Elog restart script killed the elog, but didn't restart it.  Restarted by hand.

I've noticed that it always takes running the script twice for it to actually work. I think there's something wrong with how it's doing it. I'll mess with it sometime the elog isn't getting much use.

with the script, as it was down.

Again.

Fb is now once again actually recording trends.

A section of the daqdrc file (located in /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/target/fb/ directory) had been commented out by Alex and never uncommented.  This section included the commands which actually make the fb record trends.

The section now reads as:

# comment out this block to stop saving data

#
start frame-saver;
sync frame-saver;
start trender;
start trend-frame-saver;
sync trend-frame-saver;
start minute-trend-frame-saver;
sync minute-trend-frame-saver;
start raw_minute_trend_saver;
#start frame-writer "225.225.225.1" broadcast="131.215.113.0" all;
#sleep 5;

 The elog was dead this morning. I reanimated it. It is now undead.

Aka, from a hotel in Pisa.

 Restarted Thu May 19 00:21:49 2011 to recover from Jenne's Italian terrorism.

Manasa let me know that the ELOG was down, and that she used the normal restart procedure, but then all entries were gone. 

This is because the ELOG has been moved on nodus, so going to the old place and running the restart script starts up the old dysfunctional ELOG installation. 

The proper place to restart the ELOG is now nodus:/export/home/elog/start-elog.csh

I'm updating the relevant 40m wiki page now. 

[Paco, Anchal]

Came in a little bit after 8 and found the MC unlocked and struggling to lock for the past 3 hours. Looking at the SUS overview, both MC1 and ITMX Watchdogs had tripped so we damped the suspensions and brought them back to a good state. The autolocker was still not able to catch lock, so we cleared the WFS filter history to remove large angular offsets in MC1 and after this the MC caught its lock again.

Looks like two EQs came in at around 4:45 AM (Pacific) suggested by a couple of spikes in the seismic rainbow, and this.

MC was unlocked and struggling to recover this morning due to misguided WFS offsets. In order to recover from this kind of issue, we

1. Cleared the bogus WFS offsets
2. Used the MC alignment sliders to change MC1 YAW from -0.9860 to -0.8750 until we saw the lowest order mode transmission on the video monitor.
3. With MC Trans sum at around ~ 500 counts, we lowered the C1:IOO-WFS_TRIGGER_THRESH_ON from 5000 to 500, and the C1:IOO-WFS_TRIGGER_MON from 3.0 to 0.0 seconds and let the WFS integrators work out some nonzero angular control offsets.
4. Then, the MC Trans sum increased to about 2000 counts but started oscillating slowly, so we restored the delayed loop trigger from 0.0 to 3.0 seconds and saw the MC Trans sum reach its nominal value of ~ 14000 counts over a few minutes.

The MC is now restored and the plan is to let it run for a few hours so the offsets converge; then run the WFS relief script.

We found that megatron is unable to properly run scripts/MC/WFS/mcwfsoff and scripts/MC/WFS/mcwfson scripts. It fails cdsutils commands due to a library conflict. This meant that WFS loops were not turned off when IMC would get unlocked and they would keep integrating noise into offsets. The mcwfsoff script is also supposed to clear up WFS loop offsets, but that wasn't happening either. The mcwfson script was also not bringing back WFS loops on.

Gautam fixed these scripts temprorarily for running on megatron by using ezcawrite and ezcaswitch commands instead of cdsutils commands. Now these scripts are running normally. This could be the reason for wildly fluctuating WFS offsets that we have seen in teh past few months.

gautam: the problem here is that megatron is running Ubuntu18 - I'm not sure if there is any dedicated CDS group packaging for Ubuntu, and so we're using some shared install of the cdsutils (hosted on the shared chiara NFS drive), which is complaining about missing linked lib files. Depending on people's mood, it may be worth biting the bullet and make Megatron run Debian10, for which the CDS group maintains packages.

This would be a daily first task in the morning. We'll need to check the status of arm alignment and optimize it back to maximum every morning for the rest of the day's work.

