40m QIL Cryo_Lab CTN SUS_Lab TCS_Lab OMC_Lab CRIME_Lab FEA ENG_Labs OptContFac Mariner WBEEShop
 40m Log, Page 158 of 335 Not logged in
ID Date Author Type Category Subject
10430   Tue Aug 26 23:16:49 2014 ericqConfigurationGreen LockingGain changes on Green Y PDH

Yesterday I measured the spectra and OLTF of the Y-Arm green PDH, after the LO touch-up and 60Hz hunt from last week. I also went to lower frequencies with the SR785, but forgot to take some of the background spectra down there, so I don't have the full breakdown plots yet. Nevertheless, here is the improvement in the PDH error signal:

I also measured the OLTF (SR785 injection at the error signal, Auto level ref 5mV at channel 2, 10mV/s source ramping, 50mV max output)

As you can see, we have tons of phase margin. Flipping the local boost switch had no visible effect on the OLTF; we should change it to something that puts this surplus of phase to good use, and squash the error signal even more. Putting an integrator at 5kHz should still leave about 45 degrees phase margin at 10k. I've started making a LISO model of the PDH board from the DCC drawing, and then I'll inspect the boards individually to make sure I catch the homegrown modifications.

Data, and code used to generate the plots is attached.

Attachment 3: newY.zip
10433   Wed Aug 27 18:03:47 2014 ericqUpdateGreen LockinguPDH Box Checkup

Quick post of plots and data; I'll fill in more detail tonight.

TL;DR: I pulled both green PDH boxes and made LISO models, compared TFs and noise levels.

Pictures of X and Y boards, respectively

TF comparison to LISO. (Normalized to coincide at 1Hz)

Noise comparison to LISO

To Do:

• Figure out why TFs were made differently. Check PM response curves of PZTs to see if they are fine, or need tweaking.
• Make boosts useful. Both are currently integrators with corners under 10Hz, which is already pretty suppressed.
• I just noticed that the X board is missing C25, which should be a 1uF cap on the positive power pin of the primary TF stage opamp. This should be inserted.

All data, EAGLE schematics, LISO source and plots in the attached zip.

Attachment 5: uPDH_Aug27.zip
10437   Thu Aug 28 17:34:20 2014 ericqUpdateGreen LockinguPDH Box Checkup

I had noticed in the past, that the digital control signal monitor for the X end would saturate well before the ADC should saturate (C1:ALS-X_SLOW_SERVO_IN1, which is from the "output mon" BNC on the box). It turns out that there is some odd saturation happening inside the box itself.

In this scope trace, the servo input is being driven with a 0.02Vpp, 0.1Hz sine wave, gain knob at 1.0. This is bad.

Evan and I poked around the board, and discover that for some reason currently unknown to us, the variable gain amplifier (AD8336) can't reach its negative rail, despite the +-12V arriving safely at its power supply pins.

I also realized that the LF356 in the integrator stage in this box had been replaced with a LT1792 by Kiwamu in ELOG 4373. I've updated my schematic, and will upload both boxes' schematics to the DCC page Jenne created for them. (D1400293 and D1400294)

10438   Fri Aug 29 17:28:07 2014 ranaUpdateGreen LockinguPDH Box Checkup

I've been having trouble locking the X - green for the past few hours. Has there been some configuration change down there that anyone knows about?

I'm thinking that perhaps I need to replace the SHG crystal or perhaps remove the PZT alignment mirrors perhaps. Another possibility is that the NPRO down there is going bad. I'll start swapping the Y-end NPRO for the X-end one and see if that makes things better.

10439   Fri Aug 29 23:53:35 2014 ericqUpdateGreen LockinguPDH Box Checkup

I had pulled out both X and Y servo boxes for inspection, put the Y box back, soldered in a missing op amp power capacitor on the X end box, and had not yet put back the X end box yet because of the saturation issue I was looking into. Otherwise nothing was changed at the ends; I didn't open the tables at all, or touch laser/SHG settings, just unplugged the servo boxes.

10441   Tue Sep 2 20:02:06 2014 ericqUpdateGreen LockinguPDH Box Checkup

I narrowed down the saturation point in the X green PDH box to the preamp inside the AD8336, but there is still no clear answer as to why it's happening.

As per Jenne's request, I put the X end PDH box back for tonight's work. It locks, but we have an artificially low actuation range. With SR785, I confirmed a PDH UGF around 5k. Higher than that, and I couldn't reliably measure the UGF due to SR560 saturations. The analyzer is not currently in the loop.

Both arms lock to green, but I haven't looked at beatnotes today.

10443   Wed Sep 3 00:17:22 2014 ranaUpdateGreen LockinguPDH Box Checkup

What monitor point is being plotted here? Or is it a scope probe output?

If this saturation is in the uPDH-X but not in the uPDH-Y, then just replace the VGA chip. Because these things have fixed attenuation inside, they often can't go the rails even when the chip is new.

In any case, we need to make a fix to get this box on the air in a fixed state before tomorrow evening.

 Quote: I had noticed in the past, that the digital control signal monitor for the X end would saturate well before the ADC should saturate (C1:ALS-X_SLOW_SERVO_IN1, which is from the "output mon" BNC on the box). It turns out that there is some odd saturation happening inside the box itself. In this scope trace, the servo input is being driven with a 0.02Vpp, 0.1Hz sine wave, gain knob at 1.0. This is bad.  Evan and I poked around the board, and discover that for some reason currently unknown to us, the variable gain amplifier (AD8336) can't reach its negative rail, despite the +-12V arriving safely at its power supply pins.  I also realized that the LF356 in the integrator stage in this box had been replaced with a LT1792 by Kiwamu in ELOG 4373. I've updated my schematic, and will upload both boxes' schematics to the DCC page Jenne created for them. (D1400293 and D1400294)

10447   Wed Sep 3 20:38:40 2014 ericqUpdateGreen LockinguPDH Box Checkup

The traces were from the front panel output BNCs, but the VGA preamp exhibited this asymmetric saturation at its output.

In any case, I tried to replace the Xend box's AD8336 with a new one, and in doing so, did some irreparable damage to the traces on the board  I was not able to get a new AD8336 into the board. There are some ATF ELOGs where Zach found the AD8336 noise to be bad at low frequencies (link), and its form factor is totally unsuitable for any design that may involve hand modification, since it doesn't even have legs, just tiny little pads. I suggest we never use it for anything in the future.

Instead, I've hacked on a little daughter board with an OP27 as an inverting op-amp with the gain resistor on the front panel as its feedback resistor, which can swing from 0 to x20 gain (the old gain setting was around 15dB=~x6). I've checked out the TF and output noise, and they look ok. The board can output both rails as well.

I don't really like this as a long term solution, but I didn't want to leave things in a totally broken state when I left for dinner.

10457   Fri Sep 5 04:07:44 2014 ericqUpdateGreen LockingX end uPDH Box Replaced

Just a quick note, plots and data will come tomorrow:

I grabbed an unused uPDH board from the ATF (thanks Zach!), and re-stuffed almost the entire thing to match Jenne's latest schematic for the y end box. I also threw some 22uF caps on the regulators, as Koji did with the previous box, to eliminate some oscillations up in the high 10s of kHz. I replaced the tragedy of a box that I created on Wednesday with this new box. The arm locks pretty stably with the boost on, 30 degrees of phase margin with 10kHz UGF, and locks pretty darn reliably.

Now we should now have two nicely boosted PDH loops. I'll do a noise/loop breakdown again in the upcoming days.

