The SLP-50 filters which were on the 55 MHz lines have been replaced with the SBP-60.  Their respective characteristics are given below:

SBP-60 has lower insertion loss and higher return loss.  

This may however change the phase of I and Q in the demod boards and they will therefore need to be readjusted.  Currently the output power level of 55 MHz demod is at 2dBm, whereas it ought to be at 6dBm.   I have not yet corrected that.  Once that is completed Kiwamu will adjust the phases.

 I shifted the temperature sensor to a new location.  See the photograph below.  I noticed that the higher temperature is reached on the side where there are two RF Amps.  So it would be better to check the temperature of that  area and make sure that it remains well below 65 deg.  The operating maxium is 65deg C

Here is a picture of the new RF source layout.

And here is a photograph of it

[Steve, Suresh]

We started to clean up the RF cables (heliax and PD interface cables)  at the LSC rack.

We have pulled out all the RF cables from the small hole on the side-board close to floor.  Passing the cables through this hole makes some of the cables much too short for good strain relief.  So we removed the side panel on the vacuum tube side and are going to pass the cables into the rack from there at about waist height.  We now have plenty of cable lengths to tie them off to the rack at several points.

We have traced all the available Heliax cables and have attached blank tags to them.  We have allocated some cables to REFL11, REFL55 and AS55.  These are therefore back in working order.  We have also taken stock of the available PD interface cables.  They do not have consistent names on both ends of the cable and we will identify and label the ends tomorrow.

MC is locked.  The auto-locker works fine.

Handing over the system for night time interferometer work now.  Will continue with the cabling tomorrow.

Today after Steve and I finished the RF cabling work for the day, Kiwamu noticed that there were no RF signals to be seen.  The problem was traced to disconnected 11 and 55 MHz Demod lines from the RF source.  But reconnecting them did not restore the signals.  It turned out that one of the Heliax cables had a loose N-type connector at its end and it finally came off while we were tightening it into place.

We replaced the damaged heliax with another (we have two spare running from 1X2 IOO rack to the 1Y2 LSC rack.  The new cable is used to be the LO 33.  It seems to have a 1.5dB loss.  Have to check this again tomorrow.

In the mean time I noticed that the power output of the 55MHz Demod port of the source was less than about -12dB. So I opened the source to take a look and found that all the voltage stabilisers were supplying 15V.  Even those which were supposed to be supplying 24V.  This was traced to a mistake in wiring the external power supply.  The wires had been labeled wrongly and as a result the 18V input line was connected to 28V source and vice versa.

After fixing this problem I reassembled the source checked the power output on all the ports and found everything was functioning as expected.  However after installation once again the unit failed.  The blue light on the power supply was not lighting up when switched on.  Suspecting a power supply problem I opened the unit again and found that a weak solder joint on one of the RF amplifiers had come loose and had overloaded one of the 24V stabilisers.   We, found a spare and replaced it.  The unit has been reassembled and is functioning fine.  The output power levels are

11MHz Demod -- 6dBm

55MHz Demod -- 5.5 dBm

11MHz EOM --   24dBm

55MHz EOM -- 28dBm

The Marconi is serving as the 11MHz source.  The Wenzel 11MHz source is giving 13.3 dBm and is okay.  But it needs to be checked for its performance as it may have been exposed to higher than rated power supply levels.

The 29.5MHz source is giving 7dBm.  It is supposed to be giving 13dBm. 

The Laboratory DC power supplies currently used for both the RF source and Distribution boxes need to be replaced with rack mounted Sorensen power supplies available in the lab.

[Jamie, Koji, Suresh]

We replaced splitters in several demod boards as per the table given below:

While doing a rough check of the boards I noticed that the REFL11 demod board had no signal on the Q output.

