So, near 2 of the trashcans in the control room and underneath a desk there are hundrends of ants. Is this normal?

I have been getting ready for the annual safety inspection in the past 2-3 days.

Comparing  PSL-FSS-RMTEMP and PEM-MC1-TEMPS

So, to compare temp channels, I made a plot of PSL-FSS_RMTEMP and PEM-MC1_TEMPS(the test temp sensor channel after converting from cts to degC). This plot begins about 2 months ago t_initial=911805130. The temperature channels look kinda similar but MC1-TEMPS (the temp sensor clamped to MC1,3 chamber) is consistently higher in temperature than FSS_RMTEMP. See compare_temperature_channels.png.

MC1-TEMPS isn't exactly consistent with FSS-RMTEMP. I attached a few plots where I've zoomed in on a few hours or a few days. See compare_temperature_channels_zoom1.pdf & compare_temperature_channels_zoom2.pdf

Change the room temperature, see what happens to the chamber temperature

A while ago, somebody was fiddling around with the room temperature.  See compare_temperature_channels_zoom4.pdf.  This is a plot of PEM-MC1_TEMPS and PSL-FSS_RMTEMP at t0=911805130. You can see the chamber heating up and cooling down in happy-capacitory-fashion. Although, the PSL-FSS_RMTEMP and the PEM-MC1_TEMPS don't really line up so well. Maybe, the air in the location of the MC1,3 chamber is just warmer than the air in the PSL or maybe there's an offset in my calibration equation.

Calibration equation for PEM-MC1-TEMPS

For the calibration (cts to degC) I used the following equation based on the data-sheet for the LM34 and some measurements of the circuit:

TEMPERATURE[degC]=5/9*(((-CTS/16384/451.9/1.04094)-(.0499*10^-3))/(20*10^-6)-35);

How does the chamber temperature compare with the air temperature?

It looks like the chamber may be warmer than the air around it sometimes.

I wanted to check the temperature of the air and compare it with the temperature the sensor had been measuring. So, at t=918855087 gps, I took the temp sensor off of the mc1-mc3 chamber and let it hang freely, close to the chamber but not touching anything. See compare_temperature_chamber_air.png. MC1_TEMPS increases in temperature when I am handling the temp-sensor and then cools down to below the chamber temperature, close to FSS_RMTEMP, indicating the air temperature was less than the chamber temperature.

 When, I reattached temp sensor to the chamber at t=919011131 gps, the the temperature of the chamber was again higher than the temperature of the air. See compare_temperature_air2chamber.pdf.

Also, as one might expect, when the temp-sensor is clamped to the chamber, the temperature varies less, & when it's detached from the chamber, the temperature varies more. See compare_temperature_air_1day.pdf & compare_temperature_chamber_1day.pdf.

New temp-sensor power supply vs old temp-sensor power supply

The new temp-sensor is less noisy and seems to work OK. It's not completely consistent with PSL-FSS_RMTEMP, but neither was the old temp-sensor. And even the air just outside the chamber isn't the same temperature as the chamber. So, the channels shouldn't line up perfectly anyways.

I unplugged the 'old' temp-sensor power supply for a few hours and plugged in the 'new' one, which doesn't have a box but has some capacitors and and 2 more voltage regulators. The MC1_TEMPS channel became less noisy. See noisetime.png & noisefreq.pdf. For that time, the minute trend shows that with the old temp-sensor power supply the temp sensor varies +/-30cts and with the new power supply, it is more like +/-5cts (and Volt/16,384cts * 1degF/10mV -->  apprx +/-0.03degF). So, it's less noisy. 

I kept the new temp-sensor power supply plugged in for about 8 hours, checking if new temp sensor power supply worked ok. Compared it with PSL-FSS_RMTEMP after applying an approximate calibration equation. See ver2_mc1_rmtemp_8hr_appxcal.png.

Just for kicks

Measuring time constant of temp sensor when detached from chamber. At 918858981, I heated up the temp sensor on of the mc1-mc3 chamber with my hand. Took hand off sensor at  918859253 and let it cool down to the room temperature. See temperature_sensor_tau.pdf. 

CES Mezzanine is beeing rebuilt to accommodate our new neighbor: the 20ft high water slide...& .jacuzzi

All our ac power transformers are up there. Yesterday we labelled the power switch of 480VAC on the mezz

that we need to keep to run the 3 cranes in the lab.