10460   Fri Sep 5 16:13:00 2014 ericqUpdateGreen Lockingnew X Green PDH measurements

I measured the noise spectra and loop TF of the green PDH with the newly stuffed board. Unfortunately, I never took the noise below 100Hz of the previous box, so we can't see what has happened to the overall RMS, or more specifically, the RMS due to the pendulum resonance. All of these plots are in the boosted state, as that is how we intend to use the box.

Here is the loop, which does not have quite as much margin as the y-arm, but 10dB of gain peaking is probably ok, since the RMS at 10s of kHz is not so important to ALS. (OL measured, CL inferred)  We see the 1/f shape from 1k to 50k or so, and 1/f^2 under 1k, as desired.

Comparing in the in loop error signals, we see the effect from the increased gain from 100Hz to 10kHz. (Here is where I regret not looking at the low frequency spectrum two weeks ago)

Finally, here is the noise breakdown.

The error signal RMS is now dominated by the 1Hz peak. We have talked about using digital feedback for this, since we have the PDH error signal coming into an ADC, and can sum in a DAC signal into the servo output. This also lets us intelligently trigger a sub-10Hz boost once the PDH box locks itself. With a good boost, we maybe could bring the in-loop RMS of the error signal to under 1kHz.

Something odd that Rana brought to my attention, however, is that my measurement and calibration indicates an RMS of ~5kHz, but the cavity pole should be something like 18kHz. If this is true, how can we be seeing stable power? This maybe means that my calibration is too many Hz per Volt.

I performed the calibration by creating a MIST model of the arm, and generating the PDH error signal on a demodulated PD, I then find the slope of Hz per arbitrary error signal unit. Then, looking at a scope trace, I match up the horn-to-horn voltage to the horn-to-horn arbitrary error signal units, which lets me finally find Hz per error signal volt.

However, there is some qualitative difference in the shape between the simulated and observed error signals, namely, that the outer horns are larger than the inner horns in the real signal.

Does this matter? Is there something in my simulation that I can correct that would give a more accurate calibration?

Data, plots, code, attached.

Attachment 6: xG_Sep5.zip
10463   Sat Sep 6 01:48:54 2014 ranaUpdateGreen Lockingnew X Green PDH measurements

 Quote: Does this matter? Is there something in my simulation that I can correct that would give a more accurate calibration?  Data, plots, code, attached.

What modulation depth are you using for the simulation? I have never seen a real measurement of that in our elog for the end-PDH systems.

I also disbelieve your RMS calculations. It looks like in the 1.5-0.5 Hz band we're picking up 50 kHz of frequency noise even though the 1 Hz peak is only 80 Hz/rHz, even though math says  "80 * sqrt(1) = 80".

Take a look at:

http://www.mathwords.com/r/root_mean_square.htm

and

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~rana/mat/utilities/rms.m

10464   Sat Sep 6 14:49:12 2014 ericqUpdateGreen Lockingnew X Green PDH measurements

I used a modulation depth of 0.3, which, if I recall correctly, is what we aimed for on the Y-arm when we adjusted the LO signal there. However, this is probably not the case for the X arm.

In any case, I found the bug in my RMS calculation. (I had forgotten to flip the x array in addition to the y array for the right-to-left integration, and had uneven bin spacing, so the integration bandwidths weren't correct...)

Here are the updated plots. The properly evaluated RMS is ~600Hz, which seems to mostly come in around 10k, so we may want to turn down the gain for less gain peaking in that region.

10465   Sun Sep 7 17:06:38 2014 ranaUpdateGreen Lockingnew X Green PDH measurements

600 Hz seems ~OK. From the measured reflectivities for 532 nm, the green Finesse = 108. So the green cavity pole should be 18.3 kHz given an arm length of 37.8 m.

600 Hz of green frequency noise means that we would get 38 pm RMS of arm mirror motion. We should assumed a peak/RMS factor of 10, so this would allow us to get to ~0.4 nm CARM offset.

However, its better than that. What we really care about for ALS is the amount of this green frequency noise which is put onto the arm. With an ALS feedback bandwidth of 100 Hz, my eyeball estimate say that the contribution from green PDH error will be ~100 Hz RMS, since we don't care too much about the 10 kHz stuff. So this seems good enough for now; let's figure out what's up with PDH-Y and get back to locking.

10471   Mon Sep 8 14:14:13 2014 JenneUpdateGreen Lockingnew Y Green PDH measurements

These are plots and notes from last week's PDH adventures.

For the PDH servo box re-design, we wanted to think a little bit about what we actually wanted out of the box.

* We want the zero of the main transfer function to be at the same frequency as the cavity pole for green, which is about 18kHz.

* We want the boost to suppress noise at a few hundred Hz.  We don't need super-duper low-frequency boost, nor do we want it.  We'd like to leave the boost on all the time.

* Wanted to get rid of 10dB attenuator on PD input, so needed to lower the overall gain.

* We acknowledge that the gain of the raw error signal times the PZT response is very high, so no matter what, we will have to have a low-gain servo, even perhaps have the servo shape be less than unity gain.

---> We reduced the gain of the first amplification stage from a gain of 20 to a gain of 3.

---> Made the boost stage have a DC gain of 1.  Pole at 75 Hz and Zero at 1.6kHz to give suppression at a few hundred Hz.  Boost is *not* a pure integrator, so that we can leave it on.  (If we required triggering anyway, we would have made it a pure integrator).

---> In transfer function stage, put zero at 17.7kHz to match cavity pole.  Pole of servo was going to be at 20 Hz, but we wanted a little more gain, so we lowered it to 2 Hz.

Here is the final measured servo box transfer function for the Yend box (with an arbitrary gain knob setting):

Once installed, I set the gain knob for the Yend at 4.0, which gave an overall UGF of about 10kHz.  Then I measured the loop:

I also measured the error point and the control point, and compared them to Q's measurements in elog 10430.

In order to see what we might expect for a contribution to ALS noise, I looked at the error point spectra and lowpassed it with a pole at 200Hz.  I do this because the PDH error is like sensor noise for the ALS, but the ALS UGF is around 200 Hz, so noise at frequencies higher than that will be suppressed like 1/f.  So, I lowpass the error signal, then look at the RMS, and see that we should be pretty happy with our result. I include also the Xend error spectrum, as measured and reported by Q in elog 10460.

Attachment 6: Yend_4Sept2014.zip
10666   Tue Nov 4 14:46:00 2014 manasaUpdateGreen LockingMissing beatnotes

Summary: Cannot find beatnotes between the arms and PSL.

I wanted to measure the ALS out of loop noise before putting stuff on the PSL table for frequency offset locking.

But I was not able to find the beat notes between the arms and PSL green. All I could find while scanning through the end laser temperatures is the beatnote between the X and Y green.

EricQ says that he spent some time yesterday and could not find the beatnotes as well.

Debugging and still could not find:

1. Checked the FSS slow actuator. This was close to zero ~0.003

2. Checked the green alignment on the PSL table. Everything seems fine.

3. Checked the actual PSL laser temperature. It was 31.28deg and not very far from when it was last set at 31.33deg elog.

4. Also checked the end laser temperatures. Both the lasers are ~40deg (where I could see the beatnote between the arms). Based on the plot here and  here , we are very much in the regime where there should be a beatnote between the PSL and the arms.

11334   Thu May 28 21:10:46 2015 KojiUpdateGreen LockingALS-X noise hunting

I have been looking at the X-end ALS setup.
I was playing with the control bandwidth to see the effect to the phase tracker output (i.e. ALS err).
For this test the arm was locked with the IR and the green beat note was used as the monitor.

From the shape of the error signal, the UGF of the green PDH was ~10kHz. When I increased the gain
to make the servo peaky, actually the floor level of the ALS err became WORSE. I did not see any improvement
anywhere. So, high residual error RMS cause some broadband noise in the ALS??? This should be checked.
Then when the UGF was lowered to 3kHz, I could see some bump at 3kHz showed up in the ALS error.
I didn't see the change of the PSD below 1kHz. So, more supression of the green PDH does not help
to improve the ALS error?

