The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday, October 27, 2008 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

1. Announcements

2. Programmatic (Marx)

Status Report for Enhanced LIGO (Adhikari)

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 (Adhikari)
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 CW Powerflux paper "All-sky LIGO Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves in the Early S5 Data " has been submitted to Physical Review Letters.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

For status of MOUs press here.

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

Assisted J. Miller and R. DeSalvo with requesting proper classification for a Laser System to be sent out for repairs.
Assisted G. Billingsley in making shipping arrangements for the Corning fused silica blanks from Canton, NY to CIT.
Assisted M. Woods at MIT in making shipping arrangements for one fiberglass container from MIT to Limerick, MA.
Reviewed freight and shipping invoices for August and September.
Assisted J. Worden at LHO by screening the GSAXcess equipment database for a Forklift.
Working in the FY '08 Real Property and Vehicle Annual Reports for LHO and LLO.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

Continued to review and refine Wiki helps for the new docDB system with Calum, Dennis, and Melody.
Wrote procedures for assembling electronic RFQ's/bid packages.
Worked with Rich Riesen on the use of the new Incident Report; compiled suggestions for further training and/or revision.
Working on chart which highlights differences between the current DCC system and docDB for legacy purposes.
Working on defining a policy and process for redaction for certain documents prior to upload.
Writing a procedure for the signature and release of an End Item Package for AdvLIGO contracts.
Worked with Safety on best way to keep sites informed of recent reports. Will publish updated report spreadsheet and distribute each Monday. This will give them the opportunity to see if there are any missing reports as well as the opportunity to keep abreast of other sites.
Working at providing charts that will show how many and what type of reports have occurred by quarter for the past fiscal year.

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

Processed MOU attachments from University of Texas Brownsville, Penn State, Rochester Institute of Technology, Sonoma State University and Institute of Applied Physics Russian Academy of Science.
Processed a number of Safety reports.
A little more DocDB pre-release testing.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Oracion)

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

For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY Press Here.

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

Prepared current list of open encumbrances for LIGO Operations and Advanced LIGO.
Worked with C.Akutagawa to resolve issues concerning the Oracle labor upload.
Currently preparing FY 2009 LIGO Operations budget for Oracle upload.
List of new FY 2009 LIGO Operations accounts can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/docuserv/FY2009_LIGO_Operations_PTAs.pdf
Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl).

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Arvizu, Jasnow, Salone)

See Advanced LIGO

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

We prepared a revised estimate-at-completion for the LIGO Operations cooperative agreement that we have just completed and presented the information during the meeting of the executive committee on Monday, October 20, 2008. We have also prepared and distributed a list of open commitments. Task managers have been requested to review and scrub the list.
We continue to work with the COGNOS people to develop reporting for the new cooperative agreement. We showed an example report to the Executive Committee on Monday. We are preparing the Operations budgets to be entered into ORACLE.

CHANGE REQUESTS (Lindquist)

There are no open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

No report.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

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

Completed a walk-around look at LIGO Caltech campus labs to assess what corrective actions are needed before Fire Marshall Inspection. There is one major concern regarding possible fire-code violation in the areas that have overhead fire sprinklers partially blocked by laser enclosures, clean rooms, or HVAC ducting. The Caltech safety office representative indicated that PMA may have to add or relocate sprinkler nozzles to satisfy code requirements. Another suggestion was to consider built-in inert gas fire suppression systems (localized to each enclosure) to avoid water damage to electronic equipment in the laser enclosures and clean rooms.

ADVANCED LIGO SAFETY IS BEING REPORTED UNDER ADVANCED LIGO, BELOW

Computer Security (Singer)

No report.

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

Summary of Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory
(compiled by K. Kawabe)

eLIGO commissioning

Some problem of the LSC frontend code routing OMC signal to ASI was found and then fixed. It turned out that this was the cause of our difficulty in handing off the RF Michelson to DC, but it was not the cause of handing off the full IFO to DC.
CM servo was identified as one of the problems (preventing us from increasing the DARM offset as large as we like). After reducing the CM gain we tried several things including reducing the OMC PZT dither, and finally the full H1 IFO was locked with OMC. The noise is not good for now and we'll continue noise hunting.
Further enhancement in frontend code to make the handoff from RF to DC easier.
Some data on using OMC refl QPDs as AF wave front sensors.
X arm TCS output was calibrated.
Images of 4K ITMs were posted to the elog.

Astrowatch

H2 has been running smoothly over the last week, with the exception of the weekend, when computer problems made it hard to keep H2 up and also resulted in no data being recorded for about half a day.
Despite these problems, H2's uptime was 54.6% and science time was 29.4%, which is about what we've been averaging. Miquel and Llucia from UIB Mallorca Spain are here and are undergoing training.

Outreach (Ingram)

LHO hosted a 1.5-day teacher workshop on 10/17-18 for teachers from the Chelan area in northern WA. 120 5th graders from Kennewick visited on 10/21.

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

General Operation (Rusyl Wooley)

This week we are supporting the upgrade work of TCS and the PSL.
The warehouse is essentially empty and ready to begin aLIGO modifications.

CDS Computing (Keith Thorne)

Sys-Admin:

Restored normal access to ops scripting computer (control3).
Both LLO framebuilders now accessible remotely over NDS.
Ongoing documentation of procedures (as they are learned).
Added accounts as needed (Carl Adams).