While waiting for the installation of the 32-bit Matlab 2009a to finish, I tried updating our seisBLRMS.m code.

Although DMF is in SVN, we forgot to check it out and so the directory where we have been doing our mods is not a working copy and our changes have not been captured: Shame.

We will probably have to wipe out the existing SVN trunk of DMF and re-import the directory after checking with Yoichi for SVN compliance.

Also wrote a script: LSC/x2mc, which will transition from regular ETM based X Arm locking to the MC2 based locking. It ran once OK, but I get a segfault on the 'trianglewave' which was trying to run the 'ezcastep' perl script which was calling 'ezcastep.bin'.

I also restarted the seisBLRMS.m on a terminal on Mafalda in the new Matlab 2009a to see if it loses its NDS connection like it did with 2007a. I also reduced the 'delay' parameter to 4 minutes and the 'interval' to 1 minute. This should be so that the total delay is now 5 minutes between seismic noise and seismic trend.

I don't know who left the X arm locked, but I just ran the Align Full IFO script, so everything is good in case Yoichi/someone comes in to lock the IFO this weekend.

It's crucial that I get a stable transmitted power to have an accurate measurement of the PRC transmissivity and thus of its macroscopic length.

I measured the scatter from the eLIGO beam dumps as best I could. The experiment setup is shown in the attached diagram. 

After familiarizing myself with the equipment in the morning I noticed three issues with the setup

1 - around the minimum scatter the back scatter from the beam dump is very susceptible to the incident angle (makes sense since the Si plate inside the beam dump at Brewster's angle when there is minimum scatter).

2 - The mirrored plug (Part 20 in D0900095) which is suppose to be used for alignment is not very effective. It moves around too much in its hole in the front face of the beam dump. Just by touching it I could make the reflected beam jump around by about 0.1 radians.

- I think to align these properly we'll have to partly assemble the dumps. If we leave off the front plate of the horn then we can measure the reflection off the Si. If we measure this with a power meter then alignment becomes a simple matter of rotating until this reflection is minimized.

3. - For this measurement the incident beam was a small (~ 1mm diameter) central beam with a small amount of spray of laser light beyond that central region. This spray was hitting the aluminium front face of the beam dump and was scattering back to the photodiode. This was clearly the limiting factor in the measurement. Most of this light was spread horizontally so I placed a couple of pieces of black glass on either side of the aperture, just blocking the edges a little. This reduce the background reading at the minimum scatter from 17.0uV to around 4.5uV with still a little bit of light hitting the top and bottom of beam dump face.

The incident power on the beam dump fluctuated a little but was in the range 20.5 to 22mW. The response of the PD is approximately 0.2 A/W and the transimpedance is 7.5E4 V/A.

The SR830 Sensitivity was set to 1x1 mV.

It was difficult to measure the actual angle of incidence. The dump pivoted about a point directly under the input aperture at the front. By measuring the displacement of a point on the back of the dump as I rotated it and knowing the distance between this point and the pivot point I was able to make a reasonably accurate measurement of a range of angles about the minimum.

The measured scatter (in V measured directly by the PD and as a fraction of the incident power) is shown in the attached plots.

I think I can do a better job cleaning up the incident beam - so these numbers only represent an upper limit on the scatter.

attachment 1: beam dump assembly

attachment 2: experimental layout

attachment 3: scatter measurement

attachment 4: BRDF - (scatter divided by the solid angle = 1.1 m steradians)

attachment 5: (slightly blurred )photo of dump - overhead view 

I've spent most of the last week doing background reading; fourier transforms, shm, e&m, and other physics that I didn't cover at school.  I also read a few chapters in Saulson, especially the chapter on noise and shot noise.  To get a better grip on what I'm going to be doing I read through the polarization chapter in Hobbs' "Optics" text, mostly on wave plates since that's a large part of this readout.  Since then I've been working up to calculating the shot noise, starting with the electric field throughout the new interferometer readout.

I have created the attached EOM circuit with resonances at 11 MHz, 29.5 MHz, and 55 MHz (the magnitude and phase of the voltage across the EOM are shown in the attached plot). The gain is roughly the same for each resonant peak. Although I have managed to get the impedances at all of the resonant frequencies to equal each other, I am having more trouble getting the impedances to be 50 Ohms (they are currently all around 0.66 Ohms).

