http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/16722

http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/16716

[Paco, Anchal]

BS Chamber work

• ASL was positioned in nominal place.
• PR3 was moved to its nominal place from temprorary position.
• BS Table was rebalanced
• Earthquake stops were removed from all SOS from BS table (LO2, SR2, BS, PR3)

ITMY Chamber work

• AS2, AS3, LO3, LO4, and BHDBS were positioned in the nominal place.
• AS1 was moved to its nominal place from temporary position.
• ITMY tbale was rebalanced
• Earthquake stops were removed from all SOS from ITMY table (AS1, AS4, ITMY)

[Ian, Paco]

We opened the ITMX chamber and

• Inspected PR2 and LO1 and didn't see anything suspicious.
• Took the EQ stops off ITMX in preparation for alignment

Alignment:

• Ian started at the ETMX station, slightly tweaking the M1 M2 XAUX mirrors by hand and Paco on the ITMX chamber looking at the beam. The beam was visibly making it to the ITMX optic and reflecting back though at a negative pitch angle. No small motion on the M1-M2 knobs caused visible correction on this.
• We decided to try adding an alignment offset to ITMX, and quickly saturated to 25000 (on the SUS screen) but fell short of fully correcting this PIT offset.
• We scanned further the M1 M2 input alignment, and briefly lost the first reflection.
  • We recovered the first reflection, but the beam spot is now incident near the LL OSEM position.
• We kept scanning M1 - M2 with Ian on the ITMX chamber this time, providing feedback through facetime.
• Leaning on the ITMX chamber table, we noticed the magnitude of PIT correction left to be done and verified that M1-M2 two axis alignment + ITMX offsets should be enough for it.

We stopped our effort here, the XAUX beam spot is near the lower half of the ITMX face. Tomorrow, we will resume, but we will use airpods and a clean go-pro for real-time audiovisual feedback. Furthermore, ITMX OSEMs should be rebalanced as they haven't been touched after the table was balanced for PR2 and LO1.

[Anchal, Yehonathan] (on Y Arm)

We first checked if the PZT mirrors M1 and M2 can be controlled. They indeed show no motion even after being connected with a power supply. So green injection path can not be aligned using cds controls right now.

We also noticed that all ETMY slow controls and monitors are offline. That's because the electronics upgrade did not include acromag chassis. This means that the DC bias adjustment is not accessible for ETMY.

Alignment work:

• We first aligned the green injection beam to cross two irises in the injection path to ETMY chamber.
• Then I (Anchal) went inside the ITMY chamber to find the green light. Yehonathan controlled the injection path while I gave feedback from ITMY side. We aligned injection path to get the beam near center of ITMY.
• Then I aligned ITMY through sitemap>IFO>Align to get counter propagating reflection near the ITMY side.
• We were able to see reflection from ETMY hitting the beam tube.
• Since DC alignment controls of ETMY are not accessible, we used the Alignment offset in rtcds model which puts dc offset in the coil driver to get the reflected beam from ETMY to come to ITMY table, about 1 inch above the table and about 3 inch south of ITMY SOS.
• But we got limitted by the DAC overflow on ETMY at this point. Several back and forth attempts to relief ETMY were unsuccesful.

Possible issues:

• We think having the HV coil driver set up for ETMY is important for this alignment work if not essential. The coil drivers of ETMY are near saturation.
• We also think that addition of two new suspensions in ITMY table and then counter weights to balance the table, has depressed table height slightly. We need to work out how to change injection path height and angle accordingly.

[Paco, Ian] (on X Arm)

http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/16732

[Paco, Ian]

First, we re-balanced the ITMX OSEMs so that they would damp at around half-a-shadow.

Then, we set up a clean camera inside ITMX chamber looking at the ITMX optic. Then, using the live feed we aligned the AUX beam from the ETMX station using M1 and M2. The camera was great to help us align the beam properly close to the ITMX center. It wasn't very long until we could see a green beam on the IR card, but we didn't really see any flashing, so this may just be the bare transmission away from XARM resonance (Attachment #1).

Ian checked the reflection from ITMX using the IR card with holes, and he pretty much only saw one beam spot, so we turned to look for a beam scattering on the vacuum tube but didn't really see anything. This could mean that we were hitting the ETMX again, or missing slightly, or missing completely. We tried scanning the ITMX pitch and yaw using the bias (alignment) sliders, and with the illuminators off, try seeing some scattered green beam on the ETMX. We can't really see anything yet, but we will keep trying. If there are any tips on our method, it would be great to know them.

[Ian, Paco]

Continuing with the previous alignment that we stoped on friday, we re set up my heavily cleaned iPhone on FaceTime. The Phone alowed us to see the laser on the ITMX and center it on that optic.

• We increased the trigger level for the watchdog on the optics.
• Green beam was centered on th ITMX.
• aligned the green laser: prompt reflection off of the ETMX to maximize the signal on the reflection PD
• Went back to ITMX chamber, looked for the beam in the tube to see if the laser was hitting the beam tube off of the ITMX. From there we comunicated how to adjust the beam to move the beam towards the ETMX.
• On the ETMX the reflection PD signal was measured and the ITMX was adjusted using CDS until ripples/"flashes" were seen in the reflection PD channel (C1:ALS-X_REFL_DC_OUT_DQ).
• Once we saw flashing we tried to minimize the reflection pd signal using only ITMX alignment slider so that all the light was being held in the cavity.
• Once we had this going the PDH lock engaged the higher order mode that we were seeing.
• We removed the phone setup and closed up the ITMX chamber.
• From here we moved to the control room and continude to adjust the ITMX and ETMX to see if we could lock to a lower order mode.
  • This proved unsuccessful so we will resume by trying to replicate the ASS action manually (with M1 - M2 PZT sliders and the REFL PD)

[Anchal, Tega]

We did the following alignment steps on Yarm today:

• We aligned the green beam going into the ETMY chamber to the three irises on the path.
• We aligned ETMY to get counter-propagating prompt reflection from ETMY.
• We were able to see light in the reflection photodiode for the green PDH loop.
• Then we went to ITMY chamber and checked where the beam is coming to. It was coming very low in height.
• We walked the beam on the end to get it near the center of ITMY.
• Then we changed the ETMY alignment again to get back the reflection beam on the reflection photodiode.
• Then we went again to ITMY chamber and changed the ITMY alignment to get counter-propagating reflection from ITMY.

