I pulled out the Fiber Optic Module for FOL from the rack inside the PSL table enclosure and modified it. The beat PDs were moved into the box to avoid breaking the fiber pigtail input to the PD.

The box has 3 input FC/APC connectors (PSL and AUX lasers) and 2 output FC/APC connectors (10% of the beatnote for the AUX lasers).

Attachment shows what is inside the box. The box will again go back on the rack inside the PSL enclosure.

Plan C finally worked. We have 1.454mW of AUX X light at the PSL table (2mW incident on the fiber coupler). 

Attached is the layout of the telescope.

What I did:

I stuck in Lens 1 (f=200mm) and measured the beam width after the focus of the lens at several points. I fit the data and calculated the beam waist and its position after this lens. 

I used the calculated waist and matched it with an appropriate lens and target (fiber coupler) distance. I calculated the maximum coupling efficiency to be 77% for Lens 2 with f=50mm and the fiber coupler placed at 20cm from the waist of Lens1. I was able to obtain 72% coupling after putting the telescope together.

I locked the arms, ran ASS and brought back GTRX to its usual optimum value of ~0.5 counts after closing. We also have the X arm beatnote on the spectrum analyzer.

Notes:

There are still a couple of things to fix. The rejected beam from the beam sampler has to be dumped using a razor blade.

I have moved the optical fiber module for FOL to the PSL table. It is setup on the optical table right now for testing.

Once tests are done, the box will move to the rack inside the PSL enclosure. 

While doing any beat note alignment, please watch out for the loose fibers at the north side of the PSL enclosure until they are sheilded securely (probably tomorrow morning).

[Steve, Manasa]

The fibers around the PSL table were shielded to avoid any tampering.

[EricG, Manasa]

We woke up the PDFR measurement setup that has been sleeping since summer. We ran a check for the laser module and the multiplexer module. We tried setting things up for measuring frequency response of AS55.
We could not repeat Nichin's measurements because the gpib scripts are outdated and need to be revised. 

PDFR diode laser was shutdown after this job.

As Koji found one of the spare channels of the ALS/FOL RF amplifier box nonfunctional yesterday, I pulled it out to fix it. I found that one of the sma cables did not conduct.

It was replaced with a new cable from Koji. Also, I rearranged the ports to be consistent across the box, and re-labeled with the gains I observed. 

It has been reinstalled, and the Y frequency counter that is using one of the channels shows a steady beat freq.

I cannot test the amplitude of the green X beat at this time, as Koji is on the PSL table with the PSL shutter closed, and is using the control room spectrum analyzer. However, the dataviewer trace for the fine_phase_out_Hz looks like free swinging cavity motion, so its probably ok.

The RF analyzer was returned to the control room. There are two beat notes from X/Y confirmed.

I locked the arms and aligned them with ASS.

When the end greens are locked at TEM00, X/Y beat amplitudes were ~33dBm and ~17dBm. respectively.
I don't judge if they are OK or not, as I don't recall the nominal values.

The elog crashed while I was creating an entry to the Cryo log. I restarted it with the start-elog.csh script.

[Steve, Manasa]

We ran power cables and sma cables for the FOL fiber module from the PSL table to the IOO rack.

I shutdown the +/-15V and the +/-24V sorensons on the IOO rack to connect the FOL RF PDs to the rack power supply.

They were turned back ON after the work. PMC and MC were relocked.

I pulled out the RF amplifier box from the IOO rack and swapped the amplifiers for FOL beat frequency amplification. The earlier gain of 62dB (ZFL500LN + ZFL500LN) was reduced to 40dB gain (ZFL500LN+ZFL2AD).

I also swapped one of the broken sma cables that was connecting the two amplifiers with a good one. Front ports of the module were relabeled and the box was put back on the rack.

During the course of this work, I had to turn OFF the green BBPDs on the PSL table to protect them and they have been powered up after putting the module back.

Working around the PSL table

I have put the FOL fiber box on the PSL table. The fibers carrying AUX and PSL light are connected and the RFPDs have been powered up. I can see the beat frequency on the frequency counters; but for some reason Domenica (that brings the frequency counter values on the medm screens) is not visible on the network even after hard reboot of the raspberry pi. I am neither able to ping nor ssh into the machine. I have to pull the module out and add a monitor cable to troubleshoot (my bad I should have left the monitor cable with the raspberry pi in the first place). Anyways, I have handed over the IFO to Q and will play with things again sometime later.