For the current circuit, initial calculations show that we will need around 4.7 - 14.2 A of current to drive the EOM at the desired voltage (8 - 24 V); this is much higher than the current rating of most of the available transformers (250 mA), but the necessary current will change as the impedance of the circuit is corrected, so this is probably not a cause for concern. For example, the necessary driving voltages for the current circuit are (2.8 - 8.5 V); if we assume that the 50-Ohm impedance will be purely resistive, then we get a current range of 56 - 170 mA.

I spent the last week working a lot with the differences between a basic Michelson readout and the new one as a displacement sensor.  The new one (w/ wave plates) ends with two differently polarized beams and should have better sensitivity; I've also been going through noise/sensitivity calculations for each, although that hit a road block when I had to start the 1st SURF progress report, which has taken up most of my time since Saturday.

Since last week, I have come up with a new circuit, which is shown in the attached figure. The magnitude (solid) and phase (dashed) of the voltage across the EOM (red), the ratio between the voltage across the EOM and the voltage across the primary nodes of the transformer (blue), and the impedance through the primary port of the transformer (red) are also shown in an attached figure. As can be seen on the plot, resonance occurs at 11 MHz, 29.5 MHz, and 55 MHz, as specified. Also, at these resonant frequencies, the impedance is about 50 Ohms (34 dB). The gain between the voltage across the EOM and the voltage across the primary nodes of the transformer (or output of the crystal oscillator) is about 12 dB; we'd like a higher gain than this, but this gain is primarily governed by the ratio between the secondary and primary inductances in the transformer, and we are using the largest available ratio (on the Coilcraft website) that has the necessary bandwidth. Because of this, we will likely have to add another component between the crystal oscillator and the EOM circuit, to get the voltage to the desired 8.5 Vp across the EOM (for an optical modulation depth of 0.1 rad).

The current and power through the primary port of the tranformer are 43-85 mA and 25-92 mW, respectively. Since the transformer ratings are 250 mA and 1/4 W for current and power; these values should be safe to use with the intended transformer. Also, the highest power dissipated by a resistor in the circuit (not including the 50 Ohm resistor that is part of the crystal oscillator setup) is around 74 mW.

This week, I've been working on adapting the last week's circuit to make it buildable. Mostly this has involved picking components that are already in the lab, adding tunable components when necessary, and planning roughly how the components should be laid out on a board. I then built the circuit and put it in a box with BNC connectors for easy connection during testing. A picture of the built circuit is attached.

For initial testing, the transformer was removed from the design; since this changed the response of the circuit, I added two resistors to correct the response. A figure showing a schematic of the built circuit is attached. The expected responce of the circuit is also shown; the magnitude (solid) and phase (dashed) of the voltage across the EOM are shown in green, and the impedance of the circuit is shown in blue. While this response has sharp peaks and 50 Ohms (34 dB) of impedance at resonances, the gain is low compared to the circuit with the transformer. This means that, as is, this circuit cannot be used to drive the EOM; it is simply for testing purposes.

The last week I've spent mostly working on calculating shot noise and other sensitivities in three michelson sensor setups, the standard michelson, the "long range" michelson (with wave plates), and the proposed EUCLID setup.  The goal is to show that there is some inherent advantage to the latter two setups as displacement sensors.  This involved looking into polarization and optics a lot more, so I've been spending a lot of time on that also.  For example, the displacement sensitivity/shot noise on the standard michelson is around 6:805*10^-17 m/rHz at L_=1*10^-7m, as shown in the graph. 

Before heading back to the 40m to check on the computer situation, I thought I'd check the web screenshots page that Kakeru worked on, and it looks like none of the screens have been updated since June 1st.  I don't know what the story is on that one, or how to fix it, but it'd be handy if it were fixed.

This week I've been working on testing the first version of the prototype circuit. Initially, I tested the circuit that I built last week, which had resistors in the place of the transformer. The magnitude and phase of the transfer function, as measured by the Agilent 4395A, are shown in the attached plot (first plot, MeasuredTransferFunction_R.jpg). The transfer function doesn't look like the simulated transfer function (second plot, BuiltCkt_ExpectedResponse.png), but I think I see the three peaks at least (although they're at the wrong frequencies). I spent some time trying to recreate the actual transfer function using LTSpice, and I think it's reasonable that the unexpected response could be created by extra inductance, resistance, capacitance and interaction between components.