Commissioning Support:

Added channels for HAM6 pressure, watchdog monitoring.
Added WFS DC mon channels.
Tracked down awgstream update for Jeff Kissel Upgrades.
Worked on backup server (llo3), raid array prior to llo1 swap-out.
Planned control3 decommissioing.

Safety & Security (Rich Riesen)

Working with the TCS commissioning team as well as the PSL commissioning team concerning laser safety. Both teams are meeting laser safety protocol with a high awareness for safety and good shop practices.
Scheduled personnel fire extinguisher training for LLO staff beginning the first part of November.
Completed the new Laser Hazard Transition Procedure and posted.
Set-up two entrance baseline laser eye exams for our new employees.
Restocking site first-aid cabinets, and replacing items that have met their expiration dates.
Replacing missing or damaged Warning and Caution signs throughout the site.

LLO Outreach (Kathy Holt)

We hosted a two day teacher workshop for (34) teachers from the New Orleans Recovery District.
Participating in the workshop were LSU SPS students (demo's), LSU BREC BRAS Observatory (telescopes), and LSU Astronomy and Physics Dept.(Star lab and lecture).
Prepared and mailed final surveys to Copper Mill Elementary.
Hosted 8 ULL SPS students, and 1 Physics professor for tour.
Prepared and conducted 3 school visits 106 students.
Finished scheduling for the fall and spring semester.
Continuing to work on Sally Ride Activities.
Burned photos from school visits for website and schools.
Completed programs for school visits next week.
Prepared for Docent Training next 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)

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Adhikari)

An AD797 (U10 in the PC path)on the FSS board was found to be oscillating. It was replaced with an AD829. Once a phase compensation capacitor was implemented, the oscillation was mitigated. We also replaced another AD797 on the board with an AD829 just in case. During the work, to see the stability of the op-amps, a LISO model of the FSS circuit was made. It can be useful for noise estimation, stability analysis, etc. It can be found in the 40m SVN.
Currently, the FSS UGF is about 400kHz (before the recent FSS works, it was less than 200kHz). With the increase of the FSS UGF, now the MC open loop transfer function does not have a bump at around 100kHz, which used to limit the bandwidth of the MC loop. Currently the MC loop's UGF is about 70kHz. This should now re-enable good CM servo action for interferometer locking.
Steve measured the divergence of the new HeNe laser for ITM optical levers. Then Yoichi calculated necessary lens focal lengths and locations for focusing the beam on the QPD.
Alberto wrote a python script to run the absolute length measurement automatically. This entails controlling the HP RF analyzer (8591E) and the IFR (previously Marconi) 2023A that is in use at the sites; by purchasing a few of these cheap GPIB-Ethernet boxes we should be able to make some of the laser noise couplings for Enhanced LIGO automated.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

Nothing significant to report this week. Eric and Tara went to Hanford to work on optical levers, and Akira is writing a paper.

LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

All 12 low-f blend control loops are now running, although there is a disagreement between the tilts on stage 1 (rX & rY) and vertical stage 2 so that they don’t want to run at the same time. That will be the next thing to work on.
We had some problems with plant stability this week. We saw an odd change around 4 Hz that lasted for a few days and made the blend filters unstable. We haven’t been able to isolate the source so that needs more work also. There is an entry on the Lasti ilog detailing this. http://www.ligo.mit.edu/ilog/ (Lasti Group Log).

Quad Prototype

Alastair (Caltech), Russell (Glasgow), Mark B. (Caltech) and Giles (Glasgow) have been visiting this week working towards a hanging the metal dummy masses from glass fibers.
They have spent time investigating crossed polarizer’s for characterizing the thermal stresses in the welds and ears, exploring butt welds vs. the base line lap welds, testing the recipe for drawing fibers to the correct length and testing the cutoff tooling, developing a procedure for leveling the test masses, and probably a number of other things that I am missing. There are many entries detailing their progress on the Lasti ilog. http://www.ligo.mit.edu/ilog/ AdvancedLigoOptics Group Log).
There is also a report posted by Giles on some new results from Glasgow on the vulnerability of the current test mass ears to the fiber breaking. Due to this we have postponed trying to hang a mass while some more research is conducted at Glasgow. There is also a new schedule/plan proposed there.

SEI

The second gullwing on the X-end HAM has been removed along with the HEPI boots, which have been sent off for remachining. We are waiting for some final clamp parts that attach the new support beam (external support) to the support tubes (In vacuum). When they arrive we will begin reassembling the HAM with the new support beams.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

______________________

Antony Searle:

Completed Position Reconstruction Challenge running:
- https://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~acsearle/prc/prc.html
- 1 degree median error for sine-Gaussian injections
With Chad Hanna, integrating Bayesian source localization into CBC followup pipeline * With Massimo Tinto, revising large Bayesian paper for resubmission.

______________________

Kipp Cannon:

Continued with s4 cosmic string cusp review.
Continued working on low-latency inspiral analysis techniques.
Inspiral-related maintenance work in lal/lalapps.
Telecons: inspiral, inspiral code, imr, daswg.
Visited Perimeter Institute to attend seminar by Xavier Siemens.

______________________

Peter Kalmus:

Continued development of stack-a-flare SGR search.
S5y1 SGR paper is within PRL length limit and should be deadlined within the next week.