Today, when I came, on openin gthe PSL shutter, IMC was aligned good, both arms were flashing but YARM maximum transmission count was around 0.7 (as opposed to 1 from yesterday) and XARM maximum transmission count was 0.5 (as opposed to 1 from yesterday). I did not change the input alignment to the interferometer. I only used ITMY-ETMY to regain flashing count of 1 on YARM and used BS and tehn ITMX-ETMX to regain flashing count of 0.9 to 1 in XARM.

Even thought the oplevs were centered yesterday, I found the oplev had drifted from the center and the optimal position also is different for all ooptics except EMTY and BS. It is worth nothign that in optimal position both PIT and YAW of ITMY and ITMX are off by 70-90 uradians and ETMX Pit oplev is off by 55 uradians.

Restored arm algiment to get 0.8 max flashing on YARM and 1 max flashing on XARM. I had to move input alignment using TT2-PR3 pair and realign YARM cavity axis using ITMY-ETMY pair.

I would like to advertise this useful tool that I've been using for moving cavity axis or input beam direction. It's a simple code that makes your terminal kind of videogame area. It moves two optics together (either in same direction or opposite direction) by arrow key strokes (left, right for YAW, up, down for PIT). Since it moves two optics together, you actually control the cavity axis or input beam angle or position depening on the mode.

I've been futzing with the common mode servo, trying to engage the AO path with POY for high bandwidth control of a single arm lock. I'm able to pull in the crossover and get a nice loop shape, but keep getting tripped up by the offset glitches from the CM board gain steps, so can't get much more than a 1kHz UGF.

As yutaro measured, these can be especially nasty at the major carrier transitions (i.e. something like 0111->1000). This happens at the +15->+16dB input gain step; the offset step is ~200x larger than the in-loop error signal RMS, so obviously there is no hope of keeping the loop engaged when recieving this kind of kick. Neither of the CM board inputs are immune from this, as I have empirically discovered. I can turn down the initial input gain to try and avoid this step occuring anywhere in the sequence, but then the SNR at high frequencies get terrible and I inject all kinds of crud into the mode cleaner, making the PC drive furious.

I think we're able to escape this when locking the full IFO because the voltages coming out of REFL11 are so much larger than the puny POY signals so the input-referred glitches aren't as bad. I think in the past, we used AS55 with a misaligned ITMX for this kind of single arm thing, which probably gives better SNR, but the whole point of this is to keep the X arm aligned and lock it to the Y-arm stabilized PSL. 

It's been a while since I've attempted any locking, so tonight was mostly getting the various subsystems back together.

• Reconnected SR785 at 1Y3 to CM board for TF measurements.
• POX/POY locking work fine
• Locked PRMI (no ETMs) with carrier resonant, fixed PRM and BS alignment.
• ALS-X noise is still elevated - disconnected it from the switchable delay line and now I'm directly piping the 3dB coupled part of the beat to the LO input of the demod board. But the high freq contribution to the RMS is still ~x2-x3 of what it was in November 2019. But the noise should only depend on the other (delayed) part of the beat (the discriminant is set thus).
• With arms POX/POY locked, checked that there was no elevated coherence between POX_I/POY_I signals between 800 Hz - 1.2 kHz, which is where I see the excess noise in the laser frequency control signal (see Attachment #1). So this suggests that the IMC locking loop suppresses the noise to a level that the arm cavities don't witness it. It's probably still worth checking this out and fixing it, but it wasn't a show stopper.
• Transition from POX/POY lock to ALS lock was smooth - I forgot to use the POX/POY photodiodes as OOL sensors to measure the noise in this config to see if it was elevated, but anyway, I was able to push on.
• PRMI 3f locking worked okay.
• Main thing I wanted to check today is to try the AO transition with a bit more IN1 gain on the CM board - hypothesis being the high frequency part of the CARM signal is buried in the noise if we run with -32dB of IN1 gain. 
  • Set IN1 gain to -10dB instead.
  • In this config, I checked that with the CARM offset at 0 (CARM still under purely ALS control), the CM_SLOW path was registering ~4000 cts pk-pk, which is healthily within the ADC's range.
  • I was able to engage the CARM_B path and semi-stabilize the arm powers (after compensating for the increased IN1 gain by decreasing the CARM_B gain) and turn on the integrator.
  • However, before I could try any AO path action, the IMC loses lock - too tired to try more tonight, I'll try again tomrrow.

