ISI actuators. We are now looking at correlations with the room temperature.

Quad Prototype

• Last week, during the LSC meeting, a large fraction of the monolithic crew was at Lasti working on the pulling and welding procedures. Alastair (Caltech), Mark (Caltech), Russell (Glasgow) and Amanda (RAL) worked on the procedures and tooling needed to move a glass fiber into place on a suspension and complete the weld.  There are a number of entries, with pictures on the Lasti ilog

http://www.ligo.mit.edu/ilog/ AdvancedLigoOptics Group Log.

The next trip to try the first test hang of a 40kg mass is planned for the weeks of October 13-24.

SEI

• Myron and Andy have removed one of the gullwings on the X-End HAM. They have also removed the boots out of the two HEPI housings which are being modified to accommodate the new support beam.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

__________________

Peter Kalmus:

• Work on the Stack-a-flare multiple SGR search continues.  The method is now characterized, and a search strategy is emerging.  Efforts are underway to produce closed box results for the SGR 1900+14 storm (March 2006).

__________________

Kent Blackburn for the GRID Computing R&D Team:

GRID APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT

• Write agenda and lead LIGO-Pegasus and OSG-VO-Group telecons,
• Write minutes for LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
• Attend Inspiral Coding,  DASWG and OSG-VO-Group telecons.
• Attend OSG Area Coordinator meeting.
• Wednesday: Visit from Karan Vahi of USC-ISI to discuss future planning for LIGO-Pegasus.

Einstein@OSG Activities

• E@H as Backfill: sent E-mail to Chris Green asking of Gratia can report backfill jobs (09/24).
• E@CLEMSON - waiting for gsissh port.

Binary Inspiral  Workflow Activities

• Nightly build test 09-29:
  • Old site schema
    • LIGO_UWM_NEMO run successful
    • tmpltbank fail at CIT_CMS_T
    • file transfer fail at BNL_ATLAS_1
  • New sites schema
  • Pegasus-plan error due to wrong architecture listed --> fixed
  • Work-flow fail due to bug in pegasus-get-sites
• Bosco as submit host:
  • File transfer fail (to Bosco) Port 2119 not open.
  • OSG VO Group activity.
  • Discussion of broad planning matters for year 3 in progress  Send e-mail to various inactive VO for status update

OSG INTEGRATION AND VALIDATION TESTBED

• New components have all arrived and are in boxes in computer room. Awaiting some  space making changes to the rack targeted for installation.

GRID MANAGEMENT

• Discussed changes in the CA distribution mechanisms with SCAT members and have made  a recommendation to adopt the full GOC distribution for OSG Services in LIGO while continuing  with the VDT Distribution of IGTF (International Grid Trust Federation) CAs on the LDG. This  recommendation was presented to the CompComm for their review and approval.
• OSG has asked for a timeline for when LIGO VO will migrate to a selected CA distribution. Some  additional clarification is needed from the OSG Security Team. Tentative guidelines for the change  were presented.
• Made recommendation as SCAT body to the CompComm regarding LSC cheerleading account  changes after LSC-VIRGO Meeting.
• Worked with LAMS account system manager to address needs for signed emails from LAMS and  an issue raised regarding the use of DOEGrids Service Certs for this purpose. The DOE is fine  with this usage model and are interested in our experiences.
• The LSC-VIRGO Meeting has triggered an unusually large number of requests for DOEGrids  certificates and LAMS accounts this week. The usual user startup problems have been see.

__________________

Antony Searle:

• Testing Omega pipeline fast Bayesian position reconstruction code on JW1 software injections in preparation for position reconstruction challenge.

__________________

Drew Keppel:

• Review items for the S5 1Yr Low Mass CBC search.

__________________

Chad Hanna:

• Kipp and I worked on the low latency pipeline.  We are finding hardware injections!
• I helped Becky a bit with her signal based veto.