Rana also advised that we must use the boards which have the piggy-back amplifiers on those signals which are most useful.  We referred to Alberto's thesis and chose POY55 (MICH and SRCL), REFL11(PRCL)  and AS55 (DARM) as the most useful signals.  We currently have these amps on AS11, REFL11 and AS55.  We need to convert either AS11 or REFL11 into a POY55.  Since we need to troubleshoot REFL11, I thought we might as well modify that and in the process also fix its Q output.  So I renamed AS11 as REFL11 and will convert the old REFL11 into POY55 tomorrow.

Power splitter of different types have different pin-outs.  The way we mount a splitter depends on which type we are using.   I will detail the mounting scheme in a separate elog tomorrow.

We have no plan to change the AS11 PD. I was referring to the AS11 Demod board which currently has the "Demodulator Preamp" circuit installed as a piggy back. In future I will append "_Demod" when I am referring to a demod board, to avoid confusion.

The Demod board with S. No. 022 (being used earlier as REFL11) has been modified.  It now has SCLF-65 as its input LP filter on the PD input line and a PQW-2-90 power splitter.  The unit functioning okay (I and Q signals are 90 deg apart.

The loss of Q output was traced to a possible loose solder joint and we now have both the I and Q signals after resoldering all components in the vicinity of U7 (Ref Schematic of D990511)

There is a strong oscillation around 350Hz present on I and Q signals of both REFL55_Demod and POY55_Demod.  Don't know the source. 

We have run out of power splitters to continue with the Demod board modification. We do not currently have an AS11_Demod board.  All the others are in place and ready for the I<->Q phase angle measurement.

In summary we now have the following Demod boards in place:

[ REFL11, POY11, REFL55, AS55, POY55, POY22, POY110]_Demod

I have posted the attached RF status update and 1Y2 rack layout to the svn.

We have Completed the hardware changes to the full set of 8 demod boards.  The last one completed today is AS11.  I have collected the info on all the demod boards available so far in the table below.  As we measure the actual phase and amplitude unbalance we will expand this table to include new info.

[Steve, Koji, Suresh]

   We shifted two Sorensen power supplies from the Auxiliary rack next to 1X2 to 1Y2.  And have installed them there (pic below).  The local ground reference was picked up from the racks ground reference.  A shielded cable with two twisted pairs was used to make a new power cable for the RF rack.  Since we are using three of the four conductors (+18,+28 and ground), one of them is not connected to anything.  This situation can be improved in a future iteration when, for example, we might wish to relocate the Sorensens to a different rack.

   We are still working on changing the power supply to the RF source.  Will complete this early next week

I measured the amplitude and phase imbalances of the demod boards which have been modified.  This is just a basic health check.  We hope to use the script that Kiwamu is developing for a more accurate test.  The script can also use these measurements as a sanity check.  POP110  requires some further attention. 

The RF distribution box outputs corresponding to the demod board (eg. AS55_LO --> AS55_demod) were used as LO sources.  The RF signal was generated with a Marconi and held a kHz away from the LO frequency.  The amplitude and phase unbalance were measured with SR785.  The RF Power meter was used to check the LO power in each case.

The ~350 Hz noted in the elog below was traced to an RF modulation of the 11 MHz sideband.  This modulation was set up in the Marconi which is currently supplying the 11 MHz local oscillator signal to the RF source.  lt was used during the MC length study completed last week by Valera and Ryan.  The frequency measured was 322 Hz.

As we do not require this any longer, I have switched off this modulation.

[Larisa, Suresh]

All the cables needed for the AS11 PD are in place... the heliax cable runs from the AS table to the PSL rack.  The LO and RF cables to demod board as well as the I and Q cables into the LSC Whitening board are connected.

The cables get rather densely packed when the LSC Whitening filter sits between the PD Interface Board and the LSC AA filter board.  This makes it difficult to access the SMA connectors on the LSC whitening filter.  So we shifted the LSC Whitening and AA Filter boards one slot to the right.  The LSC rack looks like this just now.  We have also shifted the binary cables at the back of the Eurocart by one slot so the same cables are associated with the cards.

I have checked the voltages on the connector.  They are okay and I have plugged in the Sorensen power into the RF Source.  The ground reference for the Sorensens comes from the 1X2 Rack ground reference lines on the south side of the rack. 