After this, we came back to the control room. One peculiar thing to note is that the C1:LS-Y_REFL_DC_OUT channel is inverted i.e. it is showing negative values for the reflection DC voltage. On this signal, we see a little bit higher-order mode flashing but it is not bright enough to be seen on the face camera of the suspension. We'll continue aligning the cavity using CDS now to get TEM00 mode.

After trying for a bit, we were able to get flash of about 2000 counts which is about 16% of the max value of 12200 counts. We adjusted the ITMY angular position using the IFO_ALIGN screen but used the OPTICAL_ALIGN offset screen to adjust the angular position of ETMY. The pitch and yaw values for ITMY are 1.0360 and -0.260 respectively whereas the pitch and yaw values for ETMY are 5664.0 and -4937.0 respectively. 

[Anchal, Paco]

Uneloged: yesterday, Paco and Ian tried locking the green laser on Yend to the Y-arm. Nothing noteworthy happened, no luck.

• Started with aligning the green injection to the Iris on table (it was misaligned) and getting it on the ITMY center.
• Then we realized that the beam is going through the focusing leans very offceter. This makes the beam warped and deflected inside that needs to be corrected by mirrors.
• So we decided to adjust the lens position first.
• We realized that lens position is hard to adjust along with keeping the beam hiting ITMY.
• So, we decided to remove the lens first and just align the green beam directly with the Iris on the table and the ITMY center. The beam became as big as ITMY when it reached there without the lens in path. We aligned it to fall on the mirror.
• Then we placed the lens back so that the beam goes through the center of the lens.
• Then we aligned ETMY to get the reflection back to the reflection PD.
• But then when we checked the beam at ITMY again, it was severely missing ITMY. The possible reason is that ETMY is a diverging lens for the beam as well and changing its position changed the beam direction in the beam tube.
• We decided to do another iteration of lens positioning with the new ETMY position. So same steps, removed lens, aligned beam with iris and ITMY, placed back the lens, aligned ETMY again to get reflection back on the PD.
• This time the beam was still reaching ITMY. So we were glad that our iterations converged in 2 repititions.
• Then we aligned ITMY to get counter propagating beam.
• At the end of this alignment:
  • We see dips in relfection photodiode counts from 12200 to 9500.
  • The ETMY oplev is partially out of range (only 1 of the quadrant seeing light) but that could be because we changed the lens position. So Oplev servo is off.
• We confirmed that the PDH servo is properly connected and loop is on. But we see no HOM catching lock for YARM even after us doing about 10 min search with ITMY-ETMY alignments.
• We are leaving things as it is. We'll continue trying to align the cavity tomorrow. Everyone is welcome to try as long as they restore the positions of the optics to a good state at the end.

[Anchal, Paco, Shruti]

• Today we found out that the laser controller at the Yend had it's inputs disconnected for the FAST PZT input and the Slow temperature control input. The cables were also not labeled that were lying nearby.
• I tracked the cables and connected the Fast input adn the slow input.
• We then adjusted the temperature slider to go to previously marked laser crystal temperature of 40.1 degrees celsius. But we could not find the the beatnote of Y end IR with teh Main laser IR.
• We scanned the laser crystal temeprature until we could see a beatntoe with the main IR laser and stopped in that region.
• Then we continued looking for flashing and HOM, but no luck.
• It was interesting that when the PDH loop was closed, we saw fluctuations in relfection photodiode DC value, but not so much when the loop was not closed.
• We tried flipping the sign of the loop with no luck and we tried changing the gain of the loop as well, but no luck.
• The behavior of this Yend laser and its controller is still suspicious to us. When the loop is closed, the PZT feedback signal should not cause a change in amplitude of the light so much as we see it.
• Also the fact that when loop is clsoed we do not see signs of flashing in the reflection photodiode is interesting. If anyone has any ideas, that would be good.

I came for a bit to check on the "1Y0 burning smell" reported by Koji last evening. I agree that there's a toasty smell around the 1Y0 rack, but it is hard to tell where it comes from exactly. I think we can use the FLIR heat camera, but this will have to wait for Monday when someone with an iphone is around.

I also played a bit with the YAUX alignment (which is still poor) but I didn't try anything different nor did I seem to have more success. This is also an outstanding item for Monday, where maybe the next step is to install the GTRY path for a CCD.

[Ian, Paco]

We continued to try and lock the IR laser to the x-arm. Last time we adjusted TT2 PR2 and PR3 to adjust the beam to hit the center of the ITMX. Today we continued to adjust the same optics to make the beam hit the center of the beam splitter and make sure the beam is going in the direction of the ITMY. Then removed a mirror that wasn't even bolted down. I put it on the front right corner of the hood with all the other optics (right in front of a suspended mirror). With this unknown mirror removed the path was clear and hit the center of ITMX. From there we went and opened the ETMX chamber and using the IR scope we adjusted ITMX to put the beam on the center of the ETMX. We continued adjusting ETMX and ITMX until we had three reflections. We stopped here because we realized we should set up POX. We think this because any adjustment to set up the POX would mess up the work we had done on the x arm alignment.

[Paco, Anchal, Ian, JC]

We attempted the alignment of IR beam into the arm cavities. We used PR2 and PR3 (moved manually as well as using cdsutils) and got the YAW aligned pretty good on both X and Y directions. PIT alignment however turned out to be much harder to align. PR2 PR3 didn't have much range, so we zeroed there offset and tried to use TT1, TT2, MMT1, and MMT2 to align the PIT but it would get clipped before reaching BS table if we were to correct for PIT misalignment happening downstream. We concluded that the issue is that one of the PR2, PR3 mirrors have too much PIT offset in equilibrium position. We have requested Koji to change the output resistors in the coil drivers of PR2 and PR3 so that we can correct for the PIT offset in them directly using the coils and reduce load on upstream optics. We have tweaked TT1, TT2, MMT1, and MMT2 positions today, so we do not have the previous reference anymore.