__________________

Amber L. Stuver:

• Presented my work on ETG combination sensitivity to the S5Y1 MDCs to the burst group.  These results are documented at: http://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~stuver/burst/MDC/S5YR1/ In anticipation of performing this investigation again for S5Y2/VSR1 MDCs, I am in the process of commenting, generalizing and otherwise streamlining the codes that were developed to produce the Y1 results.
• Partnered with Derek Bridges to give the public tour for the local Civil Air Patrol (~15 people) and two families (~7 people).
• Gave control room tours to ~50 school students.
• Gave a facility tour to a group a 3 Pro Media personnel who have volunteered their services to produce an educational video(s) for the SEC.  Kathy Holt and I also consulted with them on our goals for this work as well as the target outcomes.

__________________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Examining the effects pulsar timing noise has on the sensitivity of wide parameter targeted searches and in particular on the Crab.

__________________

Kipp Cannon:

• Continued work on low-latency inspiral analysis techniques.
• Some lal/pylal/glue maintenance work.
• Telecons:  inspiral, inspiral code, daswg, imr.
• Submitted an abstract for a CBC talk at the Texas Symposium.

__________________

Gregory Mendell:

• After getting approval, I submitted an abstract "The LIGO Scientific Collaboration's Use Of Pulsar Timing Data" for my presentation for the LSC at the 24th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, in Vancouver BC, December 8 - 12, 2008.

__________________

Kari Alison Hodge:

• I am still developing the scripts that I will need to get the information from the xml files into the form accepted by StatPatternRecognition, the multivariate analysis program. They currently successfully use lalapps_sire and lalapps_coire to get the different types of coincidences and I'm working on extracting the parameters that I need from the tables.

__________________

Anand Sengupta:

• The slide runs for EOB vs EOBNR runs have finished.
• Generated snr vs chisq plots for these runs.
• Discovered bug in lal/tools - Submitted bug report - discussed it in the code call.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• Verification of the frameCPP library showed some incompatibilities between frameL and frameCPP. FrameCPP has been corrected where needed and the author of frameL has been notified of the frameL issues.
• Work is now progressing on identifying the coarse of action which should be taken regarding the metadataAPI issues.
• An error in cmonClient of not displaying the job number when the mouse hovers over the graph or double clicking on a point has been resolved.
• Nightly testing of LDAS on ldas-dev shows the frameAPI behaving OK with some memory leaks. If the metadataAPI behaves, job rates greater than 2000 jobs per hour have been achieved.
• System testing was done using version 1.9.436 of the software. The system level compression tests failed. This issue has been addressed and has been working since version 1.9.440.
• The regression tests pr2077.tcl, pr2088.tcl, pr2116.tcl, pr2090.tcl, pr2121.tcl, and pr2071.tcl have been integrated into the System Test framework. Sixteen regression tests remain to be converted.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

• Patched opterondata-dev (bge patch and others).
• Upgraded all CIT X4600's BIOS/ILOM/LSI firmware, etc.
• Weekly check of frame files in CIT cluster showed no new bad frames.
• Sent evalution STK T10KB tape drives back.
• Following LHO downtime due to power work, upgraded LHO FC switch firmware and implemented FC zoning.
• Got all LHO 351x boxes doing media scans after downtime.
• Worked with Greg to grow LHO's /fb0_frames filesystem (only by one JBOD tray, as it turned out).
• Tested that tapes written on T10KA drives can be read by T10KB drives.
• Helped with tape export at LLO.
• Worked on tracking down problems related to sending email from opterondata-l?o machines to the outside at sites.  LLO now working, LHO still broken.
• Got LHO samfsdumps running again.
• Fixed LSCdataFind outage after cert update (certs needed to be copied to nodes1-10).  Passed this info on to Phil.
• SMFified prestager at CIT.
• Called in failed T10KB (again)

