The PMC servo railed and so I re-locked it at ~half range. I've been noticing that the diurnal drift of the PZT control voltage has been larger than usual - not sure if it's entirely correlated with temperature on the PSL table. Anyway the cavity is locked again so all is good.

The PMC has been unlocked since September 11 sometime (summary pages are flaky again). I re-locked it just now. I didn't mess with the HEPA settings for now as I'm not using the IFO at the moment, so everything should be running in the configuration reported here. The particulate count numbers (both 0.3um and 0.5um) reported is ~x5-8 of what was reported on Thursday, September 10, after the HEPA filters were turned on. We don't have logging of this information in any automated way so it's hard to correlate things with the conditions in Pasadena. We also don't have a working gauge of the pressure of the vacuum envelope.

The RGA scanning was NOT enabled for whatever reason after the vacuum work. I re-enabled it, and opened VM1 to expose the RGA to the main volume. The unit may still be warming up but this initial scan doesn't look completely crazy compared to the reference trace which is supposedly from a normal time based on my elog scanning (the timestamp is inherited from the c0rga machine whose clock is a bit off).

Update 1500: I checked the particle count on the PSL table and it barely registers on the unit (between 0-20 between multiple trials) so I don't know if we need a better particle coutner or if there is negligible danger of damage to optics due to particulate matter.

 Tonight I noticed that the drop in PMC transmission was ~1V, more than the usual of ~0.5V from the daily drift.

While re-aligning on the table, I noticed that the misalignment was not from either of the steering mirrors; i.e. I has to walk them both to get the alignment back. This implies that the misalignment is generated far upstream. Maybe the the laser itself is moving. We need some updates from Steve's laser misalignment tracker.

I have realigned the steering mirrors for PMC because the transmitted light had been at ~ 0.741

After the alignment it went back to ~ 0.850.

I realigned the steering mirrors for the PMC. The trans value went up from 0.79 to 0.83.

The misalignment was largely in the pitch direction.

A few hours ago I tweaked up the alignment to the PMC.  It was really bad in pitch, and the transmission was down to about 0.711.

PMC realigned again... The transmission was down to 0.70, and the MC was having a hard time trying to autolock.

 Do we have PSL pos and ang QPD trends?  We should start watching them, because the PMC drifted back down to 0.76 transmission, ~3.5 days after Kiwamu realigned it (his elog is from last Thurs).  Not so awesome.

I walked through the control room just now and found both PMC and MC unlocked.  They're both locked now, but with PMC transmission 0.76, MC transmission ~24,500.

I have realigned the beam pointing to PMC. The transmitted light increased from 0.74 to 0.83.

The misalignment was mainly in pitch.

I realigned the input pointing into the PMC this morning. Usually, the way I do this is to minimize any discernible mode structure in the PMC reflection CCD image. Today, I noticed that making the DC reflection go down also makes the DC transmission go down. Possibilities:

• we are sampling slightly different spots inside the PMC cavity which change the buildup by ~2-3%.
• we are misaligned on the transmission/reflection photodiode.
• ??

I realigned the incident beam to PMC at 23:30. The transmitted light went up from 0.78 to 0.83.

Also I decreased the HEPA level down to 20 % for the night time locking.

 While looking at the PMC REFL beam for the AOM diffracted beam, we noticed that although only one beam exists between the PMC and the first steering mirror, there are two afterwards and they both go to the PMC REFL  RFPD!!! This is madness. We only want one beam on our PDH diode.

The reason that we have two beams is that that first steering mirrors is actually a (W1-PW-1025-UV-1064-45P) non-wedged window with an AR coating on only one side. So two beams come out of it. There is a terrible and floppy and illegal anodized aluminum dump close to this beam which *someone* probably intended to use as a "scraper" to get rid of one of the beams.

Black anodized aluminum is a horrible beam dump material at 1064 - its about as grey as Steve's chair. And its so soft that it scatters light back into the PMC and makes more acoustic noise. And it is mounted so poorly (only one screw) that it can easily be bumped and twist and miss the beam. Punchline: only use anodized aluminum dumps for stray light around cameras or for HeNe for OL. Its NOT allowed anywhere where we care about interferometry of NIR beams.