PR2/PR3 Output R for fame OSEMS reduced from 1.2K to 1.2K//100Ohm

I put the R=100Ohm for PR3 with the functions of the units mistakenly swapped. This affects imbalanced actuation of PR3 right now as well as too strong SD

PR2 Coil Driver 1 (UL/LL/UR) / S2100616 / PCB S2100520 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH1/2/3

PR2 Coil Driver 2 (LR/SD) / S2100617 / PCB S2100519 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH3

PR3 Coil Driver 1 (UL/LL/UR) / S2100619 / PCB S2100516 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH3 only

PR3 Coil Driver 2 (LR/SD) / S2100618 / PCB S2100518 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH1/2/3

----

The output R was reduced from 1.2k to 1.2k//100 = 92 Ohm.

This means that the face coil gains were increased by a factor of 13.

The original gains for PR2 Pos/Pit/Yaw were {0.7, 0.3, 0.2}. To keep the same loop gain, the new gains were supposed to be {0.054, 0.023, 0.015}.
With the new gain, the oscillations were very slowly reduced. Therefore, I increased the gains to have the gain margin of 2. (i.e. increased the gains until I have the oscillation, and then made it half.)
The new values were {0.2, 0.1, 0.05}. The side gain was 20 and unchanged

For PR3 the same operation has been done.

The original gains for PR3 Pos/Pit/Yaw were {1, 0.52, 0.2}. They were supposed to be reduced to  {0.077, 0.04, 0.015}.
The gains were increased to {0.5, 0.1, 0.1}. The side gain was also increased from 1 to 5.

[Anchal, Paco]

After Koji reduced the output resistors on PR2/PR3 coil drivers, we got much better actuation range. We aligned TT1 TT2 again to get beam centered on PR2 and PR3. Then we used only PR2 and PR3 to do the input beam alignment to Y arm cavity. Using access in ETMY chamber, we aligned the input beam parallel to cavity axis. Slight changes were required in ETMY alignment offsets to get first roundtrip in same spot on ITMY. remaining alignment is finer and needs to be done with a help of a reflection photodiode and cameras in the control room. Immediate next step is to setup POY path for locking the Yarm with IR.

Side note: Because of the large PIT correction required in PR3, we found that our upper OSEMs were hitting totally bright limit and lower OSEMs were hitting totally dark limit on PR3. This also destablized our damping loops. We pushed the upper OSEMs slighlty and pulled back the lower OSEMs slightly to get the PD signal in half shadow region again. This worked and our damping loops are stable again. However, we think we should repeat free swing test in future to diagonalize the input matrix for new OSEM positions.

[Yuta Koji]

We took out the two coil driver units for PR3 and the incorrect arrangement of the output Rs were corrected. The boxes were returned to the rack.

In order to recover the alignment of the PR3 mirror, C1:SUS_PR3_SUSPOS_INMON / C1:SUS_PR3_SUSPIT_INMON / C1:SUS_PR3_SUSYAW_INMON were monitored. The previous values for them were {31150 / -31000 / -12800}. By moving the alignment sliders, the PIT and YAW values were adjusted to be {-31100 / -12700}. while this change made the POS value to be 52340.

The original gains for PR3 Pos/Pit/Yaw were {1, 0.52, 0.2}. They were supposed to be reduced to  {0.077, 0.04, 0.015}.
I ended up having the gains to be {0.15, 0.1, 0.05}. The side gain was also increased to 50.

----

Overall, the output R configuration for PR2/PR3 are summarized as follows. I'll update the DCC.

PR2 Coil Driver 1 (UL/LL/UR) / S2100616 / PCB S2100520 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH1/2/3

PR2 Coil Driver 2 (LR/SD) / S2100617 / PCB S2100519 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH3

PR3 Coil Driver 1 (UL/LL/UR) / S2100619 / PCB S2100516 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH1/2/3

PR3 Coil Driver 2 (LR/SD) / S2100618 / PCB S2100518 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH3

I begin modeling the initial BHD setup using Finesse. I started with copying C1_w_BHD.kat from the 40m/bhd repo and making changes to reflect the current BHD setup:

1. OMCs were removed.

2. Only 1 PD per BHD port was left.

3. Transmission of PR2 was changed to 2.2%. The PRG was calculated to be ~15.5.

4. Actual RoCs of new optics were dialed in (Yesterday me and Paco went into the cleanroom to measure the RoCs and they seem to match the datasheets).

Here's a table comparing the old (design?) RoCs with the new RoCs:

The changes looked quite alarming, especially for LO4 and AS3, so I wrote a script to calculate the mode matching between the LO and AS beams called AS_LO_ModeMatching.ipynb and pushed it into the repo. In the notebook a bright AS beam is created by creating a small asymmetry between the arms of ~ 0.003 degrees (~10pm). Amplitude detectors were put at the input ports of the BHD BS to calculate the fields in the AS and LO beams. In particular TEM00, TEM02 and TEM20 were measured for each beam.

The calculation shows that with the old RoCs the mode matching between the LO and AS beams is 99% while for the new RoCs it is ~ 50%.

[Anchal, Paco, JC, Tega]

Today we have aligned the Yarm cavity for IR, with verified 1.5 roundtrips. We also placed following optics in the BS table.

• POXM1 (installed earlier, not eloged)
• SRMOL2
• POYM1
• SRMOL1
• POYM2

We also cleared the in-air BS table of all previous optics. JC and Tega setup HeNe laser for Oplevs roughly for now. Tega also transported the POY RFPD from ITMY in-air table to the BS in-air table. We aligned the POY path to the table, but we had to move ITMY after that to get 2nd roundtrip in the arm cavity, which misaligned our POY path again. POY path would need to be modified tomorrow.

