I'm running a test to see how stable the EX green lock is. For this purpose, I've left the slow temperature tuning servo on (there is a 100 count limiter enabled, so nothing crazy should happen).

Summary:

The parts I was waiting for arrived. I finished the beat mouth assembly, and did some characterization. Everything looks to be working as expected.

Details:

Attachment #1: Photo of the front panel. I am short of two fiber mating sleeves that are compatible with PM fibers, but those are just for monitoring, so not critical to the assembly at this stage. I'll ask Chub to procure these.

Attachment #2: Photo of the inside of the BeatMouth. I opted to use the flexible RG-316 cables for all the RF interconnects. Rana said these aren't the best option, remains to be seen if interference between cables is an issue. If so, we can replace them with RG-58. I took the opportunity to give each fiber beam splitter its own spool, and cleaned all the fiber tips.

Attachment #3: Transfer function measurement. The PDFR setup behind 1X5/1X6 was used. I set the DC current to the laser to 30.0 mA (as read off the display of the current source), which produced ~400uW of light at the fiber coupled output of the diode laser. This was injected into the "PSL" input coupler of the BeatMouth, and so gets divided down to ~100 uW by the time it reaches the PDs. From the DC monitor values (~430mV), the light hitting the PDs is actually more consistent with 60uW, which is in agreement with the insertion loss of the fiber beamsplitters, and the mating sleeves.

The two responses seem reasonably well balanced (to within 20% - do we expect this to be better?). Even though judging by the DC monitor, there was more light incident on the Y PD than on the X PD, the X response was actually stronger than the Y. 

I also took the chance to do some other tests:

• Inject light into the "X(Y)-ARM" input coupler of the Beat Mouth - confirmed that only the X(Y) NF1611's DC monitor output showed any change. The DC light level was ~1V in this condition, which again is consistent with expected insertion losses as compared to the "PSL" input case, there is 1 less fiber beamsplitter and mating sleeve.
• Injected light into each of the input couplers, looked at the interior of the BeatMouth with an IR viewer for evidence of fiber damage, and saw none. Note that we are not doing anything special to dump the light at the unused leg of the fiber beamsplitter (which will eventually be a monitor port). Perhaps, nominally, this port should be dumped in some appropriate way.

Attachment #4: Dark Noise analysis. I used a ZHL-500-HLN+ to boost the PD's dark noise above the AG4395's measurement noise floor. The measured noise level seems to suggest either (i) the input-referred current noise of the PD circuitry is a little lower than the spec of 16 pA/rtHz (more like 13 pA/rtHz) or (ii) the transimpedance is lower than the spec of 700 V/A (more like 600 V/A). Probably some combination of the two. Seems reasonable to me.

Next steps:

The optical part of the ALS detection setup is now complete. The next step is to measure the ALS noise with this sysytem. I will use the X arm for this purpose (I'd like to make the minor change of switching the existing resistive power splitter at the delay line to the newly acquired splitters which have 3dB lower insertion loss). 

• Newfocus 15V current limited supply was taken from bottom NE corner of the ITMY Oplev table to power the BeatMouth on the PSL table
• BeatMouth was installed on top shelf on PSL table [Attachment #1].
• Light levels in fibers were checked:
  • PSL: initially, only ~200uW / 4mW was coupled in. This was improved to 2.6mW/4mW (~65% MM) which was deemed sufficient for a first test), by tweaking the alignment of, and into the collimator.
  • EX: ~900uW measured at the PSL table. I remember the incident power being ~1mW. So this is pretty good.
• Fibers hooked up to BeatMouth:
  • EX light only, DC mon of X PD reads -2.1V.
  • With PSL light, I get -4.6 V.
  • For these numbers, with the DC transimpedance of 10kohm and the RF transimpedance of 700 ohm, I expect a beat of ~0dBm
• DC light level stability is being monitored by a temporarily hijacked PSL NPRO diagnostic Acromag channel. Main motivation is to confirm that the alignment to the special axes of the PM fibers is still good and we aren't seeing large tempreature-driven waveplate effects.
• RF part of the circuit is terminated into 50ohms for now -
  • there is still a quesiton as to what is the correct RF amplifier to use in sending the signal to the 1Y3 rack.
  • An initial RF beat power level measurement yielded -5dBm, which is inconsistent with the DC monitor voltages, but I'm not sure what frequency the beat was at, will make a more careful measurement with a scope or the network analyzer.
  • We want the RF pre-amp to be:
    • Low noise, keeping this in mind
    • High enough gain to boost the V/Hz discriminant of the electronic delay line
    • Not too high gain that we run into compression / saturate some of the delay line electronics - specifically, the LO input of the LSC demod board has a Teledyne amp in the signal chain, and so we need to ensure the signal level there is <16dBm (nominal level is 10dBm).
    • I'm evaluating options...
• At 1Y3:
  • I pulled out the delay-line enclosure, and removed the (superglued) resistive power splitters with the help of some acetone
  • The newly acquired power splitters (ZAPD-2-252-S+) were affixed to the front panel, in which I made some mounting holes.
  • The new look setup, re-installed at 1Y3, is shown in Attachment #2.

I looked into this a little more today.

1. Looking at the beat signal between the PSL and EX beams from the NF1611 on a scope (50-ohm input), the signal Vpp was ~200 mV.
2. In the time that I was poking about, the level dropped to ~150mVpp. seemed suspicious.
3. Thinking that this has to be related to the polarization mismatch between the interfering beams, I moved the input fibers (blue in Attachment #1) around, and saw the signal amplitude went up to 300mVpp, supporting my initial hypothesis.
4. The question remains as to where the bulk of the polarization drift is happening. I had spent some effort making sure the input coupled beam to the fiber was well-aligned to one of the special axes of the fiber, and I don't think this will have changed since (i.e. the rotational orientation of the fiber axes relative to the input beam was fixed, since we are using the K6XS mounts with a locking screw for the input couplers). So I flexed the patch cables of the fiber beam splitters inside the BeatMouth, and saw the signal go as high as 700mVpp (the expected level given the values reported by the DC monitor).

This is a problem - such large shifts in the signal level means we have to leave sufficient headroom in the choice of RF amplifier gain to prevent saturation, whereas we want to boost the signal as much as possible. Moreover, this kind of operation of tweaking the fiber seating to increase the RF signal level is not repeatable/reliable. Options as I see it:

1. Get a fiber BS that is capable of maintaining the beam polarization all the way through to the beat photodiode. I've asked AFW technologies (the company that made our existing fiber BS parts) if they supply such a device, and Andrew is looking into a similar component from Thorlabs.
   • These parts could be costly.
2. Mix the beams in free space. We have the beam coming from EX to the PSL table, so once we mix the two beams, we can use either a fiber or free-space PD to read out the beatnote. 
   • This approach means we lose some of the advantages of the fiber based setup (e.g. frequent alignment of the free-space MM of the two interfering beams may be required).
   • Potentially increases sensitivity to jitter noise at the free-space/fiber coupling points

The new fiber beam splitters we are ordering, PFC-64-2-50-L-P-7-2-FB-0.3W, have the slow axis working and fast axis blocked. The way the light is coupled into the fibers right now is done to maximize the amount of light into the fast axis. So we will have to do a 90deg rotation if we use that part. Probably the easiest thing to do is to put a HWP immediately before the free-space-to-fiber collimator.

Update 6pm: They have an "SB" version of the part with the slow axis blocked and fast axis enabled, same price, so I'll ask Chub to get it.

Andrew seems to have an integrated solution of PBS+HWP in a singe mount. Or, I wonder if we should use HWP/QWP before the coupler. I am interested in a general solution for this problem in my OMC setup too.

Summary:

I set up a free-space beat on theNW side of the PSL table between the IR beam from the PSL and from EX, the latter brought to the PSL table via ~40m fiber. Initial measurements suggest very good performance, although further tests are required to be sure. Specifically, the noise below 10 Hz seems much improved.

Details:

Attachment #1 shows the optical setup. 