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Replaced mainboard data6, re-cabled 3wares; replaced mainboard, pcraid unit from caltech. Both post, reloading os data6; thumper installed, posts.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• I have upgraded the LDAS hoft generation script to run on a list of nodes.  Testing has started, with the goal of running this on the A5 astrowatch data once all the issues are resolved, as a practice run for S6.
• I worked with Dan Kozak and David Barker to increase the framebuilder disk space in the mass storage room by 50%.  A further 50% increase (beyond the original space) will be possible once we get another available RAID unit to work.
• The Special Det. Char./Timing RDS running at Caltech has run through 3-4 months of the S5 data.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• In the process of tape exporting/importing the tape robot cap A door stopped responding to the push of the button on the robot's panel. SUN engineer diagnosed it as a problem with the panel and will replace it once the part arrives. While opening the case with SUN, I learned that there is a web interface to the tape robot that allows to do pretty much the same things as one can do by pushing buttons on the robot's panel plus it gives access to robot's logs. As far as I understand, all one needs to do is to connect the robot to the network and point a web browser to its ip address.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Lasti node dead, replaced mainboard, power supply seems gone too.
• Relocated gravity,lancelot. raidweb raid array rom corruption, reloaded, rebuilt; more disk space issues tubera, moving home directories.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• Continued work on new parts management system,  UI development is well under way.  database is functional and holding a small set of real data, but may need more tweaks as I progress with UI development.
• Building a Windows workstation for general use of Matlab and Comsol.
• Moving Comsol and Matlab license servers to a new host.
• Numerous usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap

Hanford

(Larry)

• Purchased some more misc. items and had them shipped to the Observatory. Renewed another s/w license.
• Modified a couple of user accounts and mail aliases.
• Assisted a couple of users in troubleshooting some setups.
• Still working on getting a Sysadmin for the Observatory.

Caltech

(Christian)

• Re-imaged laptop that were returned to the loaner pool this week.
• 3flr W/Bridge - replaced toner cartridge, fuser and transfer kit.
• Julie Hiroto - working on transferring all of Julie’s software and data files to new workstation.
• Minor tweaks on the unit in the display case.
• Ran monthly ghost backups on all NTSRV's.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Melody)

• Worked on getting the QS check feature in DocDB.
• Started the installation of the User's Manual wiki.
• Answering DocDB questions.
• Worked on the kerberos setup with DocDB. Assessing the needed DocDB code changes in order to incorporate user authentication in the system.

(Larry)

• Placed a number of orders for different people. Finished up a maintenance contract and have a few more to go. Picked up and Delivered a number of items that have arrived.
• Moving data around to the new tape system. So far it is working out pretty nice. This should free up some of the older equipment. Working on the the scripts to have things go to the new backup media. Did the backup of the home accounts.
• Started the installation of a couple of new servers that have arrived.
• Rebuilt a PC for a long term visitor. Much more time required since we can't use the LIGO or CIT s/w installs for the box.
• Resolved some printer items. Mostly replacing cartridges.
• Modifications to user aliases and setup of a couple of accounts.
• Restored a few files from the old tape system. The newer system is definitely faster.
• Regular user assistance and meeting attendance.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

From Carol Wilkinson

Project Controls

• Advanced LIGO Change Requests (ACR) in process:
  • The ACR for changes in the UK delivery of BSC suspensions has been approved and is being signed. 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 $88K.
  • The ACR for delay in PSL delivery schedule of 200 W lasers by 6 months is in preparation. Uses schedule float and does not impact project schedule for installed units. Spares will be delivered after the install date.
  • DAQ schedule update to accommodate just in time procurements is in preparation.

Procurements

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

• The contract with Corning for Advanced LIGO optics has been signed by Caltech and forwarded to the contractor.
• The contract with Heraeus for the low OH glass is awaiting Heraeus' response to OGC's determination that some of the terms and conditions taken exception to by Heraeus will have to remain in the contract.