Ok, it turns out these optics were purchased on purpose, as this elog shows. Jon considered building a mode-matching telescope with stock optics as an initial step before purchasing the custom optics (referred to as "design" optics in my elog).

I dialed in the new distances between the optics into the .kat file as described in this elog and pushed the changes to the repo. With the new distances, I got mode-matching of 87% for the full IFO and 89% for FPMI so there's probably no need to worry as the mode-matching with these optics was already designed.

[Ian, Paco, Tega]

Paco and I opened the ETMY and ITMY chamber to work on yesterdays efforts to lock the y arm. We temporarily in stalled a camera behind the ETMY to look at the transmission as we adjusted the ETMY and ITMY. We then moved on to setting up the POY. the beam was too large for the apature of the PD so we installed a lens in the beam path to decrease it.

Once that was installed we saw some flashing on the C1:LSC-POYCD_OUT channel. We also could see the flashing on the monitors in the control room. The flashing beam seemed to be in the middle of ITMY but was slightly to the right on the ETMY. From here we tried to walk the beam using PR3 and ETMY to move the beam to the center of the ETMY.

[Paco, Koji]

I asked Koji for some advice regarding closing the loop on YARM using POY11. A few things seemed off including

• The YARM transmission; which was peaking at ~ 20 (typically, TRY is normalized so that under nominal input power conditions we see TRY in the range [0, 1])
• The POY11 DCPD level was quite low; we expect a few tens of uW in this low power configuration where no more than 100 mW are going through IMC.

We looked at the POY11 RFPD first. We tried flashing an incandescent lamp in-situ and saw some weak response using an oscilloscope and the DC Out readout. We then used the OPHIR power meter and recorded ~ 1.2 uW of light incident on the POY11 RFPD... Initially, we suspected our beam was not filling the PD sensitive area (~ 2 mm diameter), but a quick estimate using the 200 mm focusing lens currently installed in the ITMY table gave us quite a generous margin of error... so we questioned the OPHIR measurement. We swapped the power meter and this time got ~ 18.4 uW, which is more in line with what we expected (phew).

Moving on, from the POY11 RFPD responsivity, and our ~ 20 uW of incident power, we expected on the order of a 20 mV of DC Output, but weren't really seeing this on the scope, so we decided to test the pins on the power of the RFPD. The DB15 cable not only supplies bipolar 15 VDC but also monitors several other test points such as Tsens, or DCout in the RFPD. We quickly noticed a weird signal on the ENAB testpoint, so we removed POY11 RFPD from the ITMY table and took it to the PD testbench. After redoing the soldering on the breakout board and RF amplifier (ZXX-500LN+), which we tested separately, we saw the expected behavior using a +- 15 VDC power supply... thus verifying that the RFPD and breakout board seemed to work ok. We turned our attention to the upstream DB15 connection, and after quickly checking the newly run cables, we ended up debugging the eurocrate PD interface. After attempting a simple power cycle and failing, we removed this card and looked at the schematic. It would seem that the logic enabling ICs (one or both) failed, thus preventing the card from enabling its outputs correctly.... We bypassed the logic by soldering pins 4,8,14 on U1, U20 and then checked the circuit in-situ, and we saw it worked fine again.

Now none of the status LEDs (which are driven by the logic IC portion) work on this card, but the card itself works fine at least for POY11.

We moved on, and installed the DB15 cables, checking the functionality at every step... Then we looked at the POY11_I_ERR signal and were happy to see nice pdh wavelets. We pushed forward a little bit more to try and lock YARM. First, we went to the Y end and centered the ETMY Oplev so as to register the position where the YARM is flashing... The ITMY Oplev is still not online. Then, we optimized the ETMY damping gains somewhat to try and make it less noisy, and finally, played with the LSC YARM loop gain to attempt locking. This last push was not as successful, but we have an idea of what next steps are needed to reduce the SUS noise, including

• Install ITMY Oplevs, and close loop
• Optimize ITMY damping gains

To be continued....

We took out the right most PD interface board D990543 and removed the 74LS04 chips. In fact two out of 4 were already replaced with enabling wires, however it seemed that one of the remaining two got failed.
These remaining two chips were removed and the enabling signals were connected to VCC (+5V). This operation made the status LED light not functional. (We didn't bother to fixed them by connecting them to the GND)

The new schematic diagram was attached here, and the corresponding DCC entry (https://dcc.ligo.org/D1900318-v1) was modified. Attachments #2-3 show the circuit after the changes, and the front view respectively.

[Paco, JC]

We realized the 2 in oplev mirrors (Thorlabs BB2-E02) for ITMYOL, SRMOL, and BSOL, are 0.47 in thick, while the LMR2V fixed mount is 0.46 in deep, even without taking the retaining ring into account. After a brief exchange with Koji, and Ian, we decided to glue the mirrors onto the mounts using Torr Seal (a vac compatible epoxy). They are curating in the clean room and should be ready to install in about 2 hours.

{JC, Paco, Yehonathan, Ian}

POY lens was moved to infront of the POY steering mirror to make the POU beam focused on the POY11 RFPD. We measured the DC output with an oscilloscope and optimized it with the steering mirrors. We get ~ 16.5mV.

The new lens position blocked the BS OpLev ingoing beam, so we repositioned the OpLev mirrors to make the beam path not hit the lens.

We went to the control room to observe the PDH signal. We observed a series of PDF osscillation and then the signal died infront of our eyes! There is just noise.

We go and check the +/-15V powering the RFPD and we find that the V- is ~ 14V which is good but the V+ was ~ 2.7V which is not.

We went to the PD interface and measure the POY11 output oltages using a breakout board and got the same result.

The PD interface was taken out for inspection. All the OP27 on channel 3 were replaced with new ICs (without need turns out)...