The fiber box on the PSL table is only left there temporariliy till I have things working. It will be stowed on the rack properly later.

In case someone wants the fiber box out of the PSL table, please make sure to power down the RFPDs using the black rocker switches on the side of the box and then disconnect the cables and fibers.

[EricQ, Manasa]

Domenica:
Since Domenica was not picking up an IP address and hence not responding to pings or ssh even after power cycling, I pulled it out from the IOO rack and connected it to a monitor. After a bunch of hit and trials, we figured out that the problem was related to the power adapter of the Rpi discussed here : http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=39055

The power adapter has been swapped and this issue has been resolved. Domenica has been remounted on the IOO rack but left with the top lid off for the timebeing.

RF amplifier box:
The frequency counter was setup to read the beat frequency after amplification of the RFPD signals. The output as seen on the frequency counter screen as well as the epics values was intermittent. Also, locking the arms and changing the end laser frequencies did not change the frequency counter outputs. It looks like the RF amplifier is oscillating (Oscillating frequencies were ~107 MHz and 218 MHz) and the input circuit needs to be modified and the connections need better insulation.

As of now, I have connected the RFPD outputs to the frequency counter sans any amplification and we are able to get a readout of the beat frequency at > 40MHz (Frequency counter requires much higher amplitude signals for frequencies lower than that).

The fit FWHM is 10.444kHz +-55Hz. 

If we take the FSR from ELOG 9804, this implies an Xarm fineese of 380 +- 2. 

Assuming an ITMX transmission of 1.4%, this means an Xarm loss of 240 +- 90ppm. 

This is substatially lower than the ~500ppm I had measured via the unlocked/locked ASDC power method, but still pretty high. 

Since we were able to get continuous frequency counter values into the digital system, I decided to give it a quick spin with a calibrated single arm ALS scan. This should be repeated when amplifiers are in place, because the Y IR beatnote is wandering around in a way I don't trust and I'm not sure if the frequency counters have good absolute calibration...

Neverthess, I did a 5 minute scan through the Xarm, and fit it nicely to a lorentzian peak. 

Figuring out the problem with frequency counter readouts:

The frequency counter has 4 ranges of operation: 
Range 1 : 1 - 40MHz
Range 2: 40 - 190MHz
Range 3: 190 - 1400MHz  
Range 4: 1400 - 6000MHz

I set up the beat frequency readout in various configurations to troubleshoot and have recorded my observation (attachments). The amplifiers in all cases is just a single ZFL-500LN.

There seems to be a problem with the RF amplifier and the frequency counter when they are set together. I am not able to figure it out and stuck right here

Attachment 1: schematic for readout and corresponding observations

Attachment 2: Oscilloscope screen snapshot for schematic 3

Attachment 3: Spectrum analyzer screen snapshot for schematic 3

More info: RFPD used is Thorlabs FPD310 and frequency counter is Mini Circuits UFC-6000. The RF amplifier has decoupling capacitors soldered across the power supply.

[Koji, Manasa]

This problem was solved by changing the Frequency Counter range settings.

Frequency counter automatic range setting has been modified and now the range can be manually set depending on the input frequency. New codes have been written to do this. The scripts will be polished and wrapped up shortly.

Green glass for aLIGO OMC shield is temporarly stored in the inside of the Y-arm.

I was around the 1Y1 rack today. Trials were done to get the PDFR of AS55.

There is a frequency counter code written by the summer student.
The code needed some cleaning up.
It's still there in /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/FOL as armFC.c

This code did not provide unified way to send commands to the FCs.
Therefore I made a code to change the frequency range of the FCs
by removing unused variables and instructions, adding more comments,
adding reasonable help messages and trouble shooting feedbacks.