• I used two identical Thorlabs F220APC collimators to couple the light back into free space, reasoning that the mode-matching would be easiest this way.
• Only 1 spare K6Xs collimator mount was available (this has the locking nut on the rotational DoF), so I used a K6X for the other mount. The fast axis of the Panda fibers were aligned as best as possible to p-polarization on the table by using the fact that the connector key is aligned to the slow axis.
• I cut the power coupled into the PSL fiber from ~2.6mW to ~880uW (using a HWP + PBS combo before the input coupling to the fiber) to match the power from EX.
• The expected signal level from these powers and the NF1611 transimpedance of 700 V/A is ~320 mVpp. After alignment tweaking, I measured ~310mVpp (~ -5dBm) into a 50 ohm input on a scope, so the mode-matching which means the polarization matching and mode overlap between the PSL and EX beams are nearly optimal.
• To pipe the signal to the delay line electronics, I decided to use the ZHL-3A (G=27dB, 1dB compression at 29.5dBm per spec), so the signal level at the DFD rack was expected (and confirmed via 50 ohm input on o'scope) to be ~19dBm.
• This is a lot of signal - after the insertion loss of the power splitter, there would still be ~15dBm of signal going to the (nominally 10dBm) LO input of the demod board. This path has a Teledyne AP1053 at the input, which has 10dB gain and 1dBm compression at 26dBm per spec. To give a bit of headroom, I opted on the hacky solution of inserting an attenuator (5dB) in this path - a better solution needs to be implemented.
• The differential outputs of the demod board go to the CDS system via an AA board (there is no analog whitening).

Yehonathan came by today so I had to re-align the arms and recover POX/POY locking. This alllowed me to lock the X arm length to the PSL frequency, and lock the EX green laser to the X arm length. GTRX was ~0.36, whereas I know it can be as high as 0.5, so there is definitely room to improve the EX frequency noise suppression.

Attachment #2 shows the ALS out-of-loop noise for the PSL+X combo. The main improvements compared to this time last year are electronic. 

• The failed experiment of making custom I/F amplifier was abandoned and Rich Abbott's original design was reverted to. 
• New power splitter was installed with 3dB less insertion loss.
• According to the RF path level monitor, the signal level at the RF input to the demod board is ~10dBm. Per my earlier characterization, this will give us the pretty beefy frequency discriminant of ~15uV/Hz.
• I estimate the frequency noise of the detection electronics + ADC noise now translate to 1/3 the frequency noise compared to the old system. With some analog whitening, this can be made even better, the electronics noise of the DFD electronics (~50nV/rtHz) is estimated to be <10mHz/rtHz equivalent frequency noise. 
• Note that the calibration from phase-tracker-servo to units of Hz (~14 kHz / degree) was not changed in the digital system - this should only be a property of the delay line length, and hence, should not have changed as a result of the various electronics changes to the demod board and other electronics.

Next steps:

• Improve pointing of green beam into X arm cavity.
• I plan to recover the green beat note as well and digitize it using the second available DFD channel (eventually for the Y arm) - then we can simultaneously compare the the green and IR performance (though they will have different noise floors as there is less green light on the green beat PDs, and I think lower transimpedance too).

Since we haven't been using it, the PID control was not enabled on the doubling oven on the PSL table (it is disabled after every power outage event in the lab). I re-enabled it just now. The setpoint according to the label on the TC200 controller is 36.9 C. The PID paramaters were P=250, I=200, D=40. These are not very good as the overshoot when I turned the control on was 44 C, seems too large. The settling time is also too long, after 10 minutes, the crystal temperature as reported by the TC200 front panel is still oscillating. I can't find anything in the elog about what the nominal PID parameter values were. The X end PID seems much better behaved so I decided to try the same PID gains as is implemented there, P=250, I=60, D=25.

With the Ophir power meter, I measured 60mW of IR light going into the doubling oven, 110uW green light coming out, for a conversion efficiency of 2.7%/W, seems pretty great.

Next, I went to EX and tweaked the steering mirror alignment - I wasn't able to improve the transmission significantly using the PZT sliders on the EPICS screen, and the dither alignment servo isn't working. It required quite a substantial common mode yaw shift of the PZT mirrors to make GTRX ~ 0.5. 

To start the noise budgeting, I decided to measure the "DFD noise", which is really the quadrature sum of the following terms:

• ZHL-3A (RF amplifier) noise, NF ~ 6dB per spec (~ 1nV/rtHz)
• Delay line demod board noise, ~30nV/rtHz [measurement]
• AA board noise [measurement]
• ADC noise

According to past characterizations of these noises, the ADC noise level, which is expected to be at the level of a few uV/rtHz, is expected to be the dominant noise source.

The measurement was made by disconnecting the NF 1611 free space photodiode from the input to the RF amplifier on the PSL table, and connecting a Marconi (f_carrier = 40 MHz, signal level=-5dBm) instead. The phase tracked output was then monitored, and the resulting digital spectrum is the red curve in Attachment #1. The blue curve is the ASD of fluctuations of the beatnote between the PSL and EX IR beams, as monitored by the DFD system, with the X arm cavity length locked to the PSL frequency via the LSC servo, and the EX green frequency locked to the X arm cavity length by the analog PDH servo. 

Conclusions:

Assuming the Marconi frquency noise is lower than the ones being budgeted:

1. the measured frequency noise is above the DFD noise - this needs to be budgeted.
2. The DFD noise level is consistent with a frequency discriminant of 15 uV/rtHz and an ADC noise level of 3 uV/rtHz at high frequencies.

Next noises to budget:

1. In-loop X arm length noise
2. In-lop EX laser frequency noise

I worked on characterizing the green PDH setup at EX, as part of the ALS noise budgeting process. Summary of my findings:

1. Green doubling efficiency is ~ 1.5 %/W (3mW of green for 450mW of IR). This is ~half of what was measured on the PSL table. There are probably large errors associated with power measurement with the Ophir power meter, but still, seems like a big mismatch.
2. The green REFL photodiode is a Thorlabs PDA36A. 
   • It is being run on 30 dB gain setting, corresponding to a transimpedance of 47.5 kohm into high impedance loads. However, the PD bandwidth for this gain setting is 260 kHz according to the manual, whereas the PDH modulation sidebands on the green light are at twice the modulation frequency, i.e. ~560 kHz, so this is not ideal.
   • There was ~250 uW of green light incident on this photodiode, as measured with the Ophir power meter.
   • The DC voltage level was measured to be ~2.7 V on a scope (High-Z), which works out to ~280 uW of power, so the measurements are consistent.
   • When the cavity is locked, there is about 25% of this light incident on the PD, giving a shot noise level of ~25 nV/rtHz. The dark noise level is a little higher, at 40nV/rtHz.
   • Beam centering on the PD looked pretty good to the eye (it is a large-ish active area, ~3mmx3mm).
   • The beam does not look Gaussian at all - there are some kind of fringes visible in the vertical direction in a kind of halo around the main cavity reflection. Not sure what the noise implications of this are. I tried to capture this in a photo, see Attachment #1. Should an Iris/aperture be used to cut out some of this junk light before the reflection photodiode?
3. The in-going beam was getting clipped on the Faraday Isolator aperture (it was low in pitch).
   • I fixed this by adjusting the upstream steering, and then moving the two PZT mounted green steering mirrors to recover good alignment to the X arm cavity.
   • GTRX level of ~0.5 was recovered.
4. To estimate the mode-matching of the input beam to the cavity axis, I looked at the reflected light with the cavity locked, and with just the prompt reflection from the ETM:
   • DC light level on the reflection photodiode was monitored using the High-Z input o'scope.
   • Measured numbers are Plocked ~ 660 mV, Pmisaligned ~ 2.6V, giving a ratio of 0.253.
   • While locked, there was a ~ 10 Hz periodic variation in the DC light level on the green REFL photodiode - not sure what was causing this modulation.
   • However, this is inconsistent with a calculation, see Attachment #2. I assumed modulation depth of 90 mrad, round-trip loss of 100 ppm, and Titm = 1.094%, Tetm = 4.579%, numbers I pulled from the core-optics wiki page.
   • Not sure what effect I've missed out on here - to get the model to match the measurement, I have to either assume a higher cavity finesse, or a much higher round-trip loss (5000ppm), both of which seem implausible.