The PD interface card turned out to be OK. What happened is that one of the Kepcos in the RF rack died because its fan crumbled as seen in Attachment #2 (could this be the source of burning smell?). In response, the rack was drawing from the other Kepco (connected in parallel) way too much current  (4A) and the current limiter dropped its voltage from 15V to 2.7V.

The Kepco pair was removed and replaced with a single Sorensen. The POY PDH signal was restored (see attachment).

[Paco, Yehonathan]

We installed ITMYOL1 and ITMYOL2 on the ITMY chamber. We aligned the ITMY OpLev beam and closed the loop successfully, we then had a second round of YARM aligment, where we brought the Y peak transmission up from 0.04 counts to 0.09 counts (up by a factor of two). We still couldn't close the YARM loop but we have a better alignment.

[Paco]

In reply to Koji's questions;

Q1: What is the product number of the broken Kepco?

A1: Kepco JQE 0-25 V 4A (1/4 rack mountable 100 W linear power supply)

Q2: Do you feel the burning smell on this broken kepco?

A2: Not very clearly. It just smells like generic broken electronic, but the fan was already long gone by the time we detected its problem.

Q3: How much current does the +15 VDC line draw from the Sorensen?

A3: The Sorensen current monitor reads 6.3 Amps

Q4: Is there a linear power supply in the market that can handle this much current with some margin?

A4: Probably... but we would have to look around.

Q5: Do we really need a linear power supply there?

A5: Good question, I guess anything that is not contaminating the RF electronics with HF noise (e.g. switching PS) can work?

Q6: Is the same fan problem happening on other Kepcos?

A6: Other fans are on, but at least one or two have the "ill" sound... It may be worthwile to give them maintenance if we can.

I'm planning on simulating the BHD readout noise in a manner very similar to the ALS noise model using Simulink. I've made a sketch of the model for the longitudinal DOFs (attached). A model for ASC will be similar but with more measurement devices (OpLevs, QPDs, WFSs).

I'm not pretending to simulate everything in this diagram on the first go, it is just a sketch of the big picture.

[Paco, Ian]

We aligned the X-arm IR laser

• First fix pointing on the ITMX by moving the BS (mostly pitch)
• then open etmx chamber and fine tune the pointing using the BS until it is centered on ETMX
• using beam card we quickly see the third reflection back misaligned on pitch so we move ITMX pitch to center it on ETMX
• fine tune the ITMX alignment on ETMX and check higher order reflaction overlaping with input

at this point we checked C1:LSC-TRX_DQ using ndscope and luckly we see a tiny bit of flashing (about 0.04 in normalized high gain PD counts). So we closed ETM chamber and ITM chamber and go to control room to optimize this signal. The optimization was done in the following way:

• First, just reiterate on the last steps from above, by maximizing the peak transmission using ITMX/ETMX pair.
• Then, slide BS alignment, mostly in PIT, and return to ITMX/ETMX pair.
  • At some point, turning the BS PIT made a huge improvement, so I turned the control room light off and looked at the camera on the quad monitors.
• Based on the location of the flashes (now brighter) on the ITMX/ETMX, the beam seemed to be off in PIT more than YAW, so we focused on correcting the pointing (moving BS) and then correcting with ITMX/ETMX, until the flashes got centered around ETMX.

Final peak transmission (C1:LSC-TRX_DQ) was ~ 1.3 in normalized high gain PD counts. Power budgeting tells us the peak should be ~ 2.0. The flashing on this arm is much better than YARM, so we will press on by installing POX11 RFPD and attempt locking tomorrow. This also means that YARM can be improved by a combination of alignment and/or SUS damping.

In the end we turned on the ETMX oplev and centered it to "save" our flashing position using this reference.

[Yuta, Paco]

We set up POX11 beam path from ITMX chamber to the ITMX in-air table. To do this, we first identified the POX reflection on the ITMX chamber, and then steered the POXM1 (in the BSC) by hand until we cleared the viewport. We also checked that the POX beam is centered on POXM1.

We then decided to slide the LO1 YAW to clear the LO beam path, which was otherwise clipping on the PR2 SOS. The slider (DAC limited) range of -25000 counts was barely enough to clear the SOS comfortably and avoid hitting the POXM1. The LO beam is now hitting LO2 mirror, so LO alignment can proceed from BSC and ITMY chamber.

Finally, we aligned the input ITMX Oplev beam to ITMXOL2, then ITMX, then to ITMXOL2, and finally into the ITMX in-air optical table. We took some photos of the Oplev beam (see Attachments) to note their position.

By the end of in-vacuum work there was still some flashing in the arm cavities, but fine alignment is required.

After closing the ITMX Chamber, and BSC, we moved on to center the ITMXOL beam. We accomplished this by using two mirrors instead of one as was previously the case. This relaxed the angle of incidence a little, but we had to change the path and the position of the QPD. The QPD sum reads ~ 6600 counts versus the ~ >8000 counts it read right before the vent. One attempt at closing the OL loop, and the ITMX starting oscillating in YAW (PIT was ok), so we realized that maybe we flipped the order in which the OL1 / OL2 mirror were arranged and so the YAW loop needed to flip its sign. Indeed after changing the C1:SUS-ITMX_OL_YAW_GAIN from -6.0 to 6.0 the OL_YAW loop is stable.

Yesterday, I tried tuning the PR2 damping gains by increasing the gain until the damping gave the ~5 oscillations (by watching the damped motion using StripTool, and keeping an eye on the PD var). I noticed that often when I changed the gain, some OSEM sensors shifted (gained an offset!!) and the PD var values changed, typically increasing at higher damping gains. I reverted the changes until the PD var looked "normal" again (~ 2 mV) but it is hard to imagine that the damping filters can have such a "DC" effect, given the shape comprises single zero at 0 Hz (and pole at 30 Hz).

It seemed that it comes from the servo oscillation. This does not happen when the output limitters were set to be 100-ish. But even so the gains looked quite low.

I turned on the Cheby rool-offs for all the DOFs, and this allowed me to increase the damping gain A LOT.
The gains were 2~5 but now they are now 20-25 for the face OSEMs and 150 for SD.