It was also set to dump the dimmer beam. On Monday, we should order ~5 W1 and get them with a wedge of 1-2 deg. Then we use a black glass dump for the dim beam and orient the bright one to hit the REFL camera and the PMC REFL PD.

For the weekend, I have adjusted the crappy grey aluminum flapper to catch the bright beam so that the PMC REFL image no longer shows the interference fringe of two beams. Lets see how the PMC drifts over the next 3 days.

 The PMC was locked on an LG 10 mode (or something like it), for at least the last 8 hours.  I relocked it on the regular 00 mode, and it's fine now.  

Also, in CDS news, I did an mxstream restart (the RCG upgrade is supposed to make this not an issue anymore...), and did a "diag reset" afterwards, and all of the IPC errors except for one in the LSC model have gone away (OAF is still not running....on my to-do list, but not super high priority).

The PMC has been unlocked for ~23 hours. FSS slow was at ~-1.5 V. I zeroed it, and relocked the PMC, transmission is ~0.81V. MC with WFS came back fine.

PMC has been unlocked for ~4hrs, not sure why. It's servo gain was down at -10dB...

Relocked with transmission of .76V, MC locks fine with WFS, transmission of 15.5k.

I came in and PMC transmission was at 0.5V, and ETMX was swinging around a lot, (LSC mode was on). 

Turning off oplevs let ETMX calm down. I realigned the PMC to 0.82V. 

MC wouldn't relock, it looked misaligned in pitch and yaw on MC camera.

I've touched the alignment, and gotten the reflection below 0.5, but it unlocks periodically, spot positions aren't great, and turning on WFS throws it out of alignment. ughhhhh

PMC was locked in a bad state. FSS slow actuator adjust was at ~ -0.7 and PZT voltage at ~45.

So I set these right by moving the appropriate sliders and relocked it. FSS slow actuator adjust brought back to zero and PZT voltage ~115. PMC trans after relock is 0.789.
 

Found it locked on TEM01 mode.

Sweets in the fridge for non-PhD holders, courtesy of the highest levels of Caltech.

The PMC runs out of range sometimes due to the daily temperature swing. The voltage swings up after sunset and then starts to swing down before sunrise. So when you relock the PMC at the beginning of the locking night, the mnemonic from the PMC is:

Sun Go Low, Lock Me Voltage Low.

 Found that the PMC gain has been set to 5.3 dB instead of 10 dB since 9 AM this morning, with no elog entry.

I also re-aligned the beam into the PMC to minimize the reflection. It was almost all in pitch.

I moved stuff on the PSL table to accommodate the PMC ringdown setup.

I used the beam that leaks from the steering mirror at the PMC transmission that was dumped to a razor blade dump. I installed a Y1 to steer the beam to the ringdown PD. Power in the beam 75mW.

Results are in here elog 

 I am guessing that 75 mW will burn / destroy any Thorlabs PD. I hope that mW is supposed to be uW.

 It was ~7.5mW and measured ~2V at the PD output (given its range 0-5V ) on the oscilloscope . So PD is safe !

Summary

The PMC servo error (MIX OUT MON on the panel) and actuation (HV OUT MON) have been calibrated using the swept cavity.

Error signal slope in round-trip displacement: 2.93e9 +/- 0.05e9 [V/m]
HV OUT calibration (round-trip displacement): 5.36e-7 +/- 0.17e-7 [m/V]
PZT calibration (round-trip displacement): 10.8 +/- 0.3 [nm/V] => corresponds to ~2.5 fringes for 0~250V full range => not crazy

Measurement condition

The transmission level: 0.743V (on the PMC MEDM screen)
LO level: ~13dBm (after 3dB attenuation)
Phase setting: 5.7
PMC Servo gain: 7dB during the measurement (nominal 3dB)

Method

- Chose PMC actuation "BLANK" to disable servo
- Connect DS345 function generator to EXT DC input on the panel
- Monitor "MIX OUT MON" and "HV OUT MON" with an oscilloscope
- Inject a triangular wave with ~1Vpp@1 or 2Hz with appropriate offset to see the cavity resonance at about the middle of the sweep.
  The frequency of the sweep was decided considering the LPF corner freq formed by the output impedance and the capacitance of the PZT. (i.e. 11.3Hz, see next entry)