When the transformer arrived  yesterday, I replaced the resistors in the circuit with the transformer, and I have measured the following response (last plot, MeasuredTransferFunction.jpg). The gain is much lower than for the circuit with the resistors; however, I am still trying to track down loose connections, since the measured transfer function seems very sensitive to jiggled wires and connections.

Meanwhile, the parts for a flying-component prototype circuit have been ordered, and when they arrive, I'll build that to see if it works a little better.

I've spent most of the last week working on finishing up the UCSD calculations, comparing it to the EUCLID design, and thinking about getting started with a prototype and modelling in MATLAB.  Attached is something on EUCLID/UCSD sensors.

Using FET probes, I was able to measure a transfer function that looks a little more like what I expected. There are only two peaks, but I think this can be explained by a short between the two capacitors (and two tunable capacitors) in the LC pairs, as shown (in red) in the circuit diagram attached. The measured transfer function (black), along with the simulated transfer functions with (red) and without (blue) the short are shown in the attached plot. The measured transfer function doesn't look exactly like the simulated transfer function with the short, but I think the difference can be explained by stray impedances.

 Apparently I broke this when I added op540m to the webstatus page.  It's fixed now.

I have built a version of the circuit with flying components; the completed circuit is shown in the attached picture. I built the circuit in segments and measured the transfer function after each segment to see whether it matched the LTSpice simulation after each step. The segments are shown in the circuit diagram.

After building the first segment, the measured transfer function looked pretty much the same as the simulated transfer function; it appears shifted in the attached plot, but this is because I didn't do a careful job of tuning at this point, and I'm relatively sure that I could have tuned it to match the simulation. After adding the second segment of the circuit, the measured and simulated transfer functions were similar in shape, but I was unable to increase the frequency of the peaks (through tuning) any more than what is shown in the plot (I could move the peaks so that their frequency was lower, but they are shown as high as they will go). When I added the final segment to complete the circuit, the measured and simulated transfer functions no longer had the same shape; two of the peaks were very close together and I was barely able to differentiate one from the other.

In order to understand what was happening, I tried making modifications to the LTSpice model to recreate the transfer function that was measured. I was able to create a transfer function that closely resembles the measured transfer function in both the circuit as of the 2nd segment and the completed circuit by adding extra inductance and capacitance as shown in red in the circuit diagram. The transfer functions simulated with these parasitic components are shown in red in both plots. While I was able to recreate the response of the circuit, the inductance and capacitance needed to do this were much larger than I would expect to occur naturally within the circuit (2.2uH, 12 pF). I'm not sure what's going on with this.

The last week I've started setting up the HeNe laser on the PSL table and doing some basic measurements (Beam waist, etc) with the beam scan, shown on the graph.  Today I moved a few steering mirrors that steve showed me from at table on the NW corner to the PSL table.  The goal setup is shown below, based on the UCSD setup.  Also, I found something that confused me in the EUCLID setup, a  pair of quarter wave plates in the arm of their interferometer, so I've been working out how they organized that to get the results that they did.  I also finished calculating the shot noise levels in the basic and UCSD models, and those are also shown below (at 633nm, 4mw) where the two phase-shifted elements (green/red) are the UCSD outputs, in quadrature (the legend is difficult to read).

After speaking with Rana and realizing that it would be better to use smaller inductances in the flying-component circuit (and after a lot of tinkering with the original), I rebuilt the circuit, removing all of the resistors (to simplify it) and making the necessary inductance and capacitance changes. A picture of the circuit is attached, as is a circuit diagram.

A plot of the measured and simulated transfer functions is also attached; the general shape matches between the two, and the resonant frequencies are roughly correct (they should be 11, 29.5, and 55 MHz). The gain at the 55 MHz peak is lower than the other two peaks (I'd like them all to be roughly the same). I currently have no idea what the impedance is doing, but I'm certain it is not 50 Ohms at the resonant peaks, because there are no resistors in the circuit to correct the impedance. Next, I'll have to add the resistors and see what happens.

Chris,

Some comments:

0. Probably, you are working on the SP table, not on the PSL table.

1. The profile measurement looks very nice.

2. You can simplify the optical layout if you consider the following issues
  A. The matching lenses just after the laser:
      You can make a collimated beam only with a single lens, instead of two.
      Just put a lens of f0 with distance of f0 from the waist. (Just like Geometrical Optics to make a parallel-going beam.)