The main motivation was to get the residual frequency noise of the EX laser when locked to the X arm cavity - but I'll need the V/Hz PDH discriminant to convert the in-loop error signal to frequency units. The idea was to look at the PDH error signal on a scope and match up the horn-to-horn voltage with a model to back out said discriminant, but I'll have to double check my model for errors now given the large mismatch I observe in reflected power.

Some time ago, I had done an actuator calibration of ITMX. This suspension hasn't been victim to the recent spate of suspension problems, so I can believe that the results of those measurement are still valid. So I decided to calibrate the in-loop error signal of the EX green PDH loop, which is recorded via an SR560, G=10, by driving a line in ITMY position (thereby modulating the X arm cavity length) while the EX green frequency was locked to the arm cavity length. Knowing the amount I'm modulating the cavity length by (500 cts amplitude sine wave at 33.14159 Hz using awggui, translating to ~17.2 kHz amplitude in green frequency), I demodulated the response in C1:ALS-X_ERR_MON_OUT_DQ channel. At this frequency of ~33 Hz, the servo gain should be large, and so the green laser frequency should track the cavity length nearly perfectly (with transfer function 1/(1+L), where L is the OLG).

The response had amplitude 5.68 +/- 0.10 cts, see Attachment #1. There was a sneaky gain of 0.86 in the filter module, which I saw no reason to keep at this strange value, and so updated to 1, correcting the demodulated response to 6.6 cts. After accounting for this adjustment, the x10 gain of the SR560, and the loop suppression, I put a "cts2Hz" filter in (Attachment #2). I had to guess a value for the OLG at 33 Hz in order to account for the in-loop suppression. So I measured the OLTF using the usual IN1/IN2 method (Attachment #3), and then used a LISO model of the electronics, along with guesses of the cavity pole (18.5 kHz), low-pass filter poles (4x real poles at 70 kHz), PZT actuator gain (1.7 MHz/V) and PDH discriminant (40 uV/Hz, see this elog) to construct a model OLTF. Then I fudged the overall gain to get the model to line up with the measurement between 1-10kHz. Per this model, I should have ~75dB of gain at ~33Hz, so the tracking error to my cavity length modulation should be ~3.05 Hz. Lines up pretty well with the measured value of 4.7 Hz considering the number of guessed parameters. The measured OLG tapers off towards low frequency probably because the increased loop suppression drives one of the measured inputs on the SR785 into the instrument noise floor.

The final calibration number is 7.1 Hz/ct, though the error on this number is large ~30%. Note that these "Hertz" are green frequency changes - so the change to the IR frequency will be half.

Attachment #4 shows the error signal in various conditions, labelled in the legend. Interpretations to follow.

G=10 or G=100?

wrong assumption - i checked the gain just now, it is G=10, and is running in the "low-noise" mode, so can only drive 4V. fixed elog, filter.

Note: While working at EX, I saw frequent saturations (red led blinking) on the SR560. Looking a the error mon signal on a scope, it had a pk-to-pk amplitude of ~200mV going into the SR560. Assuming the free-swinging cavity length changes by ~1 um at 1 Hz, the green frequency changes by ~15 MHz, which according to the PDH discriminant calibration of 40 uV/Hz should only make a 60 mV pk to pk signal. So perhaps the cavity length is changing by 4x as much, plausible during daytime with me stomping around the chamber I guess.. My point is that if the SR560 get's saturated (i.e. input > 13000 cts), the DQ-ed spectrum isn't trustworthy anymore. Should hook this up to some proper whitening electronics

I decided to use the more direct method, of disconnecting feedback to the EX laser PZT, and then looking at the cavity flashes. 

Attachment #1 shows the cavity swinging through two resonances (data collected via oscilloscope). Traces are for the demodulated PDH error signal (top) and the direct photodiode signal (bottom). The traces don't look very clean - I wonder if some saturation / slew rate effects are at play, because we are operating the PD in the 30 dB setting, where the bandwidth of the PD is spec-ed as 260 kHz, whereas the dominant frequency component of the light on the PD is 430 kHz.

The asymmetric horns corresponding to the sideband resonances were also puzzling. Doing the modeling, Attachment #2, I think this is due to the fact that the demodulation phase is poorly set. The PDH modulation frequency is only ~5x the cavity linewidth, so both the real and imaginary parts of the cavity reflectivity contribute to the error signal. If this calculation is correct, we can benefit (i.e. get a larger PDH discriminant) by changing the demod phase by 60 degrees. However, for 230 kHz, it is impractical to do this by just increasing cable length between the function generator and mixer.

Anyway, assuming that we are at the phi=30 degree situation (since the measurement shows all 3 horns going through roughly the same voltage swing), the PDH discriminant is ~40 uV/Hz. In lock, I estimate that there is ~60 uW of light incident on the PDH reflection photodiode. Using the PD response of 0.2 A/W, transimpedance of 47.5 kohm, and mixer conversion loss of 6dB, the shot-noise limited sensitivity is 0.5 mHz/rtHz. The photodiode dark noise contribution is a little lower - estimated to be 0.2 mHz/rtHz. The loop does not have enough gain to reach these levels.

Updated the noise budget to include the unsuppressed frequency noise from the EX laser. It does not explain the noise between 10-100 Hz, although the 1-3 Hz noise is close.

Actually, I think the curve that should go on the budget is when the X arm length is locked to the PSL frequency, whereas this is when the X arm is just locally damped. I will update it later tonight.

Update 1010pm: I've uploaded the relevant plot as Attachment #2. Predictably, the unsuppressed frequency noise of the EX laser is now higher, because the MC length is a noisier frequency reference than the arm cavity. But still it is a factor of 10 below the measured ALS noise.

These weren't present last week. The peaks are present in the EX PDH error monitor signal, and so are presumably connected with the green locking system. My goal tonight was to see if the arm length control could be done using the ALS error signal as opposed to POX, but I was not successful.

I looked into this issue today. Initially, my thinking was that I'd somehow caused clipping in the beampath somewhere which was causing this 2kHz excitation. However, on looking at the spectrum of the in-loop error signal today (Attachment #1), I found no evidence of the peak anymore!

Since the vacuum system is in a non-nominal state, and also because my IR ALS beat setup has been hijacked for the MZ interferometer, I don't have an ALS spectrum, but the next step is to try single arm locking using the ALS error signal. To investigate whether the 2kHz peak is a time-dependent feature, I left the EX green locked to the arm (with the SLOW temperature offloading servo ON), hopefully it stays locked overnight...

EX green stayed locked to XARM length overnight without a problem. The spectrogram doesn't show any alarming time varying features around 2 kHz (or at any other frequency).

To maintain PM fibers all the way through to the photodiode, I had ordered some PM versions of the 50/50 fiber beamsplitters from AFW technologies. They arrived some days ago, and today I installed them in the BeatMouth. Before installation, I checked that the ends of the fibers were clean with the fiber microscope. I also did a little cleanup of the NW corner of the PSL table, where the 1um MZ setup was completely disassembled. We now have 4 non-PM fiber beamsplitters which may be useful for non polarizaiton sensitive applications - they are stored in the glass-door cabinet slightly east of the IY chamber along the Y arm, together with all the other fiber-related hardware.

Anjali had changed the coupling of the beam to the slow axis for her experiment but I ordered beamsplitters which have the slow axis blocked (because that was the original config). I need to revert to this config, and then make a measurement of the ALS noise - if things look good, I'll also patch up the Y arm ALS. We made several changes to the proposed timeline for the summer but I'd like to see this ALS thing through to the end while I still have some momentum before embarking on the BHD project. More to follow later in the eve.