Result

- 4 sweep was taken (one 2Hz seep, three 1Hz sweep)
- The example of the sweep is shown in the attachment.
- The input triangular wave and the PDH slopes were fitted by linear lines.
- Spacing between the sideband zero crossing corresponds to twice of the modulation frequency (2x35.5MHz = 71MHz)
- The error signal slope was calibrated as V/MHz
- FSR of the PMC is given by google https://www.google.com/search?q=LIGO+pmc.m
  => Cavity round trip length is 0.4095m, FSR is 732.2MHz
- Convert frequency into round-trip displacement

- Convert HV OUT MON signal into displacement in the same way.
- The voltage applied to the PZT element is obtained considering the ratio of 49.6 between the actual HV and the HV OUT MON voltage.

[Rana, Jenne]

We have decided to keep better track (using new-fangled digital "computers") of our modifications to electronics boards. 

The idea will be to create a new DCC document for every electronics board (when we pull a board and modify it, it should receive this treatment) that we have, and that document will become a history of the board's life.  Version 1 will be a copy of the original drawing.  Version 2 should be a modified version of that drawing with the current situation.  All future versions should be modified from the most recent version, to reflect any changes.  Notes for each updated version should include an elog reference to the work, so that we know why we did things, and have a place to find photos of the actual modifications.  Elogs should also include a link to the DCC version.  DCC titles should include the phrase "40m Revisions" for ease of searching.

Patient Zero for this new system will be the PMC servo card.  The DCC number is D1400221.  As of this moment, this just has the V1 original drawing with no modifications.

This has been included in the 40m's DCC document tree that Jamie started back in November 2012.

Summary:

1. I investigated the stage-by-stage transfer functions of the PMC servo up till the HV stage. See Attachment #1. There were no unexpected features.
2. I replaced the AD602 used to implement the VGA capability. After the replacement, the gain of the VGA stage had the desired performance, see Attachment #2, Attachment #3.
3. The servo board was re-installed and the OLTF of the PMC loop was measured. See Attachment #4.

​To avoid driving the PA85 without the HV rails connected, I removed R23. This was re-installed after my characterization.

Input stage:

Since we do the demodulation of the PMC PDH signal off this servo board, the I/F mixer output is connected to the "FP1test" front panel LEMO input.

• A DG190 is used to enable/disable this path.
• Initially I tried checking the enable/disable functionality by measuring the resistance across the IC's I/O pins. However, this method does not work - the resistance read off from a DMM varied from ~23 ohms in the "ON" state to ~123 ohms in the "OFF" state. While the former value is consistent with the spec, the latter is confusing.
• But I confirmed that the switch does indeed isolate the input in the "OFF" state by injecting a signal with a function generator (100 Hz sine wave, 100mVpp) and monitoring the output on an oscilloscope.

Electronic TFs:

Using some Pomona mini-grabbers, I measured the electronic TFs between various points on the circuit. There were no unexpected features, the TFs all have the expected shape as per the annotations on the DCC schematic. I did not measure down to 0.1 Hz to confirm the low frequency pole implemented by U6, and I also didn't measure the RF low pass filter at the input stage (expected corner frequency is 1 MHz). 

VGA characterization:

After replacing the IC, I measured the transfer function between TP1 and TP2 for various values of the control voltage applied to pin 4A on the P1 connector, varying between +/- 5 V DC. 

• Pin 9A on the P1 connector has to be grounded for the signal to be allowed to pass through the VGA. 
• Note that there is an overall gain of -1/10 applied to the control voltage between pin 4A and pin #1 of the AD602, which is what actually sets the gain.
• Furthermore, the input impedance of the AD602 is spec-ed to be 100 ohms. Because of the series resistance of 500 ohms from TP1 to the input of the AD602 (so that the upstream OP27 isn't overdrawn for current), the relation between the control voltage applied to Pin 4A and gain (measured between TP1 and TP2) is modified to G [dB] = 32*(-0.1 * V_pin4A) - 6. 
• The gain behavior after the IC swap is as expected, both in terms of absolute gain, and the linearity w.r.t. the control voltage.
• Note that in Attachment #2, each color corresponds to a different control voltage to the AD602, varying from -5V DC to +5V DC in 1V steps. 

