There is just so much room on this table.

[Manasa, Jenne]

We took the last of the in-vac photos of mirrors today.  I'll post in the morning.

Tomorrow, I'll align the DRMI once more to check, and get IPPOS and IPANG out of the vacuum.  I'll  take a look at POX, POY and POP, but we may just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best on those ones.  They were pretty hard to get out of the vac during their initial alignment, since they're so weak.

Also, tomorrow morning Steve is going to try out our new light access connector!!!!  I'm so excited!

The goal is to put heavy doors on, on Wed, and start pumping Wed afternoon / Thurs evening.

 My hope is that the DRMI flashes will be bright enough to see on the PO beams. IF we get 10 mW through the Faraday, you should get some buildup when the carrier resonates in the DRMI.

If the recycling gain is 10 and the pickoff fraction is 100 ppm you ought to get ~10 uW on PO. How much of the recycling cavity power gets out of POP?

 The photos on the OMC table are particularly tricky, since the camera plus the 'bathroom' mirror add a lot of weight....even if the MC locked, the input beam would be completely different, so all of the beams would be wrong.

During some of the work on the BS table, ITMY was realigned to have its beam retro-reflect, since the weight of the camera plus mirror was shifting all of the suspended optics on the BS table.  ITMY was restored after that, for subsequent photos.

I have touched PZT2 such that the beam goes through the 45 degree non-iris target on the beam splitter.  This puts the beam at the center of ITMY, and without moving the BS, at the center of ITMX.  I say "at the center", but what I really mean is I put the target approximately at the center, within what looks like, say, 2 mm, by looking from above.  The target was many (5ish) centimeters away from the optic though, so that's why my side-to-side centering isn't so precise.  Given that, the beam was always more than half going through the hole of the target for both ITMs, so I'm claiming that the spots on the ITMs are within a few mm of center.

With this alignment, the beam was also hitting the center of the SRM (with all the same caveats).

I was able to get the SRM to retroreflect, while I still had Michelson fringing, so I think that I had the SRMI at least close to aligned (I was looking at the SRM retroreflection at the beam splitter, not all the way out to the AS port).  PRM is also pretty easy to align.

We're hitting the top of the AS camera, so I think things are pretty good.  I don't see beam on the REFL camera, but no investigation of that has been done as yet.

There is some scattering going on in the BS / ITMX chambers that's making me kind of unhappy.  I don't know how to get this to embed the youtube video, so here's the embed link, as well as the regular link:

youtube of AS and BS/PRM camera.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QUbnMLXSS5U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Manasa watched the camera while I waved an IR card around in the BS chamber, and the only way I was able to get all the scatter spots to go away was to either block the beam incident on the BS (duh), or block the beam reflected off the BS, heading to ITMX.  Manasa said that the scatter spots still looked like they were fringing though, so I'm confused.  I may wave a card around in the ITMX chamber when I come back later tonight, to see what I can see.  Also, I just misaligned the SRM, and the scatter spots moved.  Now there's just some scatter off of what looks like the BS OSEM holders, as seen through the BS optic.

 {Jan, Manasa}

We tried towards calibrating the RF driver of the AOM. We decided to use the normal power supply for both the driver control voltage and the ALC voltage.  But we could not figure out the type of the ALC port to find a compatible mating connector...it did not match with SMA, SMB or SMP. Finally I wrote to the company and got to know it is a filtered feed through. Now that we know how to control the ALC voltage, we will try looking at the signal for varying ALC voltage and see how that goes. 

But when we tried to see the 2W RF signal through the RF scope, with ALC open, we found that the RF signal was distorted and did not measure 80MHz.  It was lame that we did not get a snapshot 

P.S. The AOM has been left disconnected from the RF driver. 

Results of the Razor Blade Beam Scan

The horizontal blade test measured the beam intensity as a razor blade passed in between it and a power meter from the left side of the beam (negative x values) until blocking it. The resulting function, found through least-squares regression of the error function, calculates a beam height of 3.6 mm +/- 16 mm. However, the function has a chi-squared value of 3.2, so that value may not be accurate.

The vertical blade test measured beam intensity as a razor moved from below the beam (negative x values) until blocking it. This function, found the same way as above, calculates a beam width of 2.8mm +/- 9.6 mm, and has chi-squared value of 0.77.