______________________

Diego Fazi:

Carried on investigations on the background trigger rate for PTF with different SNR thresholds.
Started bank simulations with both PTF and SPA to test efficiency in recovering spinning injections in the absence of noise.

______________________

Kent Blackburn for the GRID Computing R&D Team:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Write agenda and lead LIGO-Pegasus and OSG-VO-Group telecons.
Write minutes for LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
Attend Inspiral, DASWG, OSG-Production and OSG-VO-Group telecons.
Attend Eathquake prep seminar: 'Shake out'.
Attended third OSG LIGO Science milestones telecon.
Open GOC ticket concerning ReSS query and Glue Schema attributes.

E@OSG ACTIVITIES

CIT_CMS_T2 trouble shooting: can't find Time/HiRes perl module\.
Re-deployed code on headnode, it is running okay.
Re-deployed code on WN.
Open GOC ticket NWICG_NotreDame.

BINARY INSPIRAL ACTIVITIES

Got newest pegasus nightly build 10-16.
Tested new rc-client for conversion of sites catalogue to new schema, it is working okay.
Tested SPEW on ldg with new site schema: cit, lho good, uwm_nemo, llo but it is failing.
Tested ihope on ldg with new site schema, still troubleshooting.

BOSCO AS A SUBMIT HOST

SPEW application running on LIGO_UWM_NEMO's OSG Head Node.
Getting Pegasus nightly build from 10-16.
Testing sc client to convert sites catalogue to new format.
Testing SPEW on cit.
Troubleshooting ihope on ldg.

OSG INTEGRATION/VALIDATION TESTBED

Robert Engel reported that his visa has finally been approved. He will begin work on November 3rd.
Robert has registered to attend the OSG site administrator workshop to be held at SLAC on November 13th and 14th.
Robert and Kent worked on several architectural issues associated with the new ITB cluster, including use of Virtual Machines to isolate services on the head node and to allow multiple flavors of gatekeepers. Also discussed remote access tools to support the remote administration of the cluster.

GRID MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

The Caltech Statement of Work is being re-evaluated by the OSG Executive Director regarding science scope. This will require additional conversations to resolve.
Britta and Kent held several phone calls with Patrick Brady, the LIGO OSG Council Representative to discuss year 3 science goals for LIGO on the OSG the decision is to focus on Einstein@Home. Details are still to be worked out with CompComm and OSG.
Organized the kick-off meeting with the OSG All-Hands Program Committee for the All-Hands Meeting to be held at LLO in March 2009. The kick-off meeting will be this Friday.
Tested out a service certificate issued by an Italian CA that provided certificates to .edu domains for free. These certs are already recognized by browsers the way commercial certs from verisign and the likes are recognized. This was in support of the AuthComm Project.
Held the weekly SCAT Teleconference and posted the meeting minutes on the CompComm website.
Worked with a number of users that were experiencing difficulties requesting and using their user certificates.

______________________

Cristina Valeria Torres:

Travel to UTB to work with S. Mukherjee to continue developing multi-dimensional glitch pipeline for on-line use in S6.
Continue to edit the CBC follow-up document with R. Gouaty, S. Caudill and G. Gonzalez.
Work with SEC, assisting with a tour and a teacher enrichment workshop.

______________________

Amber L. Stuver:

Made progress on a wrapper for the delayRatio project that will include physical likelihood estimates for candidate GW events given a range of errors in the measured SNR and detection delay.
Adapted codes I wrote for the delayRatio project to determine the exact solution for possible sky locations of a source given a time delay between 2 detectors to also be able to interpolate the two possible source locations for given time delays between 3 detectors. This allows for very quick source location estimation given only timing delays between 3 detectors. This will also be adapted to account for timing errors.
Gave a tour with an extended Q&A period for a teacher professional development group (~50 teachers) and helped with the evening activities.
Gave a short control room tour to a group of SPS students (~7) from LSU who were on site to give demonstrations for the teachers at the professional development event above.
Gave an extended control room and LVEA tour to a group of SPS students (~15) from the Univ. of Louisiana, Lafayette.
Gave control room tours for students on school visits (~80 high school students).
Was invited by the Highland Park Observatory to give a Friday evening public talk and confirmed for 7 Nov.
Completed a nearly final draft for the APS education document on LIGO and discussed graphics options with the coordinator.

______________________

Joseph Betzwieser:

Working on a general wide parameter pipeline as well as continuing to test the ComputeFStatistic_resamp code.

______________________

Anand Sengupta:

Testing and implementing code to read calibration frame files.
Changes to inspiral program to analyze DARM_ERR data instead of h(t) data.
Started creating a wiki page regarding the h(t) and h(f) comparison.
Reviewed code changes submitted by Craig (PR 2011).

______________________

Chad Hanna:

Working with Antony, Romain and Sukanta on putting source localization into the followup pipeline. We are getting close.
I have also continued my investigations on the bankveto efficacy for the S5 high mass search.

______________________

Drew Keppel:

Developing a more sophisticated way to combine IFARs across categories for CBC searches.
Addressing actions items related to the review of the S5 First Year Low Mass CBC Search.
Addressing comments on the S5 First Year Low Mass CBC Search paper.