I looked for the OMC ground reference. Could not find one on either of the the OMC half racks.

[Kiwamu, Suresh]

In trying to keep the wiring of the LSC rack as neat as possible, we came up with the following channel assignments of the RF PD signals. 

PDI = PD Interface, The PD Interface D-type connectors (#1 to #12) are numbered:  Top -> Bottom and Left -> Right in ascending order. 

The Analog channels on the LSC Whitening Filter boards are numbered similarly, 1 to 32 in four sets.

The POP110 board which had the large Amplitude and Phase unbalances was examined today.  It turned out that there was some stray solder which had connected the Sum port of the PSCQ-2-120 splitter to its body (ground).  After I removed that the amplitude unbalance was 0.3dB however the phase was 105deg.  The phase reduced to 90 deg only if the power on the splitter is around 19 dBm.  So removed the AT1 (10dB attenuator) and the phase unbalance dropped to 91 deg.  However this is not a sustainable solution as the ERA-5 max output is about 19.5 dBm.

As this is a side band power monitor (and not a length sensing RFPD), we can make do with a poorer phase.  I will therefore replace the AT1 and adjust the residual phase with cable delay lines.  

The WFS2 sensor head had a damaged Quadrant PIN diode (YAG-444-4A).  This has been replaced by a   YAG-444-4AH  which has a responsivity of 0.5 A/W. 

The responsivity of each quadrant was measured at normal incidence.  A diagram of the set up with the relevant power levels is attached.  The precision of these measurement is about 5% .  Largely because the power levels measured are sensitive to the position of the laser beam on the power meter sensor head (Ophir with ND filter mask taken off).  Putting the mask back on did not solve this problem.

The incident power was 0.491mW  of which about 0.026mW was reflected from the face of the QPD.  The beam was repositioned on the QPD to measure the response of each quadrant.  In each case the beam was positioned to obtain maximum DC output voltage from the relevant quadrant.  A small amount of spill over was seen in the other quadrants.  The measurements are given below

To measure these DC outputs of from the sensor-head a breakout board for the 25-pin D-type connector was used as in the previous measurements.  The results are given below

The measured responsivity agrees with the specification from the manufacturer.  It is to be noted that the previous QPD is reported to have a slightly smaller responsivity 0.4 A/W at 1064 nm.  The data sheet is attached. 

Since the new QPD may have a slightly different capacitance the RF transfer function of the WFS2 needs to be examined to verify the location of the resonances. 

QE = (h*c)/(lambda*e) * (I/P)

Where I = (Volts from Pin1 to GND)/2 /500ohms
P = Power from laser - power reflected from diode.
h, c, e are the natural constants, and lambda is 1064nm.

Also, I/P = Responsivity

[Suresh, Koji]

   I used a matlab code written by Koji to analyse the transimpedance and current noise data  of REFL55.  The details are in the attached pdf file.

Resonance is at 55.28 MHz:

Q of 4.5, Transimpedance of 615 Ohms

shot noise intercept current = 1.59 mA

current noise =21 pA/rtHz

Notch at 110.78 MHz:

Q of 54.8 Transimpedance of 14.68 Ohms.

[Suresh, Sonali]

There were small pieces of glass, remnants of a fluorescent tube, which were lying around on the ETMY end table for a while now.  We picked up the larger pieces by hand and used the HEPA filtered vacuum cleaner to pick up the remaining glass and dust on the table. 

The Lightwave NPRO power supply which is being shared between the AS table and the ETMY table has been shifted back to the ETMY table. 

The current to the laser is set at 1.5A.  The laser output is 200mW at this current level.

I have shifted the Jenne laser back to the small table where we do RF PD characterisation (RFPD table).  I found several 25pin D-type connector cables, connected them in tandem and am using that to power the WFS2 sensor head at the RFPD table. 

The set up is ready for looking at the RF response of the  WFS sensors.  Will continue tonight.

