Caltech: D'Ambrosio, Marka, Ugolini, Whitcomb, Zweizig
Carleton: Christensen
Chicago: Shawhan
Florida: Klimenko
La. Tech: Zotov
LHO: Ito, Landry, Matone, Raab, Rahkola, Schofield, Sigg
LLO: Chickarmane, O'Reilly, Taniwaki
LSU: Giaime
Michigan: Riles
MIT: Fritschel
Oregon: Frey, Leonor
Syracuse: Saulson

S2 Preparations  (Friday Feb 14  08:00 PST (10:00 CST) to Monday Apr 14 08:00 PST (10:00 CST)

• IFO status  (S. Whitcomb)

All three IFO's are working well in terms of sensitivity (100 kpc range or better from SenseMon) and in terms of reliability. (but see P. Saulson's comments on L1 glitches below, though.)
 
• Run plans  - running policies, meetings, etc. (S. Whitcomb)
• In the week preceding the run there will be calibrations and hardware signal injections, along with routine running of the IFO's as if in science mode. The hope is to "coast" into a smooth S2 startup. The H2 IFO is quite a bit more sensitive and less fussy than it was in the E9 run. It is still plagued at times, though, by sudden increases in broadband noise (100-1000 Hz), also seen in E9. Mike mentioned this noise seems correlated with acoustic disturbances, and one optical table is suspected to be the culprit. Robert mentioned that new video monitors trained on photodiodes should allow monitoring of off-center beams.
• The calibration team (see below) will carry out a full-up calibration procedure at the beginning of the run, once in the middle, and once more at the end. There will also be daily autocalibration (swept sines).
• Aside from a comprehensive suite of pre-run injections, there will be 12 half-hour blocks devoted during the run to signal injections (see below).
• It is hoped there will be approximately 24/7 running of H1 and H2, but it is highly likely that L1 will not be lockable on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m..
• At the start of the run there will be daily inter-site telecons in the late afternoon (Stan will announce a time soon), but eventually the schedule will probably evolve to 3 telecons / week.
• The emphasis at the start of S2 will be achieving maximum sensitivity (vs maximum livetime), in part to give the upper limits groups some really good data (most analyses benefit more from sensitivity than from integrated time) and in part to learn what price in livetime one pays for high sensitivity. A tentative guidelines would be to tweak alignments (or break lock) if inspiral range falls by more than about 20%. After a couple of weeks, the emphasis may shift to maximizing livetime. There may be a couple of days in the middle of the run devoted to realignment of optical tables to correct for long-term drifts. Fred expressed a worry that fiddling with tables runs the risk of making thing worse instead of better.
• Maintaining good coincidence among the three IFOS' and GEO & TAMA may require revisiting livetime/sensitivity tradeoffs frequently. Fred mentioned that TAMA has arranged to stop all construction work nearby on its campus in order to make the best of coincident S2 running. KR will try to find out from Albert (official LIGO/TAMA liaison) whether there is a way to see in near-real-time via the Web whether TAMA is locked.
• Full (5 x 2) wave front sensing is not likely to be ready for any IFO for S2, because of stability problems, although there has been significant commissioning progress recently.
• P. Saulson brought up the glitchiness seen in the L1 IFO during E9. High glitch rates were observed during the run in DMT glitch monitors, and that glitchiness is reflected in increased E9 trigger rates from burst DSO's (relative to H1 and H2). A characteristic pattern was observed of sudden high glitchiness occurring about every 50-55 seconds. The source is not known, but there is some hope that the problem has gone away on its own after  recent hardware changes. Patrick Sutton did not see the glitches in data taken two nights ago. Clearly we need to be attentive to recurrence in the next week. If the glitches reappear in S2, then tracking down their source should become a high scimon priority.
• Declaring common and science modes (all) - KR mentioned an ongoing lal-discuss controversy over the exact definition of  "science mode data" and the use of SenseMon calibration drift corrections that appear to be unreliable in the first minute of some E9 lock stretches, presumably because of excess noise from recently changed filters that interfere with measuring injected calibration line strength. Some discussion ensued on whether to ask operators to hold off on declaring science mode until it's clear that things have settled down. Stan felt strongly that there would be too much ambiguity in such a procedure. One should declare science mode as soon as all nominal control parameters have been set in the rampup to full common mode feedback. Downstream analysts will be encouraged either to veto blindly the first minute or two of locked stretches or to use archived info such as SenseMon coefficients to determine which data to veto.