______________________

Igor Yakushin:

Per coherent waveburst reviewers' request, working on livetime checks and S5 first year trigger publication.
Testing the new version of the coherent waveburst with improved source position reconstruction.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

The focus this week has been on the release of version 1.10.0 of LDAS. The software has been built and the tarballs and documentation have been posted. The web page for the system test results is still being worked on as the tests were run late in the week. The source RPM was generated and submitted for inclusion into the lscsoft testing repository. The resource files for cit, mit, lho and llo have been updated.
Other efforts included optimizing the computation of job end times by removing unnecessary conversions of gps times to utc times and then converting back to gps time from the utc time.
The procedure to uninstall DB2 has been documented in the ldas database web page.
The nightly loop tests on ldas-dev ran without errors. The System Tests all passed except for 2. The 2 that failed were because of operator error.
The ldas-test system continues to run well. It has version 1.10.0. There were two observed failures. One of the failures was from the datacond reporting no such symbol and the other was from the frameAPI unable to access a frame file.
The integration of the regression tests into the SystemTest nears completion. This week see the inclusion of pr1993.tcl, pr1992.tcl, pr1940.tcl, pr1916.tcl, pr1820.tcl, pr1775.tcl, and pr1705.tcl. Only three regression tests remain.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

ldas-jobs kerberized, data2 is online raid-6 w\ 1 hot spare; testing watchdog daemons on pcraids.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

Upgraded ldas-jobs web server to CentOS 5.2 and configured it for the new kerberos authentication.
Backed up LDAS databases at LLO, LHO, CIT, MIT.
Upgraded metaserver and datacon to CentOS 5.2 in preparation for LDAS upgrade.
Installed and patched QFS on ngateway.
Created corrected S5 L1 nonscience lfn files.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

Verified that trend data and astrowatch data are up-to-date in the LDAS archive at LHO, LLO, and CIT as of Oct. 17, 2008. I will be checking on this again, after LDAS upgrades finish this week.
Framebuilder downtime does produce small gaps in the astrowatch data. I have reconfigured the scripts at LHO to get data from the old framebuilder as a backup when the new framebuilder is down.
Working with LDAS, the ldas-jobs web server at LHO has been upgraded to CentOS 5 and now uses LIGO.ORG Kerberos authentication.
A replacement for the failed Loop ID switch on a 3511 raid box has been shipped.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

Numerous xp issues: reinstalls; video; bad disks; 4GB ram issues on g33 chipset.
Finishing up ilog.
Setting aside some equipment for disposal (recycle).
Working on lasti file server replacement.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

Implemented newly designed parts DB, populated some tables with data, began developing redesigned UI.
Issues with new Comsol License server, I made a mistake with the new license request. It has been corrected and appears to be functional.
Helped a user with issues resolving UWM hosts.
Purchased 6 licenses for AutoCAD 2008, the first of which was installed on new EE laptop.
Installed Altium Designer on same new EE laptop.
Ordered a new MacBook Pro for a user.
Installed software on a different new MacBook Pro, and migrated user files.
Reset a VPN user password.
Restricted access to a directory on a web server to local IPs only.
Requested quote for an additional Matlab toolbox.
Booked trip to CIT for 11/17 - 11/21.
Numerous usual/unusual user support requests.
Cleared spam trap daily.

Hanford

(Larry)

Reset mail spam filters. Still some more work to do but there has been improvement on spam removal.
Installed/replaced memory on a couple of computers.
Worked on trouble shooting a couple of notebook units. One has to be sent back to Apple to be repaired. Fortunately, we had a unit that just became available for the end-user so they can continue working.
Repaired a couple of accounts.
Setup a couple of new accounts, one being on a local desktop.
Working on a couple of logistical issues for the ALIGO Ares group.
Various meetings going over logistics and purchases with different people.
Getting things lined up for the interview candidate.
Tracking a couple of procurement items.

(Mike)

Working the dhcp server freeing up expired IP numbers.
Clearing out trapped spam on their mail server.

Caltech

(Christian)

Gina Salone - Finished transferring all of Gina's files and setting to new workstation.
Julie Hiroto - Restored missing files from old workstation.
Jay Marx - Created image backup of Jay's Macbook pro laptop.
Re-imaged two laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Veronica)

Videotaped and processed for streaming a presentation on laser safety. Per Ed J., for compliance verification, installed a web form for the streaming video of LIGO market research presentation. Later it was indicated that additionally, compliance assurance would be established at a follow-up personnel meeting.
Web support for the upcoming NSF review.
Migration to the new LV password.
Updated Travel section of the Internal pages; other web updates/user support (undergraduate projects, employment pages, roster d/b etc); ligo.org updates/support.

(MIke)

Finished up the test server for SolidWorks 2009. I have our current vault copied over to this box as well. After looking into the Hardware Compatibility List for SW09 it looks like our current server will be able to handle the pdmworks 09 admin software. The Engineering workstations may have to be upgraded. We may being going forward with this upgrade after the holidays in Jan 09. More testing and planning on this is in the works.
ADVLIGO: New server build. Secured this server and loaded Terminal server. I also started setting up user accounts. Now to start loading Primavera and PrismPM. This is on going.
Worked on moving a user over to a new laptop.
Some work on hardware issue with a X2200 Sun computer.
Other user support and misc. sysadmin tasks.

