[Paco, Koji]

We took lo phase noise spectra actuating on the for different optics-- LO1, LO2, AS1, and AS4. The servo was not changed during this time with a gain of 0.2, and we also took a noise spectrum without any light on the DCPDs. The plot is shown in Attachment #1, calibrated in rad/rtHz, and shown along with the rms values for the different suspension actuation points. The best one appears to be AS1 from this measurement, and all the optics seem to show the same 270 Hz (actually 268 Hz) resonant peak.

268 Hz noise investigation

Koji suspected the observed noise peak belongs to some servo oscillation, perhaps of mechanical origin so we first monitored the amplitude in an exponentially averaging spectrum. The noise didn't really seem to change too much, so we decided to try adding a bandstop filter around 268 Hz. After the filter was added in FM6, we turned it on and monitored the peak height as it began to fall slowly. We measured the half-decay time to be 264 seconds, which implies an oscillation with Q = 4.53 * f0 * tau ~ 3.2e5. This may or may not be mechanical, further investigation might be needed, but if it is mechanical it might explain why the peak persisted in Attachment #1 even when we change the actuation point; anyways we saw the peak drop ~ 20 dB after more than half an hour... After a while, we noticed the 536 Hz peak, its second harmonic, was persisting, even the third harmonic was visible.

So this may be LO1 violin mode & friends -

We should try and repeat this measurement after the oscillation has stopped, maybe looking at the spectra before we close the LO_PHASE control loop, then closing it carefully with our violin output filter on, and move on to other optics to see if they also show this noise.