Both data sets have a y-error of 0.5 micro-Watts, and an x-error of 0.127 mm. The Python code used to analyze the data and plot the results is attached.

The DRMI was aligned once again tonight. 

Here's a video: http://youtu.be/Cy8nHL9yMeM  (Can someone please tell me / remind me how to make the elog embed videos?!?)

Description of video:

Video capture of AS camera.
NOTE: The beam is a few centimeters above ETMY with this alignment, so it will not be final.

Beginning is ITMY only.
ITMX is realigned to form MICH.
PRM is realigned to form PRMI.
SRM is realigned to form DRMI.
PRM is misaligned to form SRMI.
ITMX is misaligned to form SRY.

With this alignment, I opened up the ETMY door to find the beam there.  The beam is ~half on, ~half off of the top of the glass baffle.  Not the top of the hole, but the top of the piece of glass.  This means that it's many centimeters too high at ETMY.  This helps explain why, while swinging PZT2 around the other day, I could not see any beam on the cage.  It did, however, look pretty close (within a centimeter....I didn't look closer than that since it was so off in pitch) to centered yaw-wise.

Tomorrow I'd like a Clean assistant to help tweak PZT2 to hit the center of ETMY.  We'll need to put the 45 degree target back on to make sure that we don't end up pointing funny down the arm.  Then I'll realign the DRMI one more time.

Tonight, I can't check the full AS path, or any of the REFL path once it diverges from the main path.  Steve's new contraption (which is awesome!) doesn't have doors/windows yet, so I can't open it to get an IR card anywhere near any optics in the IOO or OMC chambers.  I waved PRM around a bit, but I can't find the beam on the REFL camera, so I definitely need to check that whole path again before we close up.

So, we're not closing up tomorrow, but progress has been made, and we're getting closer.

Note to self:  These are the ITMX, ITMY, PRM, BS, SRM biases with this DRMI alignment.  The DRMI is good, but the arms aren't, so these won't be final.  The saved alignments are still those with (for the Yarm) the beam bouncing several times between ITMY and ETMY.  BS was aligned at the time to hit the center of ETMX, and PRM and SRM should be retro reflecting in that alignment.  So, it's possible, that aligning PZT2 to hit the center of ETMY and restoring all of the optics will get me close to being back to DRMI aligned, but in a condition that the arms are align-able too.

I'm making a separate entry to go along with this thread of photos...

Putting the camera and 'bathroom' mirror on any table pretty significantly changes the leveling of any table.  The mirror especially is very heavy, although the camera is not feather light.  We need to come up with a new plan for taking alignment-confirming photos without adding anything to the tables.  That, or we have to level the table between each camera shot.  Anyone who has ever leveled one of our in-vac tables should shudder in horror at idea #2, so we need to put some thought into idea #1 before our next vent.  Vent Czar - can you put this on the list, in addition to the REFL rearrangement stuff?

As a result of this, PZT2 needed to be reverted to the place it was before work began on Saturday (so that the beam goes through the 45 degree target without any extra stuff on the table).  This means, unfortunately, that all of the photos / still captures of optics after PZT2 are invalid.

 24" diameter clear acetate access connector is in place. The 0.01" thick plastic is wrapped around twice to insure air and bug tight barrier for the MC to lock overnight. The acetate transmission for 1064 nm is 90 % This was measured at 150 mW   2.5 mm beam size.

SOS alignment tool with ID 9.5 and 6.3 mm

 {Jan, Manasa}

We started again to calibrate the RF driver. We connected the ALC to the power supply and observed the output RF power on the scope. The RF power did change with ALC voltage, but the RF signal still seems not to be operating at 80MHz 

There is some kind of additional disturbance to the waveform at 80MHz (the frequency of just the waveform with tall peaks or small peaks alone). We made sure we get a snapshot this time!! I am not sure if it will be safe to feed this RF signal to the AOM as such

The power buildup in the MC is ~400, so 100mW of incident power would give about 40W circulating in the mode cleaner.

Rana points out that the ATF had a 35W beam running around the table in air, with a much smaller spot size than our MC has, so 40W should be totally fine in terms of coating damage.