      Or even you don't need any lens. In this case, whole optical setup should be smaller so that your beam
      can be accomodated by the aperture of your optics. But that's adequately possible.

  B. The steering mirrors after the laser:
      If you have a well elevated beam from the table (3~4 inches), you can omit two steering mirrors.
      If you have a laser beam whose tilte can not be corrected by the laser mount, you can add a mirror to fix it.

  C. The steering mirrors in the arms:
      You don't need the steering mirrors in the arms as all d.o.f. of the Michelson alignment can be adjusted
      by the beamsplitter and the mirror at the reflected arm. Also The arm can be much shorter (5~6 inches?)

  D. The lenses and the mirrors after the PBS:
      You can put one of the lenses before the PBS, instead of two after the lens.
      You can omit the mirror at the reflection side of the PBS as the PBS mount should have alignment adjustment.

The simpler, the faster and the easier to work with!
Cheers.

Stephanie, 

This is a quite nice measurement. Much better than the previous one.

1) For further steps, I think now you need to connect the real EOM at the end in order to incorporate
the capacitance and the loss (=resistance) of the EOM. Then you have to measure the input impedance
of the circuit. You can measure the impedance of the device at Wilson house.
(I can come with you in order to consult with Rich, if you like)

Before that you may be able to do a preparatory measurement which can be less precise than the Wilson one,
but still useful. You can measure the transfer function of the voltage across the input of this circuit,
and can convert it to the impedance. The calibration will be needed by connecting a 50Ohm resister
on the network analyzer.

2) I wonder why the model transfer function (TF) has slow phase changes at the resonance.
Is there any implicit resistances took into account in the model?

If the circuit model is formed only by reactive devices (Cs and Ls), the whole circuit has no place to dissipate (= no loss).
This means that the impedance goes infinity and zero, at the resonance and the anti-resonance, respectively.
This leads a sharp flip of the phase at these resonances and anti-resonances.

The real circuit has small losses everywhere. So, the slow phase change is reasonable.

For the past couple of days I have been trying to understand and perform Koji's method for impedance measurement using the Agilent 4395A Network Analyzer (without the impedance testing kit). I have made some headway, but I don't completely understand what's going on; here's what I've done so far.

I have made several transfer function measurements using the attached physical setup (ImpedanceTestingPhysicalSetup.png), after calibrating the setup by placing a 50 Ohm resistor in the place of the Z in the diagram. The responses of the various impedances I've measured are shown in the attached plot (ImpResponses.png). However, I'm having trouble figuring out how to convert these responses to impedances, so I tried to derive the relationship between the measured transfer function and the impedance by simplifying the diagram Koji drew on the board for me (attached, ImpedanceTestingSetup.png) to the attached circuit diagram (ImpedanceTestingCktDiagram.png), and finding the expected value of V_A/V_R. For the circuit diagram shown, the equation should be V_A/V_R = 2Z/(50+Z). 50 Ohms is good to use for calibration because the expected value of the transfer function for this impedance is 1 (0 dB).

So I used this relationship to find the expected response for the various impedances, and I also calculated the impedance from the actual measured responses. I've attached a plot of the measured (red) and expected (black) response (top) and impedance (bottom) for a 1 nF capacitor (1nF.png). The expected and measured plots don't really match up very well; if I add extra inductance (7.6 nH, plots shown in blue), the two plots match up a little better, but still don't match very well. I suspect that the difference may come from the fact that for my analysis, I treated the power splitter as if it were a simple node, and I think that's probably not very accurate.

Anyway, the point of all this is to eventually measure the impedance of the circuit I created on Friday, but I don't think I can really do that until I understand what is going on a little better.

David and I were thinking about changing the non-polarizing beam splitter in the EUCLID setup from 50/50 to 33/66 (ref picture).  It serves as a) a pickoff to sample the input power and b) a splitter to send the returning beam to a photodetector 2 (it then hits a polarizer and half of this is lost.  By changing the reflectivity to 66% then less (1/3 instead of 1/2) of the power coming into it would be "lost" at the ref photodetector 1, and on the return trip less would be lost at the polarizer (1/6 instead of 1/4).

