Weekly Report for Week Ending October 29, 2009

Past Weekly Reports

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LSC Issues (Reitze)

No report provided - Dave is on travel.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

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

• Working with Property Services on year-end reporting of Capital Assets under new OPS.
• Working with Property Services on GSA-leased and Government-owned vehicles.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Mak)

From Cleveland Mak <mak@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Packaged/shipped four boxes of tape cartridges to LHO.
• Assisted Christina with the "Publication Project" I've given her to work on.  Verified data and links that were entered into the DCC.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Lindquist, Oracion)

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

• Worked with IMSS and Project accounting to upload FY2010 LIGO Operations budget into Oracle.
• Currently preparing templates for FY2010 reports.
• Link to LIGO Operations accounts: accounts: https://dcc.ligo.org/DocDB/0005/M0900272/001/FY2010_LIGO_OPs_WBS_Final_Ver.1.pdf.
• Link to Advanced LIGO: https://dcc.ligo.org/DocDB/0000/M0900053/002/ADV.LIGO_Char_%20of_Accounts_Ver.6.pdf.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport/. (For passwords contact Karl).

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Arvizu, Champagnie, Jasnow, Marroquin, Salone)

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

• Reviewed the MIT FY2008 funding transfer.  [PEL NOTE: MIT change order for FY 2010 Operations has been approved.  This will cover the first three months of FY 2010.]
• See Advanced LIGO Report Below.

From Gina Salone

• Rollovers for Contractors

From: Jacqueline Champagnie

• See Advanced LIGO Report Below.

From: Steve Marroquin smarroqu@caltech.edu

• See Advanced LIGO Report Below.

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

• Continued to review progress on development of new software system for P-Card transactions.
• See Advanced LIGO Report Below.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist, Beckett)

From: Dave Beckett <beckett@ligo.caltech.edu>

• After two weeks at Agnes Scott College in Georgia, the LIGO Traveling Exhibit, "Astronomy's New Messengers," has moved now to the University of Florida for a fortnight stay.  I will be posting this event, along with some background info, to the LIGO news blog.
• Continuing to audit for timeliness the various public-information and educational pages on the LIGO web. These are extensive and I'm compiling a list of updates.
• We have an end-of-October Monthly Report due to the NSF by Friday, November 13th. I will send out a call for material October 30th, with a due date of November 6th.

CHANGE REQUESTS (Lindquist)

• No open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• A Staffing Committee meeting was held on Monday, October 12th. The minutes and action items have been posted on the SC web page.
• The next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, November 9th.

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Quality/Safety (Nolting)

LIGO Lab Safety

• Peter King – Took part in the recent, inaugural, laser safety officer workshop.  Got some handy feedback about the training material that was drafted.
• David Nolting – Several ongoing projects are about to be completed, such as the revision to the LIGO Operations Safety & Environmental Protection Manual, the new LIGO Lab Safety Web Page and Incident Reporting System.  Information will be sent out once completed which will identify the new features and content.

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

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

• The H1 duty cycle was low this week (41%) owing to problematic weekend running, with BNS ranges variable from 12 to 17Mpc. On Fri/Sat we had an extended science mode outage due to difficult locking, and then excess glitchniness, at least in part associated with the tip-tilt TT2 mirror in HAM6. The mirror would wander in angle and rail, causing lock loss. An excessively strained cable was replaced, restoring good locking but not range. Full restoration of the IFO came by Wednesday night with the PSL/IOO checkout, relocking of the reference cavity and partly relieving the PSL->IOO periscope mirrors.
• A second optic that has been on walkabout this week was MMT2, also subject to alignment drifts. SoHold (small optic hold servos) were eliminated last year; we're debating restoring those.
• Fscans, frequency-time spectograms especially useful to pulsar analysts and for visualizing wandering lines, have recently been upgraded to include a convenient web interface.
• Detchar has pointed out that the POBS_DC channel has been saturating; while this is output is unused by the LSC front end, it is derived from the same photodiode that produces SPOB. We may attenuate the light here to prevent SPOB from hitting it's head.

Squeezer update (D. Sigg, S. Dwyer)

• Continuing with the procurement of electronics modules. And still working on the optics procurement for beam splitters, SHG mirrors and lenses. Now also looking at dichroics.

Outreach (D. Ingram)

• LHO welcomed ~200 8th graders from Highland Middle School in Kennewick for visits on 10/15 and 10/16. Thanks to John Worden and Armando Merlin for interacting with these student groups. Corey Gray and Gerardo Moreno represented LIGO at SACNAS 2009 mid-month. Corey and Fred Raab are now exhibiting at AISES 2009 in Portland OR.

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

General Operations (Rusyl Wooley)

• (See FMP report this week).

Enhanced LIGO and S6 run (Valera Frolov)

• The micro seismic motion remained elevated last week. The data taking was only possible for two-three days. The range was around 14 Mpc during that time.
• The investigation of the front end timing and improvement of the inter processor communication continued. The new version of the code from the OMC-LSC link was installed and tested. The code enforces the proper communication and greatly improves the error checking and diagnostics. No data corruption has been observed with the new code.
• The mismatch between the OMC-LSC data is monitored and reported once per second and available for vetoing if communication error occurs.
• The PSL beam jitter coupling was investigated using output mode cleaner as an analyzer for the laser amplitude noise after the input mode cleaner using the single bounce beam. It was found that the peaks from the PSL periscope mirrors are affected by the mode cleaner alignment servo offsets. The non zero offsets can be due to the poor mode matching of the PSL beam into the IMC. The investigation will continue with interferometer in full lock.