The attached is the example of the damping when all the damping loops are on.

I think we need to tune the servo loops carefully for all the SUSs by actually looking at the openloop transfer functions rather than a personal feeling. => To Do

[Paco, JC, Yuta]

We aligned the BS oplev using the new BSOL mirror pair. The main change is now the AOI of the oplev on the BS is quite normal. The output beam in the in-air table was quite large (diverging?) so we had to place a short FL lens in front of the QPD.

Separately, I added the LO1 YAW offset of ~ -2500 counts (before the coil driver changes it was -24500 counts) and saw LO beam hitting LO2. This means the alignment of the LO beam can move downstream.

{Yehonathan, Paco}

BS, ITMX and ETMX were aligned to get flashing in the X arm.

I aligned the POX beam on the ITMX table using a mixture of the old POP and POX optics. The beam was stirred to the POX11 RFPD. We measure the DC power using a scope but we see nothing. We went and saw that the POX11 cable was not connected to RF rack so we connected it along with some other RFPD cables.

We return but there is still no DC. We ndscope C1:LSC-POX11_I_ERR_DQ C1:LSC-POX11_Q_ERR_DQ and maximize the signal (attachment). The readout is very weak though. It should be as strong as POY which we already observed to have good SNR.

We also noticed that the one of the beam dumps for the POX RFPD is not glued and easily falls down.

[Tega, Yuta, Paco]

We tried aligning the LO and AS beams on to the BHD beamsplitter. During the alignment process, we noticed that the damping loop for AS1 was not working. Paco drew our attention to the fact that the UR OSEM signal was alway close to zero, so we checked to ensure that the magnet was still within the OSEM recess and it looks OK. Next we checked the electrical connection at the interface between the copper OSEM cables to the blue in-vacuum flat cable and this too looks alright also. Since the AS1 coil driver was recently modified, it is possible we might find the problem there, so I'll ask Koji about this.

So Koji clarified that the coil driver board and SATAMP boards are different so we should connect this issue to the coil driver board.

Tega and Paco reported that the UR OSEM of AS1 lost the response.

- I have checked the LED MON (left) of the satellite amp for AS1. CH1/2/3 had 5V -> This indicates that the OSEM LEDs are (most likely) functioning.
- Then I went to the ITMY flange and connected the OSEM emulator instead of the Dsub25 cable. The attachment shows that the UR OSEM LED/PD worked fine with the OSEM emulator. WIth the vacuum flange connected it lost the response.

This indicates that the AS1 UR OSEM problem is localized in the chamber. Please check if the DSUB pins are touching the table or something else.

[JC, Tega, Ian, Paco]

We found that the UR cable was clamped to the table by one of the ITMY OPLEV steering mirror mounts that was recently installed. After freeing the cable, the UR signal is now active again.

If someone gets time, let's put in all the cable posts and clean up our cable routing on the tables.

[Anchal, Tega, JC]

We installed cable posts in ITMY, BS, and ITMX chambers for all the new suspensions. Now, there is no point where the OSEM connections are hanging freely.

In BS chamber, we installed one post for LO2 near the north edge of the table and another post for PR3 on the Western edge with the blue cable running around the table on the floor.

In ITMY chamber, we installed the cable post in between AS1 and AS4 with the blue cables running around the table on the floor. This is to ensure the useful part of the table remains empty for future and none of the OSEM cables are taught in air.

[Anchal, Paco, JC]

We had to open ITMY, ETMY chamber doors to get the cavity aligned again. Once we did that, we regained cavity flashing and were able to align the input injection and cavity alignment to get transmission flashing to 1.0 (C1:LSC-TRY_OUT_DQ). JC later centered both ITMY and ETMY oplevs. The ITMY oplev had become completely out of range.

We also opened ITMX, ETMX chamber doors to get Xarm alignment. Again, it seems that ITMX had moved a lot due to cable post installation.

To be continued

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.

POP_SM4

I tried out this stack today and found some change of plans.

• The attachment in elog 40m/16640 says to use 1/4-20 silver coated non-vented screws for joining BA2V to PLS-T238, however PLS-T238's bottom hole is a blind hole and is not vented. So we actually required <1 in long silver plated vented 1/4-20 cap screw for this purpose. Jordan and I were only able to find the correct length silver plated screw but it is not vented. So we decided to make a venting hole on the post from the side.
• I had to use a 0.14" spacer as washer between PLS-T238 and BA1V. The 1" post shim that Koji got for this purpose had too small a hole in the center to let the 8-32 screw pass (I know, weird). but I think we had 3 spare 0.14" ad we bought 10 when we required 7, so we should be good.
• The attachment in elog 40m/16640 also says to use 8-32 silver coated vented setscrew for joining TR-1.5 to LMR1V mount. I found one vented silver coated set screw nearby in the clean room but it turned out to be too long. Worse, I overtightened the setscrew when trying this connection which damaged the inner threads of one of the LMR1V. So we need to buy one more LMR1V (maybe an additional spare too) for future installation of OMC1R1/OMC2R1.
  • Then Jordan and I searched for a smaller silver coated and vented 8-32 setscrew but didn't find any. Jordan also noted that LMR1V is an aluminium mount and we should not use silver coated setscrew with it. Since the TR-1.5 mount is ok to be sacrificed if a cold weld happens, we'll just use an uncoated SS 8-32 setscrew to join TR-1.5 and LMR1V. We could not such vented setscrews, but we have plenty of non-vented once. So Jordan is going to make a venthole in TR1.5 top end as well. LMR1V already has a vent hole on its side.

tl,dr; Jordan is preparing PLS-T238 and TR-1.5 with venting holes and C&B and they would be ready by tomorrow. I have collected all other parts for assembly, still looking for the mirror but I know other lab members know where it is, so no big issue there.