I have resurrected the MC WFS on Friday night.
I have uncommented the WFS part of the MC autolocker.
The WFS total gain was empirically set to 0.1 such that the loops have no instability.

The loops somewhat worked through the weekend although they seemed to have the drift of the operating points
in accordance with the WFS spot.

The PSL temperature box has returned to service, with some circuit modifications. The 1k resistors on all the temp. sensor inputs (R3, R4, R7, R8, R12, R12) were changed to 0 Ohm. Also, the 10k resistors R26, R28, R29, and R30 were changed to 10.2k metal film. The DCC document will be updated shortly. There is now an offset in the MINCOMEAS channel compared to the others, which will be corrected in the morning after looking at the overnight trend.

 Forgot to do this in May. Have just changed the values in the psl.db file now as well as updating them live via Probe.

To make the appropriate change, I took the measured offset (5.31 deg) and added 2x this to the EGUF and EGUL field for the MINCO_MEAS channel. (see instructions here)

Committed the .db file to the SVN.

attached plot shows 8 days of trend with 5.31 degC added to the black trace using the XMGRACE Data Set Transformations

It is actually very tricky to measure the green power at the output of the doubling crystal as the IR often leaks into the measurement.
I checked the green beam powers on the X/Y/PSL tables.

CONCLUSION: There is no green beam which exceeds 5mW anywhere in the 40m lab.

Note: The temperature of the doubling crystal at the X end was optimized to have maximum green power. It was 36.3degC and is now 36.7degC.

X END:

When the angles of the wave plates are optimized, we have 539mW input to the doubling crystal.
With the Xtal temperature of 36.7degC, where the green power is maximized, the power right after
the harmonic separator (H.S.) was 9.6mW.

Xtal temp 36.7degC   ~~~
                      |
--539mW@IR-->{Xtal}-->/-->9.6mW-->{Mirror}-->4.69mW-->{Mirror}-->4.54mW-->{Faraday}
                    (H.S.)

If we believe these 4.69mW and 4.54mW are purely from the green, we have 4.8mW right after the H.S.
This corresponds to the conversion efficiency of 1.6%/W (cf. theretical number 2%/W)

By disabling the heating of the crystal, we can reduce the green light by factor of 60. But still the reading right after the H.S. was 5.3mW

Xtal temp 29.2degC   ~~~
                      |
--539mW@IR-->{Xtal}-->/-->5.3mW-->{Mirror}-->285uW-->{Mirror}-->74.3uW-->{Faraday}
                    (H.S.)

Naively taking the difference, the green beam right after the H.S. is 4.4mW.

In either cases, the green power right after the oven is slightly less than 5mW.

Y END:

When the angles of the wave plates are optimized, we have 287mW input to the doubling crystal.
With the Xtal temperature of 36.0degC, where the green power is maximized, the power right after
the harmonic separator (H.S.) was 0.86mW.

Xtal temp 36.0degC   ~~~
                      |
--287mW@IR-->{Xtal}-->/-->0.86mW-->
                    (H.S.)

When the temperature was shifted to 39.2degC, the reading after the H.S. was 70uW. Therefore the contamination by the IR is small
in this setup and we can believe the above reading in 70uW accuracy. This 0.86mW corresponds to the conversion efficiency of 1.2%/W.

PSL

The incident IR is 80mW. We have 170uW after the H.S., which corresponds to the conversion efficiency of 2.6%/W. Maybe there is some IR contamination?
From the vacuum chamber total 1mW of green is derivered when both arms are locked and aligned.