LLO CDS (Keith Thorne)

CDS - Hardware

• DAQ Test Stand - A corrected Timing Master was received from Columbia Univ. Once installed, Carl Adams was able to get the 1PPS signal through to the front-end computer.  The test stand can now be remotely accessed through a port on the CDS NAT router.  Rolf and Alex still need to load software on the DTS server and front-end.
• Timing - Rolf and Matt studied all the timing delays in the OMC<->LSC data exchange using their improved RFM communications code.  They corrected the 1 PPS wiring so the OMC,ISI use the same source (GPS receiver) as the other front-ends.  Remaining delays may be due to inverted ADC clock inputs to the OMC (still under investigation) Mike Fyffe fixed the polarity of the DuoTone input to the LSC and made new ADC timing cables.
• Network - Mike Fyffe pulled dedicated Ethernet cables for the TCS Ethernet-Serial convertors.   This eliminated the use of unmanaged network switches to  allow the TCS chiller and vacuum controls to share a cable.

CDS - Software

Operations

• Status Screens - Keith fixed logic error in an OMC QPD2 status and created a couple of missing screens.  The OMC status can now be greened for science mode.
• FOM - instructions to restart all FOM projector screens was updated and posted at the terminals and in the wiki. - Keith added ilog accounts as requested.

Upgrades.

• Keith added EPICS gateway MEDM screens.
• Keith updated more HEPI check-valve scripts to run on the Linux workstations.
• Keith is most of the way through conversion of the autorun GUI screens and scripts for Linux compatibility.  These will be set up in a test area until validated by operators and commissioners.
• Rolf and Matt have updated the LSC and OMC front-end code to final implementation, with testing on going.  DC locking was acheived with the new code. They are trying to add RFM communication checking to the ASC, SOS and SUS front-ends, but changes are limited by available process time on the older front-end hardware.
• Tape Backup - the new backup software on the new backup server is still not working robustly. The vendor will be contacted to debug the problem.

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)

• Nothing significant to report.

See also Advanced LIGO

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Adhikari)

No report provided. Rana is on travel.

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Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

No report provided.

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LASTI (Mittleman)

No report this week.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

__________

Antony Searle:

• Supporting Omega online running and performance testing by Jonah, Jamie and Brennan.
• Refining PRC metrics.

__________

Cristina Valeria Torres:

• Work on background syncing scripts.  These scripts when setup will keep the Omega backgrounds synced across all LIGO grid clusters.
• Work on expanding the wiki based follow up checklist.  In order to proceed with a complete revision of checklist generation backward compatibility was sacrificed.  This effects the S5 high mass search follow up but we have an alternative technique to handle those followups.
• Worked on L1 glitch report from last week and presented it during the call.

__________

Stephen Privitera:

• I worked on glitch studies for S6b week 4. https://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/twiki/bin/view/DetChar/GlitchWeekH1-20091017.
• I have been working on the bank chi-squared test for the single stage pipeline.  We are trying to optimize the test to improve the efficiency of the single stage pipeline.

__________

P. Ajith:

• Improved the data conditioning of the physical instrumental veto code -- higher veto efficiency.
• Running the code on many (bilinear) combinations of instrumental channels on E14/S6A data.
• Corrected SURF reports of Aaron and Anahita.

__________

Peter Kalmus:

• Moving towards GEO segment list and calibration products for A5 SGR search.
• Talked at TASC09 about SGR GW modeling project.
• Double checked Wind ephemeris data and prepared H2-only A5 SGR events list.
• Strategizing for A5 SGR 1627 storm analysis, A5 SGR 0481 analysis (as SGR 0418 distance is unknown)>

__________

Igor Yakushin:

• mplemented significance estimate of the online cWB triggers based on time-shifted analysis (3600-3 lags) on 3 different time intervals: last hour (measured in processed livetime, not gps time), last day, the whole run.
• Working on setting up trigger submission to gracedb.
• Noticed that more than 30% of L1 Science data was vetoed by category 1-4 DQ flags while this number was only a few percent for H1 and V1 data; it turned out that PD_OVERFLOW flag included much more than one would think from its name; Josh corrected category definer file.

__________

Greg Mendell:

• Weekly Fscans showing spectrograms and spectra each Saturday for the past week of data are now automated to run on a weekly basis, and can be found here: https://ldas-jobs.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~pulsar/fscan/weeklyS6/hoft/fscanNavigation.html https://ldas-jobs.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~pulsar/fscan/weeklyS6/LHO/fscanNavigation.html https://ldas-jobs.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/~pulsar/
  fscan/weeklyS6/LLO/fscanNavigation.html. The jobs run on Sunday, and will finished by the following Monday morning, when the link will appear for the past week on the previous Saturday   Previously links to Weekly Fscans have been redirected to those above.

__________

Chad Hanna:

• This week I have been working with visitors Ruslan and Jordi on likelihood ranking statistics for CBC pipelines.

__________

Drew Keppel:

• Working with Chad, Kipp, Ruslan, and Jordi implementing new likelihood code for the CBC pipeline.
• Testing the run time of a CBC single-stage pipeline.

__________

Vladimir Dergachev:

• Worked with Joe on coherent followup.
• More exploration of loosely coherent code.
• Completed collection of data for the Full S5 mid-frequency run.

__________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Worked on Monte Carlo injections testing the effectiveness of the fully coherent follow up pipeline to PowerFlux as well as determine the optimal parameter space to follow up.