Coupling into the fast axis of the fiber:

The PM couplers I bought require that the light is coupled to the fast axis. The Thorlabs part that Andrew ordered, and which Anjali was using for the MZ experiment, was the opposite configuration, and so the input coupler K6XS mount was rotated to accommodate this polarization. The HWP was also rotated to cut the power into the fiber. I undid these changes. Mode-matching is ~65% (2.42mW/3.70mW) which isn't stellar, but good enough. The PER is ~15dB (ratio of power in fast axis to slow axis is ~40), which I verified using another collimator at the output, and a PBS + two photodiodes. Again isn't stellar but good enough.

EX laser temperature adjustment:

Rana adjusted the temperature of the main laser to 30.61 C. According to the calibration, the EX laser temperature needed to be ~32.8 C. It was ~31.2 C. I made the change by rotating the dial on the front panel of the EX laser controller. Fine adjustment was done using the temperature slider on the ALS screen. With an offset of ~+610 counts, I found a beat at ~80 MHz.

First look at PM beamsplitters:

From my initial test, the beat amplitude was stable to my moving of the fibers . The NF1611 DC monitor reports 2.6 V DC with only the EX light, and 3.15 V DC with only the PSL light. So I should probably cut the PSL power a little to improve the contrast. Assuming the 10 kohm DC transimpedance spec can be believed, this means the expected signal level is 4*sqrt(260uA * 315uA)*700V/A ~0.8 Vpp, and I see ~0.9 Vpp, so roughly things add up (this is actually more consistent with an RF transimpedance of 800V/A, which is maybe not unreasonable). The RF amps for routing this signal to the delay line has been borrowed for the 2um frequency noise experiemnt - I will reacquire it today and check the ALS noise performance.

So overall, I am happy with the performance of the current iteration of the BeatMouth.

There was no green light even though the EX NPRO was on. I checked the doubling oven temperature controller and found that its power cable was loose on the rear. I reconnected it, and now there is green light again. 

Summary:

My goal tonight was to lock the PSL frequency to be resonant in the XARM cavity, using the PSL+EX beat as the error signal. I was not successful - mainly, I was plagued by huge BR mode coupling in the error signal, and I could not enable the BR notch filter in the control loop without breaking the lock. Need to think about next steps.

Details:

• POX and POY locking was easily restored.
• EX green alignment was tweaked at the end-table. A large YAW correction was required, which I opted to apply on the mechanical mirror mounts rather than the PZTs. GTRX ~0.4 was recovered.
• The arm cavity length was first locked using POX as an error signal 
  • Then I looked at the out-of-loop ALS noise, trusting the DFD's V/Hz calibration (red-trace in Attachment #1).
  • I judged it to be close enough to the benchmark reference (green-trace in Attachment #1), and so decided that I could go ahead and try locking.
• A modified version of the script /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/XARM/Lock_ALS_XARM.py was used to transition control from POX to the ALS error signal
  • I found that I had to change the sign of the CARM loop gain for the servo to remain stable (in this config, CARM-->MC2 length, thereby modifying the IMC frequency to keep the PSL resonant in the XARM cavity).
  • I don't know why this sign change was required - we are still sticking to the same convention that the beat frequency increases when the temperature slider for the EX laser is incremented in counts.
  • The script failed multiple times at the BOOST/BR notch filter enabling step.
  • Doing these steps manually, I found that turning the BR notch, FM6, ON destroyed the lock immediately.
  • Motivated by this observation, I looked at the in-loop error signal spectrum, see Attachment #2. Here, the PSL frequency is servoed by the ALS error signal, but the BR notch filter isn't enabled.
  • The Bounce-mode peak is huge - where is this coming from? It is absent in the ALS spectrum when the XARM is locked with POX. So it is somehow connected with actuating on the MC2 suspension? Or is it that the FM6=BounceRoll filter of the XARM loop is squishing the noise when looking at the ALS spectrum in POX lock, i.e. Attachment #1? In which case, why can't I engage FM6 for the CARM loop???

Anyway, now that I have a workable set of settings that gets me close to the ALS lock of the XARM, I expect debugging to proceed faster.

Update 2019 July 23: I looked at the control loop shape today, see Attachment #3. I'm not sure I understand why the "BounceRoll" filter  in this filter bank looks like a resonant gain rather than a notch, as it does for the Oplev or SUSPOS loops for example - don't we want to not actuate at these frequencies because the reason the signal exists is because of the imperfect OSEM/magnet positioning? This does not explain the spectrum shown in Attachment #2 however, as that filter was disabled.

Summary:

I succeeded in locking the PSL frequency to the XARM cavity length, with 9 pm RMS (Attachment #1) motion below 1 kHz, by actuating on MC2 to change the IMC length. The locks were pretty stable (~20 minutes) - the dominant cause of lockloss was the infamous ETMX drifting problem.

Details:

1. I did not need to do anything to fix the anomalosly high BR mode coupling I reported yesterday .
   • To test where this could be coming from - I looked at the ALS spectrum again with the XARM length locked to the PSL frequency using POX.
   • Then I compared the spectra with the BR filter in the XARM servo enabled/disabled, see Attachment #2. 
   • There bounce/roll peak heights even with the BR filter disabled is ~x100 smaller than what I reported yesterday (it remained the case today, because without enabling the BR filter in the CARM servo bank, the TRX level was fluctuating wildly at ~16 Hz). 
2. The CARM loop (which is what the PSL frequency was slaved to) had ~150 Hz UGF with ~40 degrees phase margin, see Attachment #3.
3. The quoted RMS sensing noise is if we trust the old POX calibration - may be off by a factor of a few, but probably not an order of magnitude. I'll recalibrate using the free-swinging Michelson technique in the coming days.
4. The two broad humps in Attachment #1, centered at ~180 Hz and ~300 Hz, are present in the XARM lock as well - so it is somehow imprinted on the arm cavity length. Fixing that will improve the RMS noise performance significantly.

My main motivation here is to make some measurements and investigate the SoCal idea using a toy system, i.e. a single arm cavity controlled using ALS, so that's what Craig and I will attempt next.

Summary:

1. There are some broad peaks in the ALS out-of-loop noise, centered at ~145 Hz, ~245 Hz and ~570 Hz which are absent in both the POX in-lock error signal and in the green PDH error signals (see Attachment #1). So I conclude they originate in the IR ALS beat chain somewhere. Needs more investigation, in the general quest to improve the ALS noise.
2. This measurement also shows that the ALS noise is limited by unsuppressed EX green PDH frequency noise above ~400 Hz (100 Hz if you ignore the unexplained broad humps).

These spectra were taken with the arm cavity length locked to the PSL frequency using POX as an error signal, and the EX laser frequency locked to the XARM cavity length by the analog PDH servo at EX, so there is no feedback control with the ALS beat signal as an error signal.

Other details:

• The transition of arm resonance control from POX to ALS error signal is more robust now - I am able to do this during daytime, and also maintain the lock for >20 minutes at a time.
• Rana encouraged me not to spend too much time on this - so my next goal here will be to get the Y arm IR ALS working, and then we can control the two arms using ALS error signals in the CARM/DARM basis instead of the X/Y basis.
• I still think it's worth getting the ALS good enough that the locking becomes repeatable and reliable.
  • The main task here is going to be re-doing the EY green layout to match the EX layout, get good MM into the cavity etc.
  • The IR light also has to be coupled into the fiber at EY.

Summary:

I'd like to confirm that the IR ALS scheme will work for locking. The X-arm performance so far has been encouraging. I want to repeat the characterization for the Y arm. So I inspected the layout on the EY table, and made a list of characterization tasks. The current EY beam routing is difficult to work with, and it will definitely benefit from a re-do. However, I don't know how much time I want to spend re-doing it, so for a start, I will just try and couple some amount of light into a fiber and bring it to the PSL table, and see what noise performance I get.

Details:

Attachment #1: Photo of the current beam layout. The powers indicated were measured with the Ophir power meter.