Obviously these codes only run on domenica (raphsberry Pi host)

/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/FOL/change_frange

change_frange : change the freq range of the frequency counter UFC-6000

Usage: ./change_frange DEVICE VALUE
    DEVICE: '/dev/hidraw0' for Xarm, '/dev/hidraw1' for Yarm
    VALUE:
0 - automatic
1 -    1MHz to   40MHz
2 -   40MHz to  190MHz
3 -  190MHz to 1400MHz
4 - 1400MHz to 6000MHz

BTW, during this trouble shoot, we looked at the IR beatnote spectrum between the Xend and the PSL.
It showed a set of sidebands at ~200kHz, which is the modulation frequency.
There was another eminent component present at ~30kHz.
I'm afraid that there is some feature like large servo bump, a mechanical resonance, or something else, at 30kHz.

We should check it. Probably it is my job.

I found that the scripts in FOL and PDFR directories were not in the svn. These were added to the svn.

- I found that the cable for the AS55 LO signal had the shielding 90% broken. It was fixed.

- The Mon5 monitor in the control room was not functional for months. I found a small CRT down the east arm.
It is now set as MON5 showing the picture from cameras. Steve, do we need any safety measure for this CRT?

I was poking around with the PDFR hardware today.

I moved the Agilent which had its screen projected on the monitor. I have put it back...but please verify the settings before using it for tonight.

Since the Frequency counters have not been a reliable error signal for FOL PID loop, we will put together an analog delay line frequency dicriminator as an alternative method to obtain the beat frequency.

The configuration will be similar to what was done in elog 4254 in the first place.

For a delay line frequency dicriminator, the output at the mixer is proportional to  where 

L - cable length asymmetry, f_b - beat frequency and v - velocity of light in the cable.

The linear output signal canbe obtained for  

For our purpose in FOL, if we would like to measure beat frequency over a bandwidth of 200MHz, this would correspond to a cable length difference of 0.5 m (assuming the speed of light in the coaxial cable is ~ 2x10⁸m/s.

[Koji, Manasa]

Since the bandwidth of the fiber PD is ~ 1GHz, we could design the frequency discriminator to have a wider bandwidth (~ 500MHz). The output from the frequency discriminator could then be used to define the range setting of the frequency counter for readout or may be even error signal to the PID loop.

A test run for the analog DFD with cable length difference of 27cm gave a linear output signal with zero-crossing at ~206MHz.

Detailed schematic of the setup and plot (voltage vs frequency) will be updated shortly.

Few 1/4 -20 socket cap head screw with washers were tested for optimum torque.

QJR 117E Snap On  torque wrench was used. I found that 40 lb in was enough.

Looked up recommended values on the web later:

Our Thorlab SS 1/4-20 screw kits are SS 18-8 as DRY 70 inch / lbs max, lubricated  60 inch / lbs max

These numbers will varie with washers, material it's going into and so on!

BLACK-OXIDE Alloy Steel Socket Head Cap Screws can go much higher value

Thread Size	1/4"-20
Length	1/4"
Thread Length	Full
Additional Specifications	Black-Oxide Alloy Steel
RoHS	Compliant

The standard among high-strength fasteners, these screws are stronger than Grade 8 steel screws. They have a minimum tensile strength of 170,000 psi. and a minimum Rockwell hardness of C37. Length is measured from under the head.

Inch screws have a Class 3A thread fit. They meet ASTM A574.

Black Oxide—Screws have been heat-treated for hardness, which results in a dark surface color.

 

The information in this 3-D model is provided for reference only. Details

 

 

 

We still do not know that what torque values we get best performance : minimum jiggel and drift etc.

After looking at these numbers I raise my recommendation to 50 inch / lbs on a std aplication.

Rana is next to calibrate his feelings and declare the right number.

Than Koji....and so on

Once we a number, than I buy more torque wrenches to fit it.

For 1/4-20 bolts made of 18-8 Stainless Steel, the recommended torque varies from 65-100 inch-pounds, depending upon the application, the lubrication, how loose the bolt is, if there's a washer, etc.

For our case, where we are going into a tapped, ferromagnetic stainless table, its less clear, but it will certainly by in the 60-80 range. This is close to the 5-6 foot-lbs that I recommended on Wednesday.

I've ordered 3 torque wrenches with 1/4" drive so that we can have one at each end and one in the toolbox near MC2. We'll indicate the recommended torque on there so that we can tighten everything appropriately.