(Melody)

Installed Bugzilla as the DCC trouble ticketing system. Users log in with their ligo.org username and password.
Fixed the hostname mismatch error in the certificates when using SSL on a DNS alias.
Current DCC Google customized search organizes the documents into their respective document types.
Working on incorporating the roster ligo.org accounts into DocDB. DocDB will assign the appropriate groups.

(Larry)

Still working on some of the licensing renewals for different s/w pkgs. being used.
Worked on some of the EVO recordings. The audio works well but the video does get degraded at various times. Also, working on other EVO logistical issues.
Minor updates on a couple of servers. Updated the spam filters but still have some work to do there. One alias still getting more through than it should.
Setup another new account and cleaned up some of the mail aliases.
Regular user assistance.

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 delay in PSL delivery schedule of 200 W lasers by 6 months will be processed at the end of October and implemented in November. Uses schedule float and does not impact project schedule for installed units. Spares will be delivered after the install date.
- DAQ schedule update for a 2 months’ earlier than planned production start for coding and to accommodate just in time procurements is ready for approval and signatures. No significant budget impact expected; no change in major milestones.
- An ACR to add HEPI units to the output readout HAMs per request by the ISC subsystem is in preparation, pending a RODA that HEPI is the isolation of choice. Budget in ISC for seismic isolation of these chambers will be transferred from ISC to SEI HEPI. No significant change in budget or schedule milestones anticipated.
- ACR to consolidate the clean and bake activities in the assembly staging activity in Facility Mods. and Prep is in preparation, with expected implementation in November. Labor in the individual subsystems will be collected and moved to FMP. Expectation that more labor hours will be needed.

Staffing

A draft hiring and assignment plan for assembly work at the sites was discussed by the site deputies, the project manager, the subsystem leads and lead assemblers for SEI, FMP, and SUS. Site leads are preparing job ads and statements of work for contractors and term employees to fill the identified slots. The majority of new hires will be brought on board in the Feb-Mar time frame, with additional staff added late summer 2009.

Procurements

For Bert:

Working on procurement plan for FY2009 and presentations for NSF Annual Review of LIGO Lab in November.
The assembled RFQ package for HEPI Small Machined Parts, SI-106-d, is waiting approval from Dennis Coyne before it can be processed for release to bidders.
HEPI HAM Piers, SI-106-a, RFQ package is undergoing review by Dennis Coyne before it can be processed for release to bidders.

For Ed:

The contract for the warehouse improvements for LLO has been submitted to the NSF via FastLane. The winning contractor is Cangelosi-Ward.
A teleconference is being set up to speak directly to Heraeus personnel in Germany to discuss the continuing disagreement regarding terms and conditions.
We continue to interview candidates for two procurement positions, and are prepared to make an offer to fill Guy Fish's position.

For Gina:

The contract with ARES to definitize the letter contract is waiting for approval by CIT procurements.
Discussions with Praxair have resolved differences concerning the Terms and Conditions, and their contract will be issued October 24.
Discussions continue with MIT regarding their Operations Subaward. A teleconference is scheduled October 24 to compare the Operations Subaward with the Advanced LIGO Subaward and resolve any differences.

For Rudy:

One bid, from Galli and Morelli, was received for the R&D tiltmeter procurement. Award will be made for the first phase.
Invitations to Bid were released for the Staging Building modifications at Hanford. A job walk is scheduled for October 30, with bids due on November 11.
Assembly Clean Rooms - FM-144 - were awarded Oct 21 after NSF approval.

NSF Acquisition Approvals

The negotiation summary and the contract for the warehouse modifications for LLO have been submitted via Fastlane for NSF review and approval.
LIGO is waiting for approval of the Acquisition Plan for FY2009. The procurement team members have responded to another set of questions from Ann Miller on our plans for selecting and qualifying bidders for the awards in the FY2009 Acquisition Plan.
Ann Miller, our NSF Grants Administrator, has agreed that an updated acquisition plan should be submitted at six month intervals in order to prevent the need for re-approvals based on changing design requirements as development progresses.
LIGO is waiting for responses in writing from NSF on the six month submission as well as two other action items: the format and content of acquisition review packages for planned procurements that have not yet been sent out for quotes and bids; and a letter stating that recombining or breaking up procurements that have been pre-approved is allowable as long as the conditions in the cooperative agreement are still met.

Progress Updates

Time verification reports for the current pay period are due by Friday October 24.
Progress schedule updates for the month of October are due October 29.

Meetings & Reviews

The next Monthly Progress Reporting Meeting will be on Thursday, November 13 at 8:30 AM PT. Subsystem leaders or their delegates need to attend. Note that the monthly report is due November 14, so reports need to be in finalized format by this meeting.

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.
COC Final Design Review (FDR) committee has met twice; an interim report regarding polishing is being prepared. A draft specification for a large aperture measurement interferometer has been released for committee review.
SEI HAM-ISI FDR committee review is underway; next step is team's response to committee questions

Procurement Reviews:

HEPI pier RFQ review is pending.
HEPI machined parts RFQ revised and being checked

Technical Review Board (TRB): see the TRB log

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

Continuing to check the beta release of docDB. Have a draft wiki for "What to do with the doc DB" and "Engineering workflow" which is under review.