• I measure an SHG conversion efficiency of 0.87 %/W, which is considerably lower than the ~3.7%/W that is theoretically expected, and 1.5%/W that is realized at EX.
• Of the 0.5 mW of green light that is generated, I measure ~0.375 mW at the viewport into the EY chamber. So there is ~25 % loss in the green beam path on the EY table. Seems high to me.
• The previous solution of coupling IR light into the fiber realized at EY was to use the SHG leakage IR beam. While there isn't a measurement showing that this dirty beam is noisier than a cleaner pickoff, I'd like to adopt the solution used at EX, which is to use the leakage beam from the first steering mirror in the NPRO beam path. This will allow better mode-matching and polarization control of the beam being coupled into the fiber, which at least in principle, translates to less phase noise.
• However - the beam layout at the EY table offers much less freedom to work with this idea than EX. A constraint is the clamp that secures the enclosure to the optical table, labelled in the photo. Further behind it, the green steering optics occupy all available space. A more comprehensive photo of the EY table can be found here.
• Off the top of my head, I don't see any other good open spots on the EY table where we could couple IR light into the fiber. 
• One other change I'd like to make is to replace the first steering mirror after the NPRO head, which is currently a Y1 HR mirror, with a R=99% BS. This will make it easier to control the amount of power coupled into the fiber, which is something we'd like.

Attachment #2: A candidate mode-matching solution, given the constraints outlined above. It isn't great, with only 85% modematching even theoretically possible. The lenses required are also pretty fast lenses. But I think it's the best possible without a complete overhaul of the EY layout. I'm still waiting for the lens kit to arrive, but as soon as they get here, I will start this work.

Characterization tasks:

• Characterize SHG at EY [done 7/28]
• Characterize gPDH at EY (loop TFs, improve MM, PDH discriminant, check the polarization)
• Couple IR light into fiber with good MM at EY [done with 36% MM 8/9]
• Clean fiber at EY, and at the PSL table [done 8/9]
• Make the PSL + Y IR beat [done 8/9]
• Noise budget

• Removed power monitoring PD (It was off anyways)
• Installed Steering mirror and collimator in K6XS mount (fast axis = p-pol to best effort by eye)
• Installed lens mounts in approx position
• Cleaned fiber at EY and connected to the collimator
• Coupled EY--->PSL and spare PSL-->EY fibers together at the PSL table to facilitate coupling.
• tbc tomorrow...

Summary:

1. 220 uW / 600 uW (~36 % mode-matching) of IR light coupled into fiber at EY.
2. Re-connected the RF chain from the beat mouth output on the PSL table to the DFD setup at 1Y2.
3. A beat note was found between the PSL and EY beams using the BeatMouth.

Motivation:

We want to know that we can lock the interferometer with the ALS beat note being generated by beating IR pickoffs (rather than the vertex green transmission). The hope is also to make the ALS system good enough that we can transition the CARM offset directly to 0 after the DRMI is locked with arms held off resonance.

Details:

Attachment #1: Shows the layout. The realized MM is ~36 %. c.f. the 85% predicted by a la mode. It is difficult to optimize much more given the tight layout, and the fact that these fast lenses require the beam to be well centered on them. They are reasonably well aligned, but I don't want to futz around with the pointing into the doubling crystal. Consequently, I don't have much control over the pointing.

Attachment #2: Shows pictures of the fiber tips at both ends before/after cleaning. The tips are now much cleaner.

The BeatMouth NF1611 DC monitor reports ~580 mV with only the EY light incident on it. This corresponds to ~60 uW of light making it to the photodiode, which is only 25% of what we send in. This is commensurate with the BS loss + mating sleeve losses.

To find the beat between PSL and EY beams, I had to change the temperature control MEDM slider for the EY laser to -8355 cts (it was 225 cts). Need to check where this lies in the mode-hop scan by actually looking at the X-tal temperature on the front panel of the EY NPRO controller - we want to be at ~39.3 C on the EY X-tal, given the PSL X-tal temp of ~30.61 C. Just checked it, front panel reports 39.2C, so I think we're good.

Next steps:

• Fix the IMC suspension
• Measure the ALS noise for the Y arm
• Determine if improvements need to be made to the IR beat setup (e.g. more power? better MM? etc etc).

EY enclosure was closed up and ETMY Oplev was re-enabled after my work. Some cleanup/stray beam dumping remains to be done, I will enlist Chub's help on Monday.

Summary:

I came aross an interesting suggestion by Yutaro that KAGRA's low-frequency ALS noise could be limited by the fact that the IMC comes between the point where the frequencies of the PSL and AUX lasers are sensed (i.e. the ALS beat note), and the point where we want them to be equal (i.e. the input of the arm cavity). I wanted to see if the same effect could be at play in the 40m ALS system. A first estimate suggests to me that the numbers are definitely in the ballpark. If this is true, we may benefit from lower noise ALS by picking off the PSL beam for the ALS beat note after the IMC.

Details:

Even though the KAGRA phase lock scheme is different from the 40m scheme, the algebra holds. I needed an estimate of how much the arm cavity moves, I used data from a POX lock to estimate this. The estimate is probably not very accurate (since the arm cavity length is more stable than the IMC length, and the measured ALS noise, e.g. this elog, is actually better than what this calculation would have me believe), but should be the right order of magnitude. From this crude estimate, it does look like for f<10 Hz, this effect could be significant. I assumed an IMC pole of 3.8 kHz for this calculation.

I've indicated a "target" ALS performance where the ALS noise would be less than the CARM linewidth, which would hopefully make the locking much easier. Seems like realizing this target will be touch-and-go. But if we can implement length feedforward control for the arm cavities using seismometers, the low frequency motion of the optics should go down. It would be interesting to see if the ALS noise gets better at low frequencies with length feedforward engaged.

* Some updates were made to the plot:

1. Took data from Kiwamu's paper for the seismic noise
2. Overlaid measured ALS noise

What about just use high gain feedback to MC2 below 20 Hz for the IMC lock? That would reduce the excess if this theory is correct.

Attachment #1 shows a first look at the IR ALS noise after my re-coupling of the IR light into the fiber at EY. 

Measurement configuration: 

• Each arm length was individually stabilized to the PSL frequency using POX/POY locking.
• The respective AUX laser frequencies were locked to the arm cavity length using the AUX PDH loops.
• GTRX ~0.3 (usually I can get ~0.5) and GTRY ~ 0.2 (the mode-matching to the arm cavities is pretty horrible as suggested by the multitude of bullseye modes seen when toggling the shutter).
• The control signal to the AUX PZT had the DC part offloaded by the slow temperature control servos to the AUX laser crystal temperature.

CDS model changes:

• The c1lsc model was modified to route the input signals to the Y phase tracker servo from ADC1_2 and ADC1_3 (originally, they were ADC0_20 and ADC0_21).
• This change was necessary because the DFD output is sent differentially to the ADC1 card in the c1lsc expansion chassis (bypassing the iLIGO whitening and AA electronics, for now just going through an aLIGO AA board with no whitening available yet).
• I chose to use the differential receiving (as opposed to using the front-panel single ended BNC connectors) as in principle, it is capable of delivering better noise performance.
• After making the model changes, I compiled and restarted the model. Apart from the missing path issue, the compile/restart went smoothly.

Next steps:

• Get the easy fixes done (better GTRX, GTRY).
• Test the noise with POX and POY as the OOL sensors, and the arms controlled using the ALS error signal - this is the relevant metric for how ALS will be used in locking.
• Noise budget. Need to double-check the DFD output calibration into Hz.
• For the general interferometer recovery, I think I will push ahead with trying to lock some other configurations like the PRMI (should be easy to recover), DRMI (potentially more difficult to find the right settings), and the FPMI (I'd like to use this config to get an estimate for how much contrast defect we have in the interferometer, but I think it'll be pretty challenging to lock in this configuration).

