[Anchal, Paco, Yuta]

BS Oplev Path

• The changed position of PRM (40m/16863) meant that BS oplev path is getting clipped by the PRM SOS tower.
• We had to move BSOL ~ 16 cm North and ~ 1.7 cm East.
• This means that the BS Oplev input beam is now coming behind TT2 instead of infront of it.
• We also had to align the beam such that input and returning beam are colinear.
• This meant we, had to change the mount of the upstream beamsplitter in the in-air table so that we can use that for separating the return beam.
• Again, we should order 2 inc visible BS for this path.
• Half of the return beam is making its way all the way back to the laser head. I'm not sure if that can be an issue for our oplev loops.
• We kept the SRM Oplev path same using irises on the table.

PRM Oplev

• Again, due to changed position of PRM and BS Oplev, it became very hard to setup oplev for PRM.
• We found a special position which allows us to catch returning beam through the center of the window.
  • But this returning beam is not prompt reflection from PRM, it is reflection of the HR surface.
  • We are hitting about ~5 mm from the edge of PRMOL mirror (because we cannot move the mirror anymore south to avoid clipping BS and SRM input oplev beams)
  • We put in a 1.1m focal length lens in the input beam to narrow the beam on PRMOL so that it doesn't clip
• We did not put any lens for the return beam. The sensitivity of this oplev might be low due to slighlty bigger beam on the QPD than others (SRM, BS). We can revisit and insert a lens later if required.

Interferometer alignment and PRM alignment

• The work on BS table did not change the table balance much. We got back the alignment pretty much instantly.
• We were able to maximize the arm transmissions.
• Then we used a beam card with hole to check for reflection from PRM and used PRM (mostly pitch correction) to get the return beam back in same way.
• This recovered REFL beam on the camera. We used REFLDC signal to align PRM better and maximized it.
• We centered BS, SRM and PRM oplevs after this point.

LO beam mode correction and spatial overlap

• We tried changing the distance between LO3 and LO4 to get a better output LO beam.
• We also tried to swap the LO4 mirror with the spare mirror but we had the same result.
• Eventually, we decided to move LO3 back to East and LO4 to the west edge of the table. This made the beam sizes comparable.
  • Future exercise: We think that LO1 or LO2 might be significantly off-spec in their ROCs which might cause this issue.
  • We should rerun the calculations with the ROC values of LO1 and LO2 written in the datasheets and figure out the correct LO3-LO4 length required.
  • We can make this change in the next vent if required.
• After the beam sizes were looking approximately similar but more iterations of changing length and realigning are required.

Remaining tasks before pumpdown

• Push/pull too bright/dark OSEMs in the SOSs (40m/16865).
• Finish LO beam mode correction and spatial overlap.
• Center all oplevs, note all beam positions on camera, and note down all DC PD values at proper alignment.