__________

Kipp Cannon:

• Working with Chad Hanna, Drew Keppel, Kari Hodge, and Ruslan Vaulin and Jordi Burguet-Castell visiting from UWM on likelihood-ratio based techniques for inspiral event ranking.

__________

Anand Sengupta:

• On owl shift at LHO.

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

• The 1.16.2 version of LDAS is being prepared. It addresses an issue discovered during the running of the RDSVerify scripts where newly created frame files were not being discovered by the diskcacheAPI. This version is being prepared for release.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

• More migration of S5 L1s from 9940 to T10KB tape and md5sums of files already migrated to confirm their integrity currently 197 9940 tapes are in the state "fully migrated, data needs to be md5sum'd" and 156 tapes are ready to ship.
• Confirmed that 4 boxes of tapes arrived at LHO.
• Computed LIGO storage usage for Kent.
• Dealt with problems with samhome1 having it's samsharefsd quit responding.

(Phil Ehrens)

• Wrote script that generates column of select menus for safety documents from dcc docs using keywords.
• Wrote script that applies MANY rules to passwords and optionally updates password hash file. Wrote SWIG wrapper for cracklib to be used by this script (or elsewhere).
• Wrote script that extracts current author data from the new dcc. The output of this script can be fed to the script that currently maps old dcc authors to LDAP users.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• With Stuart (visited MIT) Wed/Thursday (Bates opening and mit-ldas stuff).

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• Received 10G network card for thumper1.
• Fixed ganglia by installing it on the old ldas-jobs machine; checked that it is reporting to the watchtower.
• Updated DAGMan binaries on head nodes.

(Doug Lormand)

• Installed a gige card into gridmon.
• Began working to restore Dwayne's cluster monitor. Found all of the perl scripts which gather the cluster data and the cron job templates that go with them. But we can't find the scripts which parse the data for the web page. They might have been missed in the backup. If so I will write new code.

Hanford

(Greg Mendell)

• Followed-up on missing files that were not published into LDR at LLO due to a filesystem becoming full. This problem was fixed by Scott Koranda, and the files have now transferred.
• Worked on adding md5sum generation to the LDAS hoft generation process.
• Scheduled a spot check for the LDAS HVAC units as part of our annual maintenance contract, and had the service person follow-up on a noise condenser fan.

(Dan Moraru)

• Replaced failed disk and installed 10GigE PCI-X card in thumper1.
• Upgraded thumper2 to Solaris 10 U8 (clean install) and ZFS v4.
• Applied latest patches (excluding kernel) to thumper1, qfs-nfs1, and qfs-nfs2.
• Fixed degraded RAID1 array on node252.
• Updated Condor DAGMan binaries on submit machines to 7.4.0-prerelease-2009-10-15.
• Removed stuck tape from L700.
• Configured new web server to replace ldas-jobs.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Setup Marie's new laptop.
• Migrating rsync linux backups to rdiff-backup.
• Some swiftoo1 machine setup for Erik.
• Transferring Sam's  XP/solidworks install to new machine.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• Created a GC account for new user.
• Replaced kantech controller board in guard shack.
• Attempted to put the machine shop door on the schedule with the other doors, but having issue with coil in locking mechanism.
• Shannon made the fiber terminations and installed WAP in the VPW and terminated the copper in the HEPI Hut.  I later installed a WAP in the HEPI Hut.
• Added memory to Rich's PC.
• Cleveland once again lost connection to the disk array attached to it. I restarted cleveland and reconnected the fibers.  Upon restart, the disks were detected. I immediately kicked off a full backup.
• Created two mailing lists for the SEC.
• Discussed possible solutions for an SEC sign-in kiosk.
• Some progress with a Solaris Kerberos/LDAP client.
• Attended a few meetings.
• Worked a couple small procurement items.
• Numerous usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap daily.

Hanford

(Jonathan)

• Reconfigured cresent to do LIGO.ORG as a solaris 10 sparc box.
• Testing ligotools on solaris 10.
• Configuring laptops for new ADLIGO users.
• Made some DNS changes for LDAS.  Created ldas-www2.
• Setup computer for Jennie Murdock.
• User support Filiberto Clara, Mary Kurts.
• Solaris printing configuration.
• Retired Padilla (Solaris 9 machine), replacing it with a LIGO.ORG authenticated Solaris 10 machine (Cresent).
• Updating cfengine config for solaris 10 LIGO.ORG machines to deal with the issues seen last week on solaris.
• Updating auth project documentation for solaris 10 LIGO.ORG setup to reflect issues seen last week on solaris.
• Updated setup on jupiter to make the calcium reminders more reliable.
• Installed Crystal Reports XI for Mary Kurts.
• Setup odbc connection from crystal reports to PRISM for Mary Kurtz.
• Restored several mailboxes that had been quarantined due to a virus getting through the email filter.  The virus has been submitted to the anti-virus.  It is not believed that anyone opened the infected attachment.
• Patched oregon.ligo-wa and converting to LIGO.ORG.

Caltech

(Mike)

• Finished up reconfiguring ADVLIGO backup software to point to new account and directory.
• Spent a lot of time working on a users computer. Problems running software/windows updates and fixing some corrupted files on his computer.
• Rebooted all NTSRV's to install critical updates. I had some problems on a few of the servers that required manual updating. Plus came across some of the services failed to start.
• Tested out Cat 5 KVM switch with sun x2200 servers. Everything works just fine.
• Continued work on spam filters.
• Ran daily ADVLIGO backups.
• Regular dhcp server work.