Thus the total green power at the PSL table is less than 5mW.

So apparently the themes/configurations didn't work so nicely on some of the logbooks with 2.8.0, so I'm reverting to 2.7.5 until I can figure out (assuming I can) how to get them to display properly.

The geophone noise in my last eLog was taken before any amplification of the signal, but what really matters is the noise after amplification, since it is this signal that the PZTs are driven by. The noise goes on to be amplified about 1000x before the geophone signal gets to the PZTs.

To obtain a more relevant noise plot, I multiplied the geophone noise by 1,000, the approximate gain of the amplification stage for the geophones (called the "compensator board", the semicircular board that sits toward the top of the STACIS). Below is a plot () that shows the noise for the geophones after amplification and the accelerometer noise (with accelerometers set with a gain of 100x, their highest).

The actual signal from both these sensors has the right magnitude to drive the PZTs (whereas it was much too small in my last plot, where I looked at the sensors before any gain)- this means that for these sensors, both of which are outputting signals that are ready to provide feedback to the STACIS, the accelerometer noise is significantly lower than the geophone noise. This is good news, because it means that there could be a real advantage to using the accelerometers instead of the geophones.

In the process of investigating further advantages of the accelerometers, I believe I killed one of the horizontal PZTs in the spare STACIS (the eBay one). The story: I had that axis in closed loop, and I saw the STACIS shudder, heard a noise, and there was a faint acrid smell. I shut the STACIS off and took out the high voltage card at the base but couldn't find any visible signs of damage (like the current-limiting resistors which burn when a PZT shorts, acc. to old STACIS records). I then tried driving the PZTs with a sine wave, and there was no response in that axis (the other axes looked fine), which leads me to believe I either did unseen damage to the high voltage amplifier (for the y-axis) or killed the PZT itself.

The units were still off in my previous post. Here's the corrected, sanity-checked version:

I estimated the uncertainties based on a linear fit to the data I recorded with 75nW incident on the CCD and assumed a 5% uncertainty in that number. This is just an upper limit, to be safe. I had calibrated the power reading placing the Ophir power meter where the CCD would otherwise be and comparing it to the PD voltage of a picked off beam. In my previous figures the axes were mislabeled, so I reproduce them here:

Using the current camera position I recorded 50 exposures both with and without beam (XARM locked vs PSL shutter closed) and averaged the images to see how much the reading fluctuates. The exposure time was 10 ms, which left the maximum reported pixel value in all exposures below 3800 out of 4096. The gain setting was 100, which is what I used to calibrate the CCDs.

(*) I calculated the lens positions to focus at a plane 65cm from the front lens. We're pretty close to that, but I can't confirm the actual distance easily, so I assumed a 5cm error on the distance, which is where most of the error is coming from. This is also assuming uniform scatter.

(**) This is assuming 10W of circulating power

[ericq, Gautam, Lydia]

We spent some time tonight trying to revive the PRFPMI. (Why PR instead of DR? Not having to deal with SRM alignment and potentially get a better idea of our best-case PRG). After the usual set up and warm up, we found ourselves unable to hold on to the PRMI while the arms flash. In the past, this was generally solved through clever trigger matrix manipulations, but this didn't really work tonight. We will meditate on the solution.

Still no luck relocking, but got a little further. I disabled the output of the problematic PRM OSEM, it seems to work ok. Looking at the sensing of the PRMI with the arms held off, REFL165 has better MICH SNR due to its larger seperation in demod angle. So, I tried the slightly odd arrangement of 33I for PRCL and 165Q for MICH. This can indefinitely hold through the buzzing resonance. However, I haven't been able to find the sweet spot for turning on the CARM_B (CM_SLOW) integrator, which is neccesary for turning up the AO and overall CARM gain. This is a familiar problem, usually solved by looking at the value far from resonance on either side, and taking the midpoint as the filter module offset, but this didn't work tonight. Tried different gains and signs to no avail.