PZT Capacitance measurement

I confirmed that the PZT capacitance is 225 nF. The measurement was made using an LCR meter connected to the BNC cable delivering the HV to the PZT, at the 1X1 rack end.

OLTF measurement

After re-soldering R23, I put the board back into its Eurocrate, and was able to lock the PMC. For subsequent measurements, the PSL shutter was closed.

• I measured the OLTF using the usual IN1/IN2 prescription, implemented with the help of an SR560.
• At the original PMC Servo gain of +12dB, I found that the feature at ~8kHz results in an OLTF with multiple unity gain crossings.
• So I lowered it to +9dB. This yields an OLTF with ~60deg phase margin, ~2.3 kHz UGF. 
• The feature that sets the gain margin is actually not any of the peaks fit by LISO, but is one of the high frequency features at ~40 kHz. At the new setting of +9dB gain, the gain margin is ~10 dB.
• The measured TF (dots in Attachment #5) was fit with LISO (solid lines in Attachment #5) to allow inferring the out-of-loop servo noise by monitoring the in-loop noise (that plot to follow).

Summary:

The PDH discriminant of the PMC servo was measured to be ~0.064 GV/m. This is ~50 times lower than what is reported here. Perhaps this is a signature of the infamous ERA decay, needs more investigation.

Details:

• Calibration of the error and control points were done using 1 Hz triangle wave injection to the "EXT DC" input of the PMC servo. Two such sweeps are shown in Attachment #1 (measured data as points, fits as solid lines). For the control signal monitor, I've multiplied the signal obtained on the scope by 49.6, which is the voltage divider implemented for this monitor point.
• The PDH discrimiannt was calibrated into physical units knowing the modulation frequency of the PMC, which is 35.5 MHz. The error in this technique due to the free-running NPRO frequency noise is expected to be small since the entire fringe is crossed in <30 ms, in which time the laser frequency is expected to change by < 5 kHz.
• The drive to the PZT was calibrated into physical units using the same technique. This number is within a factor of 2 of the number reported here. 
• Attachment #2 shows the loop OLTF measured using the usual IN1/IN2 prescription (with an SR560). In fact, the 8kHz feature makes the loop unstable. For convenience, I've overlaid the OLTF from March 2017, when things were running smoothly. It is not clear to me why even though the optical gain is now lower, a smaller servo gain results in a larger UGF.

The light level hasn't changed by a factor of 50, leading me to suspect the modulation depth. Recall that the demodulation of the PMC is now done off the servo board using a minicircuits mixer (hence, the "C1:PSL-PMC_LODET" channel isn't a reliable readback of the LO signal strength over time). Although there is a C1:PSL-PMC_MODET channel which looks like it comes from the crystal reference card, and so should still work - this, however, shows no degradation over 1 year.

Somebody had removed the BLP-1.9 that I installed at the I/F output of the mixer to remove the sum frequency component in the demodulated signal, I reinstalled this. I find that there are oscillations in the error signal if the PMC servo gain is increased above 14.5 on the MEDM slider.

PMC follow up measurements have been done. The servo circuit was reviewed.

Now the PMC, IMC, X/Y arms are locked and aligned waiting for the IFO work although I still think something is moving (ITMX?)
as the FPMI fringe is quite fast.

The result of the precise inspection for the PMC servo board for the 40m was done.

The record, including the photo of the board, can be found at https://dcc.ligo.org/D1400221-v2

- I found some ceramic 1uF caps are used in the signal path. They have been replaced with film caps by WIMA.

- In later measurements with the openloop TF measurement, it was found that the notch frequency (14.6kHz) was off from the a sharp PZT resonance at 12.2kHz.
I replaced the combined caps of 1220pF to 1742pF. This resulted nice agreement of the notch freq with the PZT resonant freq.

