PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist, Beckett)

• A final draft of the monthly report prepared for the NSF has been provided to Albert.  We expect to send this to the NSF tomorrow.
• A final report is due to the NSF at the end of June for the LIGO Operations Cooperative Agreement now completed.  I have issued some proposed writing assignments for the portions of the report required by FastLane, but which are not part of the “Activities and Findings” section, which is being handled by Stan.  I am requesting that the material provided be reviewed and updated by the first week in June. 

CHANGE REQUESTS (Lindquist)

• LIGO-M0900124, version 3 - Change Request CR-090001 Rev 3, establishes the budget for FY 2009 LIGO Operations.
• LIGO-M0900125, version 1 - Change Request CR-090003, requests budget for FY 2009 LIGO Operations fabrication accounts, submitted by Dennis Coyne.

• Adjustments to reflect the staffing plan provided by Advanced LIGO for FY 2009.
• Fabrication account budgets submitted in change requests CR-090002 (approved - Squeezing Experiment) and CR-090003 (above).
• Adjustments reflecting the return of budget for positions that have not been filled through March 31, 2009. 

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• The LIGO Staffing Committee met on Monday, May 11, 2009.

Quality/Safety (Nolting)

LIGO Lab Safety:

• LLO Equipment Operators are going through a 3rd party professional training course this week to become certified to operate Forklifts, Ariel lifts and Overhead Cranes as part of the efforts to maintain compliance with OSHA mandated training requirements.
• The LIGO Safety Steering Committee has assembled a subcommittee to draft a policy that will address personnel working alone at the facilities.  The guidelines will include new inexperienced workers to the most experienced worker.  The draft will be presented to the Deputy Director on May 15, 2009 for review.
• The satellite phones for LLO and LHO are in operation and ready if needed.  A memo will be placed on the LIGO Lab Wiki that will detail the phone numbers and use instructions.
• Planning is still in progress for the OSHA required training agenda for all LIGO Lab locations and will be communicated within the next two weeks.  The current goal is to complete the training during the months of June and July 2009. 

Caltech (King)

• After going through the safety orientation notes provided to me by Bill Tyler and the ones downloaded from the campus safety office, there were a few items that I thought I knew but wasn't 100% sure of.
• For those of us in East/West Bridge, generally speaking fire extinguishers and fire alarm pull stations are located near the stairwell. The emergency eyewash station and shower is located in the basement on the east side of the building.
• I photographed and noted the positions of the fire extinguishers and pull stations, and will be noting them on a floor plan that I should get from the Division Office.

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

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

• The PSL waveplate rotator stage slews rapidly, causing transients and lock losses. New code to slow the rotator stage and ramp the power in a specific time interval is under development and testing, and so far it looks very good.
• After tuning LA params, we resumed reliable locking at 7W, and later, 10W. Transients from the original rotor setup increased the mean time between high power operations. Latest stable locking has been at just under 12W.
• A 5Hz comb first seen in the interferometer spectrum was traced to ripple observed on PSL power supplies, and then to that of the laser controller. The supply was swapped out temporarily and the comb is gone. A more permanent solution will follow.
• Driving towards an S6 calibration, analog filters in the end station were characterized, and new perl scripts for GPIB access were written to simplify the acuisition of transfer functions
• N.B. end station trans signals are subject to card seating issues, see here
• We vent HAM6 Monday to swap thick tip tilt wires for 0.002" versions.

Astrowatch (D. White)

• Average inspiral range 7.4Mpc, uptime 30%. However, damping gains were reduced on the ETM side coils and the range was improved to nearly 8.5Mpc.
• We had some slight problems with arm locking during alignment, but it is being looked at. One interesting GRB, but was at somewhere around 3000Mpc.

Squeezer Update (D. Sigg)

• MIT (S. Dwyer): Melodie is still working on the beam propagation. Chris and Myron helped me put the clean room frame together and raise it.
• LHO: Continued to work on the design and the prototypes of the RF electronics. A review is scheduled for next Wednesday's CDS meeting. Ordered some dichromatic optics for the OPO.

Outreach (D. Ingram)

• Schools across the region are taking their spring field trips now that state testing has closed. LHO has hosted six school visits this week. The visit schedule remains full through mid-June.

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

General Operations (Rusyl Wooley)

• We completed fork lift, man lift, and overhead crane training for ten people this week.  A second session will be held in June for the rest of the people that require this training.
• All the LDAS racks are installed and we are in the process of getting them wired up.
• The south end station is now open to the beam tube.  This week we valved out the turbo pump and opened up the 14" valve to the 2500 l/s ion pump.
• The west end station is still running on the turbo pump.   I expect to put the west end station on its 2500 l/s ion pump tomorrow and open the west end to the beam tube.
• We closed up HAM6 and are currently pumping that volume with a turbo pump.
• The corner station is also being pumped down with a turbo pump.  I opened GV1 & GV2.  This exposes the vertex to the right and left beam manifolds. That allows use of the optical levers on the ITM's as well as TCS.

CDS (Keith Thorne)

S6 Upgrades:

• With Alex Ivanov, set up first new frame-builder component (NDS1) using new configuration (X2200M2, CentOS 5.3).  Still testing before making it the active data server. Racked all new equipment for FB1 upgrade. Completion of FB1 installation waiting for additional Infiniband adapters and cables (mostly on order).
• In process of placing order for additional servers to be used to upgrade web, admin, scripting and projector machines.
• Identified a minor issues with new X2200M2 with quad-core Opterons, CentOS 5.3 where system does not reboot cleanly after 'poweroff' at normal command prompt as root.
• Worked with Dan Kozak to get new DMT RAID configured. This is being held up by higher-priority work to setup minimal-LDAS at LHO.

Commissioning Support:

• Made corrections to 'stdenv' scripts that allow cross-platform scripts.