(Veronica)

• L-V meeting website:  Working on troubleshooting of the MIT e-commerce account, and setting up a payment UI.
• Working on migration of the PAC wiki to a new server.
• Ongoing work on the old DCC migration.
• Updates of various LIGO/LSC web pages.

(Christian)

• End-user laptop was overheating. Called Dell support to have the motherboard and fan replace.
• Solidworks virtual memory error. Increased memory on system.
• Replaced toner on local printer.
• Larry and I ran network lines to Phil L.'s new office.
• Upgraded firmware on Albert Lazzarini and Julie Hiroto local printers.
• Created Windows XP mandatory profile on workstations that are located in conference rooms.
• Working on installing new ANSYS network license.
• Testing new workstation with Windows 7 and XP.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Melody)

• DCC: User support: granting access, removing files Granted Phil mysql remote access to both test and production systems. Helped Phil with composing mysql queries for the Lab Safety website. Worked on adding the Specific groups access to events and sessions.
• myLIGO: Addressed some RT tickets.

(Larry)

• Worked on a number of purchases. Ordered more Solidworks licenses. Renewed the Ansys license. Working on a Labview license renewal. Renewed one of the Primavera related licenses. Purchased some network supplies for one of the labs. Working on a purchase list of items needed for the move to Downs. Received the test workstation unit and tracking down the order for two workstations to replace some obsolete units. Still working the the campus on the new P-card system.
• Built another server unit. This one is to be used as a wiki server. The first wiki installation should be wrapped up in the next day or so.
• Some minor troubleshooting of a couple of new builds. Also updated patches on a couple of the servers.
• Work on logistics for the move to Downs. Setup a new edge-switch to test out some of the network connections. Attended a couple of meetings concerning the move. Did a couple of walk-thru's and started checking on some of the cable work.
• Help a number of users with their web-page setup.
• Resolved some issues on a couple of corrupted files.
• Cleaned up a number of mail aliases as well as taking care of some typos on a couple of new alias files. Cleaned spam filter daily. Still most of the spam is coming in from white-listed locations.
• Cleaned up a few accounts.
• Worked on different logistical issues for the up-coming meetings.
• Regular user assistance.

Distributed (Grid) Computing R&D (Blackburn)

Grid Application Development

Einstein@Home on the OSG

• Restarted the production running of E@H on the OSG using a new submit host. Currently running on 17 OSG sites. Still recovering from the down time in metric for weekly average credits, but it is quickly climbing back.
• Opened a GOC ticket to address several sites where resource problems have been seen after the restart.
• Made improvements in the code used to manage the automatic error checking and recovery on sites.

Binary Inspiral Application on Grids

• After manually making changes to the DAX generated by IHOPE to fix a bug that is currently awaiting a fix, the one week's worth of data workflow on the Caltech OSG ITB using SRM completed successfully in less than a day. The performance jump is due to fixes to Condor and Condor-G made available by the Condor developers. This completed the final milestone with the OSG for this year.
• Testing a feature of Pegasus know as "horizontal clustering" to reduce the load on the job managers and condor scheduler. A one month worth of data workflow has been generated and has been submitted. A checksum error was encountered in one of the frame files and is being investigated.
• Have transfered 12600 out of ~60K frame files to the OSG production site Firefly to demonstrate the ability to use an SRM storage element at a non-LIGO site. Also registering this data in the RLS server catalog at ISI for the purpose of generating a workflow.

Open Science Grid Integration & Validation Testbed

• Set up a new submission host on osg-ldg using the new development tree version of Condor (7.4.0).
• Upped the GRIDMANAGER_MAX_JOBMANAGERS_PER_RESOURCE to 100 resulting in a high load of 40, but allowing very fast completion of the binary inspiral workflows that needed to be tested out for the completion of the year 3 milestone. 
• OSG-CE crash that occurred last friday was traced to a bad cable. Cable has been replaced but also required reinstalling some elements of the OSG software.

Open Science Grid Documentation Project

• No significant activity this week.

Grid Management

• Responded to a request for OSG WBS items in year 4 (next year) that were across various area coordination leads to assure proper scope and responsibility.
• Attended this weeks OSG Area Coordinator's Meeting and presented on LIGO's application plans for year 4 to the forum.
• Provided talking points to Paul Avery for a Data Intensive Science Symposium beyond LHC regarding LIGO that was held in Orlando Florida this week.
• Worked with Julie Hiroto to get DAF in prepared for OSG year 4 subaward. DAF has now been signed by myself and will go to PMA for signature.
• Reworked EVO enhancement request document with inputs from the LSC Remote Participation Committee. The document has now been handed over to the EVO developers for review and is in the DCC. Planning underway to meet with the EVO developers as soon as Philippe Galvez returns to work.
• Sent thank you note to the Condor developers for all their support in tracking down and fixing the issues seen on the Caltech ITB cluster installation. This allowed us to meet our last year 3 OSG milestone in the WBS.
• Held a meeting with Jim Weichel of Fermilab to discuss progress and plans for the OSG Documentation Project that Robert is the architect on.
• Supported standard set of requests for certificates and LIGO Data Grid acco.

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Management

From Carol Wilkinson

Project Controls

• A change request to accommodate the early start for RF distribution system in the Interferometer Sensing and Controls subsystem was approved. Budget of $105.7k will be taken from contingency and added to the ISC RF Distribution System Equipment control account for procurement of the RF Distribution Amplifiers.
• A second change request for additional staffing during the fabrication phase is in draft form. Total added cost is $2.5M for ~36 FTE-yrs.