I have therefore increased the power into the vacuum envelope to ~75mW.  The MC REFL PD should be totally fine up to ~100mW, so 75mW is plenty low.  The MC transmission is now a little over 1000 counts.  I have changed the low power mcup script to not bring the VCO gain all the way up to 31dB anymore.  Now it seems happy with a VCO gain of 15dB (which is the same as normal power).

 AOM driver has been removed from the PSL table for testing. However the AOM is still inside; so there should be no problems with the alignment. 

Time domain control using LQR technique is now applied to ETMX sus position. The plan was to do it for oplevs, I'll do it after the vent.

The cost function for state space variables was determined by TF  900 / (s + 30)^2. There was no penulty imposed for velocity, only for position. We can try that configuration as well.

[Unni, Manasa, Jenne]

It turned out that the beam was a teeny bit high in the corner, so we touched PZT1 and PZT2 knobs to translate the beam down a bit.

Now the beam is centered on the BS (using the 45 degree non-iris target), centered on ETMY (using Steve's latest target, which worked perfectly), and then BS was aligned a tiny bit (really, it didn't need much) to get the beam centered on ETMX.

After dinner I'll align ITMX and ITMY such that their beams retroreflect and I get MICH fringes.  I'll also align SRM and PRM to retroreflect.  Check no clipping on AS path, get REFL path out, center IPPOS and IPANG, check POX, POY and POP.  Then, I think we might be almost done.

Mannasa and Unni and I looked at the RF driver for the AOM. It was fine.

With the ALC input left unconnected, with the power supply set to +28V, it was drawing 0.56 A.

By adjusting the modulation input we were able to get 1.1 Vrms into the scope (terminated at 50 Ohms) after going through 2 10dB attenuators. 11 Vrms into 50 Ohms is 33.8 dBm ~ 2W.

The RF power trimpot on the front of the driver is now adjusted so that -0.31 to 0.69 V takes the driver output from off to 2W output at 80 MHz.

The previous distorted signal that Jan and Manasa saw was at a level of ~100 mVrms, which is ~0.5 mW of power. At this tiny drive level, the internal amplifier is not linear and is mostly putting out a signal at ~160 MHz.

We checked by putting a square wave into the modulation input that the RF power from the driver would indeed shut off with a time scale of ~20 ns. Manasa will add a picture to this entry. We are ready now to calibrate the transmitted power of the AOM v. the modulation input voltage and then to measure the step time of the AOM.

Remember: do NOT believe the spec sheet of whatever PD you are using. All commercial PDs are slower than they advertise. In order to measure a <1 us step time you must use a PD with a >50 MHz 'bandwidth'.

[Jenne, Manasa]

Using the alignment of the PZTs and BS from pre-dinner, where the beam was hitting the center of both ETMs, we aligned the DRMI.  The beam was off on the SRM in yaw by ~half a beam diameter, so I undid Koji's movement of SR2 from a week ago.  I loosened the SR2 dog clamps, touched it gently on the base to do a little bit of angle, then re-clamped it.  Once again, Steve's new brass centering target was awesome, since it was on the SRM while I was moving SR2. 

We approximately recentered the beam on the AS camera, although it didn't need much once we got the beam out of the vacuum, by centering it on all of the output AS path mirrors.

We also got IPPOS out of the vacuum.  Manasa was in the process of centering the QPD when the laptop died from too long being unplugged, so we leave that for tomorrow.

Left to do:

REFL path.  REFL is not coming out of the vacuum, and with the light access connector I can't reach any of the REFL steering mirrors, since they're in the center of the IOO table.

IPANG.  Should be easy.

POP, POX, POY.  Need to the the camera-on-a-stick back down to the corner (from ETMY) and point it at the pickoff mirrors to ensure that beam is getting out of the vacuum.

 Steve!! The light access connector got more ripped during the work last night...we've just taped it back. We might need  to figure out a better way to do this than just cutting through the cover.

 Hi everyone,

I've been working a bit on neural network code for a controller, and thus far I have code that creates a reference plant neural network. This is necessary to perform a gradient-descent learning algorithm on a controller neural network (one that reads an error signal and outputs actuation force). Because the error signal is read after the previous output of the controller neural network has passed through the plant, in order to calculate the gradient, either the inverse of the plant needs to be calculated, or the plant can be simulated through a neural network, and the error signal can thus be back-propagated through the plant neural network to find the gradient with respect to the output (as opposed to with respect to the plant), and thus back-propagated through the controller network in order to learn. 