 
• Scimon shifts (K. Riles)

Shift block schedules have been posted in which all expert scimon shifts are filled, along with a subset of trainee shifts. Shift contact persons from the groups are responsible for filling in the names of  the shift takers.
 
• Scimon procedures (K. Riles)

The scimon worksheets used in E9 provide the base for the S2 worksheets. Nearly every worksheet has been updated in the M2 (Dec 2002) or E9 (Jan 2003) runs. A couple more updates have been promised before S2 begins. KR will upgrade the lock statistics worksheet to include the daily posting of more than just lock statistics and lock histories. 24-hour trend versions of the present DMT viewer figure of merit displays will be put together as standard data viewer parameter files. Volunteers to help in this effort are welcome.
 
• Investigation teams   - E9 Reports and S2 plans

 
• Calibration stability (M. Landry, B. O'Reilly)

There is now a convergence of previously divergent calibration procedures / data handling at the two sites. The LHO auto calibrator now works at LLO too, and the modelling used in LLO data handling is now used at LHO too. The auto calibration was tested successfully in E9 (although maintaining coherence throughout the swept sine proved troublesome on L1), and tests of the modelling are underway. It is expected that preliminary calibrations will be carried out this weekend, allowing Patrick Sutton to test SenseMon thoroughly on Monday. Mike and Patrick are trying to track down a small residual discrepancy between the posted calibrated power spectra and what SenseMon finds. Calibration lines are now injected routinely during commissioning at LHO; they will be next week at LLO.
 
• Violin modes (S. Klimenko)

Nothing to report on violin modes; focussed on improved tracking of calibration lines (see below)
 
• Steady-state correlations (N. Christensen)

Adrian Ottewill spent time at LHO during E9 where he made improvements to the CorrMon DMT monitor for tracking inter-channel correlations.  Although he initially enabled triggers, he found that the rates were too high and had to be disabled. He is now going through the E9 data to determine reasonable thresholds. A few artifacts will receive attention in S2, including correlations between AS_Q and optical lever channels. The S2 correlation investigations will be spearheaded at LLO by Nelson and at LHO by Dennis Ugolini.
 
• Glitches (J. Giaime) - Had to leave early - from discussion above, it's likely that the glitches team will have some work to do in S2.

 
• Bilinear couplings (V. Chickarmane)

Vijay now has an offline matlab-based program for zeroing in on upconversion of calibration lines. This was used in E9 to set reasonable ampliltudes on injected lines. But it also provides a monitor for scimons to check from time to time. Vijay agreed to write up brief scimon instructions on checking the upconversion monitor, since it's not DMT-based.
 
• Correlated inter-site environmental transients (R. Schofield)

Robert is making sure that the necessary PEM hardware is in place, primarily coil magnetometers, voltage monitors, and RF monitors. It looks likely that the RF monitor at LLO will not be back in operation by the start of S2. Robert will make a short trip to LLO next week.
 
• Local environmental disturbances (R. Schofield)

There will be a series of PEM disturbance injections at both sites in the week leading up to S2. Robert would like to recruit scimons to help track down noise sources. KR suggested updating the scimon line-tracking worksheet to include a link to Robert's document of known lines and updating the document itself to include lines that have been seen but whose source is not yet known, so that scimons have guidance in where to focus efforts. Robert agreed to do so.
 
• Timing precision (S. Marka, D. Sigg)

During E9 timing was quite stable for H1 and H2. There were three apparent jumps for L1, but it's not yet clear whether those were real. Since E9 there has been a major revamping of microprocessor code to keep precise track of timing, including how long it takes to process data. The code is now smart enough to eliminate processing on a given cycle if in danger of falling behind. There are many more diagnostics and automated controls in place, which should make the front-end system more robust. Stan cautioned people not to hook up test points that needlessly place a drag on the processors. This can be done inadvertently by looking at test points with the data viewer.
 
• Data quality (J. Zweizig)

John has started looking at the many E9 trends produced by the DataQual monitor. In general, things look better than in S1. He sees the same glitchiness in L1 seen by others, but has no insight into their source. Silent alarms have been installed on the band-limited RMS part of DataQual, but thresholds need re-tuning. These alarms might prove useful in heading off an unintended lock loss.
 
• Data access (P. Shawhan)

Peter will set up a web page devoted to S2 data access issues, including pointers to reduced data sets. The page will hang from the main S2 web page.
 
• Data set reduction (I. Leonor)

Isabel has circulated a proposed list of RDS channels for S2, incorporating various recent requests from upper limits groups and investigation teams. More suggestions will be solicited in the coming week.  These channels will be automatically written by LDAS scripts. The signal injection team will separately be writing an RDS during injection times before the run begins, using the DMT frame writer. Mike suggested testing that early, since he has had trouble with it recently.
 
• Signal injection (S. Marka, P. Shawhan)

A detailed signal injection plan with extensive pre-run injections and more limited in-run injections, as noted by Stan above. A web page will provide detailed information on the injections, as was the case for S1. Some testing has already begun, using burst injections. For reasons not yet understood, not all of the injections were found by the offline DSO's. The team would like to start Monday night with reasonable calibration info in hand.  Peter is working on better automation of the procedure for the 12 half-hour injection periods during the run.

DMT Software
 

• Infrastructure status (J. Zweizig)

John will recompile all DMT code tonight with a new (but not final) version of FrameCPP. He does not plan to wait to use the final S2 version of FrameCPP because it is not expected to be ready before next Wednesday. All final DMT code changes for running under the process manager must be in John's hands this weekend. Only serious bug fixes will be allowed, starting next week.

• New or developing monitors:

• LineMon (S. Klimenko)

During E9 there were jumps seen (link one link two) in the phases of the calibration lines as seen in the injection and AS_Q channels. It appears those jumps were due to lost frames in the DMT data stream (memory buffer problem). To get around this problem and address a concern by the calibration team, Sergey has rewritten and is now testing LineMon. The program now allows multiple channels to be monitored, providing a trend file for the phase difference between the excitation and AS_Q channels.
 
• SenseMonitor (P. Sutton - out sick)

 
• ShapeMon (S. Marka)

ShapeMon has been running smoothly under the process manager since before E9. It has proven quite useful in identifying channel hopping, not to mention earthquakes.
 
• SuspensionMon (R. Rahkola)

Rauha is working on a PSLMon-based backup for SuspensionMon in case the primary program (B. Stubbs) cannot be debugged in time. A trial config file exists, based on a threshold of 3 x nominal RMS on large optic and recycling cavity sensors. Rauha will be testing and tuning before S2 begins. No coding changes are required for this stripped-down backup program, only definition of the PSLMon config file.
 
• SpectrumArchiver (K. Riles for T. Olson)

The monitor ran successfully at Hanford during E9 and will continue during S2. Disk space has now been allotted at LLO where the monitor will also run during S2. For the moment, the RDS channel list has been used for guidance in choosing channels, and fixed-bin spectra have been used. In the long term, a more refined channel list and variable-bin spectra will be used. It is still cumbersome to retrieve the archived spectra from the DTT import window. Tim and students are working on a better interface for integrating into the DTT.

     Steady-state correlations (N. Christensen) - deferred until next detector characteriation telecon
 

A.O.B.

     Next (regular) detchar telecon: March 7, 2003