Last week, Rana changed the integrators in the arm LSC servo filters to be double integrators with complex poles. 

Yesterday, I found that using the "timeout" feature of Foton (at filter ON/OFF request, waits for zero crossing, or T seconds, whichever comes first) is useful for turning on the integrators, but bad for turning them off.  When we're locked, the error signal is oscillating around zero, so there is often a zero crossing.  When we lose lock, we want to turn off the filter immediately.  But, as soon as lock is lost, the input signal gets large, and doesn't often cross zero, so the filter waits 8 seconds until actually turning off.  If the arm flashes any time during that 8 sec, we send a big kick to the optics.

An alternative option could be ramping the filter on.  However, since the double integrator has -180deg phase at low frequencies (until the poles at ~5Hz), the transition between no filter (0deg phase) and integrator on could be problematic.  I simulated this, and find that for the very beginning of the ramping process, we would have a problem. 

The filter is defined as:  NoFilter * (1 - R) + Integrator * (R), so for R=0, the integrator is off, and for R=1, the integrator is fully on.  R can be any value [0,1]. 

The first figure is the time series (1 second, 16kHz), ramp goes from 0->1 or 1->0 in 1 second:

The second figure is bode plots for selected values of R:

As R gets smaller and smaller, the notch goes to lower frequency, and becomes higher Q.  So perhaps ramping is not a good answer here. 

What if we go for single or triple integrator, to get rid of the (+1) + (-1) problem?