Design:

Optical Layout: A check with the 3D solid model is underway. Mike Smith calculated tolerances for BS wedge angle for COC specification; tolerance on clocking angle is pending.
Parametric Instability (PI): Calum has now 3000 modes (to 91 kHz). An additional 1000 modes (to get to 100 kHz) is underway.
Suspension wire interface: Norna and Calum created a document summarising the proposed designs for the interface between the wires and the optic for all optics on wire loop suspensions in Advanced LIGO. After internal review this will be released.
HAM1/7 isolation: While checking the technical memo on the calculated performance of a commercial pneumatic isolator for use on the ISC output chambers HAM1 and HAM7, discovered some significant approximations. Revising analysis to improve/correct. Will then re-issue technical memo. Do not expect to change technical decision to proceed with HEPI on these chambers.

Interfaces:

See the RODA status pag e and the Interface Control page.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Optics (Hiro)

Hiro is attending OSA Optics conference, Mid-Spatial Frequency and PSD, and discussed with QED people about polishing and requirements.
Working to define a better polishing requirement to make sure we have low loss test masses.
SIS code was revised so that the zernike term subtraction works better when the original data have a large power term.

Mechanical Simulation for Advanced LIGO (Sany and SLU team)

Investigated the cause of the 2.8 Hz peak that appears in the frequency noise on the AdvLIGO Input Mode Cleaner transmitted light. Our Triple suspension model indicates that this is the mode 11 resonance in which position motion of the top mass and yaw motion of the middle mass are dominating factors. This indicates that either position or yaw motion or both motions of the optic (the bottom mass) can be the cause of this peak. To investigate this effect, deactivated the optics (three mode cleaner optics) yaw motions and compared the resultant frequency noise spectrum with the one obtained without deactivating the yaw motions in our e2e model. Consequently, no significant difference was observed, indicating that the optics’ yaw motions are not the main cause of the 2.8 Hz peak in the frequency noise spectrum.

Safety

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

Completed the work on updating document M980242-A-M - “LIGO Observatory Safety and Environmental Protection Manual” Sent to Bill Tyler for his final revisions.
Met with Phil Willems and others at LLO regarding the TCS testing at LLO. In light of the fact that the Hazard Analysis that Phil completed for the TCS, (identifying the requirement for the view port protection covers for 35W power) it is recommended and included on the work permit to not exceed the 8W power and to have the attenuator mounted on the table (with as signed indicating not to remove the attenuator) since the port covers are still being fabricated and not available at this testing time.
Met with Brian O’Reilly to discuss the safety related comments for the HAM ISI document review. It was agreed that some of the questions were on a more global aspect to the AdL project, and therefore requires a need to create a few control documents that assist in the safety efforts for not just the HAM ISI assembly and installation, but to other areas as well. Such documents as a Critical Lift Plan, Cleaning Chemicals-Point of Use, Equipment Operations, and Operator Pre-Use Inspection Checklist (overhead crane and forklift trucks) to name a few.
Met with Rick Savage in the Meat Locker and was given a tour of the PSL, as well as discussion regarding the laser cover interlock.
Developing some material for FMEA discussion for meeting on 10/24/08.

Quality Assurance

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

Parts Database

Parts DB is progressing on schedule. Team has implemented a few table changes and key references to enable certain functions in the system. Backend DB has been simplified dramatically, will speed access to the data in the future.
Final version 1 UI mock ups are completed, Team will move to coding the UI this coming week to 10 days. Nov 5-7th team will be heads down integrating the UI and testing at the LLO site.

Defect Tracking System

Waiting to implement the defect tracking system onto servers for test and development until Nov 5th, when I am at LLO.
Coordinating with potential administrator team to hold training on the JIRA software management. Proposed to hold training 11/10, virtual class.

QA Program Documents

Supplier Quality Requirements M080331: Posted to the DCC.
RFQ QA Language template M080352: Posted to DCC.
QA Wiki is starting to take shape, please let me know if there is any specific content you would like posted here that is not already up. Take some time to review (requires password to access): http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/Quality_%26_Design_for_Test

In Vacuum Reliability

Met with Vern to discuss the issues around in vacuum reliability, and prepare for the report out to the NSF Nov 18th. Have just been uploaded with reams of data and docs from Vern and am reading through the history. Aiming to have rough slide set ready for end of next week outlining the in vacuum reliability issues and goals.

COC Polish Spec Sheets for AdLIGO:

Just beginning polish specs of the optics for AdLIGO. I am becoming a bit more familiar with the system but have a long ways to go. Will continue to work with team to get these out on time, ~ a week from now.

Travel Schedule
Nov 3rd-5th: Dallas: Supplier Meetings
Nov 5th-7th: LLO: Database development, Optics spec writing
Nov 16th-17th: San Luis Obispo: Supplier Meetings
Nov 18th-20th: Caltech
Nov 21st: Minneapolis: Supplier Meetings
Dec 2nd to 5th: MIT

Vacation: Thanksgiving week I will be out of office (Nov 23rd to 30th)

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

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

The Assembly Clean Room purchase order was transmitted to the vendor this week. Mick and Betsy are planning a visit to see the first article in November.
The LLO Warehouse Modification contract is awaiting Caltech and NSF approval before a purchase order can be issued. The LHO Staging Building Modifications RFQ went out to vendors this week. To avoid redundancy Mick Flanigan will be reporting on the parts database (inventory control) progress.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

SEI Project Activities

We have compiled answers to all the questions from the HAM ISI PDR committee. A document will be sent to the committee on Friday.
ADE has sent a proposal for a new position sensor which will eliminate much of the epoxy used in the strain relief.