Summary:

I managed to achieve a few transitions of control of the XARM length using the ALS error signal. The lock is sort of stable, but there are frequent "glitches" in the TRX level. Needs more noise hunting, but if the YARM ALS is also "good enough", I think we'd be well placed to try PRMI/DRMI locking with the arms held off resonance (while variable finesse remains an alternative).

Details:

Attachment #1: One example of a lock stretch. 

Attachment #2: ASD of the frequency noise witnessed by POX with the arm controlled by ALS. The observed RMS of ~30pm is ~3-4 times higher than the best performance I have seen, which makes me question if the calibration is off. To be checked...

Summary:

I improved the alignment of the green beam into the Y arm cavity.

• GTRY went from ~0.2 to ~0.25, see Attachment #1.
• This resulted in improvement of the Y arm ALS noise above 💯Hz by a factor of ~5, see Attachment #2.
• I tried controlling the two arm cavities in the CARM/DARM basis using ALS error signals - but didn't manage to successfully execute this transition today - this will be the commissioning goal for the upcoming week.

Details:

• I had to do the alignment by tweaking the steering mirrors at EY - the PZTs didn't give me anywhere near enough range.
• While I was at EY, I tried moving the two MM lenses mounted on translation stages to try and improve the mode-matching into the arm cavity - wasn't successful, still see a bunch of bullseye modes when I toggle the shutter.
• They EY green layout would benefit from a do-over (basically just copy the EX layout), but this isn't the priority right now, the ALS noise RMS is dominated by low frequency noise (as usual). 
• There is a ~5% leakage of the GTRX beam onto the GTRY photodiode.
• One thing to try would be to revive the MCL loop to reduce the <1 Hz laser frequency noise and see if that helps - basically testing this hypothesis.
• I had done some careful noise-budgeting of the EX green PDH system, the EY system would benefit from the same, but not critical.
• The improvement of the high-frequency noise is clear, and now we are consistent with the "known good reference" level from the time the DRFPMI locking was working back in early 2016.

Other changes made today:

1. /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/general/videoscripts/videoswitch was modified to be python3 compatible - for some reason, there were many syntax errors being thrown (even though I was using python2.7) and I wasn't able to change the displays in the VEA using the MEDM screen, but now it works again 👍.
2. The LSC overview and several daughter MEDM screens were edited to remove references to channels that no longer exist. All screens I edited have a backup stored in the MEDM directory with today's date as a suffix.
3. Input pointing into the PMC was tweaked.
4. Noted that some pump is noisy at pumpspool - also noted that the annuli are no longer pumped. Some event seems to have triggered an interlock condition that closed off the annular volume from TP3, needs investigation...

Summary:

I managed to execute the first few transitions of locking the arm lengths to the laser frequency in the CARM/DARM basis using the IR ALS system 🎉 🎊 . The performance is not quite optimized yet, but at the very least, we are back where we were in the green days.

Details:

1. Locking laser frequency to Y arm cavity length using MC2 as a frequency actuator
   • This is the usual diagnostic done to check the single-arm ALS noise using POY as an out of loop sensor.
   • The procedure is now scripted - I had to guess the sign and optimize the gains a few times, but this works deterministically now. 
   • Script lives at /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/YARM/Lock_ALS_YARM.py.
   • Attachment #1 shows the result. If we believe the POY sensor calibration, the RMS displacement noise is ~6 pm
2. Encouraged by the good performance of the Y arm, I decided to try the overall transition from the POX/POY basis to the CARM/DARM basis using ALS error signals.
   • The procedure starts with the arm cavities locked with POX/POY, and the respective green frequencies locked to the arm cavity length by the end PDH servos.
   • The DFD outputs serve as the ALS error signals - the PSL frequency is adjusted to the average value of DFD_X_OUT and DFD_Y_OUT.
   • I changed the LSC output matrix element for DARM-->ETMX from -1 to -5, to make it symmetric in actuation force w.r.t. ETMY (since the series resistane on ETMX is x5 that on ETMY).
   • After some guesswork, I fould the right signs for the gains. After enabling the boosts etc, I was able to keep both arms (approximately) on resonance for several minutes. See Attachment #2 for the time series of the transition process - the whole thing takes ~ 1 minute. 
   • A script to automate this procedure lives at /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/ALS/Transition_IR_ALS.py.
   • The transition isn't entirely robust when executed by script - the main problem seems to be that in the few seconds between ramping off the IR servos and enabling the CARM/DARM integrators/boosts, the DARM error-point offset can become rather large. Consequently, when the integrator is engaged, ETMX/ETMY get a large kick that misalign the cavity substantially, degrade the green lock, and destroy the CARM lock as well. The problem doesn't seem to exist for the CARM loop. 
   • Anyways, I think this is easily fixed, just need to optimize sleep times and handoff gains etc a bit. For now, I just engage the DARM boosts by hand, putting in a DARM offset if necessary to avoid any kicking of the optic.
   • Attachment #3 shows the length noise witnessed by POX/POY when the arm cavities are under ALS control. If we believe the sensor calibration, the RMS displacement noise is ~15 (20) pm for the Y (X) arm.
   • This is rather larger than I was hoping would be the case, and the RMS is dominated by the <1 Hz "mystery noise".
   • Nevertheless, for a first pass, it's good to know that we can achieve this sort of ALS performance with the new IR ALS system.

Over the week, I'll try some noise budgeting, to improve the performance. The next step in the larger scheme of things is to see if we can lock the PRMI/DRMI with CARM detuned off resonance.

[Shruti, Rana]

- At the X end, we set up the network analyzer to begin measurement of the AM transfer function by actuation of the laser PZT.

- The lid of the PDH optics setup was removed to make some checks and then replaced.

- From the PDH servo electronics setup the 'GREEN_REFL' and 'TO AUX-X LASER PZT' cables were removed for the measurement and then re-attached after.

- The signal today was too low to make a real measurement of the AM transfer function, but the GPIB scripts and interfacing was tested. 

Summary:

There are no unexpected red-flags in the performance of the DFD electronics. The calibration factors for the digital phase tracker system are 71.291 +/- 0.024 deg/MHz for the X delay line and 70.973 +/- 0.024 deg/MHz for the Y delay line, while the noise floor for the frequency noise discrimination is ~0.5 Hz/rtHz above 1 Hz (dominated by ADC noise).

Details:

1. Attachment #1 - This observation is what motivated my investigation.
   •  found that for certain beat frequencies between the PSL + EX lasers, the frequency noise reported by the DFD system was surprisingly low.
   • The measurement condition was: EX laser frequency locked to the arm cavity length by the uPDH servo at EX, arm cavity length locked to PSL frequency via POX locking.
2. To investigate further, I disconnected the output of the NF1611 PDs going to the ZHL-3A amplifiers on the PSL table (after first blocking the PSL light so that the PDs aren't generating any RF output).
   • An RF function generator (IFR2023B) was used to generate an RF signal to mimic the ALS beat signal.
   • I used a power splitter to divide the signal power equally between the two DFD paths.
   • The signal level on the Marconi was set to -5 dBm, to mimic the nominal power level seen by the DFD system.
   • I then performed two tests - (i) to calibrate the Phase Tracker output to deg / MHz and (ii) to measure the frequency noise reported by the DFD system for various signal frequencies.
   • Test (i): sweep the marconi frequency between 10 MHz - 200 MHz, measure the I and Q channels for each phase tracker servo, and figure out the complex argument of the signal using the arctangent. A linear polynomial was fit to the measured datapoints to extract the desired slope.
   • Test (ii): Sample frequencies uniformly distributed between 20 MHz - 80 MHz (nominal range of ALS beat frequencies expected). Reset the phase tracker servo gain, clear the output histories, wait for any transients to die out, and then collect the phase tracker servo output for 1 minute. Compute the FFT to figure out the frequency noise.
   • Attachment #2: Shows the phase tracker calibration, i.e. the results of Test (i). I took this opportunity to update the EPICS calibration fields that convert phase tracker servo output to Hz, the correction was ~7%. These numbers are consistent with what I measured previously - but the updated values weren't registered with SDF so everytime the LSC model was restarted, it reverted to the old values.
   • Attachment #3: Shows the spectra for the various measurements from Test (ii).
   • Attachment #4: Shows the gain of the phase tracker servo as a function of the RF signal frequency. This is a proxy for the signal strength, and the observed trend suggests that the signal power seen after digitization of the demodulated delay line output goes down by ~20% at 80 MHz relative to the level at 20 MHz. Seems reasonable to me, given frequency dependent losses of the intervening electronics / cabling.