POP_SM5

The assemly of this mirror is complete. A slight change here as well, we were supposed to use the former POYM1 (Y1-2037-0) mirror for POP_SM5 but I could not find it. It was stored on the right most edge of the table (see 40m/16450), but it is not there anymore. I found another undocumented mirror on the flow bench on the left edge marked (2010 July: Y1-LW1-2037-UV-0-AR) which means this mirror has a wedge of 1 degree and an AR coating as well. We do not need or care about the wedge or AR coating, so we can use this mirror for POP_SM5. Please let me know if someone was saving this mirror for some other purpose.

I'll finish assembly of POP_SM4 tomorrow and install them in ITMX chamber and resurrect POP path.

[Anchal, Paco]

We investigated the low power issue with POX11 photodiode.

• We used a power meter to confirm that above 12 uW of power is reaching the ITMX oplev table.
• But the power reaching the photodiode was only 3 uW, because the 2 steering mirrors used were discarding half of the light. These mirrors were taken from former POP setup and are probably BS or meant for different incidence angle/polarization.
• We used flashlight to test that the photodiode gives a response, so it is not dead.
• We also put in a db15 breakout board in line to the PD and confirmed that power input is correct, temperature is nominal, enable is ON, and DC out is responsive to flashlight.
• So we decided to redo the path with Y1-45P 1inch mirrors. I found two such mirrors in the lab.
• When setting up the path again, I realized that the beam shape is not even. I took a photo of the beam on the card (see attachment 1) and indeed the POX beam that is coming to the table is half clipped.
• So tomorrow, we'll open the chamber and find out where this is happening. For now, I've setup a nominal path to the POX11 photodiode, but we'll tune it after we get a clear POX beam on the table.

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.

[Paco, Anchal, Yuta]

We opened the BSC and ITMX chamber in the morning (Friday) to investigate POX11 beam clipping. We immediately found that the POX11 beam was clipping by the recently installed cable posts, so luckily no major realingment had to be done after reinstalling the cable post in a better location.

Because we had the BSC open, we decided to steer the AS1 mirror to align the AS path from ITMY all the way to the vertex chamber.  Relatively small AS1 offsets (of ~ 2000 counts each) were added on PIT / YAW to center the beam on ASL (there is slight clipping along PIT, potentially because of the AS2 aperture. We then opened the vertex chamber and located the AS beam with relative ease. We decided to work on this chamber, since major changes propagate heavily downstream (simply changing the IMC pointing).

Anchal removed old optics from the vertex chamber and we installed the steering pair of mirrors for AS path. This changed the balance of the vertex table by a lot. By using the MC REFL camera beam spot we managed to coarsely balance the counterweights and recover the nominal IMC injection pointing. Simply reenabling the IMC autolocker gave us high transmission (~ 970 counts out of the typical 1200 these days).

The final IMC alignment was done by Anchal with delicate PIT motion on the input injection IMC miror to maximize the transmission (to our satisfaction, Anchal's motion was fine enough to keep the IMC locked). The end result was quite satisfying, as we recovered ~ 1200 counts of MC transmission.

Finally, we looked at the arm cavity transmission to see if we were lucky enough to see flashing. After not seeing it, we adjusted TT1 / TT2 to correct for any MMTT1 pitch adjustment needed after the vertex table rebalancing. Suprisingly, we didn't take too long and recovered the nominal arm cavity pointing after a little adjustment. We stopped here, but now the vertex table layout is final, and AS beam still needs to be aligned to the vertex in-air table.

[Paco, Anchal]

We found that one of the Y1-1037-45P marked mirror that we used was actually curved. So we removed it and used a different Y1-1037-45P mirror, adjusted the position of the lens and got the beam to land on POX11 RFPD successfully.

Then in control room, we maximized the POX11_I_ERR PDH signal amplitude by changing C1:LSC-POX11_PHASE_R to 42.95 from -67.7. We kept the C1:LSC-POX11_PHASE_D same at 90. We were getting +/- 200 PDH signal on POX_I_ERR.

Then in our attempt to lock the XARM, when we ran the "Restore XARM (POX)" script, YARM locked!

We are not sure why the YARM locked, we might have gotten lucky today. So we ran ASS on YARM and got the transmission (TRY_OUT) stable at 1. The lock is very robust and retrievable.

Coming back to XARM, we realized that the transmission photodiode used for XARM was the low-gain QPD instead of the thorlabs high gain photodiode. The high-gain photodiode was outputing large negative counts for some reason. We went to the Xend to investigate and found that the high gain photodiode was disconnected for some reason. Does anyone know/remember why we disconnected this photodiode?

We connected the photodiode back and it seems to work normally. We changed the photodiode selection back to high gain photodiode for TRX and on 40 dB attenuation, we see flashing between 1.4 to 1.6. However, we were unable to lock the XARM. We tried changing the gain of the loop, played a little bit with the trigger levels etc but couldn't get it to lock. Next shift team, please try to lock XARM.

[Anchal, JC]

I installed POP_SM4 and POP_SM5 in the ITMX chamber in the nominal positions. This must have affected the ITMX Oplev because I could see that one of the ITMX oplev beam was going through POP_SM5. It needs to be changed in order to follow the original plan. However, since POP_SM5 is a 1064 line mirror, it is transparent to the opleve beam, so maybe we can just use the ITMX oplev in the current fashion.

Next steps:

• Get flashing back on the XARM.
• Try to get the correct phase angle in POX11 so that we can lock XARM with IR too.
• Inspect ITMX Oplev. The quadrant sum is low so maybe it needs adjustment in the in-ar table.
• Check if ITMX oplev path needs to be adjusted inside the chamber.

[Tega, Yehonathan, Koji, Yuta]

We tried to align AS path this afternoon.
IMC is not aligned now after the work today
Green mirrors/perisocope in IMC chamber were removed since some of them was clipping the AS beam, and this changed the balance of the IMC stack and thus MC1 and MC3 alignment.