Electronics

I've been testing the STS-2 Interface chassis, and 8-channel Valve Driver chassis, and things seem to be pretty well ironed out. I have also been preparing a response paper for the HAM ISI Preliminary Design Review reviewer questions. ~Ben A.

Actuator Redesign

Large actuator assembly prototypes: we're waiting for a few more pieces to come from a machine shop. The bulk of the parts are at Caltech for cleaning.
Small actuators: We've run into trouble with new polyimide being used on the wire on the actuator coil. It has a cure temperature recommended from the manufacturer that exceeds the max bake temperature for the wire. We're currently figuring out our options for moving forward. ~Stephany

HEPI

Pump Station: Not much change--just waiting on fabrications at machine shops. Had third bidder walk through for Pump Station Mezzinine--should receive quote shortly.
Actuators: Redlines completed (except potential sensor change issues), waiting for approvals. ~Hugh R.
A package was resent to procurement for miscellaneous fabricated parts with quantities for the additional HEPI's required for the three ISC HAM's.

HAM SEI HAM Gullwing Design

Myron finished removing the second Gullwing from the X-End LASTI. We're still waiting on parts to come in, before we can install the prototype Crossbeams. Schedule hasn't changed since last week. ~Andy S.

Suspensions

From: "Greenhalgh, RJS (Justin)" justin.greenhalgh@stfc.ac.uk

ALUK held its latest Project Management Committee on 17 October 2008 (See LIGO-M080365-00-K). A brief activity summary follows:
RAL: BS/FM review has been held and conclusions are being written up. No major issues. Out to tender for manufacturing; target date to let contracts is end October.

Quad OJEU process status as follows:

Machined items. Deliveries to RAL continue.
Weldments. A complete welded upper structure has been produced but there problems with distortion. Technical solutions being sought.
Blade springs. Material has arrived. Blade manufacture has started.
Continuing input to work at LASTI, focussing on ensuring no parts have been lost and that tooling is ready for monolithic assembly. Amanda Brummitt visited LASTI for a week.
Glasgow: Continuing to support monolithic stage at LASTI with visits by Russell Jones, Liam Cunningham and Marielle van Vegel. Working on a detailed list to ensure no tooling is overlooked. The procurement of the optics, being conducted by the US, is shortly to move forward with a formal order from Glasgow.
Birmingham/Strathclyde: OSEM manufacturing ongoing. Specs for all electronics now complete and manufacture of parts has started. Plans being laid for main production run to follow once the test stand has been delivered.
Overall: continuing to push on all fronts, all three partners working at full capacity of the staff available. Steps are being taken in the US to accelerate progress at LASTI and we are doing all we can to support this. Plans are being made for the “endgame”.
From Janeen Romie and Norna Robertson
(romie_j@ligo-la.caltech.edu, nroberts@ligo.caltech.edu)

Operations Work

HAM Suspensions for Advanced & Enhanced LIGO

Continuing work on drawings for the large triple prototype and other documentation for the triple PDR.
The OMC SUS assembly document is being worked on.
Further preparation for measuring the large triple structural resonances next week at Caltech.

BSC Suspensions for Advanced LIGO

Design/technical weekly telecons were restarted this week to address detailed issues regarding the ETM/ITM quadruple suspensions and the BS/FM triple suspensions with a smaller and targeted subset of those working on SUS activities. These meetings will be complementary to our weekly SUS telecons which cover a much wider range of topics and attendees and are more top level. A wiki page has been set up, linked from the main Adv LIGO suspensions page. The first meeting covered aspects of layouts, drawings and tooling.
Several staff from Glasgow and Caltech are currently at LASTI to carry out further tests and preparations with respect to the monolithic assembly.
Jay has revised and sent out the triple pendulum electronics requirements document (small change - relaxing spec. for acquisition mode).

Project-Funded Activities

Nothing significant to report.

General

Monthly SWG meeting was held on 17th Oct. Minutes were posted on the SWG elog.

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells <kells@ligo.caltech.edu>

Dominant in COC is the FDR process we are in the midst of -- meeting of COC team with review committee last Friday to go over outstanding questions from review of the DRD and DD (see L080126-00).

Of course this covers a wide range of issues and analysis. Present strategy is to focus on the minimum of issues needing final resolution immediately for finalizing vendor polish specifications. Therefore some leapfrogging and deferrals being adopted. Simulations and analysis of the Adv LIGO optics configuratiion by Hiro Y. and myself are ongoing in support of this. A main theme in this is to reliably extend estimates of configuration optical loss from essentially in-line cavity studies to full, 2D, branched topology.
We are reviewing all our studies of surface contamination and scattering to integrate with M. Zucker's work toward an Adv LIGO assembly cleanliness protocol. This comes at an opportune time when C. Vorvick (with P. Patel) are completing comprehensive accumulated contamination observations on the installed LHO optics.
Review documents for the Adv LIGO in house (CIT) full surface phase map interferometry are being finalized. This is under ongoing fine tuning to track the level of final specification precision (and verification) which is being incorporated in the FDR.
A new wave of more detailed (mostly simulations) investigations is being brought to bear on the Parametric Instability question. MIT is taking the concept of the "ring damper" to a refined level in the form of qusi-tuned piezo dampers. This seems very promising as a contingency back up if PI proves a problem. To optimally adapt this design better simulations were called for. Slawek Gras (UWA) is visiting MIT and contributing. Peter F, and Matt E. are working hard on thier own simulations (in conjunction with D. Coyne). One thing this has revealed is that the 2006 acoustic simulations I had done as a SURF project need revision. At this writing I have re-enlisted that student (H. Bantilan, now at Princeton) who plans to re-do the entire simulation. Of course the current Adv LIGO design calls for ESD drives tailored also to damp a broad number of acoustic modes. These new simulations support that design as well.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith smith@ligo.caltech.edu