Staffing

• Job ads and statements of work for the staff augmentation change request have been posted and resumes are being reviewed. More job offers have been tendered and accepted. Several new staff members have reported for work. 12 out of 22 positions have been filled.

Procurements

For Ed Jasnow

• Worked with Alan Wilkins to prepare responses to questions from Ann Miller on the machined parts procurement.  As a result of these responses, Ann approved the procurement on 10/29.
• Reviewed recommendations from Alan Wilkins to revise standard RFQ language to compress the proposal information requested into one section instead of two.
• Assigned new IO beam tube procurement to Rudy Arvizu.
• Setting up meeting with GariLynn Billingsley, Rudy Arvizu, and Alan Wilkins to discuss delays in Core Optics Metrology procurement.

For Steve Marroquin

• No report this week.

For Rudy Arvizu

• Loading legacy documents in the DCC as events: MIT Support under the direction of David Shoemaker.
• 10/27/09 issued Sercel Inc. PO 75ADV-S080480 for Seismometers P/N L4C (SI-153 and SI-175).
• 10/23/09 issued JPL order 75ADV-1088006 (Inter-division transfer of funds) for FTIR Surface analysis for Tom Gentry (designated priority).
• 10/29/09 prepared the draft procurement for the AdL Interferometer for Full Aperture Surface Figure Metrology  CO-102.

For Gina Salone

• Assisting others with ongoing procurements
• Generating and approving Tech-Mart requisition
• Solving Problems
• DCC Administration

Invoice Administration/Admin Support

For Ruth Winstead

• Managed and processed invoices through Webnow.
• Sent request to Triad for Alex Ivanov’s revised proposal reflecting new distribution.
• Email and phone tech reps and vendors on status of purchase orders.
• Delivered invoices to Procurement Services (Guillermo).
• Resolve issues for end users regarding receipt of items and payment of invoices.
• Continued posting of packing slips and invoices to DCC.

Property Management

Rod Luna

• Tracking two shipments from R. Cutler from the University of Birmingham, consisting of 16 UIM Coil Driver units.
• Continued working in gathering financial information for the initial LIGO elements upon decommissioning for Advanced LIGO requested by the NSF Property Administrator.
• Assisted B. O’Reilly with scheduling a shipment from Dallas, TX to LLO.
• Provided back up documentation for all exports to Adilia Koch in Export Compliance

.NSF Acquisition Approvals

• A request for re-approval is pending with NSF for machined parts for Suspensions, with an awarded price was outside the pre-approved value, was approved by NSF.

Progress Updates

• Next progress update is due October 28. The reports for October will be the basis of the presentations for the NSF Annual Review of LIGO in December.

Meetings & Reviews

• The next Monthly Progress Reporting Meeting will be on Thursday, November 12, at 8:30 AM PT. Subsystem leaders or their delegates need to attend.
• Advanced LIGO is preparing to give its semi-annual report during the NSF Annual Review of LIGO held on December 1-3 at LIGO Livingston Lab.

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>, Kurt Buckland <buckland_k@ligo.caltech.edu>

See also the Adv. LIGO Systems wiki

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

• Reviews currently underway:
  • Optical Lever Design Requirements Review & Conceptual Design Review (DRR/CDR): continues (Mike L. chair).
  • IO FDR has started (Eric G. chair).

• Impending reviews currently:
  • Systems FDR: documents ready soon.
  • SUS HSTS FDR: documents ready soon.

Procurement Techncial Reviews: see the procurement wiki

•  Nothing significant to report.

Technical Review Board (TRB): see the TRB log

•  Nothing significant to report.

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

• UHV Prep Lab: (Bob)
  • I have been working to get the FTIR account with JPL set up this week. It is now in place.
  • I received  received 180  actuator parts from  Quinetiq North America for cleaning and baking. I have cleaned and have started the baking of 30 aluminum parts and have cleaned 75 nickel plated parts.
  • I have been writing the Hazard analysis for the FTIR sample preparation process this week.
  • I received two FTIR samples from LHO for analysis. I will take these to JPL tomorrow.
  • I am continuing to build the FTIR Chemistry sets for the sites. The table mounts are finished and the parts are ordered. 
• Optical Contamination Cavity Testing: (Bob T., Liyuan) 
  • Received laser for 3rd cavity back from repair by the manufacturer.
  Configuration Control & Documentation:

• Nothing significant to report.

Design/Planning:

