c1susvme1 is behaving weirdly.  I've restarted it several times but its computation time is hanging out around 260 usec, making it useless for suspension control and locking.  I also found a PS/2 keyboard plugged in, which doesn't work, so I unplugged it.  It needs to be plugged into a PS/2 keyboard/mouse Y-splitter cable. 

Could not get past arm power of ~11 or so.  I was suspicious of the transmon high-gain/low-gain PD handover, so I ran the matchTransMon scripts, but that did not help.  I also removed the line in the cm_step script that increased the CM gain by 18dB at an arm power of 4.  The gain of the CM servo will increase naturally as the power in the IFO builds up, so it may not be good to crank it right away.  I tried several other CM gains, and watched the DARM loop, but still could not get past an arm power of ~10-11.  I'm not sure what's wrong, but it may be that mysterious CM-servo/McWFS conspiracy, so we can try turning down the McWFS gain next time.

I've plotted some transfer functions showing the response at POB DC to laser frequency (phase) noise.  There are transfer functions for multiple CARM offsets.  Basically, the transfer function looks like the DARM transfer function when the CARM is at zero offset, and is super-wonky elsewhere.  POB-DC is not a good CARM signal for intermediate stages of lock acquisition in a dual-recycled interferometer.  We should look into switching back to REFL-DC.

 Here are the corresponding transfer functions for REFL-DC.

I don't see a reason to proliferate operating systems.  Is there any reason we actually need Ubuntu? Can we put CentOS on it?

Plotted assuming the average arm power goes up to ~80.  No DARM offset.

In response to Steve's elog entry, and for 40m posterity, I provide the Paschen Curve.

To set the demod phase for RF CARM, sensed at REFL2 (REFL 166I), it suffices to set the demod phase for REFL2 to be the optimal phase for controlling SRCL in a no-arm state.

For POX33, the ideal phase for single arm locking does not yield a zero-offset CARM signal.  So the offset needs to be manipulated digitally. 

With no DARM offset, sweeping CARM shows an asymmetry between the state where we lock to a DARM spring and the state with a DARM anti-spring.  This is why we have a link between the DARM and CARM optical springs. 

For each DARM detune direction (positive or negative, spring or anti-spring), there is only one CARM direction which can yield a DC-based error signal lock with a CARM offset but no DARM offset, which is what we want.

Note the effect of quadrature rotation for small offsets.

Can't find hostname 'fb40m'

it only lasted a few hours

We were stymied tonight by a problem which began late this afternoon.  The MC would periodically go angularly unstable, breaking lock and tripping the MC2 watchdogs.  Suspicion fell naturally upon McWFS.

Eventually I traced the problem to the MC3 SIDE damping, which appeared to not work--it wouldn't actually damp, and the Vmon values did not correspond to the SDSEN outputs.  Suspicion fell on the coil driver.

Looking at the LEMO monitors on the MC3 coil driver, with the damping engaged, showed clear bit resolution at the 100mV level, indicating a digital/DAC problem.  Rebooting c1sosvme, which acquires all the OSEM sensor signals and actually does the side damping, resolved the issue. 

 Lies!  The problem was not resolved. The plot shows a 2-day trend, with the onset of the problem yesterday clearly visible as well as the ineffectiveness of the soft-reboot done yesterday.   So we'll try a hard-reboot.

This is the two arms locked, for an hour.  No integrator in either loop, but from this it looks like ETMY may have a bigger length2angle problem than ETMX.  I'll put some true integrators in the loops and do this again.

 There appear to be at least two independent problems: the coil balancing for ETMY is bad, and something about ITMX is broken (maybe a coil driver). 

The Y-arm becomes significantly misaligned during long locks, causing the arm power to drop.  This misalignment tracks directly with the DC drive on ETMY.  Power returns to the maximum after breaking and re-establishing lock.

ITMX alignment wanders around sporadically, as indicated by the oplevs and the X-arm transmitted power.  Power returns to previous value (not max) after breaking and re-establishing lock.

Both loops have integrators.

2009 May 18 03:39:36 UTC

Earthquake Details

I've disabled the alarm for PEM_count_half, using the mask in the 40m.alhConfig file.  We can't do anything about it, and it's just annoying.

I edited the configure scripts (those called from the C1IFO_CONFIGURE screen) for restore XARM and YARM.  These used to misalign the ITM of the unused arm, which is totally unnecessary here, as we have both POX and POY.  They also used to turn off the drive to the unused ETM.  I've commented out these lines, so now running the two restores in series will leave a state where both arms can be locked.  This also means that the ITMs will never be deliberately mis-aligned by the restore scripts.

I just restarted the elog.  It was crashed for unknown reasons.  The restarting instructions are in the wiki.

steve, rob, alberto

Steve installed two rotary flow meters into the MOPA chiller system--one at the chiller flow output and one in the NPRO cooling line.  After some hijinks, we discovered that the long, insulated chiller lines have the same labels at each end.  This means that if you match up the labels at the chiller end, at the MOPA end you need switch labels: out goes to in and vice-versa.  This means that, indubitably, we have at some point had the flow going backwards through the MOPA, though I'm not sure if that would make much of a difference. 

Steve also installed a new needle valve in the NPRO cooling line, which works as expected as confirmed by the flow meter. 

We also re-discovered that the 40m procedures manual contains an error.  To turn on the chiller in the MOPA start-up process, you have to press ON, then RS-232, then ENTER.  The proc man says ON, RS-232, RUN/STOP.

The laser power is at 1.5W and climbing.

 Rob, Alberto

The chiller HT alarm started blinking, as the water temperature had reached 40 degrees C, and was still rising.  We turned off the MOPA and the chiller.  Maybe we need to open the needle valve a bit more?  Or maybe the flow needs to be reversed?  The labels on the MOPA are backwards?

 The chiller appears to be broken.  We currently have it on, with both the SENSOR and RS-232 unplugged.  It's running, circulating water, and the COOL led is illuminated.  But the temperature is not going down.  The exhaust out the back is not particularly warm.  We think this means the refrigeration unit has broken, or the chiller computer is not communicating with the refrigerator/heat exchanger.  Regardless, we may need a new chiller and a new laser.

steve, alberto, rob

After some futzing around with the chiller, we have come to the tentative conclusion that the refrigeration unit is not working.  Steve called facilities to try to get them to recharge the refrigerant (R-404a) tomorrow, and we're also calling around for a spare chiller somewhere in the project (without luck so far).

 The repair man thinks it's a bad start capacitor, which is 240uF at 120V.  Steve has ordered a new one which should be here tomorrow, and with luck we'll have lasing by tomorrow afternoon.