[Yuta, Koji, Jamie]
We went into ITMX chamber to inspect the situation there. We looked for clipping and flipping at PR2, and found none, although we noticed that the beam at PR2 looks a little clipped.
We then went back into the BS chamber and took a closer look at the beam incident on PRM, and the situation with PR3. The PRM incident beam looked a little clipped, which we expected from the PR2 observation. But the beam looks well centered on PRM and PR3. As best I could tell the beam is reflecting off the front surface of PR3, as expected.
Looking at the beam around MMT1 and PJ2 (the second PZT on BS), we could tell that the beam incident and reflected off of MMT1 looked round, where as the beam incident on PJ2 looked clipped. Using my tallness super power I was able to reach into the IMC chamber and confirm that the beam going from MMT1 to MMT2 clips fairly badly on the edge of the Faraday. Koji speculates that this is the result of a misalignment of the PSL output beam into the MC. In any event, it's not clear how this would be the cause of our PRC woes.
We decided to close up for the night, and let Yuta work on aligning PRMI. We need to figure out what the heck to do now.
We've been watching the input power reduce, from 18 mW initially when we first went in, to about 5mW now. It seems to be leveling out now. It's unclear what would have been causing it. Drift of the input polarization? |