I have set up new summary pages for the 40m: http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~misi/summary/
This website shows plots (time series, spectra, spectrograms, Rayleigh statistics) of relevant channels and is updated with new data every 30 min.

The content and structure of the pages is determined by configuration files stored in nodus:/users/public_html/gwsumm-ini/ . The code looks at all files in that directory matching c1*.ini. You can look at the c1hoft.ini file to see how this works. Besides, a quick guide to the format can be found here http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~misi/iniguide.pdf

Please look at the pages and edit the config files to make them useful to you. The files are under version control, so don’t worry about breaking anything.

Do let me know if you have any questions (or leave a comment in the pages).

Attached is the schematic of the analog DFD and the plot showing the zero-crossing for a delay line length of 27cm. The bandwidth for the linear output signal obtained roughly matches what is expected from the length difference (370MHz) .

We could use a smaller cable to further increase our bandwidth. I propose we use this analog DFD to determine the range at which the frequency counter needs to be set and then use the frequency counter readout as the error signal for FOL.

Koji suggested that I make a cosine fit for the curve instead of a linear fit.

I fit the data to  
where L - cable length asymmetry (27 cm) , f_b - beat frequency and v - velocity of light in the cable (2*10⁸ m/s)

The plot with the cosine fit is attached. 

Fit coefficients (with 95% confidence bounds):
       A =      0.4177  (0.3763, 0.4591)
       B =       2.941  (2.89, 2.992)

I have created a wiki page with introductory info about the summary page configuration: https://wiki-40m.ligo.caltech.edu/Daily summary help

We can also use that to collect tips for editing the configuration files, etc.

Arm powers had drifted to ~ 0.5 in transmission.

X and Y arms were locked and ASS'd to bring the arm transmission powers to ~1.

* Relocked IMC. I guess it was stuck somewhere in the autlocker loop. I disabled autolocker and locked it manually. Autolocker has been reenabled and seems to be running just fine.

* The X arm has been having trouble staying locked. There seemed to be some amount of gain peaking. I reduced the gain from 0.007 to 0.006.

*  I disabled the triggered BounceRG filter : FM8 in the Xarm filter module.  We already have a triggered Bounce filter: FM6 that takes care of the noise at bounce/roll frequencies. FM8 was just adding too much gain at 16.5Hz. Once this filter was disabled the X arm lock has been much more stable. 
Also, the Y arm doesn't use FM8 for locking either.

1) Checked the N2 pressures: the unregulated cylinder pressures are both around 1500 PSI. How long until they get to 1000?

2) The IMC has been flaky for a day or so; don't know why. I moved the gains in the autolocker so now the input gain slider to the MC board is 10 dB higher and the output slider is 10 dB lower. This is updated in the mcdown and mcup scripts and both committed to SVN. The trend shows that the MC was wandering away after ~15 minutes of lock, so I suspected the WFS offsets. I ran the offsets script (after flipping the z servo signs and adding 'C1:' prefix). So far powers are good and stable.

3) pianosa was unresponsive and I couldn't ssh to it. I powered it off and then it came back.

4) Noticed that DAQD is restarting once per hour on the hour. Why?

5) Many (but not all) EPICS readbacks are whiting out every several minutes. I remote booted c1susaux since it was one of the victims, but it didn't change any behavior.

6) The ETMX and ITMX have very different bounce mode response: should add to our Vent Todo List. Double checked that the bounce/roll bandstop is on and at the right frequency for the bounce mode. Increased the stopband from 40 to 50 dB to see if that helps.

7) op340 is still running ! The only reason to keep it alive is its crontab:

op340m:SUS>crontab -l

07 * * * * /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/autoburt/burt.cron >> /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/burtcron.log
#46 * * * * /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/general/scripto_cron /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/PSL/FSS/FSSSlowServo > /cvs/cds/caltech/logs/scripts/FSSslow.cronlog 2>&1
#14,44 * * * * /cvs/cds/caltech/conlog/bin/check_conlogger_and_restart_if_dead
15,45 * * * * /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/SUS/rampdown.pl > /dev/null 2>&1
#10 * * * *  /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/general/scripto_cron /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/MC/autolockMCmain40m >/cvs/cds/caltech/logs/scripts/mclock.cronlog 2>&1
#27 * * * * /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/general/scripto_cron /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/PSL/FSS/RCthermalPID.pl >/cvs/cds/caltech/logs/scripts/RCthermalPID.cronlog 2>&1

00 0 * * * /var/scripts/ntp.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
#00 4 * * * /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/RGA/RGAlogger.cron >> /cvs/cds/caltech/users/rward/RGA/RGAcron.out 2>&1
#00 6 * * * /cvs/cds/scripts/backupScripts.pl
00 7 * * * /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/AutoUpdate/update_conlog.cron
00 8 * * * /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/crontab/backupCrontab

added a new script (scripts/SUS/rampdown.py) which decrements every 30 minutes if needed. Added this to the megatron crontab and commented out the op340m crontab line. IF this works for awhile we can retire our last Solaris machine.

8) To see if we could get rid of the wandering PCDRIVE noise, I looked into the NPRO temperatures: was - T_crystal = 30.89 C, T_diode1 = 21 C, T_diode2 = 22 C. I moved up the crystal temp to 33.0 C, to see if it could make the noise more stable. Then I used the trimpots on the front of the controller to maximimize the laseroutput at these temperatures; it was basically maximized already. Lets see if there's any qualitative difference after a week. I'm attaching the pinout for the DSUB25 diagnostics connector on the back of the box. Aidan is going to help us record this stuff with AcroMag tech so that we can see if there's any correlation with PCDRIVE. The shifts in FSS_SLOW coincident with PCDRIVE noise corresponds to ~100 MHz, so it seems like it could be NPRO related.

For some reason, my email address is the one that megatron complains to when cron commands fail; since 11:15PM last night, I've been getting emails that the rampdown.py line is failing, with the super-helpful message: expr: syntax error

Yes - my rampdown.py script correctly ramps down the watchdog thresholds. This replaces the old rampdown.pl Perl script that Rob and Dave Barker wrote.

Unfortunately, cron doesn't correctly inherit the bashrc environment variables so its having trouble running.

On a positive note, I've resurrected the MEDM Screenshot taking cron job, so now this webpage is alive (mostly) and you can check screens from remote:

https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:30889/medm/screenshot.html

Measuring the voltage noise and frequency response of the Analog Delay-line Frequency Discriminator (DFD)

The schematic and an actual photo of the setup is shown below. The setup was checked to be physically sturdy with no loose connections or moving parts.

The voltage noise at the output of the DFD was measured using an SR785 signal analyzer while simultaneously monitoring the signal on an oscilloscope.

The noise at the output of the DFD was measured for no RF input and at several RF input frequencies including the zero crossing frequency and the optimum operating frequency of the DFD (20MHz).

The plot below show the voltage noise for different RF inputs to the DFD. It can be seen that the noise level is slightly lower at the zero crossing frequency where the amplitude noise is eliminated by the DFD.

I also did measurements to obtain the frequency response of the setup as the cable length difference has changed from the prior setup. The cable length difference is 21cm and the obtained linear signal at the output of the DFD extends over ~ 380MHz which is good enough for our purposes in FOL. A cosine fit to the data was done as before. //edit- Manasa: The gain of SR560 was set to 20 to obtain the data shown below//

Fit Coefficients (with 95% confidence bounds):
       a =     -0.8763  (-1.076, -0.6763)
       b =       3.771  (3.441, 4.102)

Data and matlab scripts are zipped and attached.

It looks like daqd isn't being restarted, but in fact crashing every hour.

Going into the logs in target/fb/logs/old, it looks like at 10 seconds past the hour, every hour, daqd starts spitting out:

An ELOG search on this kind of phrase will get you a lot of talk about FB transfer problems. 

I noticed the framebuilder had 100% usage on its internal, non-RAID, non /frames/, HDD, which hosts the root filesystem (OS files, home directory, diskless boot files, etc), largely due to a ~110GB directory of frames from our first RF lock that had been copied over to the home directory. The HDD only has 135GB capacity. I thought that maybe this was somehow a bottleneck for files moving around, but after deleting the huge directory, daqd still died at 4PM. 

The offsite LDAS rsync happens at ten minutes past the hour, so is unlikely to be the culprit. I don't have any other clues at this point. 

Today at 5 PM we replaced the east N2 cylinder. The east pressure was 500 and the west cylinder pressure was 1000. Since Steve's elogs say that the consumption can be as high as 800 per day we wanted to be safe.

1. We closed the black valve before the regulator and closed the valve on the cylinder.
2. We unscrewed the brass fill line to the cylinder.
3. We unchained the cylinder and put in the dolly (and attached the chains on there).
4. We rolled in a fresh cylinder from outside using the red dolly (it should have chains).
5. We put it in place, hooked up the chains, and screwed on the brass nozzle with the large adjustable wrench (need to put a non-adjustable here).
6. Opened up the cylinder valve.
7. Opened up the black valve.
8. New east pressure reading is 2500 PSI. Regulated N2 pressure is 68 PSI.

The c1cal model was maxing out its CPU meter so I logged onto c1lsc and did 'rtcds c1cal stop'. Let's see if this changes any of our FB / DAQD problems.

There's a few hours so far after today's c1cal shut off that the summary page shows no dropouts. I'm not yet sure that this is related, but it seems like a clue.

I wrapped rampdown.py in rampdown.sh, which is just these lines:

#!/bin/bash
source /ligo/cdscfg/workstationrc.sh
/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/SUS/rampdown.py > /dev/null 2>&1

This is now what megatron's cron runs. It appears to be working.

I also added the workstationrc line to the n2 and chiara HDD checking scripts that run on nodus, which should resolve the issue from ELOG 11249

After one day the pressures are east/west = 2200/450 PSI

I think that the real clue was that the dropouts are in some channels and not in others:

https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:30889/detcharsummary/day/20150519/psl/

As it turns out, the channel with no dropouts is the RAW PSL RMTEMP channel. All the others are the minute trends. So something is up with the trend making or the trend reading in the cluster.

West cyclinder is empty, east is at 2000 psi; regulated N2 pressure is 64psi. I'll replace the west one after the meeting.

Running train-of-thought elog:

East N2 cylinder found empty, replaced. West is >2kpsi

Removed Yuta-specific code from damprestore. A grep for 'yuta' in the python files within /scripts/ shows some other occurances, but nothing that is really in use at this time. New feature of damprestore.py: remembers oplev status.

Ran LSCoffsets. 

WFS offsets relieved (all <20).

Adjusted FSS offset to minimize MC_FAST_MON

ASS ran (but the arm alignment has been astoundingly stable lately. I haven't touched it all this week)

ITMX is the only optic that got a correction over 20 counts. 

BS and *TM oplev spots look well centered, except for ITMX. 

I undid the gain reduction rana introduced because X ASS seemed to be really slow. It is currently fine in its older state. What's going on here?

Some network latency stuff is going on, even freezing up terminals when trying to write text files. This may (or may not) be correlated with the summary page rysnc jobs on nodus. It occurs to me that we have a DAQ ethernet network seperate from the martian network, but the frame transfers need to go through the martian network, since nodus is the only way out to the outside world. If we had a machine/gateway directly from the DAQ network to the caltech network, the martian network wouldn't get bogged down when frames are being uploaded

GTRY = 0.55, ok. Aligned GTRX to 0.52, also ok

Y beatnote was found easily. Have spent >30 minutes looking for X green beatnote. Typical FSS slow and X temperature ranges don't seem to be giving much. Will check the beat alignment with a scope, but if the beat is too high to begin with, it may not work...

I suspect a problem with the X Green BBPD

I could see the IR beatnote between the PSL and AUX X lasers at the input to the frequency counter. (I believe it is a real beatnote because it reacted as expected to the end temperature moving, and stabilizing the end laser to the arm). However, when placing the IR beatnote at a frequency which should've made the green beatnote visible on an analyzer and/or scope, no beatnote was found. I played with the beat alignment to no avail; the DC output of the BBPD behaved as expected, but I never saw anything in the RF output or on the control room analyzer.  I also checked the beatnote signal chain by hooking up a 1mV 26MHz signal into the cable that hooks up to the RF out of the BBPD; the signal showed up clearly on the control room analyzer. 

I'm not sure what may have happened. ELOG 9996 may be related. 

I'm calling it a night. 

LLO Operator Tips:

koji.arai@cr9:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/asc/l1/scripts/initial_alignment$ cat autostart_strips.sh 
 

#!/bin/bash

# Baffle window setup 1500x480

StripTool -xrm 'StripTool.StripGraph.geometry:1500x470+0+24' /opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/asc/l1/scripts/initial_alignment/baffle_pd.stp &
sleep 1

# DC signals setup

StripTool -xrm 'StripTool.StripGraph.geometry:1500x470+0+470' /opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/asc/l1/scripts/initial_alignment/dc_signals.stp &
sleep 1

# WFS prx mich sry setup

StripTool -xrm 'StripTool.StripGraph.geometry:1500x470+0-24' /opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/asc/l1/scripts/initial_alignment/wfs_prx_mich_sry.stp &
sleep 1

exit

Given my suspicion of fault with the X Green BBPD, Koji generously provided me with another one that he had confirmed to be working. 

However, I turns out I was mistaken. With the existing BBPD, I did indeed witness a beat in the RF output, but it is somehow something like 20dBm smaller than it should be. This is why I missed it the other night. Here's a video of a RF output on a scope, wherein the beat is only barely visible because I've set the trigger level very low. I could not make the beatnote any larger through any alignment motions; I had gotten to this point by doing near/far field overlap on the PSL table. 

I'm not sure what could have caused this. Mode mismatch? By eye, the beam spots looked about the same in the near and far fields, and we haven't had to touch the mode matching in quite some time... I've given up on trying to solve this for tonight. 

Just for kicks, I hooked up the fiber PD IR beatnotes as inputs to the ALS DFD. The X beat is too small to even really see above the control room analyzer's noise floor, but the Y beat looked big enough. With the arms locked on IR, the phase tracker output RMS was a few kHz, so not even worth thinking about any further. Not so surprising. 

Finally, I put back / hooked up everything in its nominal state. 

At wednesday's meeting, Rana, Koji, Steve, and I started making a list of maintenence tasks that should be done/checked on a regular basis. The actual scheduling of these has not yet been considered. They include:

• N2 Tank pressure / cylinder replacement
• Headlamp, walkie talkie battery recharge
• Workstation software updates
• Coffee bean and filters
• Multimeter battery levels
• Sorensen DC power supply voltage settings and current draws
• UPS' status (Vacuum, NFS host, workstations)
• SR560s, battery powered scopes plugged in
• Rack Fuses intact
• Take pictures of electronics racks, optical tables
• Replace PSL HEPA filter

Next, we brainstormed work that can be done to improve the interferometer performance, and what order/precedence they should take. 

In the end, it was decided that the plan for the next few weeks was to focus on improving the ALS noise levels, and, more importantly, seeking to make the performance more consistent. We need to know what is limiting us, and what we extent we can expect to improve things. To this end, I am working on reviving a ALS noise budget; using the noise budget from the green locking paper to inform a simulinkNB kind of thing.

Here are all of the items we listed during this brainstorming session.

Some near-term/priority tasks are:

• Installing the accelerometers near MC1 and 2
• Installing green steering PZT mirrors at the Y end table, commission dither alignment
• Improving the X end green mode matching
• ALS noise budgeting
• Upgrade the realtime system to RCG v2.9

More down the line, other things we thought about were:

• Cleanup of bench power supplies (FSS box has one, where else?)
• Fixing the ETMX suspension issues 
• Upgrade SOS suspension code to the appropriate aLIGO block
• Upgrade to the green PDH electronics
• Understanding / tuning the FSS servo laser PZT vs. PC crossover
• Undestanding / tuning the 11MHz vs 55MHz modulation phase
• Replacing the slow vxworks machines with the Acromag setup Aiden has set up for the CTN lab
• QPD upgrade
• New/better green beatbox
• Finalize the manifestation of the IR beat control (Freq counter vs. fast DFD)
• Explore the idea of using an analog output of the ALS beatbox as fast input to the CM board
• Replace triple resonant EOM driving circuit with double resonant one
• X end table layout/enclosure upgrade

The summary pages have been down due to incompatibilities with a software update and problems with the LDAS cluster. I'm working at the moment to fix the former and the LDAS admins are looking into the latter. Overall, we can expect the pages will be fully functional again by Monday.