Past related elogs:

SRA-3MH mixer installed in 2009: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/1502

R20 increased for more LO Mon gain: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/10172

I'm still analyzing the open loop TF data. Here I report some nominal settings of the PMC servo

Nominal phase setting: 5.7
Nominal gain setting: 3dB

After the tuning of the notch frequency, I thought I could increase the gain from 5dB to 9dB.
However, after several hours of the modification, the PMC servo gradually started to have oscillation.
This seemed to be mitigated by reducing the gain down to 4dB. This may mean that the notch freq got drifted away
due to themperature rise in the module. PA85 produce significant amount of heat.
(The notch frequency did not change. Just the 22kHz peak was causing the oscillation.)

While I have the board out, I'll try and do a thorough investigation of TFs and noise of the various stages. There is no light into the IFO until this is done.

The PMC servo was re-installed at ~345pm. HV supplies were re-energized to their nominal values. I will update the results of the investigation shortly. The new nominal PMC servo gain is +9dB.

The PMC transmission slow degration or it's input beam is not stable.

 We swapped the PMC s/n 2677 for s/n lho006.

The table below summarizes the power levels before and after the PMC swap.

- The power into the PMC (1.67 W) was measured with Scietech bolometer before the first steering PMC mirror. The leakage through the steering mirrors was measured with Ophir power meter to be 12+8 mW. There is also a lens between the mirrors which was not measured. 

- The power through the PMC was measured after the doubler pick off (105 mW), steering mirror (4 mW), and lens (not measured).

- The estimated reflection from four lens surfaces is 1-2% hence 1% uncertainty in the losses in the table.

- The beams into the PMC and on REFL PD were realigned. The beams downstream of the PMC are blocked as we did not realigned the PMC and doubler paths.

- The trans PD ND filters were removed. The VDC=1.28 V now.

- The NPRO current is 2.102 A

Atm 1 old

Atm2  new

Kiwamu and I aligned the PMC transmitted beam the incident beam going to PMC today.

I learnt how to lock the PMC using the digital controls.

• Nothing on the PMC (like it used to be)
  
• New ~14kg lead brick wrapped in copper foil on top of the PMC
  
• A stack of a piece of aluminum, a chunk of steel, and then the lead brick on top of the PMC
  
• The lead brick + Rob pushing on top of the PMC
  

I was a bit surprised by these numbers suggesting the PMC transmission is only 50-60%. I went to the table today and confirmed that it is more like 85% (1.3 W in, 1.1 W transmitted, both numbers from with the FieldMate power meter), as I claimed in 2019. Even being conservative with the power meter errors, I think we can be confident T_PMC will be >80% (modulo any thermal effects with higher power degrading the MM). There isn't any reliable record of what the specs of the PMC mirrors are, but assuming the IO couplers have T=4000ppm and the end mirror has T=500ppm as per Alan's plot, this is consistent with a loss of something like 300ppm loss per mirror - seems very high given the small beam spots, but maybe these mirrors just aren't as high quality as the test masses?

It's kind of unfortunate that we will lose ~20% of the amplifier output through the first filter, but I don't see an easy way to clean these mirrors. It's also not clear to me if there is anything to be gained by attempting a cleaning - isn't the inside of the cavity supposed to be completely isolated from the outside? Maybe some epoxy vaporization events degraded the loss?

Koji mentioned that the mode of the laser is different for lower diode currents. So that might be the reason why we got less transmission at the low input power but more afterward.

[JC, Paco, Yuta]

It seems like PMC transmission (C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD) dropped to ~0.68 from ~0.74 on Dec 27.
We tried to tweak PZT offset for PMC loop and input alignment to PMC, but PMC transmission didn't increased.
PSL laser temperature was also sweeped in the range 30.3 - 31.6 degC, but didn't help. The PSL temperature was reverted to original 30.61(1) degC.
Power measured at PSL output now is 893 mW (measured at our standard place shown in 40m/16672), which used to be 951 mW in June 2022 (40m/16886).
Power measured at PMC input (see attached photo) now is 1.18 W.

Next:
 - What was the previous PMC input power we had?
 - Sweep PSL laser temperature for larger range

The low PMC transmission alarm was on this morning. The PMC alignment needs a touch up.