Summary of changes:
ITMY chamber
  - Rotated AS2 in roll by 90 deg to have more aperture for the transmission (photo)
  - IR beams are now centered on AS1, AS2, AS3 and AS4 (photo, photo)

BS chamber
  - Moved ASL towards -X direction for about 1/4 inch
  - Installed GRY_SM2 at the nominal position (re-used GR_SM3 from IMC chamber)

IMC chamber
  - Removed green optics GR_SM4, GR_SM3, GR_PERI2L (GR_PERI2L is now stored at Xend)
  - Removed IFI camera mirrors FIV1, FIV2 (they are now stored at Xend) (photo, photo)
  - GR_SM4 mount is now reused as GRY_SM1 (Y2-2037-0 is now mounted instead of previously mounted Y2-LW1-2050-UV-45P/AR), and GRY_SM1 is installed at the nominal position (photo)
  - Moved weights to balance the stack

OMC chamber (we don't have OMC in this chamber...)
  - We swapped AS5 and AS6 so that the nobs comes in -X direction to have more spacing between AS beam and IMC REFL beam (photo)
  - Moved weights to balance the stack

What we did:
1. Misaligned ITMX and use ITMY reflected beam to align AS path
2. Centered the IR beam on AS1 using SR2
3. Centered the IR beam on AS2 and ASL using AS1. AS2 was rotated in roll by 90 deg to have more aperture for the transmisson.
4. Centered the IR beam on AS3 using AS2 nobs, centered the IR beam on AS4 by rotating AS3 in yaw.
5. "AS beam" (it turned out that what we are looking was actually not the AS beam!! Some stray light) was in +X direction by 1 inch or so at AS5. Moving AS5 to center the beam would clip IMC REFL beam. So we swapped AS5 and AS6 so that the nobs comes in -X direction to have more spacing between AS beam and IMC REFL beam.
6. Balanced OMC chamber stack again using IMC REFL beam as a referece (bring the IMC REFL beam to the reference red circle on the monitor).
7. Tweaked the alignment of TT1 and TT2 to have Yarm flashing to ~0.9 in TRY.
8. Moved AS5 towards +X by an inch or so to center the "AS beam."
9. Moved ASL towards -X direction for about 1/4 inch and re-centered the beam by AS1 to see if the "AS beam" gets far from IMC REFL at OMC chamber, but the "AS beam" didn't move much.
10. By blocking the beam from ITMY, we found that "AS beam" was not the actual one.
11. Opened IMC chamber and found that AS beam is blocked by the past optics.
12. Removed old green optics and IFI camera mirrors. GR_SM4 mount and GR_SM3 were reused as mentioned above.
13. Tried to balance IMC chamber stack to recover IMC alignment. We used IMC REFL beam as a reference, but it was hard to completely bring the IMC REFL beam to the reference red circle on the monitor. It is now off by a beam diameter or so. No IMC flashing now.

Next:
Theoretically, balancing IMC chamber stack would recover all the IFO alignment, but maybe tough. It is maybe easier to align MC1 and MC3 to have IMC locked. Assuming input pointing to IMC is not drifted too much, we should be able to recover Yarm flashing by tweaking TT1 alignment only. However, MC3 SD OSEM is at the edge of the range. We might have to balance the stack more or tweak SD OSEM position.

I feel like there is an instability in my thought process on this. Before my tendency to try to scale and generalize this problem brings me to a full stop I will make small but quick progress.

First thing is to calculate the noise budget for a simple Michelson. The involved optics are:

• ITMX
• ITMY
• BS
• LO1
• LO2
• AS1
• AS4

all sensed with OSEMs and OpLevs only.

Things to fetch:

1. OSEM sensing noise. Where do I get the null stream (AKA butterfly mode)?

2. Oplev noise, look at the SUM channel (or this elog)

3. Actuation TF. Latest elog.

4. Coil driver noise. Going to take the HP supply curve from this elog.

5. Seismic noise + Seismic stack TF. Or maybe just take displacement noise from gwinc.

6. Laser noise. Still need to search.

7. DAC noise. Still need to search.

[Paco, JC, Anchal]

We balanced the IMC table back again to point that got us 50% of nominal transmission from IMC. Then we tweaked the steering mirror for injection to IMC to get up to 90% of nominal transmission. Finally, we used WFS servo loop to get to the 100% nominal transmission from IMC. However, we found that the WFS loop has been compromised now. It eventually misaligns IMC if left running for a few minutes. This needs to be investigated and fixed.

Next steps:

• Align X-arm cavity and regain flashing.
• Fix the Oplev path for ITMX.
• Tune POX11 phase angle to get an error signal with which we can lock the cavity.
• Finish AS beam path setup.

[Yuta, Tega]

We aligned the BS, ITMY, and ETMY PIT and YAW to get the flashing on X-arm whilst also keeping the flashing of Y-arm. From attachment 1, it is clear that POXDC photodiode is not receiveing any light, so our next task is to work on POX alignment.

[Yuta, Tega]

We needed to sort out the POXDC signal so we could work on X-arm alignment. Given that POXDC channel value was approx 6 compared to POYDC value of approx. 180, we decided to open the ITMX chamber to see if we could improve the situation. We worked on the alignment of POX beam but could not improve the DC level which suggests that this was already optimized for.  As an aside, we also noticed some stray IR beam from the BS chamber, just above the POX beam which we cold not identify.

Next we moved on to the POP beam alignment, where we noticed that the beam level on LO1 and POP_SM4 was a bit on the high side. Basically, the beam was completely missing the 1" POP_SM4 mirror and was close to the top edge of LO1. So we changed TT2 pitch value from 0.0143 to -0.2357 in order to move the beam position on POP_SM4 mirror. This changed the input alignment, so we compensated using PR2 (0.0 -> 49.0) and PR3 (-5976.560 -> -5689.800). This did not get back the alignment as anticipated, so we moved ITMY pitch from 0.9297 to 0.9107. All of these alignment changes moved the POP beam down by approx 1/5 of an inch from outside the mirro to the edge of POP_SM4 mirror, where about half of the beam is clipped.

Next Steps:

We need to repeat these aligment procedures with say 1.5 time the change in TT2 pitch to center the beam on POP_SM4 mirror.