• 27 or 29 total ADC channels are used (depending whether we keep 2 spare adc chans)
  • 4 each go to ASC_QPD1/2 (8 chans total)
  • 5 go to TRANS_PD1, TRANS_PD2, REFL_PD, TRANS_PD1_UF, TRANS_PD2_UF. These PD are used for ASC and LSC.
  • 2 go to the LSC, one each for DVMDC, DVMAC, X3DC, and X4DC
  • 12 go to the ASC_PZT
  • 2 go to the SPARE_ADC (not sure what this is)
  • I think these channels are (or were at some point) defined in memory by /cvs/cds/caltech/chans/ipc/G1.ipc
    • I found this from elog 2860; it mentions that these should eventually be migrated over to a file C1.ipc, but I don't see any OMC channels in that file or any of the 'old' C1.ipc files, so I suppose it never happened or they were removed later
  • During this vent, we won't have ASC, so
• 10 or 14 DAC channels are used (depending whether we keep 4 spare dac chans)
  • 2 from the LSC, one for CLK_OUT and one for "LSC"
  • 8 from ASC, including P1A, P1B, P2A, P2B, P1OSC, Y1OSC, P2OSC, Y2OSC
  • I think these channels are (or were at some point) saved to frames due to /cvs/cds/caltech/chans/daq/C1OMC.ini, which I found from elog 2073
  • At some point, the 33MHz mod depth was controlled by one of the spare OMC chans, C1:OMC-SPARE_DAC_CH_15. See elog 2126. I assume this is no longer the case, since c1omc is defunct.
  • Durnig this vent, we won't have ASC and don't need to CLK_OUT the LSC, so we may just need one DAC channel

As of at least Nov 2009, the .par file for the OMC was located at /cvs/cds/gds/param/tpchn_C2 (see elog 2316)

• Kepco HV supply, "OMC-L-PZT", labels indicate it goes to 250V, needs to be tested  ("TESTED OK 2014OCT12")
• Tip/Tilt Piezo Driver, LIGO D060287
• HV Piezo Driver, LIGO D060283
• QPD Whitening Board, D060214
• LIGO D050374/D050387
• LIGO D050368/D050373

Need to check:

• Can the ADC/DAC adapter boards (eg D0902006) drive whatever ~10V control signal we need across ~10m of SCSI cable?
•  

Tonight, I've taken a bunch of data where the PRC is carrier locked and the ITM oplevs have the DC coupling FM turned on, as we use during locking. This is to inform new feedforward filters to stabilize the PRC angular motion, by using Wiener filtering with the POP QPD as the target, and local seismometers/accelerometers as witnesses. So far I've looked at the 1800 seconds leading up to GPS time 1122885600, but there has been plenty of locked time tonight if I need to retrieve more. 

I've also measured the PRM ASC output torque -> POP QPD spot motion with high (>0.95) coherence from 0.1Hz to 10Hz. 

Prefiltering so far consists of a 4th order elliptic LP at 5 Hz, with the target subtraction band being the 1-3Hz range. 

With offline FIR filtering, the RMS pitch motion is reduced by a factor of 3 just with the STS1_X data. IIR fitting remains to be done. 

The PRC yaw motion, which is marginally noisier, is a little more tangled up across X and Y. 

Plots / filters forthcoming pending more analysis. 

1. X arm is totally misaligned in order to measure the Y arm loss using the reflection method. Each measurement round consists of measuring the reflected power when the Y arm is aligned and when it is misaligned.

2. The measurement script used is /scripts/lossmap_scripts/armLoss/measureArmLoss.py. It generates a log file in the /logs folder specifying the alignment and misalignment times.

3. The data extraction script dlData.py processes the raw data in the log file and creates a hdf5 file in the /Data folder conataining the data of the measurement it self.

4. dlData.py labels the the aligned and misaligned datas incorrectly when the number of measurement is odd. I use only even number of measurements then.

5. In order to clip the chaotic transition between the aligned and misaligned states I use tDur attribute smaller than the actual sleep time used in the measurement script itself.