I have uploaded to my directory a directory neural_plant. The most important file is reference_plant.c, which compiles with the command

 gcc reference_plant.c -o reference_plant -lfann -lm

The code runs on a file called reference_plant.data, which consists of a series of delayed inputs i_1, i_2, i_3 ... i_{n - 1} of the plant signals and then an output that is i_{n}, the subsequent signal. Parallel streams may also be used, if more than one signal is to be read. The top of the file must contain the number of total training packets (input-output groups), followed by the number of inputs, and the number of outputs. reference_plant.c also has constant variables which specify the number of hidden neurons, which can be changed. 

 QPD at IPPOS has been centered by removing the filter at the QPD.

So we need to remember to check back on AS camera path and the IPPOS as well in addition to the usual MCrefl path.

P.S. We would be happy to have a new laptop in the lab to replace "Belladonna"!

 [Manasa, Jenne]

We think this math is wrong.

If we have P mW through the Faraday, PRM's transmission is 5.5%, BS transmission is 50%, Recycling gain is ~10, pickoff fraction is ~100ppm, we have:

P mW * 5.5e-2 * 0.5 * 10 * 100e-6 = P * 2750e-8 mW = P * 2.7e-5 mW.

So, if P=10 (10mW through the Faraday), we should have 2.7e-4 mW = 2.7e-7 W = 0.27 microwatts = not so many watts.    

If P = 100 (100mW through the Faraday), we should have 2.7 microwatts. Still, not so many watts.

We have the Watec pointed at POY right now, DRMI is flashing, I'm waving the IR card in front of the mirror, and Manasa isn't able to see anything on the monitor.  The power into the vacuum is 100mW (we just measured and adjusted it), so even if we were getting a full 100mW through the Faraday, it would be hard to see.  If we're assuming we get ~half the power through the Faraday, then we should only have 1 microwatt

[Jenne, Unni, Manasa]

I touched some in-vac steering mirrors, so we have REFL and IPANG coming out of the vacuum, not clipping.  IPPOS was done yesterday.  I re-checked a few optics in the AS path that were hard to see yesterday while the plastic light access connector was in place, and AS still looks good.

Except for POX, POY, POP, and putting the regular EQ stops back on PRM, I think we're done with the in-vac stuff.

 We can't mathdo

 [Rana, Jenne, Manasa]

POX is coming out of the vacuum.  We'll do POY tomorrow.  We were able to hold the Watec outside the chamber and focus it on the pickoff mirror, and make sure it was roughly centered.  Then we took the lens off the camera, put the camera in the POX beam path, and I steered the pickoff mirror until we were hitting the camera.  POY will be done the same way.

POP is more challenging, since the transmission of the G&H mirrors is so low.  We're not able to see a beam on an IR card held in the POP beam path.  I had thought of removing PR2, getting the beam out, then putting PR2 back (using the same dog clamping some alignment markers technique that we use for the test masses), but the G&H mirrors have a 2 degree wedge, so this won't work.  It would be fine for pitch, since the arrow is on the side of the optic, but it wouldn't be correct for yaw.

Maybe we should do something similar to what Suresh et. al. did when they set POP up originally - I think they put a green laser pointer on the POX table, and aligned it such that they were hitting the correct spot on PR2 and PRM (correct = the same as the IR spot, which should be the center of the optics).  If we can do that with the POP in-vac steering mirrors, then we're fine, and POP should come out when we're back to high power.

All video capture snapshots of tonights pictures are on the pianosa desktop.

 We would appreciate some plots. Learning curves of recurrent NN working as a plant are interesting. For harmonic oscillator your RNN should not contain any hidden layers - only 1 input and 1 output node and 2 delays at each of them. Activation function should be linear. If your code is correct, this configuration will match oscillator perfectly. The question is how much time does it take to adapt.

Does FANN support regularization? I think this will make your controller more stable. Try to use more advanced algorithms then gradient descent for adaptation. They will increase convergence speed. For example, look at fminunc function at Matlab.

    {Jan, Manasa}

We installed the AOM driver back on the PSL table this morning. To calibrate the AOM RF output we connected a 1V dc to the modulation input of the driver and we are convinced with the setup.