Then, I started to play with the phase tracker. It seems that someone already added the LF booster
to the phase tracker servo. I checked the phase tracker error  and confirmed it is well supressed.
Further integrator does not help to reduce the phase tracker error.

For the next thing I started to change the offset of the phase tracker. This actually changes
the ALS error level!
The attached plot shows the dependence of the ALS error PSD on the phase tracker
output. At the time of this measurement, the offset of -10 exhibited the best noise level.
This was, indeed, factor of 3~5 improvement compared to the zero offset case below 100Hz.

I'm afraid that this offset changes the beat frequency as I had the best noise level at the offset of -5
with a different lock streatch. We should look at this more carefully. If the beat freq changes the offset,
this give us another reason to fix the beat frequency (i.e. we need the frequency control loop.

= Today's ALSX error would have not been the usual low noise state.
We should recover the nominal state of the ALS and make the same test =

Attachment 1: 150528_ALS.pdf
11361   Mon Jun 15 22:36:40 2015 rana, kojiUpdateGreen LockingBeatBox Assay: not looking good

Because the ALS beatbox schematic is out-of-date and misleading, we pulled the box to photograph the current implementation and figure out how to proceed. The box is out on the EE bench right now. Schematic Doc added to 40m Document tree: https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-D1102241. Some notes:

1. The soldering on this board is pretty messy and there are a lot of flying wire and flying component hacks. I wouldn't trust all of the connections.
2. The GV-81 RF amps in the front end are both stuffed. The 1 dB compression point is 19 dBm, so we want to use them below 10 dBm output. They have a gain of +10.5 dB, so that means they should not be used with and input to the beatbox of more than -10 dBm. Otherwise there will be nonlinear noise generation.
3. Not stuffed: U1-Comparator, A1-attenuator, U2-splitter.
4. Why is the filter after the mixer only 2nd order?? That's not a valid filter choice in any RF world. How much do we want to cut off the 2f mixer output before sending into our low noise, audio frequency (and prone to downconversion) amplifier? The Mini-Circuits amplifiers would have given us >60 dB attenuation in the stop band. This one is only going to give us 20-30 dB when the beat frequency is low. Get rid of diplexer. The schematic claims that its just one pole?? Seems like a 2nd order LP filter to me.
5. The modified schematic (see Koji elog 8855) shows that an OP27 is used for the whitening stage. The current noise of the OP27 with the 3k resistor makes the OP27 current noise dominate below 1 Hz. And what is going on with that filter capacitor choice? We never want to use these tiny things for sensitive filter applications. (cf. Sigg doc on resistor and capacitor choice, the noise reduction book by Ott, H&H, etc.). That's why we have the larger metal-poly, paper, mylar, etc. caps sitting around.

Probably we ought to install a little daughter board to avoid having to keep hacking this dead horse. Koji has some of Haixing'g maglev filter boards. Meanwhile Koji is going to make us a new beatbox circuit in Altium and we can start fresh later this summer.

Interesting link on new SMD cap technology.

Photos of circuit as found

11363   Fri Jun 19 01:24:26 2015 rana, kojiUpdateGreen LockingBeatBox Assay: not looking good

We had decided a few days ago, to bypass the IF part of the BeatBox board and put some of the Haixing Maglev generic filter boards in there so that we could get more whitening and also have it be low noise.

Tonight we wondered if we can ditch the whole BeatBox and just use the quad aLIGO demod box (D0902745) that Rich gave us a few years ago. Seems like it can.

But, it has no whitening. Can we do the whitening part externally? Perhaps we can run the RF signals from the output of the beat RF Amps over to the LSC rack and then put the outputs into the LSC Whitening board and acquire the signals in the LSC ?

11364   Fri Jun 19 01:55:35 2015 ericqUpdateGreen LockingBeatBox Assay: not looking good
 Quote: But, it has no whitening. Can we do the whitening part externally? Perhaps we can run the RF signals from the output of the beat RF Amps over to the LSC rack and then put the outputs into the LSC Whitening board and acquire the signals in the LSC ?

I like this idea; it gives us more control over the whitening, and saves the IPC delay. We could use the currently vacant AS165 and POP55 channels.

We'd only have to move the phase trackers to c1lsc, which means 12 more FMs total. This is really the only part of the c1als model our current system uses, the rest is from before the ALS->LSC integration.

11604   Wed Sep 16 03:37:06 2015 KojiSummaryGreen LockingWorkable delay line setup prepared

[Koji Gautam]

The variable delay line has been setup for practical use. The hardware and basic software are ready.

The delay time is given by [512-1-mod(C1:LSC-BO_1_0_SET, 512)]*(1/16) ns

Giving 511 (LLLL LLLH HHHH HHHH) to C1:LSC-BO_1_0_SET makes the delayline shortest (+0ns).
Giving 0 (LLLL LLLL LLLL LLLL) to C1:LSC-BO_1_0_SET makes the delayline longest (~32ns).

The SR785 was removed from the rack for our access >> Eric

DO setup

- Three CONTEC DO-32L-PE cards are found in the Yarm digital cabinet. (I brought a card from WB, but will bring it back).
- The card was installed in the C1LSC chassis.

- The models for c1x04 and c1lsc were modified to include the card. Once they are restarted, the card was recognized without problem.
The frame builder also needed to be restarted (Attachment 1&2). The changes were committed to the repository.

- MEDM screen "CDS_BO_STATUS.adl" has been modified to include the bit monitors for the new DO card. (Attachment 3)

Epics values "C1:LSC-BO_1_0_SET" and "C1:LSC-BO_1_1_SET" are hooked up to the DO block.

Cables

- The DO board has DB37(F). I made a I/F cable with a DB37(M) crimp connector, DB25 breakout board, and a ribbon cable.
Pin 1 is connected to pin 14 of the DB25 (GND of the delayline circuit).
Pin 2~10 are connected to pin 1~9 of the DB25 (Switch 1~9 of the delayline circuit)
Pin 18 is connected to X01 (external = spare) (Attachment 4)

- [CONFESSION] A bench +15V power supply was prepared to power the transisters of the DO (Attachment 6). The hot side is connected to X01 (not connected to the DB25),
and the cold side is connected to pin 14 of the DB25. Once we find this is a useful setup we need to make a dedicated interface unit to convert DB37
into DB25 (and provide more connectivities).

- A DB25 M-F cable was installed on the cable tray above the LSC racks.

Delay line unit

- The delay line box was mounted on 34H of the LSC analog rack (Attachment 5).

- The side cross connect power supply was not available (to be described later). Therefore we decided to use the same +15V supply as the one for the DO card.

- Checked the functionarity of the local switches using a function generator @30MHz and the front panel switches. The maximum (~32ns) delay was confirmed.
(Just not enough to have 360 deg shift).

- Now the delay line function was tested with the front panel swicth at "ext". We confirmed that the delay time changes with the number given to C1:LSC-BO_1_0_SET.

What we need further

- Implement delay time slider control (511 = 0ns, 0 = 31.94ns). The delay time is given by
[512-1-mod(C1:LSC-BO_1_0_SET, 512)]*(1/16) ns

- Some independent RF issues I found. (Next entry)

Attachment 1: 21.png
Attachment 2: 51.png
Attachment 3: 46.png
Attachment 4: IMG_20150915_222236066.jpg
Attachment 5: IMG_20150915_234222349.jpg
Attachment 6: IMG_20150915_234323363.jpg
11715   Mon Oct 26 19:10:59 2015 gautamUpdateGreen LockingAUX PDH loop characterization

I began my attempts to characterize the PDH loops at the X end today. My goal was to make the following measurements:

• Dark noise and shot noise of the PD
• Mixer noise
• Servo electronics noise

which I can then put into my simulink noise-budget scheme for the proposed IR beat setup.

