After finishing my last elog entry, I monitored the digital loop's error signal (the control signal for the fast loop) and the output to the laser heater remotely, (from West Bridge), using dataviewer. The ref cav surrounding can temperature was set to 36 degrees C.

With the loop closed and a gain of 0.008, after seeing the output voltage to the laser heater (TMP_OUTPUT) remain fairly constant and the error signal (TMP_INMON) stay close to zero for ~3 hours, I tried to step the temperature. (This was at 2am last night). I was working remotely from West Bridge. To step the temperature I used the following command:

ezcawrite C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT 35.5

Rather than change the can temperature to 35.5 C, it outputted:

C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT=0.

It had set the setpoint to 0 degrees C, which was essentially turning the heater off. I tried resetting it back to 36 and had no luck. I tried changing the syntax slightly.: ezcawrite C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT=36 and ezcawrite C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT (36). No success.

I ran over to the 40m and changed the temperature back to 36 manually. The in-loop temp sensor had decreased to 31.5 degrees C before I was able to step the setpoint back up. The system seems to have recovered from this large impulse though, and the laser has remained locked.

(5 hours of minute-trend data)

From left to right: 

Top: Out-of-loop can temp sensor; Voltage sent to heat can

Middle: signal sent to heat the laser (TMP_OUTPUT); room temp

Bottom: Error signal for slow loop (sampled control signal from fast loop); In-loop can temp sensor

At 9:30 this morning (7 and a half hours after accidentally setting the setpoint to zero), I came in to the 40m. TMP_OUTPUT was still decreasing but was slowing somewhat, so I decided to step the can temperature up half a decree to 36.5 C.

TMP_OUTPUT responded to the step, but it is also oscillating slowly with room-temperature changes, and these oscillations are on the same order as the step response. The oscillations look like the room-temp oscilations, but inverted. (TMP_OUTPUT reaches maxima when RMTEMP reaches minima). Oddly, there does not appear to be much of a time delay between the room temperature and TMP_OUTPUT signals. I would expect a time delay since there's a time constant for a room-temperature change to propagate into the cavity. Perhaps the laser itself is susceptible to room-temperature changes and those propagate into the laser cavity on a much faster time scale. I don't know the thermal coupling of ambient temperature changes into the laser.

(24-hours of second-trend data)

Options are:

--If the system can handle it, do a larger temperature step (3 degrees, say), so that I can more clearly distinguish the oscillations with room temp from the step response.

--Insulate the cavity with foam (will in principle make the temperature over the can surrounding the ref cav more uniform and less affected by room temperature changes).

--Insulate the laser? Is this possible?

--Leave the system as is and, as a first approximation, fit the room-temp data to a sine wave and subtract it off somehow from my data to just see the step response.

--Don't bother with steps and just try to get the transfer function from out-of-loop temperature (RCTEMP, which is affected by temperature noise from the room) to TMP_OUTPUT via taking the Fourier transforms of both signals.

I'm flying out tomorrow morning, so I'll either need to figure out how to step the temperature set point of the can remotely, successfully, or I'll need someone to manually enter in the temperature steps for me in the control room.