[johannes, gautam]

Today we re-installed the fiber coupler on the X-endtable to couple some of the PSL light into a fiber that runs to the PSL table, where it is combined with a similar PSL pickoff to make an IR beat between the EX AUX laser and the PSL. The main motivation behind this was to make the process of finding the green beatnote easier. We used JAMMT (just another mode matching tool) to calculate a two lens solution to couple the light into the collimator - we use a +200mm and -200mm lens, I will upload a more detailed mode matching calculation + plot + picture soon. We wanted to have a beam waist of 350um at the collimator, a number calculated using the following formula from the Thorlabs website:

where d is the diameter of the output beam from the collimator, f is the collimating lens focal length and MFD is 6.6um for the fiber we use.

There is ~26mW of IR light coming through the BS after the EX AUX - after playing around with the 6 axis stage that the coupler is mounted on, Johannes got the IR transmission to the PSL table up to ~11.7mW. The mode matching efficiency of 45% is certainly not stellar, but we were more curious to find a beat and possibly measure the X arm loss so we decided to accept this for now - we could probably improve this by moving the lenses around. We then attenuated the input beam to the fiber by means of an ND filter such that the light incident on the coupler is now ~1.3mW, and the light arriving at the PSL table from the EX laser is ~550uW. Along with the PSL light, after the various couplers, we have ~500uW of light going to the IR beat PD - well below its 2mW threshold.

The IR beat was easily found with the frequency counter setup. However, there was no evidence of a green beat. So we went to the PSL table and did the near-field-far-field alignment onto the beat PD. After doing this, we were able to see a beat - but the amplitude was puny (~-60dBm, we are more used to seeing ~-20dBm on the network analyzer in the control room). Perhaps this can be improved by tweaking the alignment onto the PD while monitoring the RF output with an oscilloscope.

Moreover, the green PDH problems with the X end persist - even though the arm readily locks to a TEM00 mode, it frequently spontaneously drops lock. I twiddled around with the gain on the uPDH box while looking at the error signal while locked on a oscilloscope, but was unable to mitigate the situation. Perhaps the loop shape needs to be measured and that should tell us if the gain is too low or high. But ALS is getting closer to the nominal state...

Johannes is running his loss measurement script on the X arm - but this should be done by ~10pm tonight.