I've made an Optickle model of a simple FP cavity and intend to match the measured PDH error signal from the X end to the simulated error signal to get the Hz/V calibration. I'll put the plots up for these shortly.

With regards to the other measurements, I was slowed down by remote data-acquisition from the SR785 - I've only managed to collect the analyzer noise floor data, and I plan to continue these measurements during the day tomorrow.

11865   Tue Dec 8 23:24:08 2015 gautamUpdateGreen LockingY end laser (Lightwave) PZT calibration

Summary:

I measured the PZT actuator gain for the Lightwave NPRO at the Y-end to be 3.6 +/- 0.3 MHz/V. This is somewhat lower than the value of 5 MHz/V reported here, but I think is consistent with that measurement.

Details:

In order to calibrate the Y-axis of my Aux PDH loop noise budget plots, I wanted a measurement of the end laser actuator gain. I proceeded to measure this as follows:

1. Use a function generator to add a DC offset to the error point - I did this by taking the output of the RF mixer -> Input A of an SR560, output of the function generator -> input B of the SR560 (via a 20 Ohm attenuator, and with a 50ohm T-eed to the input for impedance matching), and setting the output to A-B, and feeding that to the "Servo Input" on the PDH box.
2. I then locked the arm to IR, ran the dither to maximize the green transmission, and set up a beat note at ~39 MHz with the help of the analyzer in the control room.
3. Set phase tracker UGF, clear phase history.
4. Vary the DC offset to the error point by using the offset on the function generator. I varied the offset until the green TEM00 lock was lost, in steps of 0.1 V. At each step, I averaged the output of the phase tracker for 15 seconds.
5. Convert the applied DC offset to the DC offset appearing at the servo output using the transfer function of the servo box (DC gain measured to be ~65 dB), taking into account the 20dB attenuator also.

The attached plot shows the measured data. The X-axis is shown after the conversion mentioned in the last bullet point. The error bars are the standard deviations of the averaging at each DC offset.

To do:

1. The value of the DC gain of the servo, 65 dB, is an approximate one based on a rough measurement I did earlier today. I'll take a TF measurement with an SR785 tomorrow, but I think this shouldn't change the number too much.
2. Upload the noise budget measurements for the Y-end PDH loop.
Attachment 1: Ycalib_8Dec.pdf
11877   Sun Dec 13 21:55:28 2015 gautamUpdateGreen LockingY end laser (Lightwave) PZT calibration

Summary:

After the discussions at the Wednesday meeting, I redid this measurement using a sinusoidal excitation summed at the error-point of the PDH servo as opposed to a DC offset. From the data I collected, I measured the actuator gain to be 2.43 +/- 0.04 MHz/V. This is almost half the value we expect, I'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious.

Details:

1. Attachment #1 is a sketch of the measurement setup and points at which signals are measured/calculated. Some important changes:
• I am now using the channel C1:ALS-Y_ERR_MON_OUT to directly measure the input signal to the servo. In order to get the calibration constant for this channel from counts to volts, I simply hooked up the input to the channel to an oscilloscope and noted the amplitude of the signal seen on the scope in volts. The number I have used is 52uV/count (note that the signal to the ADC is amplified by a factor of 10 by an SR560).
• I measured the transfer function from the input to the servo (marked "A" in the sketch) to the output of the Pomona box going to the laser PZT (marked "B" on the sketch) using an SR785 - see Attachment #2. This allowed me to convert the amplitude of excitation at A to an amplitude at B, which is what we need, as we want to measure C/B.
2. The measurement itself was done by locking the arms to IR, running ASS to maximize IR transmission, setting up a green beat note, and then measuring the two channels of interest with the excitation to the error-point on.
3. I was initially trying to use time-series plots to measure these amplitudes - Koji suggested I use the Fourier domain instead, and so I took FFTs of the two channels we are interested in (using a flat-top window with 0.1 Hz BW) and estimated the RMS values at the frequency at which I had injected an excitation. Data+code used is in Attachment #3. In particular, I was integrating the PSD over 1Hz centered at the excitation frequency in order to calculate the RMS power at the excitation frequency - it could be that for C1:ALS-BEATY_FINE_PHASE_OUT_HZ, the spectral leakage into neighbouring bins is more significant than for C1:ALS-Y_ERR_MON_OUT (see Attachment #4)?
4. With the amplitudes thus obtained, I took the ratio C/B (see sketch) to determine the MHz/V actuator gain. I had injected excitations at 5 frequencies (916Hz, 933Hz, 977Hz, 1030Hz and 1067Hz, choses in relatively "quiet" parts of the spectrum of C1:ALS-Y_ERR_MON_OUT with no excitations), and the result reported is the average from these five measurements, while the error is the standard deviation in the 5 measurements.
5. Unrelated to this meaurement - while I had the SR560 hooked up to the input of the PDH box, I inverted the mixer output to the servo input, as I thought I could use this method to estimate the modulation depth. I did so by locking the Y arm green to the sideband TEM00 mode, and comparing the green transmission in this state to that when the Y arm is locked to a carrier TEM00 mode. I averaged C1:ALS-TRY_OUT for 10 seconds in 3 cases: (i) Carrier TEM00, (ii)sideband TEM00, and (iii) shutter closed - from this measurement, I estimate the modulation depth to be 0.209 +/- 0.006 (errors used to calculate the total error were the standard deviations of the measured transmission).

Next steps:

1. Check that I have not missed out anything obvious in estimating the actuator gain - particularly the spectral leakage bit I mentioned above.
2. If this methodology and measurement is legitimate, repeat for the X end, and complete the noise budgeting for both AUX PDH loops.
Attachment 1: IMG_5972.JPG
Attachment 2: ServoY_TF_13Dec2015.pdf
Attachment 3: DatanCode.zip
Attachment 4: PSD_916Hz.pdf
11879   Mon Dec 14 16:27:11 2015 gautamUpdateGreen LockingY-end AUX PDH noise breakdown

Summary:

I've attached the results from my measurements of the noise characteristics of the Y-end auxiliary PDH system.

Details:

The following spectra were measured, in the range DC-1MHz:

1. Analyzer noise floor (measured with input terminated)
2. Green REFL PD dark noise (measured with the Y-end green shutter closed)
3. Mixer noise (measured with input to mixer terminated - measured with an SR560 with a gain of 100)
4. Servo noise (measured with input to servo terminated)
5. In loop error signal (measured with green locked to Y-arm, LSC off - using monitor point on PDH box)
6. In loop control signal (measured with green locked to Y-arm, LSC off - using monitor point on PDH box)

In order to have good spectral resolution, the frequency range was divided into 5 subsections: DC-200Hz, 200Hz-3.4kHz, 3.4kHz-16.2kHz, 10kHz-100kHz, 100kHz-1MHz. The first three are measured using the SR785, while the last two ranges are measured with the Agilent network analyzer. The spectrum of the mixer output with its input terminated was quite close to the analyzer noise floor - hence, this was measured with an S560 preamplifier set to a gain of 100, and subsequently dividing the ASD by 100. To convert the Y-axis from V/rtHz to Hz/rtHz, I used two conversion factors: for the analyzer noise floor, PD dark noise, mixer noise and in-loop error signal, I made an Optickle simulation of a simple FP cavity (all parameters taken from the wiki optics page, except that I put in Yutaro's measured values for the arm loss and a modulation depth of 0.21 which I estimated as detailed here), and played around with the demodulation phase until I got an error signal that had the same qualitative shape as what I observed on an oscilloscope with the arms freely swinging (feedback to the laser PZT disabled). The number I finally used is 45.648 kHz/V (the main horns were 800mV peak-to-peak on an oscilloscope trace, results of the Optickle FP cavity simulation shown in Attachment #2 used to calibrate the X-axis). For the servo noise spectrum and in-loop control signal, I used the value of 2.43 MHz/V as determined here

I'm not sure what to make of the strong peaks in the mixer noise spectrum between ~60Hz and 10kHz - some of the more prominent peaks are 60Hz harmonics, but there are several peaks in between as well (these have been confusing me for some time now, they were present even when I made the measurement in this frequency range using the Agilent network analyzer. My plan is to repeat these measurements for the Xend now.

Attachment 1: YAUX_NB_Dec2015.pdf
Attachment 2: PDH_errSig_Calib.pdf
11887   Wed Dec 16 18:34:40 2015 gautamUpdateGreen LockingGreen beat channels temporarily set up as IR beat channels

Since there are a few hours to go before the locking efforts tonight, I've temporarily borrowed the channels used to read out the green beat frequency, and have hooked them up to the broadband IR PDs in the FOL box on the PSL table. I've used the network analyzer in the control room to roughly position the two beatnotes. I've also turned the green beat PDs back on (since the PSL shutter has to be open for the IR beat, and there is some green light falling on these PDs, but I've terminated the outputs).

So this needs to be switched back before locking efforts tonight...

11888   Wed Dec 16 23:15:28 2015 ericqUpdateGreen LockingGreen beat channels temporarily set up as IR beat channels

With the IR beats going to the nominal ALS channels as Gautam left them, we're able to measure the free running frequency noise of the end AUX lasers.

Specifically, the end shutters are closed, leaving the AUX lasers free running. The IR beats then consist of this free running light beating with the PSL light, and the ALS phase trackers give a calibrated frequency noise spectrum. I've stabilized the PSL light by locking the laser to the Y arm via MC2 acutation, so the free running AUX laser noise should dominate by a lot above the suspension resonances. This also has the benefit of giving me the use of the CAL'd Y arm displacement as a sanity check.

At this point in time, it looks like the X laser is close to 10x noisier than the Y laser, though it does seem to be at the rule-of-thumb "10kHz/rtHz at 100Hz" level.

Attachment 1: 2015-12-16_AUXfreerunning.pdf
11906   Mon Jan 4 16:09:54 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingY end laser (Lightwave) PZT calibration

Summary:

I redid this measurement and have now determined the actuator gain to be 4.61 +/- 0.10 MHz/V. This is now pretty consistent with the expected value of ~5MHz/V as reported here.

Details:

I made the following changes to the old methodology:

1. Instead of integrating around the excitation frequency, I am now just taking the ratio of peak heights (phase tracker output / error signal monitor) to determine the actuator gain.
2. I had wrongly assumed that the phase tracker output was calibrated to green Hz and not IR Hz, so I was dividing by two where this was not necessary. I think this explains why my previous measurement yielded an answer approximately half the expected value.

I also took spectra of the phase tracker output and error signal to make sure I was choosing my excitation frequencies in regions where there were no peaks already present (Attachment #1).

The scatter of measured actuator gains at various excitation frequencies is shown in Attachment #2.

Attachment 1: choosingExcFreqs.pdf
Attachment 2: laserPZTcalib.pdf
11907   Mon Jan 4 16:45:11 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingY-end AUX PDH noise breakdown

Summary:

I've re-measured the noise breakdown for the Y-end AUX PDH system. Spectra are attached. I've also measured the OLTF of the PDH loop, from which the UGF appears to be ~8.5kHz.

Discussion:

As Eric and Koji pointed out, the spectra uploaded here were clearly wrong as there were breaks in the spectra between decades of frequency. I redid the measurements, this time being extra careful about impedance mismatch effects. All measurements were made from the monitor points on the PDH box, which according to the schematic found here, have an output impedance of 49.9 ohms. So for all measurements made using the SR785 which has an input impedance of 1Mohm, or those which had an SR560 in the measurement chain (also high input impedance), I terminated the input with a 50ohm terminator so as to be able to directly match up spectra measured using the two different analyzers. I'm also using my more recent measurement of the actuator gain of the AUX laser to convert the control signal from V/rtHz to Hz/rtHz in the plotted spectra.

As a further check, I locked the IR to the Y-arm by actuating on MC2, and took the spectrum of the Y-arm mirror motion using the C1CAL model. We expect this to match up well with the in-loop control signal at low frequencies. However, though the shapes seem consistent in Attachment #2 (light orange and brown curves), I seem to be off by a factor of 5- not sure why. In converting the Y-arm mirror motion spectrum from m/rtHz to Hz/rtHz, I multiplied the measured spectrum by $\frac{3.907*10^6}{0.5*532*10^{-9}}$, which I think is the correct conversion factor (FSR/(0.5*wavelength))?

Attachment 1: ErrSigBreakdown.pdf
Attachment 2: controlSigBreakdown.pdf
Attachment 3: YEnd_PDH_OLTF.pdf
11936   Tue Jan 19 17:27:58 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingAUX X power investigations

Last week, Eric and I noticed that the green transmission levels at the PSL table seem much lower now than they did a month or two ago. To investigate this, I attempted to reproduce a power budget for the X endtable setup - see the attached figure (IR powers measured with calorimeter, green powers measured with Ophir power meter). A summary of my observations:

• The measurements were all made at an AUX-X laser diode current of 1.90A, and laser crystal temperature of 47.41 degrees. The current was chosen on the basis of the AUX-X frequency noise investigations. The temperature was chosen as this is the middle of three end-laser temperatures at wich a beat-note can be found now. Why should this temperature have changed by almost 5 degrees from the value reported here? I checked on the PSL laser controller that the PSL temperature is 33.43 degrees. Turning up the diode current to 2A does not change the situation significantly. Also, on the Innolight datasheet, the tuning geometry graphs' X-axes only runs to 45 degrees. Not sure of what to make of this. I tried looking at the trend of the offset to the slow temperature servo to see if there has been some sort of long-term drift, but was unable to do so...
• The IR power from the laser seems to have halved, compared to the value in Feb 2014. Is this normal deterioration over two years? Changing the laser diode current to 2A and the laser crystal temperature to ~42 degrees (the conditions under which the Feb 2014 measurements were taken) do not alter these numbers radically.
• The green power seems to have become 1/4 its value in Feb 2014, which seems to be consistent with the fact that the IR power has halved.

It is worth noting that two years ago, the IR power from the AUX-Y laser was ~280 mW, so we should still be getting "enough" green power for ALS?

Attachment 1: X_END_POWER_BUDGET.JPG
11944   Fri Jan 22 11:33:20 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingAUX-X AM/PM investigations

I was trying to characterize the AM/PM response of the X end laser. I tried to measure the AM response first, as follows:

• I used the Thorlabs PDA 55, whose datasheet says it has 10MHz bandwidth - I chose it because it has a larger active area than the PDA 255, but has sufficient bandwidth for this measurement.
• My earlier measurement suggested the IR power coming out of the laser is ~300mW. As per the datasheet of the PDA 55, I expect its output to be (1.5 x 10^4 V/A) * (~0.25 A/W) ~ 4000 V/W => I expect the PD output (driving the 50ohm input of the Agilent NA) to saturate at ~1.3mW. So I decided to use a (non-absorptive) ND 3.0 filter in front of the PD (i.e. incident power on the PD ~0.3 mW).
• I measured the AM response (inputA/inputR) by using the RF output from the Agilent analyzer (divided using a mini-circuits splitter half to input R and half to the laser PZT), and the PD output to input A. I set the power of the RF output on the analyzer to 0 dBm.
• Attachment #1 shows the measured AM response. It differs qualitatively in shape from the earlier measurements reported in this elog and on the wiki below the 100kHz region.
• I also took a measurement of the RIN with no drive to the laser PZT (terminated with a 50ohm terminator) - see Attachment #2. Qualitatively, this looks like the "free-running" RIN curve on the Innolight datasheet (see Attachment #3, the peak seems slightly shifted to the left though), even though the Noise Eater switch on the laser controller front panel is set to "ON". I neglected taking a spectrum with it OFF, I will update this elog once I do (actually I guess I have to take both spectra again as the laser diode and crystal temperatures have since been changed - this data was taken at T_diode = 28.5deg, I_diode = 1.90A, and T_crystal = 47.5 deg). But does this point to something being broken?
• I was unable to lock the PLL yesterday to measure the PM response, I will try again today.
Attachment 1: AUX_X_AM.pdf
Attachment 2: AUX_X_RIN.pdf
Attachment 3: NE_Mephisto.png
11945   Fri Jan 22 13:33:37 2016 ericqUpdateGreen LockingAUX-X AM/PM investigations
 Quote: Attachment #1 shows the measured AM response. It differs qualitatively in shape from the earlier measurements reported in this elog and on the wiki below the 100kHz region.

It looks like some of the features may have shifted in frequency. The previous measurement results can be found in /users/OLD/mott/PZT/2NPRO, can you plot the two AM measurements together?

11946   Fri Jan 22 17:22:06 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingAUX-X AM/PM investigations

There were a number of directories in /users/OLD/mott/PZT/2NPRO, I've used the data in Innolight_AM_New. Also, I am unsure as to what their "calibration" factor is to convert the measured data into RIN, so I've just used a value of 0.8, with which I got the plot to match up as close as possible to the plot in this elog. I also redid the measurement today, given that the laser parameters have changed. The main difference was that I used an excitation amplitude of +15dBm, and an "IF Bandwidth" of 30Hz in the parameter files for making these measurements, which I chose to match the parameters Mott used. There does seem to be a shift in some of the features, but the <100kHz area seems similar to the old measurement now.

Having put the PD back in, I also took measurements of the RIN with the input to the laser PZT terminated. There is no difference with the Noise Eater On or OFF!

Quote:
 Quote: Attachment #1 shows the measured AM response. It differs qualitatively in shape from the earlier measurements reported in this elog and on the wiki below the 100kHz region.

It looks like some of the features may have shifted in frequency. The previous measurement results can be found in /users/OLD/mott/PZT/2NPRO, can you plot the two AM measurements together?

Attachment 1: AM_response.pdf
Attachment 2: NE_investigations.pdf
11947   Fri Jan 22 18:46:03 2016 ranaUpdateGreen LockingAUX-X AM/PM investigations

The PDA photodetectors are DC coupled, so you cannot use them to go directly into the analyzer. Must use the DC block so that you can reduce the input attenuation on the B channel and then lower the drive amplitude.

Good policy for TF measurements: drive as softly as you can and still measure in a reasonable amount of time, but no softer than that.

11951   Tue Jan 26 17:50:22 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingLightwave frequency noise measurement

I attempted to measure the frequency noise of the extra Lightwave NPRO we have that is currently sitting on the PSL table. I did the following:

1. Turn the Lightwave NPRO back on.
2. Disable MC autolocker and close the PSL shutter.
3. Checked the alignment of the pick off from the PSL beam and the beam from the Lightwave NPRO onto the PDA10CF. These seemed okay, and I didn't really have to tweak any of the steering optics. I was getting a DC signal level of ~7V (the PD should drive a 1Mohm load up to 10V so it wasn't saturated).
4. Swept the crystal temperature on the Lightwave using the dial on the front panel of the controller. I found beatnotes at 48.1831 degrees and 45.3002 degrees. However, the amplitude of the beatnote was pretty small (approx. -40dBm on the Agilent NA). I tried playing around with the beam alignment and laser power on the Lightwave NPRO to see if I could increase the beatnote amplitude, but was unsuccessful - turning up the laser power (from the nominal level of 55mW as per the front panel display) caused the PD to saturate at 10V, while as far as I could tell, the alignment of the two beams onto the PD is reasonably good. This seems inconsistent with the numbers Koji has reported in this elog, where he was able to get a beatnote of ~1Vpp for a DC of 2.5 V.
5. I tried locking the PLL (in roughly the same configuration as reported here) with this small amplitude beatnote but was unsuccessful.

I've turned the Lightwave NPRO back to standby for now, in anticipation of further trials later today. I've also restored the IMC.

11953   Wed Jan 27 18:19:45 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingLightwave frequency noise measurement

After adjusting the alignment of the two beams onto the PD, I managed to recover a stronger beatnote of ~ -10dBm. I managed to take some measurements with the PLL locked, and will put up a more detailed post later in the evening. I turned the IMC autolocker off, turned the 11MHz Marconi output off, and closed the PSL shutter for the duration of my work, but have reverted these to their nominal state now. The are a few extra cables running from the PSL table to the area near the IOO rack where I was doing the measurements from, I've left these as is for now in case I need to take some more data later in the evening...

11956   Thu Jan 28 00:29:30 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingLightwave frequency noise measurement

Summary of the work done today:

Alignment and other work on PSL table

As mentioned in a previous elog, the beatnote amplitude I obtained was tiny - so I checked the alignment of the two beams onto the PD. I did this as follows:

• Checked the alignment of the two beams on the recombination BS. Moved the steering mirror for the PSL beam until the two were aligned, as verified by eye using an IR card
• Turn the steering mirror just before the fast focusing lens and thorlabs PD (kept the fork fixed, just loosened the screw on the post to do this) such that the far-field alignment of the two beams could be checked. I used the BS to tweak this alignment as necessary
• Iterate the previous two steps till I was happy with the alignment
• Return steering mirror before the PD to its original position, tweak alignment until DC level on the PD was maximized (as verified using an oscilloscope)
• Adjust the HWP just after the lightwave laser such that the power arriving at the PD from the PSL beam and the lightwave beam were approximately equal - verified by blocking each beam and checking change in the DC level

After doing all of this, I found a beatnote at ~-10dBm at a temperature of 45.3002 degrees on the Lightwave. The DC level was ~8V (~4V contribution from each beam).

PLL and frequency nosie measurements:

Pretty much the same procedure as that described in this elog was followed for setting up the PLL and taking the measurements, except that this time, I used the two SR560s in a better way to measure the open loop TF of the PLL. This measurement suggested a UGF of ~ 10kHz, which seems reasonable to me. I turned the 11MHz marconi off because some extra peaks were showing up in the beat signal spectrum. I judged that the beatnote was not large enough to require the use of an attenuator between the PD and the mixer. I was able to lock the PLL easily enough, and I've attached spectra of the control signal (both uncalibrated and calibrated). To calibrate the spectrum, I did a quick check to determine the actuator gain of the spare Lightwave laser, by sweeping the fast PZT with a low frequency (0.5Hz) 1Vpp sine wave, and looking at the peak in the beat signal spectrum move on the network analyzer. This admittedly rough calibration suggests that the coefficient is ~5MHz/V, consistent with the other Lightwave. Eric suggested a more accurate way to do this would be to match up spectra taken using this method and by locking the PLL by actuating on the FM input of the Marconi - I didn't try this, but given the relatively large low-frequency drifts of the beatnote that I was seeing, and that the control signal was regularly hitting ~2V (i.e shifting the frequency by ~10MHz), I don't think this is viable with a low MHz/V coefficient on the Marconi, which we found is desirable as described here

Bottom line:

The spare Lightwave frequency noise seems comparable to the other two measurements (see attachment #2). If anything, it is a factor of a few worse, though this could be due to an error in the calibration? I'm also not sure why the shapes of the spectra from today's measurement differ qualitatively from those in elog 11929 above ~7kHz.

Some random notes:

• Do we want to do an AM/PM characterization of the spare Lightwave laser as well? It might be easier to do the PM measurement while we have this measurement setup working
• Yesterday, I noticed some peaks in the spectrum of the PD output while only the PSL beam was incident on it, at ~35MHz and ~70 MHz. They were pretty small (~-50dBm), but still clearly discernible over the analyzer noise floor. It is unclear to me what the source of these peaks are.
Attachment 1: PLL_OLG.pdf
Attachment 2: Freq_noise_comparison.pdf
11961   Fri Jan 29 14:43:47 2016 SteveUpdateGreen LockingInnolight laser is 10 years old
 Quote: After adjusting the alignment of the two beams onto the PD, I managed to recover a stronger beatnote of ~ -10dBm. I managed to take some measurements with the PLL locked, and will put up a more detailed post later in the evening. I turned the IMC autolocker off, turned the 11MHz Marconi output off, and closed the PSL shutter for the duration of my work, but have reverted these to their nominal state now. The are a few extra cables running from the PSL table to the area near the IOO rack where I was doing the measurements from, I've left these as is for now in case I need to take some more data later in the evening...I

Innolight 1W 1064nm, sn 1634 was purchased in 9-18-2006 at CIT. It came to the 40m around 2010

It's diodes should be replaced, based on it's age and performance.

RIN and noise eater bad. I will get a quote on this job.

The Innolight Manual frequency noise plot is the same as Lightwave' elog 11956

Attachment 1: inno1W.pdf
11962   Fri Jan 29 16:55:27 2016 ranaUpdateGreen LockingInnolight laser is 10 years old

I don't think there's any evidence that the noise eater is bad. That would change the behavior of the relaxation oscillation which is at 1 MHz ?

11963   Sat Jan 30 00:12:22 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingInnolight laser is 10 years old

 Quote: I don't think there's any evidence that the noise eater is bad. That would change the behavior of the relaxation oscillation which is at 1 MHz ?

While I was investigating the AM/PM ratio of the Innolight, I found that there was a pronounced peak in the RIN at ~400kHz, which did not change despite toggling the noise eater switch on the front panel (see plot attached). The plot in the manual suggests the relaxation oscillations should be around 600kHz, but given that the laser power has dropped by a factor of ~3, I think it's reasonable that the relaxation oscillations are now at ~400kHz?

Attachment 1: RIN_comparison.pdf
11964   Sat Jan 30 09:56:24 2016 KojiUpdateGreen LockingInnolight laser is 10 years old

It is strange that there is no difference between with and without NE, isn't it?

11967   Mon Feb 1 15:16:28 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingInnolight laser is 10 years old

The Innolight laser control unit has a 25 pin D-sub connector on the rear which is meant to serve as a diagnostics aid, and the voltages at the various pins should tell us the state of various things, like the diode power monitor, laser crystal TEC error temperature, NE status etc etc. Unfortunately, I am unable to locate a manual for this laser (online or physical copy in the filing cabinets), so the only thing I have to go on is a photocopied page that Steve had obtained sometime ago from the manual for the 2W NPRO. According to that, Pin 1 is "Diode laser 1, power monitor, 1V/W". The voltage I measured (with one of the 25 pin breakout boards and a DMM) is 1.038V. I didn't see any fast fluctuations in this value either. It may be that the coefficient indicating "normal" state of operation is different for the 1W model than the 2W model, but this measurement suggests the condition of the diode is alright after all?

I also measured the voltage at Pin 12, which is described in the manual as "Noise Eater, monitor". This value was fluctuating between ~20mV and ~40mV. Toggling the NE switch on the front of the control unit between ON and OFF did not change this behaviour. The one page of the manual that we have, however, doesnt provide any illumination on how we are supposed to interpret the voltage measured at this pin...

11968   Mon Feb 1 15:43:18 2016 KojiUpdateGreen LockingInnolight laser is 10 years old

This is the same one as what you got from Steve. But you can find full pages.

https://wiki-40m.ligo.caltech.edu/PSL/NPRO

11969   Mon Feb 1 18:11:25 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingLightwave frequency noise measurement

Before distrubing the beat setup with the spare Lightwave laser, I wanted to see if I could resolve the apparent difference in behaviour between the measured free running noise of the spare Lightwave laser and my earlier measurements with the existing X and Y end lasers above ~5kHz. So I redid the measurement, but this time, on Eric's suggestion, while taking spectra on the SR785, I was careful to maintain the same "CH1 input range" while measuring the control signal spectrum and the measurement noise spectra. The level used was -20dBvpk. I think the measured spectrum shape now makes sense - above ~4kHz, the SR560 noise means that the SNR is poor and so we can only trust the spectra up to this value (the spectra for the end lasers are from earlier measurements where I did not take care to keep the input range constant). Anyways, I think the conclusion is that the spare Lightwave seems to have a free-running frequency noise that is approximately a factor of 3 worse than the Lightwave laser at the Y-end, though this may be because I didn't take the measurement at the optimal operating conditions (diode current, power etc). But I guess this is tolerable and that we can go ahead with the planned swapping out of the existing Innolight at the X-end with this laser.

I will now move the Lightwave laser off the PSL table onto the SP table where I will do some beam characterization and see if I can come up with a satisfactory mode-matching solution for the swap. I've borrowed a beam profiler from the TCN lab for this purpose.

Attachment 1: Free_running_frequency_noise_comparison.pdf
11970   Tue Feb 2 18:35:47 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingLightwave NPRO moved from PSL table to SP table

I've moved the following components that was a part of Koji's setup from the PSL table to the SP table so that I may measure the beam profile of the beam from the spare Lightwave NPRO and work on a mode-matching solution for the X-end.

• Lightwave laser
• Lightwave controller
• Interlock switch (Newport)
• HWP and PBS

I did some preliminary characterization of the beam from the Lightwave - in the power controlled mode, setting the "ADJ" parameter to 0 (which is the state recommended in the manual) gives an output power of ~240mW. I used the HWP and PBS to dump most of this into a "Black Hole" beam dump, but I was still getting about 300uW of power after this. This was saturating the CCD in the beam profiler (even though 300uW for a beam of ~1mm should be well within the recommended operating limits as per its manual - maybe the ND filter on the camera isn't really ND4.0), and so I further reduced the "ADJ" parameter on the laser controller to -20, such that I had no saturation of the CCD. I will try and take some data later today. The laser is presently in "Standby" mode, and the SP table is fully covered again.

11971   Tue Feb 2 18:54:02 2016 KojiUpdateGreen LockingLightwave NPRO moved from PSL table to SP table

jiIn fact, it is one of the most difficult type mode profiling to measure a beam directly out from a laser source.

If you reduce the power by ADJ, this significantly changes the output mode as the pumping power varies temperature gradient of the laser crystal and thus thermal lensing in it. I'd recommend you to keep the nominal power.

If you use a PBS for power reduction, you should increase the transmission ~x10 from the minimum so that you are not dominated by possible junk polarization.

Any transmissive BK7 components where the beam is small can cause thermal lensing. In order to avoid this issue, I usually use two noncoated (or one AR coated) optical windows made of UV fused silica to pick off the beam. Once the beam power is reduced I suppose it is OK to use an additional ND filter in front of the CCD.

Another more reliable method is an old-good knife edge measurement.

11973   Wed Feb 3 23:23:47 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingLightwave NPRO moved from PSL table to SP table

As Koji pointed out in the previous elog, the CCD beam profiler was ill suited for this measurement. Nevertheless, to get a rough idea of the beam profile, I made a few rearrangements to my earlier setup:

• Kept the HWP at the same place it was, as this is roughly the configuration that is going to be used at the endtable anyways. It was ~7cm from the shutter housing on the laser head (unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture).
• Moved the PBS downstream till it was ~40 cm away (so as to minimize the thermal lensing effect from the ~300mW beam) from the laser head. Rotated the HWP till I got about 6mW of transmitted power (dumped the rest into a black hole)
• Installed a 95% reflecting BS to further attenuate the power to a level suitable for the CCD (dumped the reflected part onto a razor beam dump)
• Installed the CCD beam profiler and captured an image, at ~60cm from laser head. In this configuration, I was able to get a clean image capture without the CCD saturating. Unfortunately, I could not transfer it off the laptop used to operate the beam profiler, I will upload a screen capture tomorrow once I get it. Anyways, the main observation was that the beam appeared quite elliptical (ellipticity ~0.6). It was also not clear to what extent thermal lensing at the PBS/BS was afftecting this measurement.

Following Koji's suggestion, I decided to do a knife-edge measurement as well. The measurement configuration was similar to the one described above, except the PBS/BS were removed, and a 1.0 neutral density filter was was installed ~80cm from the laser head (here the ~300 mW beam was >2mm in diameter, as judged by eye). I used the Ophir power meter, which was why I had to install an ND filter as it is rated for 100mW max power. I will put a picture up tomorrow. Thermal lensing shouldn't be of much consequence here, as we just need the whole beam to fall onto the power meter active area (verified by eye), and only the relative change in power levels as the knife edge cuts the beam matters. I took the cross-sectional profile of the beam by translating the knife in the x-direction (i.e. cut the beam "left to right" ).

Attachments 1 and 2 are the results from todays measurements. It remains to repeat by cutting the beam along the y direction, and see what ellipticity (if any) shows up. I also found some "nominal" numbers in page 4 of the Lightwave datasheet - it tells us to expect a waist 5cm from the shutter housing, with horizontal and vertical 1/e^2 diameters of 0.5mm and 0.38mm respectively. My measurement suggests a horizontal diameter of ~0.25mm (half the "nominal" value?!), and the waist location to be 8.22cm from the shutter housing. I wonder if this discrepancy is a red flag? Could it be due to the HWP? I'm reasonably sure of my calculations, and the fits have come out pretty nicely as well...

Attachment 1: KnifeEdgeScans_x.pdf
Attachment 2: Beamscan_x.pdf
11974   Thu Feb 4 09:16:46 2016 KojiUpdateGreen LockingLightwave NPRO moved from PSL table to SP table

I don't think the discrepancy is a serious issue as long as the mode is clean. The mode is determined by the NPRO crystal and is hard to change by anything except for the thermal lensing in the crystal.

And I never succeeded to reproduce the mode listed in the manual.

One thing you'd better to take care is that clipping of the beam produces diffraction. The diffracted beam spreads faster than the nominal TEM00 mode. Therefore the power meter should to be placed right after the razor blade. i.e. As you move the longitudinal position of the razor blade, you need to move the power meter.

11977   Fri Feb 5 00:23:01 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingLightwave NPRO moved from PSL table to SP table

I've repeated the measurement for the x-direction and also did the y-direction, taking into account Koji's suggestion of keeping the power meter as close as possible to the knife edge. Attachment #1 shows a picture of the setup used. Because an ND filter is required to use this particular power meter, the geometrical constraints mean that the closest the power meter can be to the knife edge is ~3cm. I think this is okay.

The result from the re-measured X-scan (Attachments #2 and #4) is consistent with the result from yesterday. Unfortunately, in the y-direction (Attachments #3 and #4), I don't seem to have captured much of the 'curved' part of the profile, even though I've started from pretty much adjacent to the HWP. Nevertheless, the fits look reasonable, and I think I've captured sufficient number of datapoints to have confidence in these fits - although for the Y-scan, the error in the waist position is large. The ellipticity as measured using this method is also significantly smaller than what the CCD beam profiler was telling us.

If we are happy with this measurement, I can go ahead and work on seeing if we can arrive at a minimally invasive mode-matching solution for the X-end table once we switch the lasers out...

Attachment 1: Beamscan_setup.pdf
Attachment 2: Beamscan_x.pdf
Attachment 3: Beamscan_y.pdf
Attachment 4: Zscan.pdf
11978   Fri Feb 5 15:02:13 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingX-end NE cable

[Steve, gautam]

Steve thinks that the X-end Innolight does not come with the noise-eater option (it is an add-on and not a standard feature, and the purchase order for the PSL Innolight explicitly mentions that it comes with the NE option, but the X-end Innolight has no such remarks), which would explain why there is no difference with the noise eater ON/OFF. During earlier investigations however, I had found that there was a cable labelled "Noise-Eater" connected to one of the Modulation Inputs on the rear of the Innolight controller. Today, we traced this down. The modulation input on the rear says "Current Laser Diode 0.1A/V". To this input, a Tee is connected, one end of which is terminated with a 50ohm terminator. The other end of the Tee is connected to a BNC cable labelled "Nosie-Eater", which we traced all the way to the PSL table, where it is just hanging (also labelled "X end green noise eater"), unterminated, at the southeast corner of the PSL table. It is unlikely that this is of any consequence given the indicated coefficient of 0.1A/V, but could this somehow be introducing some junk into the laser diode current which is then showing up as intensity fluctuations in the output? Unfortunately, during the PLL measurements, I did not think to disconnect this BNC and take a spectrum. It would also seem that the noise-eater feedback to the laser diode current is implemented internally, and not via this external modulation input jack (the PSL, which I believe has the noise-eater enabled, has nothing connected to this rear input)...

11979   Fri Feb 5 16:50:24 2016 gautamUpdateGreen LockingFirst pass at mode-matching

I've done a first pass at trying to arrive at a mode-matching solution for the X-end table once we swtich the lasers out. For this rough calculation, I used a la mode to match my seed beam (with z = 0 being defined as the shutter housing on the current position of the Innolight laser head, and the waist of the beam from the NPRO being taken as the square-root of the X and Y waists as calculated here), to a target beam which has a waist of 35um at the center of the doubling oven (a number I got from this elog). I also ignored the optical path length changes introduced by the 3 half-wave plates between the NPRO and the doubling oven, and also the Faraday isolator. The best a la mode was able to give me, with the only degrees of freedom being the position of the two lenses, was a waist of 41um at the doubling oven. I suppose this number will change once we take into account the effects of the HWPs and the Faraday. Moreover, the optimized solution involves the first lens after the NPRO, L1, being rather close to the second steering mirror, SM2 (see labels in Attachment #2, in cyan), but I believe this arrangement is possible without clipping the beam. Moreover, we have a little room to play with as far as the absolute physical position of the z=0 coordinate is - i.e. the Lightwave NPRO head can be moved ~2cm forward relative to where the Innolight laser head is presently, giving a slightly better match to the target waist (see attachment #3). I will check the lenses we have available at the 40m to see if a more optimal solution can be found, but I'm not sure how much we want to be changing optics considering all this is going to have to be re-done for the new end table... Mode-matching code in Attachment #4...

Attachment 1: Modematch_AUXx.pdf
Attachment 2: NewSetUp.png
Attachment 3: Modematch_AUXx_2.pdf
Attachment 4: XendModeMatch.m.zip
ELOG V3.1.3-