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

• Four bids were received at LLO for the warehouse modification effort for Advanced LIGO.  The bids ranged from the low bid of $389,400.00 to $420,000.00.  The LIGO estimate was $355,000.00.  The low bidder was Cangelosi-Ward of Baton Rouge.  This is the same company that built the Science Education Center.  Since this task was added to Advanced LIGO by Change Request, it was not included in the Acquisition Plan approved by the NSF.  Since it is also in excess of $250,000.00, it will have to be submitted to the NSF for approval.
• Two req’s for seismic isolation (SEI) have been awarded this week – the actuators with Kineoptics and the crossbeam foot.
• The University of Florida Advanced LIGO contract has been signed and sent to UFL.
• A bidder has been selected for the warehouse renovations at LLO with award pending approval by NSF.
• The contract with Corning for Advanced LIGO optics has been signed by Caltech and forwarded to the contractor.
• The contract with Heraeus for the low OH glass is awaiting Heraeus' response to OGC's determination that some of the terms and conditions taken exception to by Heraeus will have to remain in the contract.

NSF Acquisition Approvals

• A request for NSF re-approval of the assembly clean rooms award (FMP) has been sent to NSF for re-approval. The award needed re-approval because of the cost savings due to a design simplification passed a cost deviation threshold limit in the cooperative agreement.
• Another approval package is being prepared for submission for NSF approval for renovations for the LLO warehouse building and cleaning facility (FMP). A winning bidder has been selected. The original procurement was estimated to be under the $250K submission limit, but exceeded it as a result of a design change request made after the submission of the acquisition plan for 2008.
• The Acquisition Plan for 2009 was submitted to NSF for procurements >$250K.  Some procurement activities for the second half of the year are not well known at this time and will need to be submitted to NSF for approval at a later date.
• LIGO has asked NSF to consider the proper path to take for procurements that exceed various thresholds and limits after the submission and approval of the yearly acquisition plan. One interpretation of the cooperative agreement is that these awards require review and approval of full procurements packages. We anticipate several such procurement changes to occur since we are still in the design phase for several subsystems. The two packages going to NSF for review this week are examples of how the FMP design change request altered plans such that pre-approved acquisitions required submission of full award packages for review and re-approval at the time of award.

Progress Updates

• Progress schedule updates for the month of October have been incorporated into the schedule.
• Monthly status reports will be posted on line by COB Friday October 3. Subsystem leads should review reports and turn in variance reports by Wednesday, October 8.

Meetings & Reviews

• The next Monthly Progress Reporting Meeting will be on Thursday, October 9 at 8:30 AM PT. Subsystem leaders or their delegates need to attend.
• The Advanced LIGO Project Advisory Board will meet with LIGO managers at MIT on October 6-7.

Advanced LIGO Systems

Dennis Coyne <coyne@ligo.caltech.edu>, Peter Fritschel <pf@ligo.mit.edu>, Calum Torrie<ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>, Matt Evans <mevans@ligo.mit.edu>

AdL Project-Funded Activities

Design Reviews: For a list of reviews, see the main AdL wiki page

• BS/FM suspension mechanical/subsystem Final Design and Fabrication Readiness Review (FDR/FRR) draft report is being prepared.
• PSL Preliminary Design Review (PDR) committee review continues.
• COC Final Design Review (FDR) committee review has just started.
• SEI HAM-ISI FDR committee review has just started.
• Participated in the Final Review at Tinsley/ASML for their COC Pathfinder effort.
• Preparing for PAP review

Procurement Reviews:

• HEPI pier RFQ review is pending..

Technical Review Board (TRB): see the TRB log

Vacuum Review Board (VRB): see the VRB log Configuration Control & Documentation:

• Calum, Linda and Dennis met to discuss required items for a DOC DB users guide, hosted on a wiki. This will be an extension of M080351. I have also been working with Mike Meyer on tidying up the documents "Synchronizing PDMWorks with DocDB" and "Organization of DocDB-Mechanical drawings". The plan is to try and keep these to 2 pages (or so) and be in the form of a list of rules.