 I checked the setup and found RF reflection at the load was the cause of the unreasonable response in the impedance measurement.
So, I have put a total 22dB attenuation (10+6+6 dB) between the power splitter and the load to be measured. See the picture.
This kind of attenuators, called as PADs, is generally used in order to improve the impedance matching, sacrificing the signal amplitude at the load.

Then, It looks the measurements got reasonable up to 100MHz (at least) and |Z|<1kOhm.
For the measurements, I just followed the procedure that Stephanie described.
Stephanie has measured the impedance of her resonant circuit.

As a test of the method, I measured impedances of various discrete devices. i.e. 50Ohm, 10-1000pF Cap, Inductances, circuit opened.

a) 50Ohm (marine-blue) was calibrated to be recognized as 50Ohm.

b) The mica capacitances (orange 10pF, yellow 100pF, green 1000pF) appeared as the impedances f^-1 in the low freq region. It's nice.
At high frequency, the impedances deviate from f^-1, which could be caused by the lead inductance. (Self Resonance)
So 1000pF mica is not capacitance at 50MHz already.

c) Open BNC connector (Red) looks have something like 5pF. (i.e. 300Ohm at 100MHz)

d) I could not get good measurements with the inductors as I had 200nH (and some C of ~5pF) for a Pomona clip (blue).
This is just because of my laziness such that I avoid soldering the Ls to an RF connector!

I was able to make an impedance measurement of the flying-component circuit using Koji's method for impedance measurement. I first measured the impedance of the circuit with a 10 pF capacitor in the place of the EOM (as shown in the circuit diagram). This impedance plot is attached. I then added resistance to adjust the impedance slightly, attached the circuit to a New Focus KTP 4064 EOM, and took another impedance measurement (circuit diagram and impedance plot attached). The peaks are relatively close to 50 Ohms; they are at least the same order of magnitude.

I put the flying-component circuit in a box; a photo is attached. I also measured the impedance; it looks exactly the same as it looked before I put the circuit in the box.

I have spent the past couple of days gathering optics and mounts so that I can observe the modulation of the EOM attached to the circuit I built using the optical spectrum analyzer (OSA). A rough diagram of the planned layout is attached.

I also built a short SMA cable so that the EOM did not have to be connected directly to the circuit box. The cable is shown attached to the EOM and circuit box in the attached photo. After checking to make sure that all of the connections in the cable were sound, I remeasured the input impedance of the circuit; the impedance measurement (black) is shown in the attached plot with the impedance before the SMA cable was added with and without the box (green and blue, respectively--these two are almost identical). The new impedance has a strange shape compared to the original measurements; I'd like to understand this a little better, since adding extra inductance in LTSpice doesn't seem to have that effect. Since I had already taken apart the setup used for the previous impedance measurements, I had to rebuild and recalibrate the setup; I guess the difference could be something about the new calibration, but I don't really think that that's the case.

After investigating this a bit further, I discovered that some of the components in the circuit were pressed firmly up against the inside of the box, and when they were moved, the impedance plot changed shape dramatically. I think that originally, the components were not pressed against the box, but the box's SMA joint was rather loose; when I connected this to the SMA cable, I tightened it, and this seems to have twisted the circuit around inside the box, pushing the components up against the side. I have fixed the twisting, and since the SMA joint is now tight, the circuit should no longer have any twisting problems.

A new plot is attached, showing the impedance of the circuit with nothing attached (blue), with the SMA cable and EOM attached (green), and with the EOM attached directly to it taken last friday with the old calibration of the setup (red). All three curves look roughly the same; the center peak is shifted slightly between the three curves, but the circuit with SMA and EOM is the version we'll be using, and it's central peak is close to the correct value.

We can't read minute trends from either Dataviewer or loadLIGOData from before 11am this morning. 

fb:/frames>du -skh minute-trend-frames/
 106G   minute-trend-frames


So the frames are still on the disk.  We just can't get them with our usual tools (NDS).

 Trying to read 60 days of minute trends from C1:PSL-PMC_TRANSPD yields:

Connecting to NDS Server fb40m (TCP port 8088)
Connecting.... done
258.0 minutes of trend displayed
read(); errno=9
read(); errno=9
T0=09-06-06-22-34-02; Length=5184000 (s)
No data output.


Trying to read 3 seconds of full data works.

Second trends are readable after about 4am UTC this morning, which is about 9 pm last night.

 Yesterday Alex started transferring the data records to the new storage unit. That prevented us from accessing the trends for a fe hours.