• Optical Layout (Mike S.) Mike traced the arm length stabilization beams from both arms in H1 through the AR surface of the PR2 and steered to HAM1. The 532 nm beams almost overlap, and are a few millimeters away from the 1064 nm POB beam in HAM1, so that nothing heroic needs to be done to bring those beams out to the PSL table if desired. Mike is continuing to update the H2 layout.
• Metal components intended for use in the Adv LIGO Vacuum System  (Calum, Ken, Dennis) Wrote up short memo on Metal components intended for use in the Adv LIGO Vacuum System. It can be found on the DCC at: - LIGO-E0900364-v1.
• Dust generation from ALL suspensions (starting with the quad) (Calum, Dennis) We sent the following request to all personnel on the aligo_sus email list server: Systems would like help in compiling a list of items that are adjusted once the suspensions are inside the vacuum chamber e.g. earthquake stops, osems etc ... We also plan on including with the list details of how the items are adjusted, how often, when etc ... This information will be used:
  • In the design of the items used to protect the monolithic suspension e.g. optics cap, umbrella, fibre guard etc ...
  • When considering additional mitigation methods.
  • To recommend any upgrades e.g. if a regular stainless screw is adjusted often we may suggest switching to a N60 screw. 
• Request for review of systems drawings D0900465 and D0900405 (Calum,Dennis) We also sent the following to aligo_sys: Please find at the following DCC links the AdvLIGO Systems Top Level Chamber Assembly drawings for HAM9-H2 LIGO-D0900465-v3 and BSC7-H2 LIGO-D0900405-v3. We are in the process of building similar drawings for all of the chambers and creating an entire tree for advanced LIGO. Our tree currently starts at Advanced LIGO Systems Layout Drawing LIGO-D0901491-v1 and goes down through the sites, splits at both end and corner stations, then chamber level and beyond. We would like to get feedback from you on the HAM and BSC chamber drawings indicated above. We are using these as a reference guide to create all of the other chamber drawings (for both sites). I would like to emphasise that:
  • Each chamber level includes .pdf, and an e-drawing assembly with multiple configurations. It also has a .jpg with a plan view (looking up at a BSC from below and down on a HAM from above).
  • In the various sheets of the .pdf we have included dimensions, views and configurations that we feel will be useful. We are keen for additions but users should remember that they can measure, section and move items using the e-drawing assembly or accessing the files in the vault.
  • All of the associated SolidWorks (SW) files are available on the PDMWorks Vault.
  • In the SW files the laser beam can be viewed down to chamber level. In the DCC documents, above, the laser beam can be seen in either the .jpg or e-drawings.
• Cake Tins (Calum, Kurt, Ken) Prototypes arrived and have been tested. Working on updates.

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

• Nothing significant to report.

Modeling and Simulation

From: Hiroaki Yamamoto hiro@ligo.caltech.edu  

Static IFO Simulation (Hiro)

• SIS Algorithm : The slow stable cavity simulation is the bottle neck to do detailed study of the characterization of IFO. The development of faster algorithm is underway.
• Mode matching and loss : From the studies of 40m IFO and a coupled cavity with stable recycling cavity with finite AOI, the power loss was found to be much larger than the value naively estimated by the mode coupling between the short cavity and the long arm. The underlying relation is being investigated.
• COC Support : The recycling cavity loss caused by the astigmatism of RM3 surface aberration was calculated to set the requirement on the mirror surface figure requirement.
• LG33 : Matteo of APC is working with a company to prepare a LG33 mode field for the future IFO with smaller thermal noise. Data files of a simulated (not real) input field is provided from the company. SIS has been modified to accept a field specified by data files, in addition to specify by just modes. A quick look indicates that the field is not a good LG33 mode.

Safety

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

• Assisted the AdL Suspension group with addressing safety issues for the  HAM Small Triple Suspension Assembly and Installation Hazard Analysis, which is currently in the approval process.
• Continue to engage the AdL Clean & Bake team with equipment operations at LLO.
• Also, assisting with preparations for the FTIR testing labs that are being assembled for use at both LHO and LLO.

Quality Assurance

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

QA

Seismic:

• Visited MIT this week to review a vendor about ready to deliver parts to both sites. We had a couple of issues with the interpretation of the drawings, and as a consequence one of the parts sets were scrapped and are being reworked. A few other parts had minor dimensional issues, however these are on non-critical edges, and determined to be acceptable. We also found that some other parts may have problems we do not yet know about, and as a result the team at MIT reviewing the parts has decided to pass one sample of each part to an inspection house with a Solidworks enabled CMM system, for full dimensional checks. The supplier that is machining the parts does not have this capability in house at this time. Once we receive a variance report from the inspection house, we will review any potential issues by looking upstream at assemblies and at each interface to determine if we will need rework. Ken will be delivering parts to be inspected in the coming week.
• Another potential issue that has been identified is the possible backlog of parts cleaning and baking at LLO in the next month or two. Because if this possible issue, we are evaluating whether to ship the first batch of parts from the supplier to LHO instead of LLO. Since there may be a bit more uptime available at LHO, we can reduce idle time on ovens there. Another possibility is all parts should be shipped to LHO and then distributed to LLO as cleaned, bake at LLO.

COC

• Reviewed the RFQ for the cake tins for transporting the optics, looked good for QA, and Calum has had prototype in hand to check, etc before ordering the full batch.
• The QA plan for the large optics from our vendor is about 75% reviewed, expect to complete and return to them this weekend. No major issues found, it looks very good to this point.

Inventory Control Database

• A bug was discovered this week, we are unsure what the root problem is, but it appears when too many parts are imported at one time, the system can freeze or hang, and also cause parts improperly import. We are currently trying to recreate on the test system so we can solve and move forward.

Facilities Modifications and Preparations

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

LHO

• The large air bake oven work continues - fans and heaters have been operated a number of times and we are still working on cleaning out the fabrication dust - good progress here. The vacuum bake oven looks almost ready for the first load - it is at 150C, and the RGA is baking after fixing a short on the RGA head. The OSB vacuum oven has been in continual use for several weeks now processing BOSEMs and other SUS parts. Electrical conduit has been placed in the new wall of the fiber pulling room and the contractor is installing the door today and will put up drywall tomorrow.

LLO

• The FTIR samples from the large air bake oven have been sent to Pasadena for analysis. We are in the process of the final cleaning of the large aLIGO assembly area. A contractor has been chosen to do some air conditioning upgrades in the old banquet room. That work will begin on Wednesday 11/4. We ran the large parts washer this week. Unfortunately, water leaks into one of the 480 volt heater coil junction boxes so we have turned off the main power feed and locked it out.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason kmason@ligo.mit.edu

aLIGO Project Activities

SEI Activities and Progress at LLO

• We have finished calibrating HEPI valves and are now working on testing HEPI actuators on the new Actuator test stand. We have also been flushing actuators and filters for the past few weeks. We sent fluid samples from before and after actuator flushing to be analyzed for contaminants.
• The clean areas for ISI assembly are nearing completing as is the clean & bake infrastructure.  ~Brian O.