Conclusion and next steps:

I still don't know what's responsible for the anomalously low noise levels reported by the ALS-X system sometimes. Next test is to check the EX PDH system, since on the evidence of these tests, the problem seems to be imprinted on the light (though I can't imagine how the noise becomes lower?).

Summary:

The EX PDH setup had what I thought was insufficient phase and gain margins. So I lowered the gain a little - the price paid was that the suppression of laser frequency noise of the end laser was reduced. I actually think an intermediate gain setting (G=7) can give us ~35 degrees of phase margin, ~10dB gain margin, and lower residual unsuppressed AUX laser noise - to be confirmed by measurement later. See here for the last activity I did - how did the gain get increased? I can't find anything in the elog.

During our EX AM/PM setups, I don't think we bumped the PDH gain knob (and I hope that the knob was locked). Possible drift in the PZT response? Good thing Shruti is on the case.

Is there a loop model of green PDH that agrees with the measurement? I'm wondering if something can be done with a compensation network to up the bandwidth or if the phase lag is more like a non-invertible kind.

The closest thing I can think of is here.

[Koji, gautam]

Summary:

We think we got to the bottom of this issue today. The RF signal level going into the demod board is too high. This electronics chain needs some careful gain reallocation.

Details:

I was demonstrating to Koji a strange feature I had noticed in the ALS control, whereby when applying a CARM offset to detune the arms, the two arms seemed to respond differently (based on the transmission levels). This kind of CARM-->DARM coupling seemed strange to me. Anyway, I also noticed that the EPICS indicators on the ALS MEDM screen suggested ADC saturations were going on. I had never really looked at the fast time series of the inputs to the phase tracker servos, but these showed saturating behavior on ndscope traces. I went to the LSC rack and measured these on a scope, indeed, they were ~20V pp.

The output of the BeatMouth PDs are going to a ZHL-3A amplifier - we should consider replacing these with lower gain amplifiers, e.g. the Teledyne AP1053. This is relegated to a daytime task.

Other findings tonight:

While working on the PSL table, I somehow put the IMC FSS into a bad state, reminiscent of this behavior. Seems like this is linked to some flaky connection on the PSL table. One candidate is the unstable attachment of the Pomona box between the NPRO PZT and the FSS output - we should install a short BNC cable between these to avoid the lever arm situation we have right now.

In calculating the above numbers, I assumed a DC transimpedance of 10 khhms and an RF Transimpedance of ~800 V/A.

[Elog14480]: per these calculations, with the NewFocus 1611 PDs, we cannot achieve shot noise limited sensing for any power below the rated maximum for linear operation (i.e. 1mW). Moreover, the noise figure of the RF amplifier we use to amplify the sensed beat note before driving the delay-line frequency discriminator is unlikely to be the limiting noise source in the current configuration. Rana suggested that we get two Gain Blocks. These can handle input powers up to ~10dBm while still giving us plenty of power to drive the delay line. This way, we can (i) not compromise on the sacred optical gain, (ii) be well below the 1dB compression point (i.e. avoid nonlinear noise effects) and (iii) achieve a better frequency discriminant. 

Temporary fix: While the gain blocks arrive, I inserted a 10dB (3dB) attenuator between the PSL+EX (PSL+EY) photodiode RF output and the ZHL-3A amplifiers. This way, we are well below the 1dB compression point of said RF amplifiers, and also below the 1dB compression point of the on-board Teledyne AP1053 amplifiers on the demodulator boards we use.

Nest steps: Rana is getting in touch with Rich Abbott to find out if there is any data available on the noise performance of the post-mixer IF amplifier stage in the 0.1 -30 Hz range, where the voltage and current noise of the AD829 OpAmps could be limiting the DFD performance. But in the meantime, the ALS noise seems good again, and there is no evidence of the sort of CARM/DARM coupling that motivated this investigation in the first place. Managed to execute several IR-->ALS transitions tonight in the PRFPMI locking efforts (next elog).

No new Teledyne AP1053s were harmed in this process - I'll send the 5 units back to Rich tomorrow.

Some details:

- There was a SR560+SR785 (not connected for measurement) placed near the X end which I moved; it is now behind the electronics rack by the X arm beam tube (~15m away).

- Also, for the AM measurement I moved the AG5395A from behind the PSL setup to the X end, where it now is.

- By toggling the XGREEN shutter, I noticed that the cavity was not resonant before I disconnected anything from the setup since the spot shape kept changing, but I proceeded anyway. 

- Because Rana said that it was important for me to mention: the ~5 USD blue-yellow crocs (that I now use) work fine for me.

The AM Measurement:

1. The cables were calibrated with the DC block in the A port (for a A/R measurement)

2. The cable to the PZT was disconnected from the pomona box and connected to the RF out of the NA, the PD output labelled 'GREEN_REFL' was also disconnected and connected to the B port via a DC block. 

3. The ITMX was 'misaligned'. (This allowed the reflected green PD output as seen on the oscilloscope to stabilize.)

4. The PZT is modulated in frequency and the residual amplitude modulation (as observed in the measured reflected green light) is plotted, ref. Attachment 1. The parameters for the plotted data in the attachment were:

# AG4395A Measurement - Timestamp: Nov 07 2019 - 17:04:07
#---------- Measurement Parameters ------------
# Start Frequency (Hz): 10000.0, 10000.0
# Stop Frequency (Hz): 10000000.0, 10000000.0
# Frequency Points: 801, 801
# Measurement Format: LOGM, PHAS
# Measuremed Input: AR, AR
#---------- Analyzer Settings ----------
# Number of Averages: 8
# Auto Bandwidth: On, On
# IF Bandwidth: 300.0, 300.0
# Input Attenuators (R,A,B): 0dB 10dB 20dB 
# Excitation amplitude = -10.0dBm

------------------------------------

Update (19:13 7thNov19):  When the ITMX was intentionally misaligned, Rana and I checked to see if the Oplevs were turned off and they were. But while I was casually checking the Oplevs again, they were on! 

Not sure what to do about this or what caused it. 

Attachment #1 - comparison of phase tracker servo angle fluctuations for the green beat vs IR beat.

• To convert to Hz, I used the PT servo calibration detailed here.
• This is only a function of the delay line length and not the signal strength, so shouldn't be affected by the difference in signal strength between the IR and green beats.
• For the green beat - I divided the measured spectra by 2 to convert the green beat frequency fluctuations into equivalent IR frequency fluctuations.
• There is no whitening before digitization. I believe the measured spectra are dominated by ADC noise above ~50 Hz. See this elog for the frequency discriminant as a funtion of signal strength, so 5uV/rtHz ADC noise would be ~2 Hz/rtHz for a -5dBm signal, which is what I expect for the Y beat, and ~0.5 Hz/rtHz for a +5dBm signal, which is what I expect for the X beat. Hence the brown (Green beat, XARM) being lower than the green trace (IR beat, XARM) isn't real, it is just because of my division of 2. So I guess that calibration factor I applied is misleading.
• I did not yet check the noise in the other configuration - arm lengths controlled using ALS, and POX/POY as the OOL sensors. To be tried tonight.

Attachment #2 - RIN of the DCPDs.