Livingston Outreach

(Kathy Holt)

• Met with Chad Hebert from the Advocate.
• Conducted our 3rd Open House with ~70 guests and 7 Docents from Cohorts 1 and 2 participated in the event.
• We had Docent Training for 8 Docents from Cohort 3 on pendulum motion.
• We had 2 school visits this week for a total of 120 - 3rd graders from a charter school out of  N.O.
• 10 Docents participated in the 2 school visits.
• Purchased books for assessing informal learning, recommended by the IFI workshop facilitators.
• Contacted Anna Rochester from the Exploratorium about reimbursement for teachers who attended the workshop in Feb.
• Spoke to Paul Doherty about dates for me to participate in his Physics workshop this summer as part of the Teacher Institute.

(Amber Stuver)

• Gave control room tours to ~120 3rd graders.
• Assisted with the LLO Open House and gave control room tours to ~50 visitors.
• Have been in contact with the Highland Road Park Observatory to give another talk there on LIGO for the International Year of Astronomy.
• Have been deploying the content I created or collected for the new ligo.org site.  I have created content giving an introduction to gravitational waves an LIGO for the "Science" section and have collected resources to make available in the "Students/Teachers/Public" section.  The WebComm plans to have the ligo.org page ready before the World Science Festival in June.

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

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Adhikari)

• The DARM response of the DRFPMI detuned to non-springy side was measured with DC readout. It shows an RSE peak at 3.8kHz and the optical spring stiffness below 70Hz as expected. The measured response has an extra small bump around 2.5kHz and a steeper cut off above the RSE peak. The reason for this is still under investigation.
• The arm losses were measured by taking the ratio of the reflected power between the locked and unlocked states. The measured losses were:
  
  XARM: RTL= 171 (+/-2) ppm
  YARM: RTL = 181 (+/-2) ppm
  
  These values indicate the arm finesses to be about 1200 if we assume the ITM transmissivity to be the designed value. From the arm power transmission curves measured for the arm absolute length measurement, the arm finesse was also estimated to be around 1300. So these are roughly consistent.
• The laser power started to fluctuate a lot in a daily cycle after the cooling water pipe was unclogged. The water chiller temperature is a few degrees higher than it used to be. It looks like the chiller is overloaded.
• The MC started to be kicked out of lock intermittently. This is probably caused by the MC3 side coil driver being intermittent. This problem is intermittent, and it has been quiet for a day now. We will see if it happens again.
• We replaced the ETMY optical lever quad as it was noisier than the others.
• We installed a new 14TB RAID for the framebuilder to have longer data lookback.
  

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• Fabrication of the new samples for the photothermal experiment was a success. No delamination was observed, and the mirrors arrived today (Wednesday).
• Akira is in Ft. Lauderdale this week for the GWADW meeting.

LASTI (Mittleman)

Cavity Work

• John and Lisa have locked the Triple/Quad cavity (entry in today’s Lasti ilog, http://www.ligo.mit.edu/ilog/). Using a combination of actuation on the triple test mass and feedback to the laser frequency the cavity stayed locked for a number of hours.

HEPI

• We have gotten back to the HAM-HEPI commissioning. Christian has instrumented the new beams with an extra set of accelerometers at the center of the beams for diagnostics (so we can figure out were the bending is taking place) and we have started to look at controller design. At first glance higher it looks like we will be able to get higher UUGs on the loops.

Suspensions

• Brett and Christian have installed a suspension watchdog that turns off HEPI and ISI control when the suspension damping loops are not on.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

__________

Ajith Parameswaran:

• Contrinued to work on the spinning IMR waveforms.
• Helping the SURF student with the project proposal.

__________

Cristina Valeria Torres:

• Submit GWDAW13 article for internal review.
• Integrate new parameter consistency checks and first found bug python implementation of that code to follow up pipeline. Example checklists (drawn from test data sets) at https://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/
  ~ctorres/CHECKLIST/.
• Posted another revision (link) of follow up documentation to group wiki and added static link to follow up documentation for all checklist generated in future follow up pipeline runs.

__________

Antony Searle:

• Addressing Matlab compiling issues.

__________

Amber L. Stuver:

• Consulted, along with Jonah Kanner, with Richard Scalzo from Yale regarding the work he has been a part of for the identification of supernovae in the Palomar-QUEST Survey.  He has agreed consult with us for the LUMIN post-processing of data products that will result from the EM follow-ups for LOOC-UP.
• Planning for the science project the summer RET will undertake. Right now, I am fleshing out what will need to be done to establish thresholds on EM transients and FARs for LUMIN.  This is something that must be done to effectively interpret EM follow-ups as well as a short term project that can be completed during the RET.

__________

Peter Kalmus:

• I focused on the 40m locking.

__________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Starting to look at the effectiveness of the CW followup scripts with short Monte Carlo software injections.

__________

Anand Sengupta:

• Multivariate statistics: I have started to integrate lalapps_mvsc as part of the high mass follow up. Also ran it on more injection sets to understand systematics.
• Refereeing CQG data analysis paper.

__________

Pinkesh Patel:

• Worked on going over the code with the review committee and am done with that, writing up automated testing scripts.
• Traveling back from Germany.

__________

Chad Hanna:

• Debugging and validating the new segment code for the highmass reruns.
• Writing the post-processing pipeline for the high mass search.

__________

Kipp Cannon:

• Working on S5 high-mass post processing and upper limit DAG with Chad  Hanna.
• Preparing slides for CASCA'09 conference.
• Working with Shinkee Chung and Linqing Wen on GPU paper.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• The diskcacheAPI continues to progress well. The code base was committed to CVS after it had run on ldas-dev for several hours. The regular nightly loop scripts were run with no failures. There is a memory leak which is being investigated. Also, the updating of the binary and ascii dump files on disk has started. A function is now available at the C++ layer which detects if the hash is in a dirty state and writes it out. It also supports an update interval value. The next step is to modify the TCL layer to make use of the new function.
• Several of the frameCPP utilities have been modified to use long options. This modification has also provided better help messages to be displayed when the command is invoked with the --help option.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

• All A5 frames are now on T10KB format tapes with ssum set except for 3 GEO files which I'm following up on.
• Following up on bad frames in cluster as reported by Josh.
• Helped bring up basic level of services at LHO so that the the gateway & dataserver boxes and tape archiving could run. Involved some reworking of our fibre channel zones.
• Generated list of tapes to eject for shelf storage at LHO.
• Got working on building LLO /dmt out of new 2540 RAID unit. Determined that 64K is the optimal DAU for the filesystem.
• Configured identical test QFS filesystems except that one used a 6140 RAID1 volume for metadata and the other a zvol RAID1 (w/compression) and began testing. Determined that our /home1 metadata can be compressed 4.8:1 by ZFS.