Work Under Project Budget

OPTICAL LAYOUT Luke is in the process of updating the IO mirror positions document with the latest mirror positions listed in T080078-05. So far, there are no discrepancies.
COC: Mike analyzed the BS wedge angle tolerance: 1) the lower tolerance on the wedge angle is set by the requirement to clear the demagnified ITMX PO beam sufficiently at the vicinity of SR2--wedge angle min >0.02 deg; 2) the upper tolerance is set by the clipping of the PO beam by SR3 clear aperture; a wedge angle = 0.08 deg causes approximately 1% clipping power loss of the PO beam, therefore wedge angle max < 0.08.

Work Under Operations Budget

SLC: Ken, Virginio, and Riccardo measured the damping characteristics of the confined viton suspension structure for the elliptical baffle. The primary resonance of the suspended structure occurs at 0.65 Hz, with a Q = 7.7. The support tube itself appears to have a resonance at around 40 Hz. We will investigate moving this tube resonance to a higher frequency by stiffening the tube. The damping effect of a higher durometer viton material will also be investigated. This appears to be an inexpensive and effective suspension design for the elliptical baffle and the arm cavity baffle.
ETM TELESCOPE SUS: Chris is completing the remainder of the parts drawings for the ETM Telescope Suspension test-prototype.
190 mm APERTURE ETM TELESCOPE: Mike made a preliminary design for a three-lens 190 mm aperture ETM Telescope using ZEMAX. He will optimize the design to work with the additional wavelengths of the Hartmann beam and the End-locking beam.
TCS: Phil and Aidan are at LLO installing the TCS CO2 laser table upgrade. The effort is expected to be completed by end of October.

Input Optics

From: David tanner@phys.ufl.edu

e-LIGO Commissioning

We are working on the phase II of the eLIGO PSL installation, including alignment of the beam path downstream of the PMC and preparation for handling high PSL power on the ISC tables (Antonio, Volker, others from LLO and LHO)
We also tracked down extra darm noise to misaligned beam on REFL1 PD, improved the mode cleaner autolocker script, measured new ASC sensing matrix, computed and implemented new ASC control matrix, added code to have calASC.m compute the calibrated sensing matrix in the DOF basis, measured WFS loops and changed some gains accordingly, investigated the role of lens in front of WFS4, and are planning an upgrade to IOT1 and ISCT1 tables for high power. (Kate)

Adv-LIGO Design

We have looked at the astigmatism due to AOIs at the recycling cavity mirrors. A presentation summarizing the results can be found at http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/advligo/Recycling_Cavity_Geometry?
action=AttachFile&do=get&target=astigmatism.pdf .
A brief summary is that the astigmatism due to angle of incidences in the recycling cavity mirrors is not a problem. It produces very little loss. (Muzammil)
We are also working on the verification of cavity lengths. (Luke)
We are investigating scattering in the Input Mode Cleaner. (Rodica)

Adv-LIGO Procurement

We are calculating the mirror ROCs and their tolerance for reference spheres for IO and RM1,2 optics. Also we are examining Pre-Award Certification documents against our specs to establish the lowest qualified bidder. (Rodica)

Prestabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

Operations

The SOP, failure modes and effects analysis, and hazards analysis for the PSL Lab was submitted for approval.

Project

A photodiode test board was sent to be manufactured.
Fabrication of prototype beam dump has been completed and it has been shipped off to LLO for testing with the 35-W laser.

Control and Data Systems

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

CDS Weekly Report for the Period Oct. 15 - 22, 2008
Included are activities of a broad nature across CDS and activities specific to advanced LIGO.

LHO CDS Report

Tested binary I/O module functionality on ISI system. All channels switched as expected but the MEDM screen was mislabeled. We are resolving the situation will be fixed to represent the actual configuration.
Installed a new CPU as h2awg. We had problems getting it to boot properly. After moving network cables around a number of times, the system booted fine with the original cabling. The CPU installed was confiscated from h2adcufast, so we have sacrificed the h2adcufast channels.
Replaced QRC panel on the Access control system that controls h1isct1 and h1iot1. Fixed one problem but not the main problem of erroneous signal from the ISC table.
Installed motor starter circuit to test HEPI motors.
Many restarts of matlab license server.
Tracked down issues with sites phones not being able to call new numbers in Germany. This problem is attributed to the switch at the phone companies CO. will only accept 15 digits not the required 16 for the new numbers. Use the operator if you need to place these calls.
Installed new LSC code to control the transition to DC control.
Replaced h2susepics Dell computer with an HPC model.
Successful ISI transfer function measurements run with upgraded system.

LLO CDS Report