NPRO

Koji and I inspected and photographed the laser after opening up its case. I then drilled the clearance holes in the 4 corners and tapped holes for 1/4-20. I was careful to tap with the laser sideways, to avoid shavings getting into the laser and suctioned out as much of the pieces as I could. The laser is now mounted on some bad 1/4-20 based NewFocus style pedestals. The riser block can now be made with 1/4-20 through holes and the laser will sit on its for corner feet. We'll make the base aluminum to avoid differential CTE based stress in the laser base.

We checked the level of the laser. With the new mounting the beam is level to within ~1 mrad and has a 4" beam height.

Faraday

I've mounted the Faraday Rotator from the old MOPA. It has 8-32 mounting holes (who's shafts are curiously not parallel). We need an aluminum block of the proper height (2 3/4" ??) to make a permanent solution.

I've also mounted the thin-film polarizer. This works well, but it also needs a block machined to get the mounting to be less Mickey Mouse.

Pockel Cell for phase correction and 35.5 MHz PMC modulation

The EOM is mounted as before on the angle bracket to align it for P-pol light. The beam now goes cleanly through there. No further mounting hardware required.

Lenses

The 2 lenses in the 'mode matching telescope' between the laser and the PMC are in place, but not placed with any accuracy.

By sheer luck, I saw the PMC flashing in the TEM27 mode without any alignment from me. Next step is to get the lens positions tuned and then do the beam scan on the beam going towards the PMC to verify the approximate mode matching. This is all crude, but I just want to get the beam going into the vacuum as fast as possible.