I put labels on the pair of beam steering mirrors which are at the output end of the PSL table.  I had changed one of these mirrors (elog) and Jenne had changed the other (elog).  This was at about 3PM today

I just learned from Kiwamu that this has messed up the MC alignment.

WFS1 Transimpedance

The attached plots show the location of the ~29.5 MHz pole and the 59 MHz notch for each quadrant of the WFS1 Sensor head.

As may be seen from the above table, these frequencies will need to be adjusted in some cases.

From the plots we can see that, when there is no attenuation set on the attenuator AT65-0263 (ref D990249-A),  the MAX4107  oscillations are seen in Q2,Q3,Q4 quadrants at around 200 MHz.  

Rana suggested, from his previous encounter with this circuit, that the solution is to remove the second MAX4106 and the attenuator on the RF line to avoid this oscillation.

A look at the circuit board shows that some of the inductors have not been mounted.  That explains the presence of only one notch though the schematic shows two. 

I measured the power incident on REFL11 and REFL55.  Steve was concerned that it is too high.  If we consider this elog the incident power levels were REFL11: 30 mW and REFL55: 87 mW. (assuming efficiency of ~ 0.8 A/W @1064nm for the C30642 PD).  However, currently there is a combination of Polarising BS and Half-waveplate with which we have attenuated the power incident on the REFL PDs.  We now have (with the PRM misaligned):

REFL11:  Power incident = 7.60 mW ;  DC out = 0.330 V  => efficiency = 0.87 A/W

REFL55:  Power incident = 23 mW ;  DC out = 0.850 V  => efficiency = 0.74 A/W

and with the PRM aligned::

REFL11:  DC out = 0.35 V  => 8 mW is incident

REFL55: DC out = 0.975 V  => 26 mW is incident

These power levels may go up further when everything is working well.

The max rated photo-current is 100mA => max power 125mW @0.8 A/W.

The WFS2  Transimpedance has been measured to determine if it also suffers from the same 200MHz oscillations seen in WFS1 sensor head

The attached plots (pdf attached) show that the 29.5 MHz peak needs tweaking in Q2 and Q1 seems to have a much lower transimpedance than other quadrants.  The table below summarises the resonances and notches of the ckt

The peak at 10MHz is much sharper than the similar peak at 13MHz in the case of WFS1.  Is this a matter for some concern? 

The 200MHz oscillation once again exists in Q2, Q3 and Q4.  This sensor head will also require the same treatment as WFS1.

I measured the power in various beams on the AP table to check and see if any beam is having too much power. 

I am uploading two pics one is in the "high power state" and the other is the "low power state".   High power in the MC REFL PD occurs when the MC is unlocked.  In addition the WFS also will see this  hike in power. We wish to make sure that in either state the power levels do not exceed the max power that the PDs can tolerate.

Low Power state: MC locked, PRM not aligned.                                                   High Power state: MC unlocked,  PRM aligned.

As noted before the  resonances had to be tuned to the 29.5 MHz ( or rather 29.485 MHz to match with the Wenzel) and notches to twice that frequency (58.97 MHz). 

I tuned these frequencies and remeasured the transimpedance curves .  These are in the attached pdf file. 

Some notes.

1) The variable inductances on the PCB have a ferrite core which is actually ferrite powder compacted around an iron screw.  The screw serves to provide the adjustability.  However, being iron, it seems to have rusted and so the cores are stuck.  So several of the cores splintered when I tried to adjust the frequencies.

2) The WFS1 had a finger print/smudge on the face of the PD.  I drag wiped it with methanol to get rid of it.

WFS1 is ready to go on the table.  I am going to work on WFS2 today.

This was the WFS whose photodiode was repaced as the old one was found to be damaged. 

I retuned the resonances and the notches of all the quadrant and have attached a pdf file of my measurements.

Some notes:

a)  The variable inductor on WFS2Q2 quadrant may need to be changed. The ferrite code has come of the solinoid and is just held in place due to friction..  It may be easily disturbed.    So though i chose to leave it in place for now,  it will need to be replace in case the Q3 misbahaves..

b) In general the frequencies have shifted a bit when I closed the lid of tne WFS sensor head.