• I noticed that over 10s of seconds, the GTRY level was fluctuating by ~5%. 
• This was much more than any drift seen in the GTRX level.
• Measuring the RIN on the DCPDs (Thorlabs PDA36A) supports this observation (spectra were divided by DC value to convert into RIN units).
• There is ~120uW (1.6 VDC, compatible with 30dB gain setting) incident on the GTRX PD, and ~6uW (170 mVDC, compatible with 40dB gain setting) incident on the GTRY PD.
• Not sure what is driving this drift - I don't see any coherence with the IR TRY signal, so doesn't seem like it's the cavity.

Characterization of the green beat setup [past numbers]:

• With some patient alignment effort (usual near-field/far-field matching), I was able to recover the green beat signals.
• Overall, the numbers I measured today are consistent with what was seen in the past when we had the ability to lock using green ALS.
• The mode-matching between the PSL and AUX green beams are still pretty abysmal, ~40-50%. The mode shapes are clearly different, but for now, I don't worry about this.
• I saw some strong AM of the beat signal (for both EX and EY beats) while I was looking at it on a scope, see Attachment #3. This AM is not visible in the IR beat, not sure what to make of it. The frequency of the AM is ~1 MHz, but it's hard to nail this down because the scope doesn't have a very long buffer, and I didn't look at the frequency content on the Agilent (yet).

o BBPD DC output (mV), all measured with Fluke DMM

             XARM   YARM 
 V_DARK:     +1.0    +2.0
 V_PSL:      +8.0    +13.0
 V_ARM:      +157.0  +8.0

o BBPD DC photocurrent (uA)
I_DC = V_DC / R_DC ... R_DC: DC transimpedance (2kOhm)
 I_PSL:       3.5    5.5
 I_ARM:      78.0    3.0

o Expected beat note amplitude
I_beat_full = I1 + I2 + 2 sqrt(e I1 I2) cos(w t) ... e: mode overlap (in power)
I_beat_RF = 2 sqrt(e I1 I2)

V_RF = 2 R sqrt(e I1 I2) ... R: RF transimpedance (2kOhm)

P_RF = V_RF^2/2/50 [Watt]
     = 10 log10(V_RF^2/2/50*1000) [dBm]
     = 10 log10(e I1 I2) + 82.0412 [dBm]
     = 10 log10(e) +10 log10(I1 I2) + 82.0412 [dBm]

for e=1, the expected RF power at the PDs [dBm]
 P_RF:      -13.6  -25.8

o Measured beat note power (measured with oscilloscope, 50 ohm input impedance)      
 P_RF:      -17.95dBm (80 mVpp)  -28.4dBm (24mVpp)   (40MHz and 42MHz)  
    e:        37%                    55  [%]                                             

I also measured the various green powers with the Ophir power meter (filter off): 

o Green light power (uW) [measured just before PD, does not consider reflection off the PD]
 P_PSL:       18    24
 P_ARM:       400     13

The IR beat is not being made at the moment because I blocked the PSL beam entering the fiber.

As part of characterization, I wanted to calibrate the EY uPDH error point monitor into units of Hz. So I thought I'd measure the PDH horn-to-horn voltage with the cable to the laser PZT disconnected. However, I saw no clean PDH fringe while monitoring the signal after the LPF that is immediately downstream of the mixer IF output. I then decided to measure the low pass filter OLTF, and found that it seems to have some complex poles (f0~57kHz, Q~5), that amplify the signal by ~x6 relative to the DC level before beginning to roll-off (see Attachment #1). Is this the desired filter shape? Can't find anything in the elog/wiki about such a filter shape being implemented...

The actual OLTF looks alright to me though, see Attachment #2.

                   filter Q seems too high,

but what precisely is the proper way to design the IF filter?

   seems like we should be able to do it using math instead of feelins

                              Izumi made this one so maybe he has an algorythym

I got confused. Why don't we see that too-high-Q pole in the OLTF? 

I'm not sure - maybe it was measurement error on my part, I will double check. Moreover, the EX and EY boxes don't seem to use identical designs, if one believes the schematics drawn on the Pomona boxes. The EY design has a 50ohm input impedance in the stopband, whereas the EX doesn't. Maybe the latter needs a Tee + 50ohm terminator at the input?

Judging by the schematics, the servo inputs to both boxes are driving the non-inverting input of an opamp, so they see high-Z.

Rana and I discussed this alogrythym a bit today - here are some bullet points, I'll work on preparing a notebook. We are still talking about a post-mixer low pass filter.

• We want to filter out the 2f component - attenuation relative to the 1f content and be well below the slew-rate of the first post-mixer opamp (OP27).
• We don't want to lose much phase due to the corner of the LPF, so that we can have a somewhat high UGF - let's shoot for 30kHz.
• What should the order of the filter be such that we achieve these goals?
• We will use a numerical optimization routine, that makes a filter that has
  • yy dB attenuation at high frequencies
  • sufficient stability margin
  • sufficiently small phase lag at 30 kHz so that we can realize ~30kHz UGF with the existing servo electronics.

Here are some loop transfer functions. I basically followed the decomposition of the end PDH loop as was done in the multi-color metrology paper. There is no post-mixer low pass filter at the moment (in my model), but already you can see that the top of the phase bubble is at ~10 kHz. Probably there is still sufficient phase available at 30 kHz, even after we add an LPF. In any case, I'll use this model and set up a cost function minimization problem and see what comes out of it. For the PZT discriminant, I used 5 MHz/V, and for the PDH discriminant, I used 40 uV/Hz, which are numbers that should be close to what's the reality at EY.

(i) Note that there could be some uncertainty in the overall gain (VGA stage in the servo).

(ii) For the cavity pole, I assumed the single pole response, which Rana points out isn't really valid at ~1 MHz, which is close to the next FSR

(ii) The PZT response is approximated as a simple LPF whereas there are likely to be several sharp features which may add/eat phase. 

Summary:

1. The ZHL-1010+ gain blocks acquired from MiniCircuits arrived sometime ago.
2. I packaged them in a box prepared  (Attachment #1).
3. Their performance was characterized by me (Attachment #2 and #3).

The measurements are consistent with the specifications, and there is no evidence of compression at any of the power levels we expect to supply to this box (<0dBm).

Details:

These "gain blocks" were acquired for the purpose of amplifying the IR ALS beat signals before transmission to the LSC rack for demodulation. The existing ZHL-3A amplifiers have a little too much gain, since our revamp to use IR light to generate the ALS beat.

Attachment #4: Setups used to measure transfer functions and noise.

For the transfer function measurement, I chose to send the output of the amplifier to a coupler, and measured the coupled port (output port of the coupler was terminated with 50 ohms). This was to avoid saturating the input of the AG4395. The "THRU" calibration feature of the AG4395 was used to remove the effect of cabling, coupler etc, so that the measurement is a true reflection of the transfer function of OUT/IN of this box. Yet, there are some periodic ripples present in the measured gain, though the size of these ripples is smaller than the spec-ed gain flatness of <0.6dB.

For the noise measurement, the plots I've presented in Attachment #3 are scaled by a factor of sqrt(2) since the noise of the ZFL-500-HLN+ and the ZHL-1010+ are nearly identical according to the specification. Note that the output noise measured was divided by the (measured) gain of the ZFL-500-HLN+ and the ZFL-1010+ to get the input referred noise. The trace labelled "Measurement noise floor" was measured with the input to the ZFL-500-HLN+ terminated with 50ohms, while for the other two traces, the inputs of the ZHL-1010+ were terminated with 50ohms.

Raw data in Attachment #5.

I will install these at the next opportunity, so that we can get rid of the many attenuators in this path (the main difficulty will be sourcing the required +12V DC for operation, we only have +15V available near the PSL table).

Jordan will write up the detailed elog but in summary,

1. Former +24V Sorensen in the AUX OMC power rack (south of 1X2) has been reconfigured to +12V DC.
2. The voltage was routed to a bank of fusable terminal blocks on the NW corner of 1X1.
3. An unused cable running to the PSL table was hijacked for this purpose.
4. The ZHL-1010+ were installed on the upper shelf of the PSL table, the two gain blocks draw a total of ~600mA of current when powered.