Before we direct the rf signal to the AOM, in order to check its diffraction efficiency, we would like to setup an rf PD at the AOM output. We think we have place for a filter and PD after the AOM (replacing a beam dump) and would like to confirm the position before we actually install them. The layout is the picture below showing sweet spots for the new pd to sit. If you think it may disturb the system in any way, let us know!

Getting POP:

We put a green laser pointer at ~4 inches on the POX table, and steered it using a mirror on the POX table to hit the center of the last in-vac mirror that POP sees.  I then steered that mirror so we were hitting the center of the other POP in-vac steering mirror, and hitting the same spot as the main IR beam.  It is easy to hold an IR card in front of PR2 and see the IR and green beams simultaneously.  I aligned both of the POP in-vac steering mirrors such that the green beam is co-aligned with the IR beam at PR2, as well as as far as I could reach toward the face of PRM from the ITMX door. 

Note:  The drawings by Koji have the POP "forward" beam (transmission through PR2 of the beam from PRM to PR2) dumped, while the POP "backward" beam (transmission through PR2 of the beam from PR3 to PR2) leaving the vacuum.  I aligned the steering mirrors such that the 'forward' beam would come out, although no dump is in place to dump the other beam.  I can't think of a reason why we care one way or the other, but I feel like Koji has perhaps mentioned something in the past.  I need to figure this out before we put doors on.

Getting POY:

Like yesterday with POX, we used the Watec with the aperture fully open to look at the POY pickoff, while I held the IR card in front of the mirror, to confirm that the beam was ~on the center of the optic. Then we took the lens off the camera, and made sure that the POY beam hit the CCD on the POY table.

To do list for Monday: While we are putting the heavy doors on, someone needs to wave an IR card in front of the IPANG steering mirrors in the ETMY chamber, while someone else takes a photo / still snapshot with the Watec.  Also, Manasa wanted to retake in-vac photos of at least the ITMY chamber, since SR2 was moved a very slight amount.  Also, also, someone tall needs to put the regular EQ stops on the PRM face (we have the old spring ones in there now).

Before pumpdown, we also need to get the IPANG beam centered on the PD.  The beam is cleanly coming out of the vacuum and hitting the first out of vac steering mirror, I just haven't centered it onto the QPD. 

Barring any other thoughts that people have of things that *must* be done before we pump down, I think we're ready to start putting heavy doors on the chambers on Monday.

Other thoughts, for next vent:  We need to re-look at the ITMY table.  POY's pickoff is just too close to the main beam.  Is it possible to move the AS steering mirrors and get POY from the BS table?  VENT CZAR: please put looking at this on the next vent to-do list.

Unaltered PR2 images, with IR card, without card, and steering mirror:

Unaltered POX and POY images:

The POX images only needed a major brightness reduction and increased contrast to view:

The POY images needed their intensity histograms shifted slightly right and made left-tailed:

I did TT alignment using red laser and QPD.

 I had a problem aligning TT with frame number SN-035 as some screws are damaged so all what I could move were 2 blades on the sides of the mirrors. But this was not enough to align pitch and yaw simultaneously.  It is possible to align pitch only, but then I got a huge yaw angle (~0.05-0.1 rad). The only option I had was to make a reasonable alignment in yaw and then suspend several washes on the screw on the bottom of the mirror to align pitch.

Attached are flag positions inside coils. 1 - SN034, 2 - SN012, 3 - SN006, 4 - SN035. For each TT there are 4 pictures with flag 1-4: UL, LL, UR, LR

I've installed Guralp readout box back and it turned out that it does not work with voltage provided from the rack (+13.76 0 -14.94).  +/-12 voltage regulators inside the box convert it to -0.9 0 -12. I've connected the box to +/-15 DC voltage supply to measure seismic motion at the ETMY table. Readout box works fine with +/- 15.

Seismic noise on the ETMY table measured to be a few times higher then on the floor in horizontal direction in the frequency range 50 - 200 Hz. Attached are compared spectrums of X, Y and Z motions.

I've applied LQR approach to MC_L locking. Results show that LQR does not make MC_F signal smaller below 0.3 Hz in contrast with classical locking. This might indicate that in this frequency range we see sensing noise as LQR was provided with state-space model of MC only so it tries to reduce displacement noise. It is also possible that state-space model is not accurate enough.

The SP table was found open this morning. Please, do not make optics dirty!

I cleaned up the tops of the SP table.

Stop storing your junk, boxes, laptops, etc. on the optical tables. This includes the big SP table. Please move all of that junk into racks or shelves, etc.

[The 40m Family]

The access connector and all heavy doors are back on. 

Jamie put the regular viton EQ stops back on PRM, since he had to adjust the distance between the EQ stops and the PRM anyway.  Jamie also waved an IR card near the IPANG steering mirrors in ETMY, but it was not possible to take a good photo.  Jamie certifies that the beam is centered on both of those 2 optics.

I have centered IPPOS and IPANG QPDs. 

All oplevs need a little realignment, especially ETMY, which had it's lens removed (Rana has a Wall of Shame photo of this, which is why it was removed by him).  Steve will look into this tomorrow, after he starts pumping.

I have turned off all PZT high voltage supplies for in-vac PZTs: The input PZTs, the output PZTs, and the OMC PZTs (which weren't on, but I confirmed they were off).

I have also prepared the 3 low-power items for high power: MC refl's path was changed back to regular BS, AS camera was moved to its nominal position, and IPPOS has its ND filters back.  MC refl and the AS camera will need to be realigned once we're actually at high power tomorrow afternoon.

Long vent, but good work everyone.

 I'm not sure what the problem is here.  Den and I looked at it for a few minutes, before I went back to helping with putting doors on.  The Sorensons are not supplying the rack power for 1X1.  There are some flat cables which go from the fuses on the side of the rack up to the cable tray, and go elsewhere.  Den is going to continue looking into this, but I think it's a moderately high priority, since lots of things should be getting served by that same power.

  The IFO will be at atmosphere  overnight. The annuloses are pumped down. The access connector jam nuts are tightened to 45 ft/lbs

Actual pumpdown will start tomorrow morning.

  What was the reasoning / resolution of the POP forward/backward beam? Are we going to have the right beam for DRMI locking?

From Koji's email to me:

"With the backward beam you can see the returning beam even when the PRM is misaligned. That's the only difference. Once the PRM is aligned both beams have the same information."

So, we should be fine.

 IFO P1= 1mTorr,   CC1 = 5e-4 Torr.  The IFO is ready for work. Be free to open the shutter and turn on HV

Jenne will double check the MC -REFL path for 1W power.  There is a manual block on the PSL table.

Atm1,  Pirani gauge at 9 h 10 min

Atm2, Pump configuration of pd#73 at 9h 35 min

[Jenne, Evan Hall]

Both IPPOS and IPANG beams are (after turning on the input and output PZTs) hitting their QPDs.  However IPANG was saturating.  We went down to take a look, and we had ~2.8mW incident on the QPD.  There was an ND filter sitting unmounted, next to the diode, and an empty fork directly in front of the diode.  Since IPPOS also has an ND filter in front, we stuck this ND filter back in.  Now we are no longer saturating.

We're not hitting (yet) the center of these 2 PDs, but we're at least hitting the diodes, so it shouldn't be too hard to steer the input PZTs.

Whomever took away this ND filter without elogging it was BAD!!!  (Jamie, when we first found IPANG coming out of the vacuum during this vent, we moved some of the mirrors on the out-of-vac table in the IPANG path.  Was the ND filter removed at that time?  Or has it been out for much longer, and we never noticed because IPANG wasn't coming nicely out of the vacuum / was clipping on the oplev lens?)

[Jenne, Evan, Den]

MC REFL beam is back on the PD, and the mode cleaner locks.  It looks like we're a little high on the MC Refl camera, but the MC spots were measured, and don't look like they changed from Friday (or maybe Monday?), the last time they were measured. We took this to be acceptable MC alignment, and did not touch the PSL table's pointing.

The laser power reduction optics were removed, and placed out of the way on the PSL table (where do they belong?).  PSL-POS and PSL-ANG aren't quite perfectly centered, but a beam dump had been in the way of that path, so I don't know if they drifted bad, or if it was a sudden thing.  The beam is still hitting the QPDs though.  After removing the beam power reducing optics, we recentered the MC REFL beam on the REFL PD, still not touching any PSL alignment.  MC mirrors were aligned (Den did this work while I showed Evan around, so I don't know by how much), and MC Trans was maximized (really MC Refl was minimized, making sure that the unlocked MC Refl was the usual 4.something units on the EPICS readback.