WFS1 and 2 have been installed on the AP table and are functional. I am shifting attention to the software.

Just tying up a loose end.  The next day Kiwamu and I checked to see what the trouble was.  We concluded that the PRM had not moved during my measurement though I had 'Misaligned' it from the medm screen.  So all the power levels measured here were with the PRM aligned.  The power level change was subsequently measured and e-logged

[Jamie, Suresh]

   We looked at the ADC channel assignments in the LSC model and wanted to make sure that the LSC rack wiring and the LSC model are in agreement with each other.  So the plan is to wire the rack as shown below.  I will also post this file on svn so that we can keep it updated in case there are changes.

There is should be a few IDC connectors in the lab (and some ribbon cable) using which you can proceed with the testing of the circuit, if you prefer.  If not we can get them from our ever helpful electronics division at Downs.  In any case there is no need to lose time waiting for parts to arrive.

The Y-end green beam power is 0.47 mW.

While aligning the Y-end aux laser light into the fiber we noticed that the green power out of the doubling crystal was in microwatts.  I checked to see what was the trouble and found that the oven was cold as the temperature controller had been disabled.  I enabled it and scanned the temperature to maximise the green output.  Yet the power is less than 10% of that at the X end (7mW).

To verify I checked the power of various beams on the Y-end table.  They are listed below in the picture

The green beam power is proportional to the square of the IR incident power and this explains the drop in green power by a factor of (210/730)^2  thus making 7 mW -->  0.5 mW.  However we may be able to double the power at the Y-arm oven if the uncoated lenses in the IR path are exchaned for coated ones. 

The green beam injection into the Y-arm cavity also needs to be cleaned up as noted here.  As seen in the picture below two of the mirrors which launch the beam into the arm cavity need to be fixed as well.

Gains of individual quadrants in both the WFS

As a simple check of the gains on all the quadrants I hooked up the AM (Jenne) laser to put FM modulated light on to the WFS heads and observed the FM modulation frequency , 105 Hz, show up on a power spectrum of the RF outputs.   The plots below show the peak at 105Hz in all the quadrants.

However I should have put in AM modulation rather FM modulation.  I will do that using the digital system today.  The first version above was done wth a Marconi driving the AM laser modulation.

The ABSL locking setup to the PSL is down. 

According the plan, I started to use the IR beam dumped after the doubling crystal for the IR beat lock (Sonali's project).  The beat lock was disturbed when I shifted some clamps to make way for a few mirrors.  So I set about fixing the beat lock.  I reobtained the lock but noticed that the net beam power reaching the Newfocus 1611 detector was around 15mW.  10mW from the ABSL and 5mW from PSL.

This is much too high as the maximum allowed on 1611 is 2mW. 

I therefore started to adjust the power levels by using  Y1-1064-45S mirrors at non-45 deg angles.  However Rana pointed out that this would lead to amplitude noise due to the mirror vibrations.  I then switched to using beam splitters as pick offs.   This is better than using neutral density filters since the back scatter is lower this way.

David wanted some of the ABSL beam for his SURF student.  So I changed the mirror after beam expanding telescope on the ABSL route to provide this power.  We also installed a pair of half wave plates and a PBS to allow us smooth power level control on this beam.

The beat lock setup is now down and needs to be completed for PRCL and SRCL measurements.

The mode cleaner is not locking because the MC Trans QPD signal is not present.  There is light on the QPD when the MC flashes and its position has not shifted.  The cable is plugged in well into the sensor head.  The signal cable is labled "MC2 Opt Lever"  and it arrives on the 1X4 rack along with other Optical Lever cables. Pressing the connector in did not solve the problem.

I restarted the fb twice during the last 15mins.   This was after I added test points into the C1IOO/WFS1.mdl and C1IOO/WFS2.mdl.

 I had to realign PSL beam into the MC in order to reobtain the MC lock.  We lost lock at sometime around 8:30 AM on Tuesday.  See attached trend data for MC_RFPD_DCMON. 

The is the second time this week that I had to do this when we were unable to obtain the MC lock.  On both occassions the zig-zag at the end of the PSL table was tweaked to minimise the MC_RFPD_DCMON.

 We have been using the MC as a Beam Axis Reference.  And therefore we are adjusting the PSL beam to maximise coupling into MC.  However if MC's beam axis has shifted, then would it not be best to use the pzt's to re-obtain coupling into the arm cavities? 

This is part of the WFS activity.  So far I have completed the following tasks:

1)  I fixed the MEDM screens up to a point where they can be used for locking.  There are still some buttons which invoke non-existing screens and some blank fields.  But the basic filter banks and input  and output matrices are fixed.

2) I copied all the old filter banks into the new screens both in the WFS head and in the WFS Master, where the servo filters are located.  The I and Q filter banks in the WFS heads have been switched on.

3) I <=> Q phase settings in the WFS head for each quadrant:  We have assumed that the I and Q are orthogonal so D=90 for all cases.  I set the R phase to minimise the signal in all the Q lines.  So the signal is largely in the I phase.  I used Sine Response feature in DTT while supplying an excitation signal to MC2_ASCPIT_EXC.  At times I used the YAW instead of PIT if I did not get enough coherence.  This was set manually by watching the Q phase signal and minimising that by adjusting the R angle.  It was in general possible to get this correct to a deg.   There are several old scripts to do this in the MC/WFS but they do not work since most of them are based on the ezlockin or ezcademod functions.    I will try to fix the ezWFS1phase and ezWFS2phase scripts to automate this.  Some channel names have to be changed in these.

4) I measured the transfer function between the mirror motions [(MC1, MC2, MC3) x (PIT, YAW)] and the sensor DoF [(WFS1, WFS2) x (PIT, YAW)].  The measurements are reported below.  The plan is to invert this matrix and use it as the Out_Matrix.

I list here the various steps I took in making this measurement.

a) Set the DC offsets on the individual quadrants to zero using an old script (which I updated with the new channel names).  The script is called McWFS_dc_offsets and is located in the $scripts$/MC/WFS directory.   Note that before doing this the PSL shutter was closed.  This script sets a basic EPICS parameter called AOFF for each channel.  These are listed in cvs/cds/caltech/target/c1iool0 .

b) Then the PSL beam into the MC was steered to optimise coupling into MC (described in my earlier post today).  This is because we use the input beam as a reference while setting up the WFS.

c) Unlock the MC and center the directly reflected beam from the MC on the WFS.  We use the DC monitors on the C1IOO_WFS_QPD.adl screen to center the spot on the WFS head. 

d) Then used the WFSoffsets script to set the offsets in the I and Q filter banks to zero.  This script uses the ezcaservo to look at the OUT16 channels and zeroes them by setting an appropriate offset.  I took care to switch off all slow filters in the I and Q filter banks before this operation was carried out .  Only the 60Hz comb filter was on.

e) Opened the PSL shutter and relocked the MC

f) Then I measured the transfer co-efs by oscillating the optic (exciting a specific degree of freedom) and observing the response in the WFS sensor degrees of freedom.   These are tabulated above.

Next

   I plan to use this matrix and prepare the Output matix and then close the WFS servo loops. 

The optics on the Y-end table which required to be moved have been repositioned.  Please see the attached pic for details.

The green beam is not yet aligned to the cavity. That is my next task.

I measured the power transmitted from the PSL to the MC. It is 19mW.

The MC is now locked.  The MC Autolocker script cannot be used now since the tigger conditions are not met.  It has been disabled on the C1IOO-LOCK_MC screen.  The boost switch also is set to zero.  Increasing the boost results in MC unlocking. 

The C1:IOO-MC_RFPC_DCMON was going from 1.4 (MC Unlocked) to 0.66 (MC_locked).  I thought we ought to have a factor of ten drop in this since under high power conditions we used to have a drop of about 5.6 to 0.6.   So I adjusted the zig-zag at the end of the PSL table to improve the alignment.  It now goes from 1.4 to 0.13 when the MC is locked.   The lock is also much more stable now.  It still does not tolerate any boost though.

I checked to make sure that the beam centering on MC_REFL PD is optimal since I touched the zig-zag.  The RFPD output is now 0.7V (MC unlocked).  This matches well with the fact that we used to have 3.5V on it with the MC unlocked.  And we have cut the down the power incident on this by a factor of 5.  Because 1W -> 20mW at the PSL table  and 10% BS -> 100% Y1-...

The table below gives the OSEM positions as seen on the slow chanels C1:SUS-ETMX_{UL,UR,LL,LR,SD}PDMon

Note that the side OSEM has the fast channel (OUTPUT) available and we used that to locate it.

When we began work the OSEMs were photographed so that we have a record of their locations till now.  It was difficult to get accurate estimate of the magnet offset inside the OSEM we could not see the screen on the camera while clicking.  We then took some pictures after finishing the work. These are given below

The picture of the left is from before OSEMs were moved. It can be seen that OSEMs are rotated to make sure that the magnets avoid touching the teflon sheets which hold the shadow sensors.  The picture on the right shows the positions of the OSEMs after we adjusted their positions.  This time we kept the teflon sheets vertical as shown to minimise the coupling between the Side and Axial directions.

We needed to reposition them once again after we moved the tower to the center of the table.

Pictures with more detail will be posted to the wiki later.

 Kiwamu suggested that since the side resonance is at a lower frequency than the bounce (~17Hz)  we ought to worry about the side more than the bounce.  If this is okay we can reposition the OSEMs to minimise this coupling. 

More over, in the current position, the OSEM s will not sense the side motion!!  So we definitely need to reposition them.  Sorry! I was being a spatz. 

The slow signal from the side sensor on ETMX was last seen in action sometime in May 2010!  And then the frame builder has no data for a while on this channel.  After that the channel shows some bistability starting Sept 2010 but has not been working.  The fast channel of this sensor  (C1:SUS-ETMX_SDSEN_OUTPUT) does work so the sensor is working.  Probably is a loose contact... needs to be fixed.

I switched off damping to the ETMX and used a reduced version of freeswing-all.csh script (called freeswing-ETMX.csh) to set it swinging.    After about an hour I used the saved template ETMX/2008.08.06.xml to obtain the following plot.

There is something defintely wrong with the side sensor.  It might be the electronics as it also has this problem with it slow channel readings (my previous elog today).

[Kiwamu, Suresh]

We attempted to minimise the A2L coupling in the MC mirrors (centering the beam spot on the actuation node on each optic).  While it was easy to minimise the coupling in the pitch for all the three optics and yaw of MC2, the yaw alignment of MC1 and MC3 proved to be difficult.  For one the adjustment required was quite large, so much so that PSL alignment into the MC is often lost during this adujstment.  We had to align the PSL coupling several times in order to proceed.   And the MC settles into a new position when the MC-PSL servo loop was disturbed by random denizens in the lab.  Requiring us to start over again.

Kiwamu wrote a script to measure the MC(optic)(Pitch/yaw) -> Lockin(#1 to #6) matrix.  Inverting this matrix gave us the linear combination of the offsets to put on the MC# PIT/YAW  inorder to minimise a specific Lockin output.  However the cross couplings were not completely eliminated.  This made it very hard to predict what a given set of offsets were going to do to the Lockin outputs.

Net result:  the spots are centered in vertical direction (pitch) but not in the horizontal (yaw)

Day time tasks have started so I am quitting now.

[Kiwamu, Suresh]

We worked on the beam path from MC to BS this evening. 

After the beam spots on MC1 and MC3 were close to the actuation nodes (<1mm away) we checked the beam position on the Faraday Isolator (FI) to make sure that it is passing through both the input and output apertures without clipping.  The beam is slightly displaced (by about half a beam diameter) downwards at the input of the FI.  The picture below is a screen shot from the MC1 monitor while Kiwamu held an IR card in front of the FI.

We then proceeded to check the beam position on various optical elements downstream.  But first we levelled the BS table and checked to see if the reflection from PJ1 (1st Piezo) is landing on the MMT1 properly.  It was and we did not make any adjustment to PJ1.  However the reflection from MMT1 was not centered on MMT2.  We adjusted the MMT1 to center the beam on it.  We then adjusted MMT2 to center the beam on PJ2.  At this point we noticed that the spot on IPPO (pick off window)  was off towards the right edge.  When we centered the beam on this it missed the center of the PRM.  In order to decide what needs to be moved, we adjusted PJ2 such that the beam hits the PR2, bounces back to PR3, and becomes co-incident with the green beam from X-arm on the BS.  Under this condition the beam is not in the center of PRM and nor is it centered on IPPO.  In fact it is being clipped at the edge of the IPPO. 

It is clear that both IPPO and the PRM need to be moved.  To be sure that the beam is centered on PR2 we plan to open the ITMX chamber tomorrow.

We started an ITMX freeswing run at this time

Thu Aug 11 18:58:59 PDT 2011
997149554

 But the optic did not repond to the kick.  It is possible that the earthquake stops are close to the face and/or rear of the optic and prevent it from oscillating.  We will check again and see what is up in a few hours.

I ran "freeswing all" at Fri Aug 19 01:09:28 PDT 2011 (997776583)  and "opticshutdown"  as well.

[Keiko, Jamie, Kiwamu, Anamaria,

We followed the procedure that we laid-out in our elog of yesterday.  We completed the first six steps and we now have the y-arm well aligned to the green beam which passes through the center of of both ETMY and ITMY. 

The IR beam was steered with the PZTs to coincide with the green beam.  The BS was adjusted to see IR beam scatter on a target placed near the center of the ETMX.  And then the AS IR beam was steered to the AS camera by adjusting several components along OM path ( we touched OM1, OM2, OM3, OM4, OM5, OMPO and OM6).  We then looked for IR fringes in the AS port from the Y-arm. But no luck there.  We need to realign the IR beam into the Y-arm cavity axis using the pzts.

We aligned ITMX and PRM to get power recycled Michelson fringes at the AS.

[Kiwamu, Suresh]   This is a belated elog entry from last Friday night + Saturday morning! 

    We shifted the SRM tower across the beam and away from the door by about 5mm. 

                  After the input beam from MC was aligned to the Y-arm,  Kiwamu noticed that the AS beam was being clipped and that the correction had to start from SRM onwards as the beam had become offcentered on the SRM.  So we shifted the SRM tower by about 5mm away from the door and transverse to the beam and rotated it by a few degrees to center the OSEM offsets.  After this we aligned all optics along the AS beam path to extract the AS beam from the chamber.    We then aligned each optic in the vertex so that their beams overlap at the AS port with the reflection from ITMY.  Then we aligned BS to center the beam on ETMX and then looked for flashes from the Y arm.

      At this point Kiwamu checked and found that the input beam from the MC had shifted.  It was landing on the ITMY about 5mm below the center.  And (inexplicably) it was still centered on ETMY!  The Y- green which traced the cavity axis (since this was still flashing) was not coincident with the IR beam.   So all the work we did in aligning the AS beam and the vertex optics work was lost..... and had to be done again.

After the MC1 and MC3 OSEMs were  repositioned  MC had to be realigned and the beam spots had to be recentered on the actuation nodes.  

To do that I had to change the input beam direction into the MC  and the coil offsets.   

I also measured the resultant spot positions

spot positions in mm (MC1,2,3 pit MC1,2,3 yaw):
    0.1354   -0.2522   -0.1383   -1.0893    0.7122   -1.5587

The MC1 and MC3 yaw can be improved further after the chambers are closed and evacuated.  The PZT adjustments needed to realign the input beam pointing are quite small and should not pose a problem.