(Phil Ehrens)

• Copied roster.ligo.org and my.ligo.org from PSU to new development system at Caltech as first step in moving the services to Caltech.
• Ported two Kerberos modules from Perl to SWIG (and thereby to all SWIG target languages) trivially.
• Performed various user support tasks, including certificate installation, version control access, and infrastructure usage hints.
• Investigated the Qemu virtualization framework after seeing examples of it's use. It looks promising and is very light in terms of configuration and maintenance compared to other virtualization methods.

(Josh Abadie)

• Took over user creation.
• Took over frame checking.
• Started disk upgrade.
• Upgraded memory on servers.
• Tweaked kickstart file for autorebuilding.
• Cleaned up mezzanine and hallway.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Some bates work; trip to bates; updated condor, framecpp.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• Modified scripts to push online h(t) and DQ XML file to use rsync server. At first glance that resulted in several times faster transfer from LHO to CIT. However, at the moment there seems to be a network problem between LHO and CIT that slows everything down and makes it impossible to further test the transfer rate.
• Got memory for ldas-pcdev1.
• Installed the new UPS into the server rack.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• I have set up contractors to begin adding duct work to the LDAS room at LHO on May 18.  The power upgrade is progressing on time, and all contract work in this room is scheduled to finish by May 29.
• Working with LDAS, I have set up temporary servers to keep archiving and publishing trend and astrowatch data at LHO, during the LDAS downtime here.
• I have ordered UPS units to provide power protection for new LDAS servers we are setting up for E14 and S6.

(Dan Moraru)

• Moved Sun Fire 880 gateway to mass storage room and helped bring it and other head nodes back online.
• Worked on ILOM and kickstart configuration for new cluster.
• Started sorting cables.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Finished kerberos replica, awaiting keytab file.
• Some more stuff re: networking for dec. conference sonesta hotel.
• Video issues Sam re: solidworks.
• Another linux w/s as xterm setup.
• Some purchasing, routine desktop issues.
• More old computer cleanup.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• Installed latest version of Arkeia software on all backup clients, hoping this resolves the issues with the backups hanging after three days.  also reworked the way the backup clients are licensed, so we have more seats.
• Ordered three rail kits for X2200m2 servers.
• Created a new GC account and reset passwords on two more.
• Re-imaged 4 desktops using Christian's unattended DVD install.  works very well as expected.
• Setup computers in cubicle area for AdL support staff.
• Setup computers in area 51 for Mech E interns.
• Removed Dealio toolbar from IE on a laptop.
• Patched and rebooted NS2, docshare/sec, www.
• Placed an order with Dell, which again got put on hold.  hopefully this will be the last time.
• Attended a few meetings.
• Worked a couple small procurement items.
• Numerous usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap daily.

Hanford

(Jonathan)

• Racked several new x2200s and base OS installs.
• Installed COMSOL license server.
• Installed local LIGO.org LDAP replicator.
• Acquired SSL certificates for LHO based LDAP servers.
• Ordered laptops for new Ad Ligo workers.
• Setup temp laptop for Eric Allwine.
• User support Doug Cook, Ewan Douglas.
• Routine spam and dhcp work.

Caltech

(Mike)

• Loaded a new Engineering workstation with GC software, and SW09.
• Started loading another new Engineering workstation.
• Trouble shot some SW issues.
• Loaded two loaner laptops.
• Some work on the trouble shooting a printer issue.
• Other misc. onsite/phone user support, and sysadmin tasks.
• Wrapped up a couple of procurements and reconciled P-card.

(Melody)

• DCC User support (removing wrong files and versions, allowing access).
• Fixed a few anomalies and added some search filtering features for the DCC version 2.2.0.
• Wrote a script which figured the LSC's SciMon efforts from the roster information.
• Created an instance of the myligo and grouper database in authcore-dev.
• Will meet with the AdvLIGO procurement staff regarding their wiki.

(Veronica)

• WebComm:  Set up a test page for Dave Reitze's 'news' section in the svn playground.  Posted various css/html updates.  The content remains to be finalized.  Several implementation issues remain to be resolved (backend for a media repository, various php fixes).
• GWADW09:  On Monday I received calls that the payment gateway had stopped accepting transactions.  Authorizenet's support indicated that authorizenet.com has changed its policies and that this integration method was no longer supported.  I advised the rep that we're in the middle of an event; the payment gateway has now been reintegrated. Other ongoing meeting web support.
• Updates of the LSC/LIGO websites, user support on web issues.
• CaJAGWR:  Taped the last seminar, compressed for streaming, updated the website.

(Christian)

• Rand Dannenberg - Installed Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0.
• Toner cartridge replacements - 2nd/flr W/brige and Karl Oracion local printer.
• Ken Mailand - Solidworks 2009 keeps crashing. Disabled thumbnail preview on XP.
• Calum Torrie - Can't hear audio from laptop. Calum's laptop is running Windows 64 bit OS and IBM will not support it. waiting for Mike to get back to see if we can move Calum to Vista 64 bit.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Larry)

• Went through a number of procurement items. Renewed the licensing for the network matlab package. Combining a number of the solidworks licenses, this process is just about complete. Reordered a number of SUN boxes. Two of the orders have arrived and one order is still going through the system. Purchased another Solidworks license for a new person starting. Purchased another comsole license. Purchased a number of misc. items for different people.
• Cleaned up a couple of servers. Updated patches and removed some of the junk off of them.
• Reset/repaired one of the older servers.
• Cleaned up one of the wireless scripts.
• With Christian we cleaned up some of the items in the computer room. Still quite a bit to go but we were able to free up space for some new installs.
• Working on ligo.org assignments. Presently, getting new servers installed to support ligo.org.
• Assisted/talked to a number of different groups concerning their conference setups. Computer support and communications becoming more of factor for conferences.
• Assisted users with different setups and configurations.
• Regular user assistance and meeting attendance.

Distributed (Grid) Computing R&D (Blackburn)

Grid Application Development

Einstein@Home on the OSG:

• Encountered issues with loading gatekeepers at two OSG sites this past week. A different issue was identified at each site. The first involved clean-up procedures for heavily loaded sites and the second involved excessive loads due to large number of job managers used in Globus when submitting directly to GRAM.
• To address the first, minor code changes have been made to throttle clean-up procedures. For the second, we have reduced the number of jobs we submit to any specific site until a rework of the code to use Condor-G and or the new Globus is available.
• Continued E@H code documentation writing with Doxygen.
• Added signal handlers to the code to address issue seen at the Caltech CMS site and provided site admin with test script to detect signals.
• Upgraded the code base to use the latest version of BOINC.
• Current OSG ranking statistics: Recent Average Credit (RAC) = 111,384.17 up by ~30,000 from last week; E@H ranking based on RAC = 9 down by 2 from last week; E@H rank based on accumulated credits = 38 up by one from last week.

Binary Inspiral Application on Grids:

• Copied a one week segment of Frame data into the SRM server on the OSG ITB cluster's Storage Element (SE). There were 99 Frame files that failed in their srmcopy routine and are being retried.
• Still writing a python script to do the SRM copy of Frame files onto SOG SE sites as well as populate the RLS server at ISI with the the catalog information for each SE. Using XML file for input Frame file data in this script.
• A fix for a gap in data error was provided by Duncan Brown and is now being tested.

Open Science Grid Integration & Validation Testbed

• OSG-JOB gatekeeper went down last Friday. Had to bring down and restore the virtual machine it was running as to bring it back up. System logs did not indicate a problem but it is known that workflows and SRM copies were underway at the time of the failure.
• Update all packages on all resources and rebooted the cluster on Monday.
• Updated the documentation on the cluster configuration to include new sections for how to start, stop and reboot the cluster.
• Provided ongoing support for SRM use by LIGO applications.
• Hosted the OSG ITB "campfire" CHAT on Thursday of last week.
• Made travel plans to attend the OSG Storage Workshop at Fermilab and to visit with the Condor developers at UW Madison to discuss Condor-G.

Grid Management

• Chaired monthly OSG Council Telecon and posted minutes on Council's website.
• Continued to prepare for OSG Council Face-to-Face meeting in August in Chicago.
• Asked that OSG Executive Team work with STAR to review possibilities for supporting their request for Virtual Machine technologies on the OSG.
• Call for three separate ad-hoc teleconferences with the OSG Project Manager, the OSG Production Coordinator and the CMS Grid Manager to troubleshoot and understand a load problem seen at University of Nebraska Lincoln. Ultimately the problem was attributed to the inability of Globus Gram 2 to handle large numbers of concurrent job managers. Other groups have seen this and have patched the problem by using Condor-G to submit jobs. This only instantiates one job manager per submit host instead of one job manager per job. An alpha release of Globus with a fix for this is out but will not appear on the OSG production sites for about a year. When schedule permits we will migrate to using Condor-G for the Einstein@Home jobs to resolve this on our end. This will hopefully be in place by mid summer. In the meantime, we are reducing the job submissions to OSG sites to avoid this problem as LHC sites ramp up.
• Reviewed "The OSG Project Management Process" document that the DOE has requested.
• Gave brief feedback to the OSG regarding LIGO's needs in the future for better utilization of the OSG.
• Contacted OSG Grid Operations Center to facilitate communications between the MyOSG developers and the Pegasus developers to assure that LIGO dependencies on VORS via Pegasus are removed before VORS is dropped by the OSG this summer.
• Met with OSG Staff twice to discuss how to handle the loading issue on the Nebraska and Michigan OSG gatekeepers. A plan was put forward and has been implemented. Discussed priorities for the next few months to assure OSG milestones are kept on schedule.
• Contacted Pegasus developers to provide an alternative approach to using Pegasus to plan workflows on OSG sites where SRM storage is shared with the worker nodes to assure that a doubling of run time is not introduced due to unnecessary data copies. This is still an open issue but hopefully, it will allow OSG sites to perform more in line with LIGO Data Grid sites.
• Continued to support LSC certificate and account request and to unravel odd situations seen by users.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

From Carol Wilkinson

Project Controls

• Project controls staff has being working on the monthly progress reports and the EVM reporting for the month of April.
• There are two change requests in progress. One incorporates schedule changes in metrology to reflect the new planned procurement dates and the shorter durations due to initial metrology being provided by the polishing contractor. A second change request will rework the seismic schedule to reflect the new BSC design and assembly schedules.
• The monthly report is in review, with the final version to be sent to NSF on Friday, May 15

Staffing

• The assembly staff  new hires have started reporting for work at both sites. The last 2 new hires will be on board by mid-June.
• Ads are out for additional staff, including: 2 real time programmers for the sites, 1 optics tech at CIT, 1 ME and 1 draftsperson for Systems engineering, and 1 Electech at CIT.

Procurements (Covers the period from April 17 to May 7)

For Ed Jasnow

• Reviewed the RFP's for the two core optics coating contracts that were released this week.
• Reviewed several RFQs for the seismic isolation components, including the blades, springs, and the maraging steel procurements.