6. plotData.py (written by Gautam) and AnalyzeLossData.ipynb (written by me) can be used to calculate the loss and to plot some analyses (see https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8081/40m/14568). They give roughly the same answer. The descripancy can be explained by the different modulation and ITM transmissions used.

7. I take a measurement of 8 repeatitions. I plot the measured reflected power alternating between the aligned and misaligned states. 

I find that the reflected power is repeatable to within 1%.

This is consistent with the transmission data plotted here which is also repeatable to within 1%.

8. I take an overnight measurement of 100 repeatitions.

I drew out some idea of how we might use a single OMC to clean both paths of the BHD after mixing, without being susceptible to polarization-dependent effects within the OMC. Basically, can we send the two legs of the BHD into the OMC counterpropagating. I've attached a diagram.

I think one issue would be scattered light, since any backscatter directly couples into the counterpropagating mode, and thus directly to the PD. However, unless the polarization of the scattered light rotates it would not scatter back to the IFO. And, since the LO and signal mix before the OMC, this scattered light would not directly add phase noise.

Maybe more problematic would be that if the rejection at the PBS (or the polarization rotation) isn't perfect, light from the LO directly couples into the dark port. Can we get away with a Faraday isolator before the OMC? 

Diagram attached.

I think a Faraday rotator rotates the polarizations in a same way for both forward and backward beam, and it's not like in this figure.
And the transmission through multiple faradays will also be a big issue.

 We are venting tomorrow. This give us an opportunity to fix sick vacuum controller computer. Jamie volunteered.

Remember to rough down cryo and ion pump volumes. Their pressure can be at 1 Torr range after years of accumulated outgassing.  Without total valve controls it is dangerous to have these air pockets. Some of their  gate valves can be leaking and that would explane the slower pumpdown speed. 

I had asked Chub to order 100ft ea of 9, 15 and 25 conductor ribbon cable. These arrived today and are stored in the VEA alongside the rest of the electronics/chassis awaiting assembly.

I installed a fast PDA10CF along the path of a leaking beam from one of the steering mirrors that direct the main beam to the PMC. This beam was dumped to a razor blade. I removed the razor blade and installed a Y1 to steer this beam through a lens on the PD.

Pics of the layout post-installation will be updated.

Also, I tested the AOM by giving it 0-1V modulation input from the AWG. This has been disconnected after the test. So everything should be as it was pre-testing.

I tried to make ringdown measurements at the IMC using the DC falling edge as the trigger. Input to the MC was switched off by changing the polarity of the MC servo. But it does not seem to give the needed data as there seem to be several DC falling edges as soon as the polarity is switched. We should think about a better trigger or try to setup data recording from the oscilloscope seamlessly.

Also an ethernet cable has been connected to the router from the oscilloscope at the MC trans, but has not been set up to record data yet.

Finally ringdown at IMC conquered and oopsie that came out so clean!

The finesse of the cavity from the current ringdown measurement, F= 453, differs from the measurements made in the document dated 10/1/02 on dcc...not sure if things have changed since then.

While I thought that the bumps observed at the end of the ringdown might be because of the cavity trying to lock itself, Jan commented that they have always existed in these measurements and their source is not known yet.

What I meant to say was that in all ringdown measurements that we observed today, the bumps were consistently part the ringdown, and that I have no explanation for the bumps. It should also be mentioned that fitting the bumpy part of the ringdown instead (we used the clean first 10us), the ringdown time is about twice as high. In either case, the ringdown time is significantly smaller than we have seen in documents about previous measurements.

We (basically I) also made one error when producing the plots. The yaxis label of the semi-logarithmic plot should be log(...), not log10(...).

 I thought about  why we do not find any bumps beyond the exponential fall. Could it be because we neglected fluctuations of voltage in the negative direction and plotted the absolute values?

I prepare for the ringdown measurement of the PMC according to Gautam's previous experiments.

1. I assembled the needed PDs and power supplies, lenses, beamsplitters and optomechanics needed for the measurement.

2. I surveyed the laser power with an Ophir power meter in the different parts of the experiment. All the measurements were done with the AOM driver excited with 1V DC.

For the PMC reflection, we chose to split off the beam that goes into the reflection camera. The power in that beam is ~ 0.11mW when the PMC is locked and 2.1mW otherwise.

For the PMC transmission, we chose to split the beam that is transmitted through the second steering mirror after the PMC. The power in that beam is 2mW.

For the peak off before the PMC, we chose to split the beam that goes into the fiber coupler. That path contains also the other AOM diffraction orders: 2.26mW in the 0th order beam, 6.5mW in the 1st order beam, 0.14mW in the 2nd order beam.

3. I placed a 10% beam splitter in the peak-off path such that 90% still goes into the fiber coupler (Attachment 1). I place a lens and PDA255 to measure the peak-off (Attachment 2).

It's getting late, I'll continue with the PD placements on Tuesday.

Zero order beam PMC ringdown

On Wednesday I installed 3 PDs (see attached photos) measuring: 

1. The input light to the PMC. Flip-mirror was installed (sorry Shruti) on the beam path to the fiber coupler.

2. Reflected light from the PMC.

3. PMC transmitted light.

I connected the three PDs to the oscilloscope and the AOM driver to a function generator. I drive the AOM with a square wave going from 1V to 0V.

I slowly increased the square wave frequency. The PMC servo doesn't seem to care. I reach 100KHz - it seems excessive but still works. In any case, I get the same results doing a single shut-down from a DC level.

I download the traces. I normalize the traces but I don't rescale them (Attachment 4) so that the small extinction can be investigated.

I notice now that the PDs show the same extinction. It probably means I should have taken dark currents data for the PDs.

Also, I forgot to take the reflected data when the PMC is out of resonance with the laser which could have helped us determine the PMC transmission.

Again, the shutdown is not as sharp as I want. There is a noticeable smoothening in the transition around t = 0 which makes the fit to an exponential difficult. I suspect that the function generator is the limiting device now. I hooked up the function generator to the oscilloscope which showed similar distortion (didn't save the trace)

I try to fit the transmission PD trace to a double exponential and to Zucker model (Attachment 5).

The two exponentials model, being much less restrictive, gives a better fit but the best fit gives two identical time constants of 92ns.

The Zucker model gives a time constant of 88ns. Both of these results are consistent with more or less with the linewidth measurement but this measurement is still ridden with systematics which hopefully will become minimized IMC ringdowns.

Zeroth order IMC ringdown setup

Following Gautam's IMC ringdown setup, I took the REFL PD form the PMC ringdown experiment and installed it in the IMC REFL path blocking WFS2 (Attachment 1).

I also ran a BNC cable from the transmission PD that Gautam installed on the IMC table to the vertex where the signals are measured on the scope. 

I offloaded the WFS servo output values onto the MC alignment (using the WFS servo relief script) so that its dc values would be correct when the servo is off.

Unfortunately, it seems like the script severely misaligned the MC mirrors at some point when the MC got unlocked. We should fix the script such that it stops when the offloading is complete.

We got the MC realigned but left it in a state where it is not locking easily.

It's fine to block the WFS while doing ringdowns but please return the config to normal so I don't have to spend time every night recovering the interferometer before doing the locking. As I mention in that post, it is possible to do this in a non-invasive way without having to run any extra cables / permanently block any beams. If there is some issue with the data quality, then we can consider a new setup. But I see no reason to re-invent the wheel.

The IMC was also massively misaligned. I had to re-align both MC1 and MC2 to recover the lock. I took this opportunity to reset the WFS offsets. Please do not disturb the alignment of the existing optical layout unless you verify that everything is working as it should be after your changes.

And for whatever reason, ITMX was misaligned. If you do something with the interferometer, no matter how minor it seems, please leave a note on the ELOG. It will save many painful debugging hours.

As I fix these, the seismic activity has gone up . I'll wait around for an hour, but not an encouraging restart to the locking 😢