SEI Electronics Design and Fabrication

• I'll send out the block diagrams for the BSC ISI FDR today. Sam has begun making the cables for the Inductive Position Sensors in the Pier Interface.  They should be finished in the next few weeks.
• The front and back panels for the Pump Servo should be in soon.
• We've re-designed the HAM GS-13 Interface channel to include the whitening that we want, and now have to do a little work on the pressure sensor readback electronics.
• I flew up to Stanford on Tuesday to help test the Trillium-to-STS-2 Interface, and its RS-232 functionality.  Daniel, Graham, Brian and I got everything working, and I am writing up a procedure for others to replicate what we did.
• We are getting some quotes together to have the GS-13 In-Pod cable manufactured.  We'll see what comes back.
• Emery has re-designed the GS-13 connector board so it all fits nicely in the pod.
• Mohana's Coil Driver panels are here, and everything looks good.  Sam will stuff up one chassis worth of boards for a final shake down before production. ~Ben

Single Stage HAM Procurement and Build

• Mick Flanigan visited MIT this week for a visit to Lavallee Machine. He reviewed their methods for converting solid models to CNC programs and inspected many parts. Since there is some questions we will have first article of each part sent to an independent inspection service.

Two Stage BSC Design and Procurement

• We are working on the final design details and the FDR documentation due by November 2. The FDR will be held on Friday, 13 November.  ~Fabric
• Working on SEI top level assembly, including Tooling.  Writing Assembly procedures, and itemizing changes since the PDR in preparation for the FDR. ~Sam
• BSC Stage 2 Design: tying up loose ends in preparation for upcoming Final Design Review. ~Andy

Suspensions

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

Operations Work

• HLTS prototype - Nothing significant to report.
• HSTS - Many of the SUS group are working hard to prepare documentation for the FDR.
• Blades - Received more prototype blades this week. Awaiting parts for blade test stand to perform characterization.
• Blade Test Stand - ordered a simplified set of blade and wire clamps for each type of blade for exclusive use on the test stand. They should be here in a week or so.

Project-Funded Activities

• Updated schedule and participated in monthly meeting with Project Management team.
• Added ESD-like cables to the quad Mathematica model to look at effect of stiffness.Work ongoing.
• Received report on ESD drive from the UK. Setting up telecon to discuss.
• Starting to assemble information to submit ACR for harness assembly work.
• Organizing a trip to LLO by the IO folks to discuss optical alignment methods for HSTS & HLTS.

Prestabilized Laser

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

Operations

• I am doing scimon shifts at LLO all this week.

Project

• Drafting out the power stabilisation section for the final design document. Going over the beam pointing requirements for the photodetector and the need for a suspended photodetector again.

Input Optics

From: David Tanner <tanner@phys.ufl.edu>

Adv LIGO Acquisition:

• We spent time cleaning and assembling IMC optic containers. (Luke, with help from Prem)
• We scheduled meetings with proposers for polishing the small RMs. We ordered 4 test pieces of superpolished CVD coated SiC to test for reflectance, scattering, high power exposure and vacuum compatibility. We ordered shock sensors to attach to transport containers for suspended optics.
• We have begun updating / finalizing the coating specifications for the small recycling mirrors, based on the latest ISC developments. (Rodica)

Adv LIGO Design

• We designed the HSTS alignment tools and submitted drawings to shop. (Luke)
• We evaluated a number of heaters for temperature uniformity. The conclusion is that the thermal conductance through current wires is the main source non-uniformity. We have started looking into new types of heaters for TCS and a few more heaters have been ordered. (Muzammil)

Core Optics

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

Rand Dannenberg

• Continued management of CSIRO AdL coating. 3rd weekly call. 2) Prep for trip to LMA. 3) FTIR support. 4) Inst Sci coating support.

Liyuan Zhang

• HEP conference.

GariLynn Billingsley

• Updating (learning) the Inventory control system with FM and CP shipments.
• Tinsley is running behind in polishing, due mostly to the ITM02 damage, there is no COC delivery impact.
• We are still factfinding for the large aperture metrology.
• FMs have arrived at CSIRO for annealing, there may be a delay in that process, since CSIRO is not set up to anneal yet.
• Exploring the possible impact of high temperature anneal on absorption of fused silica at 1064nm.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Eric Gustafson <egustafs@ligo.caltech.edu>

Pre Stabilized Laser ­ Peter King

• Created a first draft of the power stabilization section of the Final Design Review document. reviewing the beam pointing requirements for the photodetector to evaluate the need for a suspended photo-detector.

AOS TransMon Group ­ Sam Waldman, Matt Evans, Jay Heefner, Mike Smith and Ken Mailand

• The TransMon_SUS design is progressing with a Zmax table optics layout provided by Waldman. Mailand has converted the layout to a Solid Works assembly showing the Telescope kinematically attached to the TransMon optics table, is beginning the suspension assembly model and will combine it with the Telescope and Table. When this assembly is complete it will give Evans the information needed to start work on the suspension dynamics model. The Telescope primary and secondary off-set Parabolic Element specifications are complete (E0900347 & E0900349 ) and have been sent to vendors for feedback.