For Jacqueline Champagnie and Gina Salone

• RFP for the COC Microscope. In progress for due date of mid-June 2009
• RFQ for Maraging Steel Blade Springs deadline for bidder responses extended to May 22, 2009.
• RFQ Machine Plates. Receiving Bids
• Misc. Projects - DCC Coordination for procurement related documents

For Rudy

• Finalized and released the RFPs and specimen contracts for Core Optics Test Masses Coating solicitation (RFP #RA-141) and Optics Coating for the Recycling Cavity (RFP #RA-145) to bidders, with responses due June 15.  Both of these procurements, with different groups of contractors, make up AdvLIGO Procurement Item CO-118. These procurements have high schedule priority, with awards needed by early August.

NSF Acquisition Approvals

• Ann Miller has approved four out of the five procurements in the Acquisition Plan for the second half of FY2009. A draft response to Ann Miller’s questions about the fifth procurement, the sole source contract to deliver the timing system is under review by procurement and Data Acquisition technical staff.

Progress Updates

• The monthly report for April was submitted to NSF on May 15.

Meetings & Reviews

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

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>, Ed Chavez <chavez_j@ligo.caltech.edu>,  Bob Taylor <taylor_r@ligo.caltech.edu>,  Mike Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>, Mike Zucker <mike@ligo.mit.edu>, Hiroaki Yamamoto <hiro@ligo.caltech.edu> see the Adv. LIGO Systems wiki

AdL Project-Funded Activities

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

• Optical Lever Design Requirements Review & Conceptual Design Review (DRR/CDR) continues (Mike L. chair).
• Review of the UK provided ETM/ITM quadruple pendulum suspension electronics continues (Jay H., Vern).
• The Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for  Interferometer Sensing and Control (ISC) continues (Daniel S. chair).

Procurement Techncial Reviews: see the procurement wiki.

• Provided technical review of RFQ , COC Coating of Test Mass Substrates (Dennis).
• Provided technical review of RFQ , COC Coating of Recycling Cavity Substrates (Dennis).
• Provided technical review of RFQ SI-148a, HAM-ISI, Seismometer Pods (Dennis).

Technical Review Board (TRB): see the TRB log.

UHV & Vacuum Review Board (VRB): see the VRB log.

• Small Parts Washer (Bob Taylor):
  • OTF Lab: (Bob Taylor) I worked worked on the rearrangement of the OTF Lab. I installed new safety curtains, warning lights and First aid kit in the OTF. I have ordered safety curtains and rods for the PSL side of the OTF.
  • Bake Lab: (Bob) Alll of the spill control stuff I ordered has arrived and I am installing the floor protectors for the Bake Lab. I shipped some Dog Clams to LLO from the stock of clamps in the Clean Room. I believe I have about 40 left in stock.  I am baking the optical glass tube for the new Cavity in the OTF. 
  • FTIR Lab (Bob) I am still waiting for the boxes to be shipped from room 17, so I can begin work on the FTIR Lab. Some of them have been shipped but there is more that need to be removed/ shipped before I can do anything in the room.
• Optical Contamination Cavity Testing (Bob T., Liyuan):
  • Cavity 1: 7 production BOSEMs.
  • Cavity 2: carbon-loaded PEEK; proposed as spool for the new value engineered OSEM (nickel plated PEEK might be a fallback).
  • Cavity 3: Started to reconfigure the OTF Lab to make more room for the third cavity being built and to correct some safety violations.
  • Queue:
    • Tra-Bond 2103 epoxy (a medium viscosity, low outgassing, general purpose epoxy) -- proposed replacement for Vacseal.
    • Krytox low vapor pressure lubricant (we have samples).
    • Torr-Seal (Varian adhesive -- proposed replacement for Vacseal).
    • Barrierta-IS (a German Company low vapor pressure lubricant alternative to krytox, that New Focus thought may be cleaner) (we have samples).
    • Retest ADE position sensor materials (2 Tra-Con epoxies) due to the anomalous test results (no samples in hand).
    • Copper & kapton clad fiber optic. Brian Lantz wants to test this material for use with an optics table, optical lever system. Could be used for ALS etc. Likely "inherently" vacuum compatible, but worth checking since it has a polymer. 
    • Nedox solid lubricant (for potential BSC-ISI tooling use (class b) but perhaps useful in vacuum as well) (had small sample -- likely inadequate in size).
    • Tungsten carbide/carbon (WC/C) sample (for potential BSC-ISI tooling use (class b) but perhaps useful in vacuum as well) (had small sample -- likely inadequate in size probably inherently vacuum compatible).
    • Cesic sample (composite ceramic of SiC, Si and C) possibly inherently vacuum compatible application is not clear (high stiffness to weight structure) (sample size adequate?).

Configuration Control & Documentation:

• Calum has have been helping a number of folks through the process of submitting drawings & documents to the new DCC.

Design/Planning:

• COC support: (Calum) I have been working with COC to prepare the gold goating pattern barrel drawings for the ERM, ETM, ITM and CP optics. These are now ready and on the DCC at, E0900137. (The ETM / ITM drsawing may require a change to include a stripe for the ring heater.) Ed Chavez and I have also been meeting with Rand to discuss concepts for the housing / jig to be used with the first contact. We now have a couple of ideas that Ed is going to detail. Work is progressing on the "cake tin" drawings and we now have confirmation, from SUS US and UK, of a date when the 1st ergo-arm will be required, August. I have been working with Mike Gerfen about including an alarm with input from Steve Vass.
•  Systems Layout and associated items: (Calum, Ed) Ed and I have been working on adding struts to both the HAM and BSC chambers. The updated e-drawings can be found here LIGO-G0900418. These struts are designed purely to allow them to be maneuvered in real time in SW and are not what the final design will look like. We have also been working on extending the Bill of Materials of each chamber to include a mass properties section that is linked to the actual SolidWorks assemblies.
• HLTS and HSTS on a HAM table: (Calum) I now have a working model / tool of the HAM table with HLTS & HSTS suspensions that can now be used t oadd stiffeners / dampers etc ... I solved the problem I was having with the no-suspended mass by simplifying the model of the HLTS further. As I progress with this work the data with be posted at LIGO-T0900193.
• OMC Structure FEA (re-visited): (Calum) I updated the OMC structure to include the *new* e-stop housing and re-ran the model. I will update the report LIGO-TO70086 with this work by the end of the week.
• Vacuum Equipment Layout: (Dennis) I have developed SolidWorks models and drawings for the new vacuum equipment adapters/spools needs for the end station. These components use a number of pre-existing drawings for flanges (developed by PSI for initial LIGO). These draft drawings and a bill of materals has been given to John and Doug to search for potential bidders. I will post these drawings to the DCC soon.

Interfaces: see the RODA status page and the Interface Control page. 

• On and around the test mass: (Calum) The full list of proposed items, actions required now and a draft order of assembly are posted at LIGO-T0900092. Also included at this link is a first cut at a 3D layout, e-drawing, with all of these items included. This information was presented to the SUS folks at the weekly technical meeting and I am now working on a couple of actions prior to sending it out to all the relevant folks, with actions, individually.
• SEI interfaces with SUS, AOS, IO and SYS (Dennis): Held another meeting to status the interface issues between these groups, in particular status of work and plans for damping/stiffening structure for the suspensions.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu

Static IFO Simulation, COC/TCS Modeling (Hiro)

Thermal Shield by Calum:

• Phil calculated the thermal lens using a thermal shield designed by Calum.
• A FP cavity with this phase map in ITM and without any other thermal effect, was studied in order to see an extra effect due to this non uniform thermal lens. The extra fraction of the higher order mode power, i.e., the loss, is 1%, which can be reduced by half by correcting using a spherical shape diverging lens.
• This phase map is non-axisymmetric. This induces fake tilt signal, i.e., a large TEM01 mode is reflected even when the mirror is fully loaded for fields not resonating in the arm. Just using the reflected signal, the effective tilt was calculated to be 0.35 micro radian. It may be more like an extra wedge only for SB. This map was made for the fully loaded arm, and this fake wedge will depend on the arm power.

Thermal Lens in ITM by RH:

• The effect of the thermal lens in ITM induced by the ring heater was studied using calculations by Matt Evens based on FEM.
• When the ROCs of ITM and ETM are optimized using ring heaters to produce the design beam shape, the effective ROC induced by the ring heater comes out to be 9.26km for non-gold coated ITM and 7.61km for gold coated ITM. This is a spherical diverging lens. The optimal diverging lens to make the ROC of the reflected field to be the design value, the ROC of the diverging lens to be prepared by CP is 8.93km for non-gold coated and 10.05km for gold coated ITM.
• The difference of the signal loss using just the RH induced lens and that using the fully optimal lens is ~0.1%.
• The thermal correction on the reflected field cannot be done by a simple diverging lens because of the shape of the intrinsic thermal lens, and the loss using only spherical lens correction is 2%.
• TCS is needed to make the loss smaller to compensate the non-spherical thermal lens tail, but a proper use of the RH thermal lens could reduce the necessary dynamic range of CP, or at least the thermal lens by RH should be taken into account seriously.

Safety

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

• The AdL safety efforts are concentrating on the safe work practices of LIGO personnel engaged in LDAS equipment change-out and room preparation activities.

Quality Assurance

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

Inventory DB:

• Phase 1 bugs are pretty much sorted out. We have a couple of late changes:
  • Add serial numbers to catalog items. We did this, however we are not handling the import of the data properly. We need to be able to look at being able to list parts by s/n against a single part number. Will be working the solution this weekend.
  • Editing the process which PO/Line records are marked as paid, or partially paid. This will be rolled out next week.
• Significant progress has been made in the design of process flow for all the loads. These have been validated with the team, and are in the design teams hands for programming.
• We have also finalized design of the subsystem screens, how they will look and display information. These are also reviewed and in the hands of the design team.
• Next week will focus on the design of the assembly module, as well as the screen view for the parts themselves. Parts will display status info, ownership info, parts attributes, as well as digital imaging, and traceability records (all, status changes, modifications, load history, test history w/results.

QA:

• Reviewed the remaining RFQ/RFP's from SEI this week. All looks good with some minor comments.
• Reviewing the ISC preliminary design review documents this week, started but will not finish until next week sometime.
• Am working on the design of the test results and tracking in ICS system, as well as the defect modules. These will be rolled into the ICS system by mid June for testing.

Travel:

CIT: May 26th-29th
SFO: May 30th-June 2nd
Vacation: June 3rd-5th
LLO: June 8th-12th
UFL: June 17th-20th
MIT/Appfire: June 23rd - June 28th

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

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

FMP

• LHO: Our second assembly tech started work this week. Both new techs are helping out with HEPI assembly work. Warehouse work is on schedule with painting of the walls this week. Vendor drawings for the aqueous parts washers were approved.
• LLO: We began cleanup of the high bay in preparation for SEI and SUS work. The new crane was installed in the warehouse/clean and bake area. It still needs to be grouted. Work continues on the HEPI build area. We still lack two 220 volt circuits and water.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

aLIGO Project Activities

SEI Electronics Design and Fabrication:

• We have just received an Athena II PC-104 computer for the pump servo. I've started playing with it a little, and things are progressing.
• Gary has started ordering the final parts, boards, chassis and panels for the production run of the STS-2 Interface, STS-2 Distribution chassis, the Pier Interface Chassis, and the 8-channel Valve Driver. They should all be back soon, then we can send them to Screaming Circuits for stuffing. ~ Ben A.

HAM ISI Design and Procurement:

• A purchase order has been issued for the maraging steel billets. The bids for the machining are due next week. Bids for the large plates are due 5/15. We have a completed design for storage and transit cases. RFQ for quote should go out soon. We spoke with several shops about making the BeCu flexures for the seismometer retrofit.

HEPI Procurements and Assembly:

• HEPI -- Eric Allwine, Jim Warner, Jodi Fauver, HughRadkins.
• Pump Stations -- Installed five manifolds, the remaining 8 units are expected end of next week. Other than the laminar flow resistors and miscellaneous fittings, that will complete the Pump Stations.
• HEPI Assembly hardware -- Three more components needed before assembly can be started at LLO, these are expected in one to two weeks. LHO still needs the same parts plus L4C cabling expected in a couple weeks. Production L4C units, corrected to our needed connector will start shipping 15 May; we already have several on-hand. Working on assembly jigs, procedures and hardware. Actuators: 9 units arrived LLO in good condition. KineOptics has 33 on hand waiting on Bellows Shields before shipping. Will complete an additional 34 units by 8 June. ~ Hugh R.

R & D Activities

BSC ISI Design and Test:

• Design: We made a decision regarding the vertical actuators relocation: it's too late to make such a change. We have been making good progress on the other re-design projects. We have scheduled review meetings with the SEI team to validate those changes before the PDR.
• Control commissioning: We are back to vacuum, and we have started the second control commissioning. Compensation filters have been implemented to account for the actuators dynamics and some of the electronics (seismometers 4th order filters). Also implemented the normalization filters on the input and output to make the corners symmetric. Damping loops have been designed with the objective to maintain the gain peaking below 10%. We are installing the damping filters. Next step we'll be to implement the high frequency blend control filters. ~ Fabrice

Suspensions

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

RAL

OJEU process status as follows:

• Machined items. Deliveries to RAL continue. All deliveries nearly complete.
• Weldments. Efforts continue to get the RGA rig working. A meeting is being sought with Dennis Coyne to help analyse results so far and agree a way forward.
• Blade springs. ETM/ITM blades complete – they now need characterising.
• Currently working to ensure various strand of activity are carried out in such a way as to integrate with US requirements (close liaison with Janeen Romie, Calum , Torrie, and Norna Robertson).
• Shipments to the US of parts for cleaning and first stage assembly (first shipment, 16 blades, now sent).
• First article assembly and completion of quad training.
• Modify faceplates and ship parts to US for cleaning.
• Preparations for monolithic hang in August.
• Continuing work to get RGA rig working.
• Preparation of documentation.
• Glasgow: A cartridge test has been done with fibres and new-design ears with good strength. Test hangs being planned. First 54 ears (test batch) have been initially machined, of which 32 have been flame polished, of which 16 have been polished flat (ie complete). Orders are placed for sapphire prisms – and we need details for the metal prisms in the next few weeks. (Following the meeting we now have the details – thanks!).
• Birmingham/Strathclyde: 250 OSEMs are ready to ship; production continues at about 100/month. Full set of tests stand electronics (plus some spares) are shipped and testing in the US is underway.
• Overall: frustrating delays on RGA testing; concern about timescales for electronics; good progress in other areas.

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

Operations Work

• The blade vendor is starting on fabrication of the prototype blades, as they received the PO and our material earlier this week. They have asked for an additional 2-3 weeks beyond the 7 weeks quoted for delivery.
• The manufacturing specification, E0800023, has been updated concerning the double-disc grinding. This information was included in the PO.
• Sent HLTS structure drawing to CES showing clinch nut installation requirements. Still working with clinch nut vendor on part number clarification as there appears to be one part number for 2 materials and only one of the materials is acceptable for our application.
• Updated document on suspending optics on steel wire loops T080266, to allow UK to proceed with design of prisms.

Project-Funded Activities

• RAL provided a non-formated BOM for the quad. It has been given to JIRA site representatives (Tom Gentry/LLO and Jodi Fauver/LHO). Some RAL-produced quad production blades were sent to LHO for nickel-plating, but have not been received yet. RAL were to ship quad machined parts to sites yesterday but no notification of shipment or parts list received yet.
• Work ongoing to schedule/coordinate 2nd quad training exercise at LLO. This must be scheduled along with the monolithic work at RAL, Glasgow and LASTI. Electronics schedule must be accommodated.
• The OMC procurement is ongoing. Waiting for Systems to approve the weldment drawings. Small changes to some drawings to accommodate the DocDB/JIRA system. Working on the SOW.
• Collected drawing package for Triple Hang Tooling and submitted to Brockman Machine. Waiting for estimate, as it will be below the $10k procurement level.
• Worked on monthly variance report including a closer look at the schedule and cost variance under fab labour.
• Attended monthly ALUK telecon.

Prestabilized Laser

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

Operations

• Nothing significant to report.

Project

• Checked the status of the PSL Laser Safety Plan, with a view to re-working some now out of date sections.
• Received a few responses about the Laser Area Enclosure so far.
• An existing wiring harness and EPICS records diagram was drafted for LLO. This will reflect the various electrical connections for the PSL going into S6.

Input Optics

From: Rodica Martin <rmartin@phys.ufl.edu>

ELIGO Commissioning (LLO)

• We improved the beam centering on the mode cleaner mirrors, made mode cleaner thermal lensing measurements up to the maximum available power of 26.3 W. We debugged issues otherwise preventing maximum power through the mode cleaner and helped install the new OMC audio frequency WFS. (Kate)

ALIGO Design

• We have been looking into finalizing the ROCs for the RC. Because of the ASC considerations, the Gouy phase of the cavity has been lowered somewhat and the ROCs have been changed accordingly. We determined new ROC tolerances for the updated design and the requirements have been conveyed to COC. We analyzed the option of biasing the ROCs such that the optimal design is achieved at somewhat higher power level (10-20 W) without the TCS compensation at the CP. Finally, we decided to pick the ROC values for zero watt operation but then change the distance PR2-PR3 to optimize it for higher power levels by moving this a couple of centimeter. A document will soon be updated to reflect all these changes. (Muzammil)
• We are working on HAM2 layout. (Luke)
• We are modeling the Advanced LIGO interferometer in ZEMAX. (Rodica)

ALIGO R&D

• We continued high power testing of the LMA coatings. (David F.) We wrote a document regarding the necessity of the in-vacuum Faraday isolator in Advanced LIGO. (Rodica)

Core Optics

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

• All coating RFPs have gone out. Many thanks to all who contributed.
• Three TIS scans of 18 x 18 mm^2 have been done on a 3" spare HR mirror after being left for several days in the lab, cleaned with First- Contact and with FC plus N2 ion gun. The two results with FC cleaning are consistent and almost the same as that (~ 3 ppm) we observed on the HR of a steering mirror from LLO. Three HR mirrors of 3" in diameter are just arrived, of which the substrates are polished with different techniques. Characterizing one of them on the RTS is underway. We'll also test the cleaning methods with these three mirrors.

Auxiliary Optics

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

Work Under Project Budget

OPTICAL LAYOUT:

• Luke is working on the HAM2 layout. Rodica is in the process of verifying Mike's ZEMAX layout.
• Mike is in the process of adding the optical lever beams to the ZEMAX layout for H1 and H2. This will define the locations of the viewports in the new power recycling and signal recycling beam tubes, and in the new adapter/spools for the H2 end station.

Work Under Operations Budget

OPTICAL LEVER:

• The Design Requirement document has been uploaded to the AOS OptLev Wiki; Tara is in the process of uploading the Conceptual Design document. http://ilog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:7285/advligo/Auxillary_Optics_Stuff.
• Doug is in the process of testing the long-term stability and angular pointing noise over a period of several days. Craig is in the process of releasing the drawings for the prototype optlev pylon.
• Mike has determined with the ZEMAX layout that the optlever beams for the BS may require an in-vacuum periscope to access the BS surface through the vertical row of viewports in the BSC2 and BSC4 chambers, because the BS is offset significantly from the BSC center, unlike initial LIGO.

OUTPUT FARADAY ISOLATOR:

• Mike and Ken have checked the drawings for the test apparatus Niem designed for measuring the FI suspension characteristics.

35 W AIR-COOLED BEAM DUMP:

• K. Mailand has released the drawings and is awaiting approval before manufacturing the parts.

HARTMANN SENSOR FOR ITM:

• Phil and Aidan estimate that if the relative position between HAM4 and HAM5 ( HAM11 and HAM12) changes by > 1 micron the Hartmann signal will be invalid. However, they have a design concept that uses a reference beam, which senses the same path between the HAM tables and allows them to subtract the wavefront error due to the movement.

Control and Data Systems

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

Operations: R&D, ELIGO DAQ, and Electronics

LHO - Electronics:

• Finished testing the top driver electronics and submitted the results. We finish installation of the BSC test stand and plan on testing it this coming week.
• MC-F was flat 0s in the DAQ which led to reboots of the ADCU. The first reboots were unsuccessful so we tried to delete some of the unused channels in case it was a reflective memory capacity problem, but were unable to run the DAQ with the new .ini file. Work is in progress to address this issue.
• Worked on new layout of power for the LDAS room. Previous plan was determined to be unfeasible do to weight of transformers. We have returned the transformers back to the LDAS room.
• Finished the final details for modified motor control for PSL and TCS rotation stages. Testing on PSL will commence Thurs.
• Worked on Laser Safety Access system. The 4k PSL will not trip out with an invalid opening of an ISC table door. This is probably due to the ongoing problem with ISCT-1 Access panel. We have been working this problem for a while and have replaced all the hardware associated with the system. The next step is to replace the cabling. Suspect a pinched wire.

LLO - Electronics:

• Getting the TCS operational and stable for the upcoming science run. (Note: Hardware freeze comes into effect this June 5th.) The major tasks this week has been the trouble shooting of a faulty binary IO signal to enable the TCS ISS electronics, and to continue the commissioning tasks for the TCS ISS electronics as well.

LHO - Systems/Software:

• Followup on frame6 vs. frame8 data quality issues. Testing verified that the uncompressed data from /frame8/full/926/H-R-926094752-32.gwf exactly match the data in the frame6 frame.

LLO - Systems/Software:

• S6 Upgrades: Set up first new frame-builder component (NDS1) using new configuration (X2200M2, CentOS 5.3). Still testing before making it the active data server.
• Commissioning Support: Made corrections to 'stdenv' scripts that allow cross-platform scripts.

Project: AdvLIGO Systems

SEI:

• We have received an Athena II PC-104 computer for the HEPI pump servo. Code development is underway.
• Ordering the final parts, boards, chassis and panels for the production run of the STS-2 Interface, STS-2 Distribution chassis, the Pier Interface Chassis, and the 8-channel Valve Driver. They should all be back soon, then we can send them to Screaming Circuits for stuffing.

SUS:

• Testing of Pre-Production prototype electronics for the quads continues. The units appear to meet the requirements.
• A design for the triple low current driver was presented at last week's CDS meeting. There were a few suggested additions made made and these have been incorporated into the design.
• The triple acquisition driver prototype testing is progressing at CIT. It now appears that we may be able to use this design for both the low current driver and the acquisition driver. While the design is more complex than is needed for the low current driver, it will allow just one type of unit to be produced for AdL. This will greatly simply production.

DAQ:

• We are working with One Stop Systems and Trenton Technologies to find a solution to some configuration problems we have discovered in the new IO expansion chassis.
• We have received the new 18 bit DAC from General Standards. Testing will be started this week. We should have some preliminary numbers for noise, etc. by next week. We have resurrected testing of the Innovative Integration ADC/DAC module.

ISC:

• Performed preliminary measurement on the triboelectric voltage generation coefficient for the coaxial cable used in the ESD drive system for Advanced LIGO optics. There is still some debate going on about the validity of the results, but the preliminary number is 2.7e-9 amps/cm at 73 Hz, which in conjunction with the 56 ohm output of the ESD driver yields a voltage when the chamber motion is known at the feedthrough.
• A follow-up analysis suggests that this will not be a problem. The number is ~1e-7 V/cm. At best any ESD driver will have an output noise voltage of ~10 nV/rtHz, and so the tribo noise will be negligible as long as the vibration is below 1e-2 cm/rtHz. Actual vibration levels of the vac chambers are 1e-6 cm/rtHz or smaller.

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For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini