[ericq, gautam]

While trying to resolve the strange SRCL loop shape seen yesterday (which has been resolved, eric will elog about it later), we got a chance to put in the correct filters to the "CINV" branch in the C1CAL model for MICH, PRCL, and SRCL - so we have some calibrated spectra now (Attachment #1). The procedure followed was as follows:

1. Turn on the LO gain for the relevant channel (we used 50 for MICH and SRCL, 5 for PRCL)
2. Look at the power spectra of the outputs of the "A" and "CINV" filter banks - the former has some calibrated filters in place already (though I believe they have not accounted for everything).
3. Find the peak height at the LO excitation frequency for the two spectra, and calculate their ratio. Use this to install a gain filter in the CINV filter module for that channel. 
4. Look at the spectrum of the output of the "W" filter bank for that channel - the plot attached shows this information.

The final set of gains used were:

MICH: -247 dB

PRCL: -256 dB

SRCL: -212 dB

and the gain-only filters in the CINV filter banks are all called "DRMI1f".

Once we are able to lock the DRFPMI again, we can do the same for CARM and DARM as well...

To avoid the strange kicking of ETMX, I locked XARM with ITMX actuated instead of ETMX so that I changed elements of C1LSC_OUTPUT_MTRX; before: XARM=ETMX, after: XARM=ITMX.

And I change C1:LSC-XARM_GAIN from 0.007 to 0.022.

With this setup, I ran dither but then error signals of dithering oscillated as shown in the figure below.

Then I found that if C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_PIT_L_DEMOD_SIG_GAIN / C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_YAW_L_DEMOD_SIG_GAIN in C1ASS_LOCKINS_XARM.adl are changed as 0.200 -> 0.100 and 0.200 -> 0.100, respectively, the dithering works well.

But the burt file that is loaded when you let dithering "ON" is not changed, because now I don't know how to update a burt file. So, if you let dithering "ON", the dithering will run with the condition that C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_PIT_L_DEMOD_SIG_GAIN / C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_YAW_L_DEMOD_SIG_GAIN are not 0.100 but 0.200.

To focus POX beam on POX11 PD, I added an iris and a lens before POX11 PD as you can see in Attachment 1.

It seemed that the beam is well focused, but the behavior of POXDC has not changed, as shown in Attachments 2 & 3.    

[yutaro, Koji]

Now, the beam on POX11 PD is well centered and well focused.

We found out why POXDC had behaved as reported in elog 11839. There were a few reasons: the beam was not focused enough, hight of a mirror was not matched to the beam well, path of the light reflected by misaligned SRM was occasionally close to the path of POX beam.

Then, What we did is following:

- changed orientation of SRM slightly

- changed the hight of the mirror whose hight had not matched well, by changing the pedestal (hight of which mirror was changed is shown in Attachment 1.)

- put a lens with f=250 mm (where the lens is located is shown in Attachment 1.)

- refined alignment for the POX beam to hit on the center of POX11 PD.  

As a result, POX DC level behaved as shown in Attachment 2&3 when the orientation of ITMX was varied (Attachment 2: POX DC vs ITMX PIT, Attachment 3: POX DC vs ITMX YAW). 

You can see broad plateau when varied in both PIT and YAW directions, and the beam is at the center of the plateau if ITMX is aligned ideally.

On the day before yesterday and in this morning, I measured loss map of ETMX. I reported the method I used to change the beam spot on ETMX below.

Round trip loss was measured for 5 x 5 points. The result is below.

(unit: ppm)

455.4 +/- 21.1       437.1 +/- 21.8       482.3 +/- 21.8       461.6 +/- 22.5       507.9 +/- 20.1      
448.4 +/- 20.7       457.3 +/- 21.2       495.6 +/- 20.2       483.1 +/- 20.8       472.2 +/- 19.8      
436.9 +/- 19.3       444.6 +/- 19.7       483.0 +/- 19.5       474.9 +/- 20.9       498.3 +/- 18.7      
454.4 +/- 18.7       474.4 +/- 20.6       487.7 +/- 21.4       482.6 +/- 20.7       487.0 +/- 19.9      
443.7 +/- 18.6       469.9 +/- 20.2       482.8 +/- 18.7       480.9 +/- 19.5       486.1 +/- 19.2 

The correspondence between the loss shown above and the beam spot on ETMX is shown in the attached figure. In the figure, "up" and "right" indicate direction of shift of the beam spot when you watch it via the camera (ex. 455.4 ppm corresponds to the highest and rightest point in the view via the camera). 

This result is consistent withe previous result of 561.19 +/- 14.57 ppm ericq got with ASDC and reported in elog 10248 if the discussion I reported in 11819 is taken into account. Elog 11819 says in short that the strange behavior of ASDC could give us 60-70 ppm error.

The reason why the error is larger than that of the measurement for ETMY is that the noise of POX is larger than that of POY. But I am not sure to what extent the statistical error needs to be reduced.

How I shifted the beam spot on ETMX:   

Basically, the method was same as one used for Y arm. Different point is: for Y arm we have two steering mirrors TT1&2, but for X arm we have only one steering mirror BS. Then in order to shift incident beam so that the beam spot on ITMX does not change, I ran the dithering of X arm as well as that of Y arm and added offsets to both dither loops that caused same amount of shift on ETMX and ETMX. Thanks to the symmetry between X arm and Y arm, the dithering of Y arm ensured that the beam spot on ITMX was unchanged as well as that of ITMY. The idea of this method is schematically shown in Attachment 2. 

The calibration of how much the beam spot shifted is based on the results of elog 11846 . The offset was [-15,-7.5,0,7.5,15]x[-5,-2.5,0,2.5,5] for pitch and yaw, respectively.  

I changed the snapshot file for ASS, /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/ASS_DITHER_ON.snap as follows:

L124 >  C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_PIT_GAIN 1 -5.000000000000000e-02

        => C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_PIT_GAIN 1 -1.500000000000000e-02

L128>   C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_YAW_GAIN 1 5.000000000000000e-02

        => C1:ASS-XARM_ETM_YAW_GAIN 1 1.500000000000000e-02

The purpose of this change is to avoid the oscillation when the dithering of X arm is running.

I estimated power recycling gain with the results of arm loss measurement.

From elog 11818 and 11857, round trip losses including transmittivity of ETM of Y arm and X arm (let us call them  and ) are 229+13.7=243 ppm and 483+13.7=495 ppm, respectively.

How I calculated:

I used the following formula.

Amplitude reflectivity of an arm cavity : 

   (see elog 11816)

Amplitude reflectivity of FPMI : 

With power transmittivity of PRM  and amplitude reflectivity of PRM , power recycling gain is

.

 I assumed , , and , and then I got

PRG = 9.8.

Since both round trip losses have relative error of ~ 4 % and PRG is proportional to inverse square of  up to the leading order of it, relative error of PRG can be estimated as ~ 8 %, so PRG = 9.8 +/- 0.8. 

Discussion

According to elog 11691, which says TRX and TRY level was ~125 when DRFPMI was locked, power recycling gain was  at the last DRFPMI lock.

Measured PRG is lower than PRG estimated here, but it is natural because various causes such as mode mismatch between PRC mode and arm cavity mode, imperfect contrast of FPMI, and so on could decrease PRG, which Eric suggested to me. 

Added on Dec 9

If  were as small as , PRG would be 16.0. PRC would be still under coupled.  

I did additional tests for the strange behavior of ASCD. ETMY, ETMX and ITMY were misaligned so that only light reflected by ITMX went into AS port. I had done similar measurement before with ITMY YAW varied.

Attachment 1 shows how ASDC level changed when ITMX PIT varied.

Attachment 2 shows how ASDC level changed when ITMX YAW varied.

Attachment 3 shows how the power of light measured by a power meter just after the AS view port varied when ITMX YAW varied.

Comparing 1 & 2, we can say that this behavior is not unique to YAW direction.

From 2 & 3, we can say something strange is happening inside the chamber.   

To check if the strange behavior of ASDC is caused by SR2/SR3 or not, I did the following measurement:

ASDC measures the power of the light reflected by ITMX. POXDC measures the power of the light reflected by ITMX and SRM successively. Then I varied the angle of ITMX in YAW direction and compared the behaviors of ASDC and POXDC.

The results are shown in Attachments 1-3.

As you can see in these figures, the strange up-and-down behavior appeared ONLY in ASDC. Therefore, the cause of this behavior exists between AS table and SRM (I had confirmed that the angle of SRM did not affect ASDC).

And this behavior is fringe-like, as can be seen in the figures (there seems to be 3 "peaks" and 2 "valleys"), so the cause could be interference between main path and not good AR reflection at a mirror after SRM before AS table (I suspect a mirror is flipped mistakenly).   

I took PR3 AR reflectivity and calculated PRG (PR3 is flipped and so AR surface is inside PRC).

As shown in attached figure, which shows AR specification of the LaserOptik mirror (PR3 is this mirror), AR reflectivity of PR3 is ~0.5 %. Since resonant light in PRC goes through AR surface of PR3 4 times per round trip, round trip loss due to this is ~2 %. Then I got

PRG = 7.8.    

Can I ask you to make a plot of the power recycling gain as a function of the average arm loss, indicating the current loss value?

Attached is the plot of relation between the average arm round trip loss and power recycling gain. 2 % loss due to PR3 AR reflection is taken into account.

[ericq, Gautam]

We were not able to fix the excess frequency noise of the AUX X laser by the usual laser diode current song and dance. Unfortunately, this level of noise is much too high to have any realistic chance of locking.  

We're leaving things back in the IR beat -> phase tracker state with free running AUX lasers, on the off chance that there may be anything interesting to see in the overnight data. This may be limited by our lack of automatic beatnote frequency control. (Gautam will soon implement this via digital frequency counter). I've upped the FINE_PHASE_OUT_HZ_DQ frame rate to 16k from 2k, so we can see more of the spectrum.

For the Y beat, there is the additional weird phenomenon that the beat amplitude slowly oscillates to zero over ~10 minutes, and then back up to its maximum. This makes it hard for the phase tracker servo to stay stable... I don't have a good explanation for this. 

Here's how we should diagnose the EX laser:

1. Compare IR RIN of laser out to 100 kHz with that of another similar NPRO.
2. Look at time series of IR beat signal with a fast scope. Are there any high frequency glitches?
3. Disconnect all of the cables to the EX laser PZT and temperature control. Does the frequency noise change?
4. Change the temperature by +/- 1 deg to move away from mode hop regions. Remeasure RIN and frequency noise and plot.

I'll finish up the beat / frequency noise parts of the diagnosis tomorrow later, but I've done some investigation of the AUX X laser RIN. 

I placed a PDA255 at one of the rejected beams from the PBS on the downstream side of the IR faraday, making sure the power didn't saturate the PD. I measured the RIN on a SR785, and simultaneously looked at the signal on a 100MHz scope. 

The RIN has a very strong dependence on the laser diode current, and no noticable dependence on the crystal temperature or the presence of the PDH modulation / temperature control cables. Here are some traces, note that "nominal" current up until recently was 2.0A. 

When adjusting the diode current, a peak beings to appear in the tens of kHz, eventually noticible in the DC power trace on the scope. The point at which this occurs is not fixed.

At all times, I saw a strong intensity fluctuation at around 380-400kHz on the scope whose amplitude fluctuated a fair amount (at least 75mVrms over Vdc=6.5V, but would often be 2 or 3 times that).

I didn't look at the frequency noise while doing this, because the WiFi at the X end was too slow, I'll do more tomorrow in the daytime. 

[ericq, Gautam]

We set out to lock a marconi to the IR fiber beat of PSL + AUX X to measure some frequency noise, and failed.

In short, the Marconi's 1.6MHz max external FM isn't enough oomph to stabilize the PLL error signal. It's actually evident on the Agilent that the beat moves around a few times more than that, which I should've noticed sooner... We could briefly "lock" the PLL for a few tenths of a second, but weren't able to get a spectrum from this.

We also tried using the digital phase tracker temperature servo for some help at ~DC; this worked to the extent that we didn't have to twiddle the Marconi carrier frequency to stay on top of the fringes as the beat wandered, but it didn't otherwise stabilize the beat enough to make a difference in locking the PLL.

I suppose one more thing to try is to lock the PSL laser itself to each AUX laser in turn via PLL, and look for different / excess noise.

The Green and IR beat electronics are a in a little bit of disarray at the moment, but it's not like anyone else is going to be using them for the time being...

The problem here is that the MC displacement noise is leading to large frequency excursions of the PSL beam. Options

1. Feed back the low frequency PLL control signal to the MC2 length to suppress the excursion required by the Marconi. This is better than driving the laser, since the drive to the laser would be squashed by the MC locking loop.
2. Put the beat signal through a divider? Don't know if this makes the Marconi more able to handle it.
3. Turn on the MCL path. this will make the low frequency MC error signal go to the MC length, thereby reducing the low frequency feedback to the NPRO.

Turning on the MCL path (in addition to the MCL FF we always have on) let me lock the PLL for multiple seconds, but low frequency excursions still break it in the end. I was able to briefly observe a level of ~50Hz/rtHz at 1kHz, which may or may not be real. Tomorrow we'll send the PLL control signal to MC2, which should lock it up just fine and give us time to twiddle laser diode current, measure the PLL loop shape, etc. 

[ericq, Gautam]

Brief summary of tonights work:

• Locked Marconi to AUX X vs PSL beat at around 320MHz, PSL shutter closed (i.e. both lasers free running)
• Measured control signal spectrum at various laser diode currents, crystal temperatures. Oddly, spectra remained consistent across these variables. 
• Measured OLG of PLL to calibrate into open-loop frequency noise of the beat, found UGF ~30kHz

Our "requirement" for the end laser is as follows: We expect to (and have in the past) achieved ALS sensitivity of 1Hz/rtHz at 100 Hz. If the end PDH loop is 1/f from 100Hz-10kHz, then we have 40dB of supression at 100Hz, meaning the free running AUX laser noise should be no more than 100Hz/rtHz at 100Hz.

So, if we expect both the PSL and AUX lasers to have this performance when free running, we would get the green curve below. We do not. 

I'll post more details about the exact currents, temperatures and include calibrated plots for the >30kHz range later. Here's the OLG for kicks. 

Here is some of the promised data. As mentioned, changing diode current and crystal temperature didn't have much effect on the frequency noise spectrum; but the spectrum itself does seem too high for our needs. 

At each temperature, we started measuring the spectrum at 1.8A, and stepped the current up, hoping to reach 2.0 A.

At 47.5 C, we were able to scan the current from 1.8 to 2.0 A without much problem. At 49.0C, the laser mode would hop away above 1.95A. At 50.4C it would hop away above 1.85A. The spectra were not seen to change when physically disconnecting the PZT actuation BNC from the rear of the laser. 

The flattening out at the upper end is likely due to the SR560 output noise. I foolishly neglected to record the output spectrum of it, but with the marconi external modulation set to 3.2MHz/V, the few Hz/rtHz above 20k translates to a signal on the order of uV/rtHz, which seems reasonable. 

Data and code attached. 

The next step is to compare this data with the same measurement with the PSL and the AUX laser on the PSL table (or the end Y laser). If these show a lot lower noise level, we can say 1) the x-end laser is malfunctioning and 2) the y-end and AUX laser on the PSL are well low noise.

Here are some results from measuring the PSL / AUX Y beat. 

With the Y end laser, I was able to lock the PLL with a lower actuation range (1.6MHz/V), and with the PSL in both the free-running and MCL locked configurations. (In the latter, I had to do a bit of human-turning-knob servo to keep the control signal from running away). I also took a spectrum with the marconi detuned from the beat frequency, to estimate the noise from the PD+mixer+SR560. 

It looks like the AUX X laser is about 3 times noisier than the Y, though the Y laser looks more like a 10^5 noise-frequency product, whereas I thought we needed 10^4. 

Gautam is investigating the PSL / AUX PSL beat with Koji's setup now. 

Unless this is the limit from the way you guys set up the PLL, it seems like there's no difference between the two lasers that's of any import. So then the locking problem has been something else all along - perhaps its noise in the X-PDF lock somehow? PDH box oscillations?

I took spectra (attached) with the same actuation range (3.2 MHz/V) for the AUX X+PSL and AUX Y+PSL combinations (PSL shutter closed) just to keep things consistent. It looks like there is hardly any difference between the two combinations - could the apparent factor of 3 worse performance of the X end laser have been due to different actuation ranges on the Marconi? 

I've not managed to take a spectrum for the proposed replacement Lightwave laser on the PSL table, though with Eric's help, I've managed to find the beatnote (at a temperature of 53.0195 degrees). I had to do some minor alignment tweaking for this purpose on the PSL table - the only optics I touched were the ones in the pink beam path in attachments 1 and 2 in this elog (the setup used to make the measurement is also qualitatively similar to attachment 3 in the same elog, except for the fact that we are feeding back to the Marconi and not the laser - a detailed sketch with specific components used will be put up later). I'll try and measure the frequency noise of this laser as well over the weekend and put up some spectra. 

With regards to possibly switching out the Lightwave on the PSL table for the (faulty?) Innolight at the X end, I've verified the following:

• The beam-height from the Lightwave on the mount it is currently sitting on is the same as that from the Innolight on the X end table.
• There is sufficient space on the X end table to house the Lightwave laser+mount

It remains to characterize the beam coming out from the Lightwave laser and do a mode matching calculation to see if we can use the same optics currently in place (with slight rearrangement) to realize a satisfactory mode-matching solution - I've obtained a beam profiler to do this from Liyuan and have the software setup, but have yet to do the beam scan - the plan is to do this on the SP table, but we've put off moving the Lightwave laser off the PSL table until we (i) establish conclusively that the X end laser is malfunctioning and (ii) check the frequency nosie of the Lightwave relative to the Aux lasers currently at the ends. 

The area around the Marconi is in a little disarray at the moment with a bunch of cables, SR560s, analyzers etc - I didn't want to disconnect the measurement setup till we're done with it. I have however turned both IR beat PDs on the PSL table off, and have reconnected the Marconi output to the Frequency Generation Unit and have set the carrier back to 11.066209MHz, +13dBm. 

EDIT 01/12/2016 6PM: I've updated the plots of the in-loop spectra such that they are calibrated throughout the entire domain now. I did so by inferring the closed-loop transfer function (G/(1-G)) from the measured open-loop transfer function (G), and then fitting the inferred TF using vectfit4 (2 poles). The spectra were calibrated by multiplying the measured spectra by the magnitude of the fitted analytic TF at the frequency of interest.

EricQ brought back one of the Marconis that was borrowed by the Cryo lab to the 40m today (it is a 2023B - the Marconi used for all previous measurements in this thread was 2023A). Koji had suggested investigating the frequency noise injected into the PLL by the Marconi, and I spent some time investigating this today. We tried to mimic the measurement setup used for the earlier measurements as closely as possible. One Marconi was used as a signal source, the other as the LO for the PLL loop. All measurements were done with the carrier on the signal Marconi set to 310MHz (since all our previous measurements were done around this value). We synced the two Marconis by means of the "Frequency Standard" BNC connector on the rear panel (having selected the appropriate In/Out configurations digitally first). Two combinations were investigated - with either Marconi as LO and signal source. For each combination, I adjusted the FM gain on the Marconi (D in the plot legends) and the overall control gain on the SR560 (G in the plot legends) such that their product remained approximately constant. I measured the PLL OLG at each pair to make sure the loop shape was the same throughout all trials. Here are the descriptions of the attached plots:

Attachment #1: 2023A as LO, 2023B as source, measured OLGs

Measured OLG for the various combinations of FM gain and SR560 gain tested. The UGF is approximately 30kHz for all combinations - the exceptions being D 1.6MHz, G=1e4 and D=3.2MHz, G=1e4. I took the latter two measurements just because these end up being the limiting values of D for different carrier frequencies on the Marconi.

Attachment #2: 2023A as LO, 2023B as source, measured spectra of control signal (uncalibrated above 30kHz)

I took the spectra down to 2Hz, in two ranges, and these are the stitched versions. 

Attachment #3: 2023B as LO, 2023A as source, measured OLGs

Attachment #4: 2023B as LO, 2023A as source, measured spectra of control signal (uncalibrated above 30kHz)

So it appears that there is some difference between the two Marconis? Also, if the frequency noise ASD-frequency product is 10^4 for a healthy NPRO, these plots suggest that we should perhaps operate at a lower value of D than the 3.2MHz/V we have been using thus far? 

As a quick trial, I also took quick spectra of the PLL control signals for the PSL+Aux X and PSL+Aux Y beat signals, with the 2023B as the LO (Attachment #5). The other difference is that I have plotted the spectrum down to 1 Hz (they are uncalibrated above 30Hz). The PSL+Y combination actually looks like what I would expect for an NPRO (for example, see page 2 of the datasheet of the Innolight Mephisto) particularly at lower frequencies - not sure what to make of the PSL+X combination. Also, I noticed that the amplitude of the PSL+Y beatnote was going through some large-amplitude (beat-note fluctuates between -8dBm and -20dBm) but low frequency (period ~10mins) oscillations. This has been observed before, not sure why its happening though. 

More investigations to be done later tonight.

Gautam will soon follow up with detailed analysis, but here is a brief summary of some of our activities and findings.

• Two Marconis were beat together in various ways, we figured the noise added by turning on external modulation didn't make us happy. 
• I locked the AUX X laser to the PSL via PZT. I'm more likely to believe we're seeing real broadband laser noise in this configuration; locking the the PSL laser to the IMC brought the noise down in a reasonable way. The PLL bandwidth was a smidge over 100k.
• We saw a factor ~6 increase in noise when changing the diode current from 1.8 to 1.96A. We'll be following this up at more temperatures and currents soon. 
• Gautam will verify the AUX X laser PZT calibration tomorrow, and post calibrated spectra of this increase. 

Please note that there is a long BNC cable still laid out from the IOO rack area to the X end table; watch your step!

EDITS 15Jan:

1. Schematic of test setup added (Attachment #5). Note that the UGF measurements were made with the LPF and gain on the 'wrong' SR560, in a way defeating the purpose of having 2 SR560s in the setup. I only realised this after taking the measuements. But having done the loop algebra, I believe we can extract the necessary information, which is what has been done in subsequent plots...
2. Koji pointed out that UGFs of ~100kHz was probably too high - this is when I took a closer look at the setup and realised the remarks made above in point 1. I realised we were in fact measuring the 'Process' open-loop TF. We can recover the loop TF by measuring the controller TF (which I did, see Attachment #3). The UGF for the PSL+X PLL loop is ~7.5kHz while that for PSL+Y is ~22kHz (both with a 1Hz LP on the SR560 and gain of x200).
3. During the above investigations, I found that the measured TF for a 1Hz LP on the SR560 is weird - there seems to be a zero around 5kHz which gives some phase lead where one would expect a uniformly decaying gain and phase to be -90 degrees. Eric and I confirmed this behavioud on another SR560. Low-pass at 10kHz and high-pass at 1kHz seem to work fine. I will investigate this further when I get the time. Anyhow I don't think this affects anything as long as we measure the correct OLTF. It is still not clear to me why we even need this to lock the PLL...
4. All the spectra (Attachment #4 and #5) are now calibrated taking into account the loop TF. I've added another panel with the spectra in V/rtHz as measured on the SR785, along with the SR560 output noise. I don't think any of the conclusions below are affected by these edits.

Summary:

I took several measurements today using the revised PLL scheme of using the Marconi just as an LO, and actuating on the Laser PZT to keep the PLL locked (I will put up a sketch soon). On the evidence of the attached plots (spectra of PLL control signal), I guess we can conclude the following:

1. The AUX X laser's frequency noise performance is consistent with the levels expected from 'typical' NPRO numbers (and the datasheet), and is more or less consistent across different diode currents/crystal temperatures (? see below...).
2. The diode current should be set to something less than 2.00 A
3. Qualitatively, there is a difference in the shape of the spectra between the PSL+X and PSL+Y combinations above a couple of kHz. I don't know why we see this.

Attachment #2: Measured OLG of PLL for the PSL+X and PSL+Y combinations. The UGF in both cases looks to be above 100 kHz, so I didn't do any calibration for the spectra attached. The gain on the SR560 was set to 200 for all measurements.

Attachment #3: Measured spectra of PLL control signal for various diode currents, with one reading from the PSL+Y combination plotted for comparison. When we took some data last night, Eric noted that there was a factor of ~6 increase in the overall frequency spectrum level at higher currents, I will update the plots with last night's data as well shortly. I found it hardest to keep the PLL locked at a diode current of 2.00 A across all measurements.

Attachment #4: Measured spectra of PLL control signal at two different crystal temperatures. There does not seem to be any significant dependance on temperature, although I did only do the measurement at two temperatures.

Attachment #4 Attachment #1: All the data used to make these plots (plus some that have yet to be added to the plots, I will update them).

Misc notes:

• All measurements taken with two free-running lasers (PSL shutter closed)
• The SR560 noise was measured with the input on the SR560 set to ground. 
• In order to go from V/rtHz to Hz/rtHz on the plots, I used 1MHz/V for the X-end laser (which I verified by a quick measurement today to be approximately correct) and 4.6 MHz/V for the Y-end laser, based on an earlier measurement. 
• I re-routed the long BNC cable to the Y-end, have yet to remove it. The BNC from the PDH setup at the X-end has been re-attached to the X-end NPRO.

Unrelated to this work:

When I came in this afternoon, I noticed that the PMC was unlocked. The usual procedure of turning the servo gain to -10dB and playing around with the DC output adjust slider on the MEDM screen did not work. Eric toggled a few buttons on the MEDM screen after which we were able to relock the PMC using the DC output adjust slider.

In preparation for tonight's work, I did the following:

On the PSL table:

• Powered the RF amplifiers for the green beat signal on
• Reconnected the outputs of the Green beat PDs to the RF amplifiers
• Restored wiring in the fiber box such that both IR beats go to the frequency counter.

At the IOO Rack area:

• Restored wiring to the frequency counter module such that the IR beats from both arms go to the respective channels
• Partially cleaned up the setup used for measuring AUX laser frequency noise - moved the SR785 to the X end along with one SR560 so that we can measure the end PDH OLTF
• Brought the HP network analyzer back to the control room so that we can view the green beatnotes.

At the X-end:

• Turned the function generator used for PDH locking back on
• Checked that the AUX laser diode current is 1.90 A, and the crystal temperature is ~47.5 degrees, both of which I think are "good" values from our AUX laser frequency noise measurements
• Did some minor manual alignment of the PZT mirrors

At the Y-end:

• Restored the BNC connection from the PDH box to the laser's "FAST" control input. The long BNC cable used for the PLL is still running along the Y-arm, I will clean this up later.

Having done all this, I checked the green transmission levels for both arms (PSL green shutter closed, after running ASS to maximize IR transmission). GTRY is close to what I remember (~0.40) while the best I could get GTRX to is ~0.12 (I seem to remember it being almost double this value - maybe the alignment onto the beat PD has to be improved?). Also, the amplitudes of the beatnotes on the network analyzer are ~-50dBm, and I seem to remember it being more like -25dBm, so maybe the alignment on the PD is the issue? I will investigate further in the evening. It remains to measure the OLTF of the X-end PDH as well.

[ericq, Gautam]

We checked the UGF of the AUX X PDH servo, found a ~6kHz UGF with ~45 degree phase margin, with the gain dial maxed out at 10.0. Laser current is at 1.90, direct IR output is ~300mW.

We recovered ALS readout of IR-locked arms. While the GTRX seemed low, after touching up the beam alignment, the DFD was reporting a healthy amount of signal. ALSY was perfectly nominal. 

ALSX was a good deal higher than usual. Furthermore, there's a weird shape around ~1kHz that I can't explain at this point. It's present in both the IR and green beats. I don't suspect the DFD electronics, because the Y beat came through fine. The peak has moderate coherence with the AUX X PDH error signal (0.5 or so), but the shape of the PDH error signal is mostly smooth in the band in which the phase tracker output is wonky, but a hint of the bump is present. 

Turning the PDH loop gain down increases the power spectrum of the error signal, obviously, but also smoothens out the phase tracker output. The PDH error signal spectrum in the G=10 case via DTT is drowning in ADC noise a bit, so we grabbed it's spectrum with the SR785 (attachment #2, ASD in V/rtHz), to show the smoothness thereof.

Finally, we took the X PDH box to the Y end to see how ALSY would perform, to see if the box was to blame. Right off the bat, when examining the spectrum of error signal with the X box, we see many large peaks in the tens of kHz, which are not present at the same gain with the Y PDH box. Some opamp oscillation shenanigans may be afoot... BUUUUUT: when swapping the Y PDH box into the X PDH setup, the ~1kHz bump is identical. ugh

While carrying out my end-table power investigations, I decided to take a quick look at the out-of-loop ALSX noise - see the attached plot. The feature at ~1kHz seems less prominent (factor of 2?) now, though its still present, and the overall noise above a few tens of Hz is still much higher than the reference. The green transmission was maximized to ~0.19 before this spectrum was taken.

EDIT 1130pm: 

We managed to access the trends for the green reflected and transmitted powers from a couple of months back when things were in their nominal state - see Attachment #2 for the situation then. For the X arm, the green reflected power has gone down from ~1300 counts (November 2015) to ~600 counts (january 2016) when locked to the arm and alignment is optimized. The corresponding numbers for the green transmitted powers (PSL + End Laser) are 0.47 (November 2015) and ~0.18 (January 2016). This seems to be a pretty dramatic change over just two months. For the Y-arm, the numbers are: ~3500 counts (Green REFL, Nov 2015), ~3500 counts (Green REFL, Jan 2016) ~1.3 (Green Trans, Nov 2015), ~1 (Green Trans, Jan 2016). So it definitely looks like something has changed dramatically with the X-end setup, while the Y-end seems consistent with what we had a couple of months ago...

[ericq, Gautam]

We gave DRFPMI locking a shot, with the ALS out-of-loop noises as attached. I figured the ALSX noise might be tolerable. 

After the usual alignment pains, we got to DRMI holding while buzzing around resonance. Recall that we have not locked since Koji's repair of the LO levels in the IMC loop, so the proper AO gains are a little up in the air right now. There were hopeful indications of arm powers stabilizing, but we were not able to make it stick yet. This is perhaps consistent with the ALSX noise making things harder, but not neccesarily impossible; we assuredly still want to fix the current situation but perhaps we can still lock.

On a brighter note, I've only noticed one brief EPICS freeze all night. In addition, the wall StripTools seem totally contiuous since ~4pm, whereas I'm used to seeing some blocky shapes particularly in the seismic rainbow. Could this possibly mean that the old WiFi router was somehow involved in all this? 

Earlier today, we did a bunch of stuff to see if we could improve the situation with the excess ALS-X noise. Long story short, here are the parameters that were changed, and their initial and final values:

X-end laser diode temperature:     28.5 degrees ---> 31.3 degrees

X-end laser diode current:             1.900 A ---> 1.942 A

X-end laser crystal temperature:   47.43 degrees ---> 42.6 degrees

PSL crystal temperature:              33.43 degrees ---> 29.41 degrees

PSL Diode A temperature:           21.52 degrees ---> 20.75 degrees

PSL Diode B temperature:           22.04 degrees ---> 21.3 degrees 

The Y-end laser temperature has not yet been adjusted - this will have to be done to find the Y-beatnote.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to have fixed the problem - I was able to find the beatnote, with amplitude on the network analyzer in the control room consistent with what we've been seeing over the last few days, but as is clear from Attachment 1, the problem persists...

Details:

• PSL shutter was closed and FSS servo input was turned off. 
• As I had mentioned in this elog, the beat can now only be found at 47.41 degress +/- 1 deg, which is a shift of almost 5 degrees from the value set sometime last year, ~42.6 degrees. Rana thought it's not a good idea to keep operating the laser at such a high crystal temperature, so we decided to lower the X-end laser temperature back to 42.6 degrees, and then adjust the PSL temperature appropriately such that we found a beat. The diode temperature was also tweaked (this requires using a small screwdriver to twist the little knob inset to the front panel of the laser controller) - for the end laser, we did not have a dedicated power monitor to optimize the diode temperature by maximizing the current, and so we were just doing this by looking at the beat note amplitude on the network analyzer (which wasn't changing by much). So after playing around a little, Rana decided to leave it at 31.3 degrees.
• We then went to the PSL table and swept through the temperature till a beat was found. The PMC wouldn't stay locked throughout the sweep, so we first did a coarse scan, and saw weak (due to the PMC being locked to some weird mode) beatnotes at some temperatures. We then went back to 29.41 degrees, and ran the PMC autolocker script to lock the PMC - a nice large beatnote was found. 
• Finally, Rana tweaked the temperatures of the two diodes on the PSL laser controller - here, the optimization was done more systematically, by looking at the PMC transmitted power on the oscilloscope (and also the MEDM screen) as a function of the diode temperature.
• I took a quick look at the ALS out of loop noise - and unfortunately, our efforts today does not seem to have noticeably improved anything (although the bump at ~1kHz is no longer there). 

Some details not directly related to this work:​ 

• There are long cables (routed via cable tray) suitable for RF signals that are running from the vertex to either end-table - these are labelled. We slightly re-routed the one running to the X-end, sending it to the IOO rack via the overhead cable tray so that we could send the beat signal from the frequency counter module to the X-end, where we could look at it using an analyzer while also twiddling laser parameters.
• A webcam (that also claims to have two-way audio!) has been (re?)installed on the PSL table. The ethernet connection to the webcam currently goes to the network switch on the IOO rack (though it is unlabelled at the moment)
• The X-end area is due for a clean-up, I will try and do some of this tomorrow. 

That's a good news. Only quantitative analysis will tell us if it is true or not.

Also we still want to analyze the traffic with the new switch.

Is the black ref spectrum from this year or from May of 2015 or ?

I wonder if the noise is a bunch of fast spikes or if its a true broadband rumble. Maybe we can tell by looking at the analog DFD or PLL outputs?

I hooked up the ALSX DFD output to the fibox, and used the adjustable delay line to set the phase properly. I recorded the noise on pianosa, and have attached it. Of course, this doesn't really capture the low frequency behavior. 

Unrelated to this: I found the MC WFS turned off, and the loops ran away when turning them on. I tweaked the alignment, and reset the WFS offsets. Seems stable for now. 

Yesterday, I uploaded some EAGLE schematic files and a LISO source file for the green PDH servo electronics to the 40m LISO git repository. In doing so, I realized that the DCC document for the X box (D1400293) was not updated at the end of the electronics work we did in Aug/Sep 2014. This is entirely my fault. 

The Y box document (D1400294) is currently accurate. 

The missing information is that, as I posted In ELOG 10457, I ended up destroying our original X box, and replaced it with a spare from the ATF. It was restuffed to match the Y end box pretty much exactly. We will update the X circuit DCC page with an accurate schematic and photo. 

Gautam tells me that he and Rana were looking at the outdated schematic and thinking about improvements, but at least some of this was already done back in 2014 (specifically, the resistors used to specify the AD8336 preamp gain were changed).

I've uploaded reasonably high-resolution photographs of the uPDH box for the X-end and Y-end on their respective wiki pages. I've uploaded two photos for each box, one of the circuit board (I checked that these photos are clear enough that we can zoom in and read off component values if necessary), and one of the box with the peripherals not integrated into the circuit board (i.e. the minicircuits mixer ZAD-8+ and the little Pomona box that is an LP filter for the output from the mixer). Since I pulled the boxes out, I thought it might not be a bad idea to measure the TFs of these Pomona boxes and make sure nothing weird is going on, I'll put up some plots later. 

Rana and I discussed some things to look at earlier today:

• Check the voltages at test-points 1,7 and 9, and make sure they are as expected
• Change the gain of the pre-amp from x2 to x4 - as Eric mentioned in the previous elog, these had already been swapped out. Right now a 600 ohm and 200 ohm resistor pair are being used, so the preamp gain is x4, which should be okay as per the datasheet of the AD8336 VGA amplifier (although the "recommended" resistor pairing is 301 ohm and 100 ohm, but I don't think this is critical?
• Track down the reason for the difference in Gain settings at the X and Y ends - typically, the X-end PDH box "Gain" knob is set to 10, while that for the Y-end is set to ~4. The fact that the PZT actuator gain for the Y-end is ~5 times larger than for the X-end doesn't seem to account for all of this. As per the attached plot, the difference in gain between the ends is ~35 dB, which is a factor of 50!

I also did a quick check of the behaviour of the Servo Gain potentiometer by checking the resistance at various positions of the knob - we had suspected that the potentiometer may be logarithmic, but I found that it was in fact linear. I'll put up a plot of the gain as a function of the Servo Gain knob position soon,(plot added) along with results from the other checks.

While disassembling the setup at the X-end to get the PDH box out, I noticed that the signal from the LO is going to the mixer through a Pomona box (no such Pomona box is used at the Y-end). I opened it up and found that it contains just a pair of capacitors in parallel, so it's a phase shifter?. The LO signal also goes through an attenuator. The mixer in both boxes is a ZAD-8+, so why is this part of the setup different?

Both PDH boxes are not hooked up at the moment, I will restore the setups at both ends after running a few more checks on the boxes...

[ericq, Gautam]

We worked on getting the DRFPMI back up and running, hoping the ALS performance was good enough. 

We did succeed in bringing in enough of the AO path to stabilize arm powers > 100, but failed at the full RF DARM handoff. 

REFL165 angle was adjusted to -86 to minimize PRCL in the Q signal. 

The AS110 signals are mysteriously huger than they used to be. Whitening gain reduced to 15dB from 27dB. Old trigger thresholds are still fine.

The new AUX X laser has a different sign for the temperature-> frequency coupling, so our usual convention of "beatnote goes up when temp slider goes up" meant the ALSX input matrix elements had to change sign.

We think the POPDC PD (which I think is the POP2F PD) may be miscentered, since in PRMI configuration, its maximum does not coincide with the REFLDC minimum, and leaves a sizeable TEM10 lobe on the REFL camera. This was a pain. 

[ericq, Gautam]

Three RF-only locks longer than a minute tonight, out of 5 total attempts. 

Last week, I determined that the beam spot on the RF POP PD is too large. This still needs to be fixed. I updated the ASS model to use REFLDC as a PRCL dither error signal; it works. 

There seems to be some excess angular motion of ETMY tonight. This is evident in the oplev spectra (as compared to ETMX), and the GTRY camera, and even the retroreflected beam from a misalgined ETMY on the ITMY face when the PRC is carrier locked.

Gautam and I mostly focused on setting up the CAL-DARM_CINV block to produce this (mostly) calibrated spectrum starting from GPS 1143274087. [Darm on unwhitened AS55, DRMI on 3F, one CARM boost]

Here are the control and error signal spectra:

[DTT files attached]

Note to self: archive some of this data 

I haven't found any data files for the DARM spectrum of the previous generation of 40m, but with some GIMP-fu, I have plotted Monday's spectrum (green) on top of one of the figures from Rob's thesis.

I have copied over the complete frame files from two DRFPMI lock acquisitions + locks to /frames/archive. The data should be safe from the wiper script here.

One, under the subfolder DRFPMI_Mar29_cal is the lock where the CAL-DARM channel is properly calibrated at GPS time 1143274087.

The other lock, under DRFPMI_MAR29_nocal, does not have the calibration set up yet, but was a much quicker acquistion (<2 min from ALS acquisition to DRFPMI) and longer lock (~8min).

The 2F product out of the mixer is a natural concern when demodulating. However, I think this isn't so big of a deal in our green PDH servos; 420kHz isn't so high of a frequency that the servo amplifiers are bandwidth or slew-rate limited. Furthermore, the amplitude of this line is supressed by the loop somewhat, since it arises from the same field product that the loop is acting on. Measuring the Y end mixer output with a high impedance probe and the AG4395 shows it to be something like -50dBm. 

In fact, the main thing that the pomona LPFs are accomplishing right now is filtering the 1F content of the mixer output that arises from the second order sideband creating a signal at 2F, and beating with the LO at (2F-1F)=1F. This line is something like -30dBm (5mVrms) at the mixer output; I can reproduce this amplitude with a back-of-the envelope calculation using a modulation depth of 0.3, 8V out of the PD at DC when unlocked, the mixer datasheet, and the nominal cavity parameters. 

The nice thing about this is that we don't need to filter this after the mixer, we can use a [bandpass/lowpass/notch] filter before the mixer (as is done in the LSC demod boards) to filter out the 2F (420kHz) content of the PD signal, which will only introduce some small amount of linear time delay to the PDH loop, instead of the wicked phase loss from the current post-mixer LPF. We can then replace that 70kHz filter with something of lower order or higher corner frequency to win a good deal of phase in the PDH loop. 

OK - but give us a circuit diagram and the expected before/after loop plots. Got to make sure we keep the right impedance from PD to mixer. Some of the Thorlabs PDs have a 50 Ohm instead of 0 Ohm source impedance. Maybe you can try it out now since the green arm is ready.

We can get as much, if not more, attenuation of the 1F line in the mixer output that we get from the post-mixer LPF from using the following passive filter between the PD and mixer RF input:

There should still be some kind of LPF after the mixer, but I haven't yet determined what it should be; this will determine how much phase the PDH loop wins. At most, this should win around 25 degrees at 10kHz.

The filter was designed by referencing the "Handbook of Filter Synthesis" by Zverev, looking for an elliptic filter for matched source and load impedences, 40dB min attenuation in the stopband, a stopband frequency that starts at twice the corner frequency, and minimizing the VSWR between the PD and filter in the passband.

In terms of the tables in the book, this means: n=5, rho=2%, theta=30deg, K**2 = 1.0. The dimensionless component values were scaled by the corner frequency of 200kHz, and reference impedence of 50 Ohm. (The corner is a little lower than the real modulation frequency, since the nonzero resistance of the inductors pushes the frequency up a bit)

The ideal capactior values do not correspond to things we have in hand, so I checked our stock and chose the closest value to each one.Unsurprisingly, due to these component substitutions, and the fact that the coilcraft inductors have a resistance of about 7 Ohms, the predicted TF of the realizable filter does not match the design filter exactly. However, the predicition still looks like it will meet the requirement of 40dB of supression of the 2F line in the PD signal. (Since we have tunable inductors, I've used the ideal inductor values in generating the TF. In practice I'll inspect the TF while I tune them)

[In this TF plot, I've multiplied the real response by 2 to account for the voltage division that occurs with ideal 50 Ohm impedance matching, to make 0dB the reference for proper matching]

The filter's phase delay at the modulation frequency is just about 180, which as a time delay of 5usec works out to 9 degrees of phase loss at 10kHz in the PDH loop. According to some old measurements, the current LPF costs something like 35 degrees at 10k, so this wins at most around 25 degrees, depedent on what LPF we put after the mixer.

LISO source both traces is attached!

We took an OLG measurement of the green PDH loop. It seems consistent with past measurements. I've added a trace for the the post-mixer lowpass, to show its contribution to the phase loss. (EDIT: updated with measured LPF TF)

I used this measured OLG and the datasheet laser PZT conversion factor to calibrate the control signal monitor into the AUX laser frequency noise, it looks consistent with the frequency noise measured via the PSL PLL (300 Hz/rtHz @ 100Hz). Above a few tens of kHz, the control signal measurement is all analyzer noise floor, due to the fourth order 70kHz lowpass after the mixer (the peaks change height significantly depending on the analyzer input range, so I don't think they're on the laser). Gautam will follow up with more detailed measurements of both the error and control signals as he noisebudgets, this was just intended as a quick consistency check.

This morning I poked around with the green layout a bit. I found that the iris immediately preceding the viewport was clipping the ingoing green beam too much, opening it up allowed for better coupling to the arm. I also tweaked the positions of the mode matching lenses and did some alignment, and have since been able to achieve GTRX values of around 0.5.

I also removed the 20db attenuator after the mixer, and turned the servo gain way down and was able to lock easily. I then adjusted the gain while measuring the CLG, and set it where the maximum gain peaking was 6dB, which worked out to be a UGF of around 8kHz. On the input monitor, the PDH horn-to-horn voltage going into the VGA is 2.44V, which shouldn't saturate the G=4 preamp stage of the AD8336, which seems ok.

The ALS sensitivity is now approaching the good nominal state:

There remains some things to be done, including comprehensive dumping of all beams at the end table (especially the reflections off of the viewport) and the new filters to replace the current post-mixer LPF, but things look pretty good.

I've build the filter, and it seems to have the desired TF shape.

I also re-purposed the 70k lowass to a ~120k lowpass by changing the 68nF caps to 22nF caps, since we still want some post-mixer rolloff. 

However, putting the ELPF in the chain caused some weird shapes in the OLG. I still need to get to the bottom of it. However, just with the post-mixer LPF modification, here's what the OLG looks like:

As Rana surmises, we definitely still add a boost and maintain a 10k UGF. I still need to look into the state of the remote boost....

Seems weird to design a PD lowpass with a corner at the modulation frequency. Recall what our strategy is with the other photodetectors we use for PDH servos: bandpass, not low-pass, and the band has to be wide enough to not effect the phase of the servo.

As I was looking at filter designs, it seemed difficult to get 40dB of supression at 2F with a bandpass without going to a pretty high order, which would mean a fair number of lossy inductors.

I'll keep working on it. Maybe we don't need 40dB...

Indeed. This is why the LSC PDs have a 2f notch in addition to the 1f resonance. In recent versions, we also put a 2f notch in the feedback of the preamp which comes after the diode but before the mixer. The overall 1f to 2f ratio that we get is in the 50-60 dB region. I don't think we have to go that far with this thing; having a double LC already seems like it should be pretty good, or we could have a single LC bandpass with a 2f notch all in one Pomona box.