Optical Lever ­ Tara Chalermsongsak, Eric Black and Riccardo DeSalvo

• The optical modes from FC/PC and FC/APC fibers using several different collimators have been measured. It appears that the rings in the beam are most likely due to diffraction. We are estimate the optical power in the cladding mode. We are remeasuring the noise from each quadrant of the Split Quadrant Photo Diodes receivers.

Thermal Compensation System ­ Aidan Brooks and Phil Willems

• We have interviewed three candidates now for the TCS ME Cog. Eng. position and will make a recommendation the Staffing Committee before the end of the week. At the sites, nothing extraordinary is happening involving TCS. At Hanford a cable that was making a channel noisy was swapped, along with the channel- now the signal is just saturated, so something about the switch was not done quite right. This is ongoing but not urgent. At Livingston, the Ethernet connection to the chillers was moved to isolate it from the vacuum electronics. TCS electronics are slowly being moved onto the DCC in accordance with Rich Abbott's new guidelines. ISS is complete, the QPD electronics nearly so, thermistor electronics to follow. Later we will compose quick-start manuals for all our electronics. Florida and Caltech have ordered sample heaters from Watlow to evaluate them for use in Advanced LIGO. These should arrive by next week. The choice of Hartmann probe wavelength and input optical path has not reached closure but needs to soon. As part of this we are requesting input from our coating vendors about visible spectral performance of their candidate core optic coating designs with input from COC.

Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>

ADLIGO

Work Under Project Budget

OPTICAL LAYOUT

• Mike is continuing to update the H2 layout. Work under Operations Budget Mike traced the arm length stabilization beams from both arms in H1 through the AR surface of the PR2 and steered to HAM1. The 532 nm beams almost overlap, and are a few millimeters away from the 1064 nm POB beam in HAM1, so that nothing heroic needs to be done to bring those beams out to the PSL table if desired.

OUTPUT FARADAY ISOLATOR

• All the parts for the Output Faraday Isolator Suspension prototype test have been received. Virginio measured the extension of the 0.375 inch diameter rubber cord under full load and determined that because of the non-linear modulus of elasticity and Poisson's ratio, a larger diameter latex cord is needed. Niem has ordered a new cord sample for testing.

ETM/TRANSMON

• Mike has been in e-mail contact with a potential supplier of the off-axis parabolic telescope mirrors in Russia. A second company in the U.S. is being informed of the changes in the specification and is in the process of providing a budgetary quotation.

PHOTON CALIBRATOR

• Mike revised the layout of the photon calibrator beams for H1 and H2 in Zemax to provide the desired separation of the dual beams entering the input viewport, the vertical locations of the beams hitting the ETM, and the separation of the dual beams exiting the output viewport. He created a spread sheet with the locations of the beams and internal periscope mirrors and gave that information to Craig who will make a SW layout.

Control and Data Systems

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

Operations: R&D, ELIGO DAQ, and Electronics

LHO - Electrical - R. McCarthy

Computing - Barker

• Tape backup system final testing was performed.
• Port of CDS code into the new CDS SVN repositories continues. Wiki documentation was completed.

LLO - K. Thorne

Hardware

• DAQ Test Stand - A corrected Timing Master was received from Columbia Univ. Once installed, Carl Adams was able to get the 1PPS signal through to the front-end computer. The test stand can now be remotely accessed through a port on the CDS NAT router. Rolf and Alex still need to load software on the DTS server and front-end.
• Timing - Rolf and Matt studied all the timing delays in the OMC<->LSC data exchange using their improved RFM communications code. They corrected the 1 PPS wiring so the OMC,ISI use the same source (GPS receiver) as the other front-ends. Remaining delays may be due to inverted ADC clock inputs to the OMC (still under investigation) Mike Fyffe fixed the polarity of the DuoTone input to the LSC and made new ADC timing cables.

Software

• Rolf and Matt have updated the LSC and OMC front-end code to final implementation, with testing on going. DC locking was acheived with the new code. They are trying to add RFM communication checking to the ASC, SOS and SUS front-ends, but changes are limited by available process time on the older front-end hardware.

Project: AdvLIGO Systems

SEI - B. Abbott

• The block diagrams for the BSC ISI FDR go out today.
• Sam has begun making the cables for the Inductive Position Sensors in the Pier Interface. They should be finished in the next few weeks.
• The front and back panels for the Pump Servo should be in soon.
• Re-designed the HAM GS-13 Interface channel to include the whitening that we want, and now have to do a little work on the pressure sensor readback electronics.
• Ben flew to Stanford on Tuesday to help test the Trillium-to-STS-2 Interface, and its RS-232 functionality. Daniel, Graham, Brian and Ben got everything working. Ben is writing up a procedure for others to replicate this work.
• Assembling quotes together to have the GS-13 In-Pod cable manufactured. Emery has re-designed the GS-13 connector board so it all fits nicely in the pod.
• Mohana's Coil Driver panels are here, and everything looks good. Sam will stuff up one chassis worth of boards for a final shake down before production.

DAQ - R. Bork

• Working with M. Evans at LLO on standard inter-process communication software being tested on ELIGO. This same standard is to be applied to AdvLigo.
• Working together on standard I/O processor code for all real-time systems for AdvLigo.

Time Distribution System - Columbia Univ.

• We progressed with the procurement of the long-lead items: The VCXO order is now at Columbia Purchasing(lead time 12 weeks vs 16 weeks in first quote) + OCXO order went out (the lead time is 10 weeks) Quotes are obtained on the fiber transceiver modules; the lead time will be about 7 weeks.

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For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini