Yesterday, I moved the following optics:
- Lens in front of AS110 PD.
- BS splitting light between AS110 and AS55.
After moving these components around a bit, I locked them down once I was happy that the beam was pretty well centered on both of them, and also on AS110 and AS55 (measured using O'scope with single bounce from one ITM, other optics misaligned).
The beam was close to clipping on the lens mentioned in #1, probably because this wasn't checked when the 90-10 BS was installed for the AUX laser. Furthermore, I believe we are losing more than 10% of the light due to this BS. The ASDC (which is derived from AS55 PD) level is down at ~110cts as the Michelson is fringing, while it used to be ~200 cts. I will update with a power measurement shortly. But I think we should move ahead with the plan to combine the beam into the IFO's AS mode as discussed at the meeting last week.
Unrelated to this work, but c1psl and c1iscaux were keyed.
ASDC has something weird going on with it - my main goal yesterday was to calibrate the actuators of ITMX, ITMY and BS using the Michelson. But with the Michelson locked on a dark fringe, the ASDC level changed by up to 50 counts seemingly randomly (bright fringe was ~1000 cts, I had upped the whitening gain to +21dB), even though the CCD remained clearly dark throughout. Not sure if the problem is in the readout electronics or in the PD itself. |