I have been able to recover the ability to sit at zero CARM offset while the PRMI is locked on RELF33 and CARM/DARM are on ALS, effectively indefinitely. However, I feel like the transmon QPDs are not behaving ideally, because the reported arm powers freqently go negative as the interferometer is "buzzing" through resonance, so I'm not sure how useful they'll be as normalizing signals for REFL11. I tried tweaking the DARM offset to help the buildup, since ALS is only roughly centered on zero for both CARM and DARM, but didn't have much luck.

Example:

Turning off the whitening on the QPD segments seems to make everything saturate, so some thinking with daytime brain is in order.

How I got there:

It turns out triggering is more important than the phase margin story I had been telling myself. Also, I lost a lot of time to needing demod angle change in REFL33. Maybe I somehow caused this when I was all up on the LSC rack today?

We have previously put TRX and TRY triggering elements into the PRCL and MICH rows, to guard against temporary POP22 dips, because if arm powers are greater than 1, power recylcing is happening, so we should keep the loops engaged. However, since TRX and TRY are going negative when we buzz back and forth through the resonsnace, the trigger row sums to a negative value, and the PRMI loops give up. 

Instead, we can used the fortuitously unwhitened POPDC, which can serve the same function, and does not have the tendancy to go negative. Once I enabled this, I was able to just sit there as the IFO angrily buzzed at me. 

Here are my PRMI settings

REFL33 - Rotation 140.2 Degrees, -89.794 measured diff

PRCL = 1 x REFL33 I; G = -0.03; Acquire FMs 4,5; Trigger FMs 2, 9; Limit: 15k ; Acutate 1 x PRM

MICH = 1 x REFL33 Q, G= 3.0, Acquire FMs 4,5,8; Trigger FM 2, 3; Limit: 30k; Actuate -0.2625 x PRM + 0.5 x BS

Triggers = 1 x POP22 I + 0.1 * POPDC, 50 up 5 down

Just for kicks, here's a video of the buzzing as experienced in the control room