The process had been completed and now we can read the trends again.

For the past week Dmass and I have been ordering parts and getting ready to construct our own modified version of EUCLID (figure).  Changes to the EUCLID design could include the removal of the first lens, the replacement of the cat's eye retroreflector with a lens focusing the beam waist on a mirror in that arm of the Michelson, and the removal of the linear polarizers.  A beam dump was added above the first polarizing beam splitter and the beam at Photodetector 2 was attenuated with an additional polarizing beam splitter and beam dump.  Another proposed alteration is to change the non-polarizing beam splitter from 50/50 to 33/66.  By changing the reflectivity to 66\%, less power coming into the non-polarizing beam splitter would be ``lost" at the reference detector (1/3 instead of 1/2), and on the return trip less power would be lost at the polarizing beam splitter (1/6 instead of 1/4).  Also, here's a noise plot comparing a few displacement sensors that are used to the shot noise levels for the three designs I've been looking at.

 I thought slightly harder and I think that the beamsplitter stays. We will lose too much power on the first PD if we do that:

33/66:  Pwr @ PD2 = 2/3*1/3*1/2 =  1/9 Pin

            Pwr @ PD3 = 2/3*2/3*1/2 = 2/9 Pin

50:50 Pwr @ PD2 = PWR @ PD3 = 1/8 Pin

balancing them is probably better.

Stephanie and Koji

We left two carts near the PSL table.
We are using them for characterization of the tripple resonant EOM.

I was able to observe the three sets of modulation sidebands created by the EOM + triply resonant circuit yesterday. Quantitative results will be posted later.

I measured the magnitude of modulation as a function of frequency using the optical spectrum analyzer and an oscilloscope while generating signals using a Marconi signal generator; the results are shown in the attached plot and are compared to the expected modulation given the measured transfer function of the circuit and the nominal modulation index of the EOM used (13 mrad/V). Using the oscilloscope, I found the resonant peaks to be at 11.11 MHz, 29.57 MHz, and 54.70 MHz. There are several different colors on the plot; this is because I had to take the data in several different segments and had to switch to measuring a different sideband partway through the measurment. I also separately found the modulation at each resonant peak for each sideband. The magnitude of modulation was measured  by finding the ratio between the magnitude of the carrier and sideband powers using an oscilloscope, and calculating the magnitude of modulation from this. This method was also used to quantify the dependence of modulation magnitude on input power at each resonant peak; these results are also attached. These same results can also be plotted as modulation magnitude as a function of voltage into the resonant circuit; this is also attached (I'm not sure which is more useful).

In order to produce these results (get the measurements in mrad/V) it was necessary to measure the gain of the amplifier. I used the signal generator to input signals of varying power and measured the output signal voltage using the oscilloscope; I then repeated this process at each resonant frequency. From this I was able to calculate the gain of the amplifier to be 28.1 dB at 11.11 MHz, 27.4 dB at 29.57 MHz, and 25.7 dB at 54.70 MHz. These values are in the same ballpark as the values in the Mini Circuits data sheet (all values are ~25-28 MHz).

Today I set up the EUCLID long range michelson design on the SP table; It's the same as the setup posted earlier, but without the pickoff (at PD1), which can be added later, and a few other minor changes (moved lenses, mirrors, PDs - nothing major).  I hooked up the two PD's to the oscilliscope and got a readout that pointed to more power hitting PD2 than PD3.

The EUCLID-style Michelson readout is on the SP table now and is aligned.  See image below.  I took several power spectra with the plotter attached to the HP3563 (not sure if there's another way to get the data out) and I'm still waiting to calibrate (since dP/dL isn't constant as it isn't locked, this is taking a bit longer).  When put into XY mode on the oscilliscope (plotting Voltage at PD2 on the x and Voltage at PD3 on the y), a Lissajous figure as in the first plot below.  It's offset and elliptical due to imperfections (noise, dc offset, etc) but can ideally be used to calculate the L_ target mirror movement.  By rotating the first quarter wave plate by ~80.5deg counter-clockwise (fast axis was originally at Pi/8, now at 103deg), I was able to turn the Lissajous figure from an ellipse into a more circular shape, which would ideally allow for us to use a circular approximation (much simpler) in our displacement calculations.

I restarted the conlogger on op340m.  This needs to be done when op340m is rebooted--it wasn't done for some reason and so we've lost several days of controls records.