Design:

• Optical Layout: Near final, small wedge angle layout, including transformation to local gravity vector, have been completed and a check with the 3D solid model is underway, 
• Parametric Instability (PI): Prior to crunching out modal calculations (thousands of modes) for use in Matt's code which determines good locations for passive dynamic absorbers to mitigate parametric instability I have been ensuring the model is converged. I believe it now is and have now started crunching numbers. Data on the first 100 modes has been sent to Matt.
• HAM1 (ISC output chamber) Isolation:  Calum has a draft write up of the preliminary results from a quasi-rigid body model which includes commercial  hydraulic isolators and the directional stiffnesses of the bellows -- will distribute soon.
• Cantilever Spring Process Guidance Documents: I believe we now have a process for manufacturing the blades including nickel plating which is ready for review. It can be found in section 7 of the following link: - http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/advligo/Suspensions/CantileverBlades
• Beam Splitter Suspension Wire interface: Calum is checking on the feasibility of incorporating the double prism (glass then smaller metal) concept into the BS suspension (and possible others) using solid models from RAL.

Interfaces:

• See the RODA status page and the Interface Control page.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

COC Analysis (Hiro)

• The mirror surface aberration effects are studied. Some results are posted in the COC modeling Wiki.
• One additional constraint to characterize the surface for low scattering loss is to use a rms of the surface after high pass filtered.
• The best solution would be to use a filter which best suites for our need, i.e., proportional to the loss. This is not a simple task. We should use FFT to characterize the filter to reflect the advLIGO cavity. 
• I strongly feel that, if we try this approach, the best is to ask them to run our FFT software (packaged so that they don't need to understand the details how to use the code).
• The total loss depends on the paring of the two mirror deformation. When ITM and ETM have same deformation, the total loss is not the twice of the loss estimated using one mirror. For some spatial wavelength, common (ITM and ETM have both bumps) or differential (one has bump and another has dip) can have smaller loss and the other pair can have larger than the twice of the loss estimated using one mirror. When test masses are delivered, it may be useful to make a match making, instead of making pair randomly.

Mechanical Simulation for Advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

• In our AdvLIGO Input Mode Cleaner e2e modeling, succeeded in reducing the near 10 Hz bump in the frequency noise on the MC transmitted light. It is still higher than the requirement by a factor of two at the top of the bump, though. The sharp peaks in the frequency noise spectrum at MC triple suspensions resonance (1.2 Hz and 2.8 Hz) have also been reduced. They are still factor of three higher than the requirement. 

Safety

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

• Engaged in the  PDR for the BS, PSL and HAM-ISI.
• Researching and requesting MSDS information on HD Microsystems POLYIMIDES.
• Researching and assisting with the LHO Safety Audit Action Item regarding the BTE bridge crossover for load rating.
• In the process of designing the AdL Safety Wiki Page…hopefully in a week or so there will be some useful information to help the AdL team members.

Quality Assurance

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

Design Reviews

• PSL:  There was some questions raised on test plans. While recognized as important, these did not appear to be a gating issue during the PDR. Have requested times to meet with some of the PSL team next week.
• BS/FM: Participated in the PDR, and submitted a set of questions around testing, validation of hardware. Also want to bring to the forefront the focus on installation instructions.
• Ham ISI: Just beginning the PDR process now, reading up on the systems and forming questions for team. Noted some interesting chemicals being used and notified Safety of these, and the potential MSDS requirements.
• COC:  Just beginning the PDR process, reading up on the systems now.

Procurements

• Finished document M080352, Standard QA Requirements for RFQ's. This boilerplate will help the procurements team ensure appropriate QA requirements are given to the potential suppliers bidding on the work. This document is designed as a general template, and may need to be modified for each RFQ sent out to reflect the type of work being done. This document was sent to DCC team for upload this past Monday. There will be links to it from the QA Wiki: http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/ Quality_%26_ Design_for_Test

QA Programs

• Parts DB: Expansion of the backend DB has been proposed to include inspection reports, traveler reports, project identifiers and a modification history. Will be working with team this coming week to iron out the last requirements for an initial system and work with Dwayne to implement the changes to the DB schema. Once this is completed, we can focus on the UI.
• Defect tracking: QA is in the process of looking more closely at a single software called JIRA for our defect tracking needs. It has the capability of acting as a bug tracking system with links to CVS and SVN, and also has a module that is an issues tracker, for physical problem. This is one of the few software packages found that actually treats software bugs and everything else separately. It also has a remote DB call plug-in that will pull in parts and component information from the Parts DB under construction. It also has reasonable costs and runs on almost any DB platform and OS environment.
• Calibration: During talks with team members the past few weeks it is pretty clear that a "calibrate everything" plan is not what we are going for, and it is not in the financial or staffing interest of LIGO. However several of us agree an audit of instruments that could be calibrated should take place. Once LLO and LHO have a handle on what instrumentation they have on hand, we can move to identify what devices we should put on a calibration program. I expect this to be a quite small subset of the instruments we actually have on hand.

Travel

• I will be in LLO the week of 10/6/2008 to work with Dwayne Giardina on the Parts DB backend and Frontend designs. We will also be developing a schedule for initial roll out and feature enhancement.
• Tentatively planning to visit NextIntent in October sometime, but is going to be dictated by Joe LaCour's schedule for visit as well. Will post travel dates as soon as they are firm.

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

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

• Bids for the LLO Warehouse Modifications were opened this week at LLO.
• Next step - NSF approval.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

BSC Actuator Redesign

• The large actuator assembly parts for the LASTI BSC ISI were ordered and machining is in process.
• NorCal contacted to say that the new vacuum chamber for the additional STS-2 on the BSC ISI at LASTI is almost complete. It will ship soon to LLO for cleaning and assembly.
• The replacement polyimide for the ISI actuator wire coil coating needs to undergo material testing and approval for use in Advanced LIGO. We are working to obtain a sample for testing. ~ Stephany

SEI Project Activities

• We have been preparing for the HAM-ISI PDR by pulling together various pieces of documentation and writing some new procedures. We now have all documents posted on the advanced ligo wiki.
• Unfortunately, due to a problem with the NTP server on the CDS system we cannot run the awg excitation engine. This means that ISI commissioning is on hold. We expect the problem to be fixed Monday. ~ Brian O.
• Most hardware is in hand for the HEPI pump stations or at fabricators--only a minor bits of assembly done while waiting for shop output. ~Hugh R.
• Purchase orders have been issued to Kineoptics for the HEPI actuators and to Limerick Machine for the HEPI crossbeam foot.

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

• Small and large triple suspensions: it was agreed that a joint preliminary design review will be held in November.
• Blades will shortly be sent out for nickel plating. These will include a variety of sizes of blades for suspensions and a blade from the SEI group.

BSC Suspensions for Advanced LIGO

Quad:

• Follow-up is being carried out following last week's visit to LASTI of staff from Glasgow, RAL and Caltech for welding tests. Useful tool - webcam has been set up there so that remote participation is possible. The next trip for Caltech and Glasgow staff is likely to be starting 13 Oct.
• A  UK/US telecon was held to discuss assembly and alignment tooling for both mechanical and glass assemblies with the aim of sorting out who is responsible for which parts and which parts are not yet complete or need redesigning. A spreadsheet will be prepared building on documents already put together by RAL and Glasgow. When this is ready, comments and advice will be sought from a wider audience and comparison will be made to assembly procedure documents to ensure that all stages of assembly are covered.
• Jay Heefner visited Birmingham last week to work with Ron Cutler on various aspects of the UK electronics for the quad and triple suspensions, including design work and discussion of test plans and schedules.

Project-Funded Activities

• ACR-080006 SUS BSC Schedule & Budget Revision has been finalised.
• Mechanical test stand PO has been prepared but not yet sent out.
• Plans are being made for four LIGO staff to visit RAL in early December for training on assembly of the beamsplitter suspension.

Core Optics

From: GariLynn Billingsley Billingsley_G@ligo.caltech.edu

Development

• The Final Review of the Tinsley Pathfinder took place on Thursday, October 2.
• QED has submitted their final invoice but continues to work on the pathfinder "for their own information". There will be a summary meeting with them in mid-October.
• The Final Design review for Core Optics commences October 10.  Documents under review can be found at http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/COC_Final_Design_Review

Project

• The Corning contract is being signed and sent to Corning.  Corning is ready to deliver 9 of 12 pieces.

Auxiliary Optics

From:   Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

ADLIGO

Work Under Project Budget

• OPTICAL LAYOUT: Mike published the latest revision to the optical layout, T080078-04, Stable Recycling Cvity Mirror Coordinates and Recycling Cavity Lengths, and a description of the tilt angles of the PR and SR telescope mirrors in the local coordinate system, T080258-00 Recycling Cavity Mirror Normal Vectors for H1, H2, and L1 in the ADLIGO System WIKI http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/advligo/OptomechanicalLayout .
• COST BOOK: Mike made a cost estimate for a new ETM Telescope with 195mm clear aperture, anticipating that the baseline aperture for the ETM transmission beam will increase and require that new ETM telescopes be built for ADLIGO.

Work Under Operations Budget

• SLC: The CES machine shop completed fabrication of the prototype elliptical baffle suspension. Ken is designing a compliant mount for the suspension so that it can be easily vibrated for testing. Mike helped Ken design an undamped flexure support for the elliptical baffle suspension, which will be used as a reference suspension for comparing the elastomeric flexure design under test. The CES shop is making the new parts.
• ETM SUS: The ETM Suspension test-prototype is being made in the CIT Aero machine shop.
• VIBRATION TEST FACILITY: Calum et al have located all the components needed for a preliminary vibration measurement of the elliptical baffle suspension. In the future, special mounting bracketry may be designed and mounted to the wall of the high bay area in Lauritsen for making more sensitive transfer function measurements of suspensions.
• TCS: Aidan finished the upgrade of the TCS table. The alignment of the TCS beam into the IFO is in progress. Doug Cook has circulated a preliminary design of the ZnSe viewport protection window assembly for review.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

Advanced LIGO Development

• High power tests have been conducted at Hanover on the Advanced LIGO EOM. The EOM was tested at 140 W with a beam of ~465 micron radius. The modulation depth and mode analysis measurements were done with a diagnostic board with a 250 finesse cavity. The results showed no power dependence for the carrier and the 9.15 MHz sidebands. The sidebands are really strong; the modulation index was estimated to 1.3 using the formula for small index 4*sqrt(I_sb/I_carrier).
• There is some weak thermal lensing observed at 140 W compared to 20 W. This could be very well assigned to other optical elements in the setup, and reference measurements without the EOM will be performed next to determine this. The temperature of the modulator was measured with a thermocouple connected to one of the unused electrodes and showed a few degree increased from 24C to 28C in 30 min, as the modulator was exposed to 140 W.  (Volker, Hsin-Jung)
• We are looking into the possibility of moving the Faraday isolator outside the vacuum. The main problem this causes is frequency noise in the input mode cleaner. This was a problem in Virgo until recently, but after a quick comparison with the Virgo numbers, the AdvLIGO-MC seems to do much better, due to its more forgiving geometry.  A thorough analysis of the light scattering in the mode cleaner has begun. (Rodica)

Advanced LIGO Procurement

• The first draft of the polishing specifications for both configurations (folded, unfolded) have been finished, based on the recommendations and suggestions from the Procurement Review Committee. We will try to contact vendors next week to discuss some of the most critical specs for the mode cleaner optics. (Rodica)

Prestabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

Operations

• Nothing significant to report.

Project

• Hardware for a prototype beam dump is in.  I just need to put things together.  It will be sent to LLO for testing in the near future.
• Some quadrant photodiodes have been ordered from OSI Optoelectronics.
• A revised PSL laser safety plan is near completion.  A few sections need to be changed as the original was written before the installation of the EnL Laser.
• The first draft of the failure modes effects and analysis was completed.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

• No report this week.

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For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini

tten before the installation of the EnL Laser.

The first draft of the failure modes effects and analysis was completed.

Control and Data Systems

From: Rolf Bork rolf@ligo.caltech.edu

• No report this week.

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For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini