Some things bouncing around my head that haven't made it to ELOG yet:

• Last week, Rana and I were investigating excess power line noise coming from the DFD demodulation. We put transformers on the green beat signals where they arrive at the LSC rack, to avoid connecting their signal ground from the PSL table to the LSC rack ground. This didn't help; it's unclear what the culprit is; maybe the demod board power board?
• Lately, when the interferometer loses lock, the Y arm will not lock on POY, or even flash its IR resonance. for a little while. The green beam can be locked, the X arm can be locked, and no excess angular noise is evident from glancing at the oplev XY plots. Mysterious.  
• Sometimes, when writing new values to the C1LSC SDF table, the c1lscepics process dies (though the write is successful). This is highly annoying. This may have been adressed in some slightly newer RCG code. 
• C1OAF is running with a big red NO SYNC message on its GDS screen. C1LSC has shown this too, but I think only when the SDF/epics crash happens. 
• C1OAF also doesn't seem to properly load the "safe" SDF table when starting up, and errantly puts ones in every element in the static FF matrix. Be careful when restarting OAF!

I have started measuring the low frequency noise of the FET front end + LT1128 low noise preamp from Rai Weiss. It has a very low input current noise because its FET based, which is not surprising. It is also a fairly low voltage noise box - the best measured ones have an input referred noise of ~0.35 nV/rHz.

Today I measured the noise of the one we have down to 0.1 Hz. It looks like a good candidate for a Geophone readout (e.g. Ranger or GS-13 or perhaps the L-4C). Because I didn't thermally shield any of this stuff, the broadband noise is ~0.8 nV/rHz. The low frequency corner is ~15 Hz.

I attach the LISO simulation of the voltage noise referred to the input. The circuit is described in this entry.

We can probably do better than this if we package it a little better or give it time to warm up or use metal film resistors inside. Even as it is, however, it would allow us to reach the thermal noise of the Ranger (or GS-13) down to 0.1 Hz.

This should be ~1.5 or 2x better than the LT1012 based readout at 1 Hz and 10x better down at 0.1 Hz (c.f. T0900457).

1) Lock it down.
2) Turn it sideways. Use the leveling screws to center the bubble level.
3) Carefully loosen the hanger rod and release slowly the tension to allow
   the mass to recenter.
4) Look through the little viewhole next to the rod to make the white lines
   line up. This means the mass is centered.
5) Look at the output on a scope. It should be freely moving with a ~1 sec.
   period.

                 R_x
G_L = G_0 * ------------   =  149 +/- 3 V/(m/s)
             R_x  +  R_c

where
G_0 = 340 V/(m/s)    (generator constant)
R_x = 4300 Ohms      (external damping resistor in Pomona box)
R_c = 5500 Ohms      (internal coil resistance)

in DTT:
G = 1e-9
p = 0, 0
z = 0.7 0.7

      Ranger
i.e.  ------ ~ f
      Guralp

The Ranger seismometer has been moved to ~the middle of the Mode Cleaner tube, and it's orientation has been changed to horizontal (using all of the locking/mass centering procedures).  This is similar in orientation to the way things were back in the day when Rana and Matt had the OAF running nicely.

The Ranger was left in a place where it could be bumped during next week's activities (near the crawl-space to access the inside of the "L" of the IFO on the Yarm).  It has been moved a meter or so to a safer place.

Also, so that Steve can replace the battery in the SR560 that is used for the Ranger, I swapped it out with one of the ones which already has a new, charged battery.  All of the settings are identical.  For posterity, I took a pic of the front panel before unplugging the old SR560.

I set up a raspberry pi on the martian network, to be hooked up to a frequency counter for tracking ALS beatnotes. 

The instructions at https://wiki-40m.ligo.caltech.edu/Martian_Host_Table are outdated, the name server configuration is now at /etc/bind/zones/martian.db, I need to remember to update the wiki soon. 

In any case, the raspberry pi is called "domenica," is found at 192.168.113.107, and has the standard controls user, with /cvs/cds mounted in the same way as the control room machines. 

Once I'm comfortable with the configuration of the pi, I'm going to take an image of the SD card that serves as its hard drive, so that we can just image new cards for future raspberry pis on the martian network if we ever want them. 

We got it! Traps are removed.

The rat is cut by mechanical trap and it was removed from ITMX south west location.

A nagy kover patkanyt a fogo elkapta es megolte.

Please look around when working close to these five locations. Use flashlights or leave lights on.

These mechanial traps are HAZARDOUS !

No visitors or tours till Monday, Jan 11  2016

In the modern times, people use glue traps to catch rats instead of springs. They are less hazardous to people and don't spread rat fluid on the floor.

Our janitor confirmed that Q was not hallucinating about this animal. The dropping size indicating a good size one in the IFO room.

One of the mechanical traps moved from the control room to the east arm, close to the " machine shop " door.

I'm going to get more traps.

Two mechanical and two sticdky traps were set to catch univited visitor.

Absolutely no food or food remains into inside garbage cans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A small rat / large mouse just ran through the control room. Ugh.

The PSL HEPA stopped working while it was running at 80%. I have closed the PSL enclosure.

Steve is working to fix this.

There is an intermittent rattling sound coming from the HEPA in the NE corner of the PSL table (right above the PMC, all of our input optics).

Steve says it might be a bad bearing, but he'll check it out in the morning and get it fixed.

 MC was having a hard time staying locked, with no discernable reason from the control room (i.e. no big seismic, no PMC PZT railing).    The HEPA was on 100%, so I turned it down to 50% to hopefully reduce the rattling, if that was what was wrong. 

Reconfigured razorblade analysis setup on the PD table as per instructions. Used it to collect data to calculate beam waist with, analyses to follow.

See attached schematic for optical setup.

 Eric Q and I set up the optical configuration for razorblade beam analysis on SP table for future use.

It has been aligned, and will be in use on Monday.

The beam will be characterized for future characterization of optical fibers.

Harry will update this elog with details about his beam waist measurements for the old NPRO on the SP table.

 see http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/10098 for the update

Purpose

To use a razorblade to measure beam waist at multiple points along the optical axis, so as to later extrapolate the modal profile of the entire beam. This information will then be used to effectively couple AUX laser light to fibers for use in the frequency offset locking apparatus.

Data Acquisition

1) Step the micrometer-controlled razorblade across the beam at a given value of Z, along optical axis, in the plane orthogonal to it (arbitrarily called X).

2) At each value of X, record the corresponding output of a photodiode, (Thorlabs PD A55) here given in mV.

3) Repeat process at multiple points along Z

Analysis

Data from each iteration in the X were fitted to the error function shown below.

V(x) = A*(erf((x-m)/s)+c)

In the Y, they were fitted to:

V(x) = -A*(erf((x-m)/s)+c)

'A' corresponds to an amplitude, 'm' to a mean, 's' to a σ, and 'c' to an offset.

(Only because in Y measurements, the blade progressed toward eclipsing the beam, as opposed to in the X where it progressively revealed the beam.

These fits can be solved for x = (erf^-1((V/A)-c)*s)+m1  which can be calculated at the points (V_max/e²) and (V_max*(1-1/e²)). The difference between these points will yield beam waist, w(z).

Conclusion

Calculations yielded waists of: X1=66.43um, X2=67.73um, X3=49.45um, Y1=61.20um, Y2=58.70, Y3=58.89

These data seem suspect, and shall be subjected to further analysis.

I took a look at the data from the middle of the night to see if it was significantly quieter than the data from the day, but it doesn't seem to be. The plot shows data from yesterday around 12:30pm and from this morning around 2am. It's a bit quieter at low frequencies, but not by much.

Figure.1  I-Q relative phase measurement as a function of LO power.

 Blue curve : relative phase of AS55 that I have modified today (#4572).

 Red curve : relative phase of AS11 that I had modified a week ago (#4554). Just for comparison.

 The relative phase of AS55 agrees approximately what we expected according to the datasheet of PSCQ-2-51W. We expected 85 degree.

Figure.1  I-Q amplitude imbalance as a function of LO power.

From - 5 dBm to 5 dBm in LO power the imbalance is within 3 %.

But the precision of the measurement is also about 2 % (because I used an oscilloscope). Even so the imbalance is still good.

[Jenne / Rana/ Kiwamu]

 We found the 30 Hz high pass filters had lower gain than what they used to be at low frequcnies.

So we increased the gain of the high pass filters called '30:0.0'  by a factor of 10 to have the same gain as before.

Now all the suspension shows some kind of damping. Needs more optimizations, for example Q-adjustments for all the suspensions...

I'm not convinced that this is what you want to do, or at least I wouldn't do it this way.  The "k" in the zpk filter was set such that the filter had unity gain above the high-pass cut-off frequency.  For a 30 Hz high-pass the k needs to be a factor of 10 smaller than it would be for a 3 Hz high-pass to achieve this high frequency unity gain.

As it is now these HP filters have 20 dB of gain above 30 Hz.  If the open loop transfer function needs to more gain I would have done that by adjusting the overall DC gain of the filter bank, not by increasing the gain in this one filter.  Maybe you guys have been doing it differently, though.  Or maybe I'm just completely off base.

So after talking to Kiwamu about it, I understand now that since the damping loops need all of this extra gain when the high-pass corner is moved up, it's more convenient to put that gain in the control filter itself, rather than having to crank the overall DC gain up to some inconveniently high value.

Nulling the slow actuation offset fixed the issue. Now PMC is back to normal.

The reflected beam on the CCD was quite symmetric (it looked very TEM00 mode !) for some reasons, I somehow suspected the mode matching to PMC.

One possibility I thought of was the laser temperature because it could change the laser spatial mode.

So I looked at the slow actuation offset on the FSS screen and found it was at -4.0 which sounds somewhat big.

Then I zeroed the offset by the slider and relocked PMC.

Then the spatial pattern of the reflected beam became usual (i.e. junk light looking) and the transmitted light wet up to 0.83 which is normal.

I think you made a simple mistake in your diagram -- the mixer must be replaced by a summer circuit. Otherwise you cannot do the PDH lock.

Fb is in a bad situation. It needs a MANUAL fsck to fix the file system.

HELP US, Jamieeeeeeeeeeee !!!

When Suresh and I connected a display and tried to see what was going on, the fb computer was in a file system check.

This was because Suresh did a hardware reboot by pressing a power button on the front panel.

Since the file checking took so long time and didn't proceed fast, we pressed the reset button and again the power button.

Actually the reset button didn't work (maybe ?) it just made some light indicators flashing.

After the second reboot the reboot message said that it needs a manual fsck to fix the file system. This maybe because we interrupted the file checking.

We are leaving it to Jamie because the fsck command would do something bad if unfamiliar persons, like us, do it.

In addition to it, the boot message was also saying that line 37 in /etc/fstab was bad.

We logged into the machine with a safe mode, then found there was an empty line in 37th line of fstab.

We tried erasing this empty line, but failed for some reasons. We were able to edit it by using vi, but wasn't able to save it.

fb was requiring manual fsck on it's disks because it was sensing filesystem errors.  The errors had to do with the filesystem timestamps being in the future.  It turned out that fb's system date was set to something in 2005.  I'm not sure what caused the date to be so off (motherboard battery problem?)  But I did determine after I got the system booting that the NTP client on fb was misconfigured and was therefore incapable of setting the system date.  It seems that it was configured to query a non-existent ntp server.  Why the hell it would have been set like this I have no idea.

In any event, I did a manual check on /dev/sdb1, which is the root disk, and postponed a check on /dev/sda1 (the RAID mounted at /frames) until I had the system booting.  /dev/sda1 is being checked now, since there are filesystems errors that need to be corrected, but it will probably take a couple of hours to complete.  Once the filesystems are clean I'll reboot fb and try to get everything up and running again.

fb is now up and running, although the /frames raid is still undergoing an fsck which is likely take another day.  Consequently there is no daqd and no frames are being written to disk.  It's running and providing the diskless root to the rest of the front end systems, so, so the rest of the IFO should be operational.

I burt restored the following (which I believe is everything that was rebooted), from Saturday night:

/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1lscepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1susepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1iooepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1assepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1mcsepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1gcvepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1gfdepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1rfmepics.snap
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/snapshots/2011/Aug/27/23:07/c1pemepics.snap
 

[Paco]

Installed AS1 in vacuum, near the center of the table, and installed the OSEMs. All OSEMS are "balanced" nominally, i.e. their shadow is at the halfway point optimum, but fine tuning is required, which I will attempt tomorrow after restoring the AS1 suspension screen settings. Today, I tried damping the SIDE DOF, but didn't succeed, although there was definitely some oscillating behaviour with high (> 5) gains on the damping, so I believe this is a matter of patience. For now, all OSEMs are looking ok, the SOS is in place, and hopefully it will soon be damped. 

[Paco]

AS1 is installed, OSEMs balanced, and the optic damped successfully. We should run the free swinging test overnight to validate this re-installation.

Thanh and I re-glued the magnet to the PRM following the procedure outlined by Jenne

The PRM in the gluing fixture has been placed in the little foil house and left to cure for a day.

If all goes well the balancing the PRM will be done tomorrow.

Since I will need to do transfer function measurements in order to implement FF for the arms and the MC2's yaw and pitch channels, I decided to practice this by replicating the transfer function measurement Eric did for MC2 to MCL. I followed his procedure and the data that I aquired for the TF looked as shown below,

About five minutes of data were taken (0.05 Hz resolution, 25 averages) by injecting noise from 1 to 100 Hz. The TF coherence looked as below,

{Yehonathan, Anchal, Paco}

Yesterday, Anchal and Paco removed AS1 from the vacuum chamber and moved it into the cleanroom. The suspension wires were cut and the AS1 optic was put on the table.

Two things were noticed:

1. One of the wires was not sitting inside the side block groove (attachment 1)

2. One of the face magnets was grossly tilted (attachment 2). Probably due to uneven polishing of the dumbbell.

We put new wires into the side blocks making sure they sit in their grooves and we removed the tilted magnet. A different, more straight magnet was picked from the remaining spare magnets. The dumbbell and adapter were cleaned from glue residues and a batch of glue was prepared.

In the process of gluing a different magnet was knocked off. We cleaned that magnet too. The 2 magnets were glued on the adapter.

Today I came and saw that the gluing failed completely. One of the magnets was completely away from its socket and the other one wasn't glued at all.

I prepared a new batch of glue and glued the two magnets.

Yesterday, I rebuilt the OpLev setup in the cleanroom in order to suspend AS1. It took me a while to find all the necessary parts but I found them in the end.

The HeNe laser was placed on the optical table and turned on. The beam was aimed to bounce off a folding mirror to the SOS tower.

The beam's height was controlled by the HeNe laser stage and made to be 5+14/32". The beam from the folding mirror was made parallel to the table, first with an iris and then with the QPD connected to a scope.

Preparing the SOS tower for the suspension I noticed that the wire clamp is scratched on both sides from previous suspensions. I discarded that wire clamp but couldn't find the spares. Time ran out and I had to stop.

[Anchal, Paco]

Wire clamp spare was installed, furthermore AS1 was reinstalled on adapter, attached wire clamps, and cleaned using ionized air gun. Finally, we suspended it on the SOS tower and left it resting on the bottom earthquake stops; ready for balancing.

{Paco, Yehonathan}

We tried to roughly balance the adapter with two counterweights at the front, like with the other thin optics using an iris. As before, we couldn't get the beam above the iris hole no matter how much we inserted the counterweights into the adapter. We noticed that one of the side blocks is actually the one where the clearance for the wire was made on the wrong side. So there was clearance on both the up and bottom sides of the side block (see attachment 1).

Could this be the cause of the balancing issue? Running out of ideas on how to fix it we gave it a try and replaced it with a spare side block. We also found that the wire on the other side block was kinked so we replaced the wire on this one as well.

After inserting new wires into the side blocks, we hung the adapter on the winches and the beam was above the iris aperture! How could this tiny amount of missing mass make this much difference?

We were able to roughly balance the adapter.

We then tried to balance the roll of the adapter but accidentally knocked off the side magnet 😫.

We usually glue several side magnets together and they all together support the metallic plate on which the magnets are magnetically attached to. This time we had only one side magnet to glue so instead of trying to glue the magnet vertically we are trying to glue it horizontally using a flat surface and a stage to clamp it (attachments 2,3).

BTW, the HeNe was not working when we came into the cleanroom. We realized it was the old HeNe that we already determined to be broken but there was no sign on it. I attached a "BAD" sign on it and replaced it with the new HeNe. The OpLeve beam was realigned. All of this happened before all the things described above

Not sure if that small difference can cause the alignment inability. Particularly, the removed metal was just below the wire. This means that there is no misalignment effect at the first order.

Here is my idea:
You may be able to assist the alignment by adding washers on one side of the four holes to this "H" shaped parts. The holes are away from the center line, adding some weight definitely do some misalignment.

The gluing seemed to be successful. I assembled the side block with the magnet on the adapter. Paco helped me hang the adapter on the SOS tower.

The height and roll of the adapters were balanced (attachment 1,2).

The QPD was placed at the beam reflection. The beam was centered horizontally on the QPD and then measured vertically. The pitch DOF was balanced using the counterweights. The counterweight was locked. Balance was retained.

I tried to assemble the upper mirror clamp on the tower but for some reason, one of its tap holes was not able to accept screws. I gave it to Jordan for retapping. I measured the motion spectrum using the QPD connected to a scope (attachment 3).

Major peaks are at 668mHz, 942mHz, and 1029mHz.

P.S. There is a document about the 80MHz VCO box. This may be helpful. 

link to LIGO DCC

2. Weighted screw rod at the bottom for tilting the mirror-holder:

The screw length selected here (2") is not interfering with any part of the assembly.

The 'weights' I have here are just thumb nuts from Mcmaster, so their weight is fixed (1.65g each, btw).

Problem I'd like to solve: Find an assortment of weighted, symmetric nuts with caps on one end to fix position on shaft. 

3. Set-screws on both side of wire clamp to adjust its horizontal position:

Thanks for pointing out the mismatch in travel distance of protrusion and clamp screws. To match them, the clamp screw slot now sticks out of the profile (by 1.5mm). The range of the clamp motion is +/- 3 mm.

Also, here's a screenshot of the slot in the mirror holder:

--

- Excluding the weighted screw rod assembly, the height gap between assembly COM and wire release point is 3.1 mm.

3.
- Do we need this much of extended range of the clamp location? How much range will we need if we use either 3/8 or 1/4 inch mirrors?
- This slot on the mirror holder ring is not machinable.

About the CoM height
- Include the angle adjustment screw and adjust the wire releasing point to have comparable pitch resonant freq to the SOS suspension.