We turned on the PZT high voltage supplies for the output steering PZTs and for the input steering PZTs.  We left the OMC locking PZT supplies off, since we're still not using the OMC.  Sadly, the beam coming out of the AS port looks clipped somewhere.  [SELF: attach the videocapture shot when you get to work tomorrow] We tried moving PZT2's sliders, but nothing happened!!! I can move BS and the ITMs to get the beam mostly unclipped, but I really need to be able to move the PZTs, or at least one of them.  IPPOS and IPANG beams are hitting the QPDs (although they're not centered perfectly), so the PZTs came back mostly to the same positions, but not exactly.  Evan and I sat next to the input steering PZT controllers in 1Y3, and moved the sliders around.  For most of the range, nothing changes on the LCD screen for either PZT2 pitch or yaw.  Yaw can make 2 small steps near the far negative side of the slider, but nothing happens for most of the slider.  Pitch really doesn't do anything for any part of the slider.  We ensured that the LED labeled "CL ON" was not illuminated, next to the button labeled "closed loop", for all 4 controllers (PZT1 and 2, pitch and yaw).  Sad!!   I don't know if the LCD screen on the front panel of the PZT controllers is a readback of signal supplied to the PZTs, or of the strain gauges.  I really hope it's the controller that's not working, rather than the PZTs themselves.  The PZTs were fine before we vented, and Koji and I did our centering of the PZT range check during the vent, so they were fine then.  What happened???  All PZT high voltage supplies were off during the pump-down.  I turned them off yesterday, and Evan and I turned them back on tonight around 9:30pm or 10pm.  What else could make them bad?

Without being able to move PZT2, just using BS and / or ITMs, I was unable to completely make the beam look nice on the AS camera.  I came close, but it still seems a little bit funny, and I had to move the suspended optics quite a bit to find that place.  This is not good. 

 The new cold cathode gauge CC1 is in place. We were at atmosphere for 28 days ......more later

I do not remember removing anything from that setup.  We just moved some mirrors and lenses around

  [Koji, Steve, Den]

TT alignment is fine, yaw damping is satisfactory, pitch damping is slow. We might want to add magnets to the mirror and attach blades to the frame for pitch edge current damping.

We are moving towards electronics testing.

Since the MC spots are good, I put the beam back on WFS 1 and WFS 2.

Also, I changed the indicators on the LockMC screen to reflect the change in elog 7289, where we added another on/off switch for the WFS so that the ASS could be on, but the WFS off.  For the last month, the WFS could be disabled, but the MC screen's indicators would suggest that we were pushing very significantly on all 3 MC mirrors.  Now the MC screen reflects reality a little better.

I also uncommented the WFS lines in the mcup script.  Den had commented them out, but didn't elog about it!  C'mon Den, please elog stuff!!!!  (He confessed out loud the other day, but it still wasn't in the elog).

I'm leaving the WFS loops disabled (even though the MC autolocker tries to turn them on, I have them manually disabled using the extra on/off switch) since they're unstable.  I'm in the process of figuring out what's wrong.  So far, the WFS improve the MC alignment for a minute or two, and then they totally misalign the MC.  This is a work in progress.

Jenne, Mike and I installed all of the post holders we could today including: REFL11, REFL33, REFL55, AS55, MCRef, POX11 and POP55.  We did not install AS110, POY or REFL165 because there are interferences that will require moving stuff around. We also did not mount POP22 because it is a peely wally ThorLabs PD that will be replaced by a strong, straight and right thinking LIGO PD in the fullness of time.  We did move it out of the way however which is no more than it deserves. Next step this afternoon Mike and I will install all of the telescopes and launching hardware.  Then with the help of Steve we will begin routing the fibers.  The splitter module will be here by next Monday, the laser by the following Friday and then we will light up the fibers. 

Atm1,  TT 1.5" high adaptor base will be back from the shop in 10 days.

Atm2,  There is no PITCH damping, YAW edie current damping works well at 0.5 mm gap

Atm3,  Adjustable Al -disc that contains a small magnet is purely designed.

We have to come up with a solution to have damping in PITCH

 I'm proposing split loom tubing that would run in the cable tray  to protect the fibers  inside of it.  This tubing diameter in the cable tray can be 1.5-2"  and out of the tray 0.75"