The PMC runs out of range sometimes due to the daily temperature swing. The voltage swings up after sunset and then starts to swing down before sunrise. So when you relock the PMC at the beginning of the locking night, the mnemonic from the PMC is:

Sun Go Low, Lock Me Voltage Low.

 Found that the PMC gain has been set to 5.3 dB instead of 10 dB since 9 AM this morning, with no elog entry.

I also re-aligned the beam into the PMC to minimize the reflection. It was almost all in pitch.

I moved stuff on the PSL table to accommodate the PMC ringdown setup.

I used the beam that leaks from the steering mirror at the PMC transmission that was dumped to a razor blade dump. I installed a Y1 to steer the beam to the ringdown PD. Power in the beam 75mW.

Results are in here elog 

 I am guessing that 75 mW will burn / destroy any Thorlabs PD. I hope that mW is supposed to be uW.

 It was ~7.5mW and measured ~2V at the PD output (given its range 0-5V ) on the oscilloscope . So PD is safe !

Summary

The PMC servo error (MIX OUT MON on the panel) and actuation (HV OUT MON) have been calibrated using the swept cavity.

Error signal slope in round-trip displacement: 2.93e9 +/- 0.05e9 [V/m]
HV OUT calibration (round-trip displacement): 5.36e-7 +/- 0.17e-7 [m/V]
PZT calibration (round-trip displacement): 10.8 +/- 0.3 [nm/V] => corresponds to ~2.5 fringes for 0~250V full range => not crazy

Measurement condition

The transmission level: 0.743V (on the PMC MEDM screen)
LO level: ~13dBm (after 3dB attenuation)
Phase setting: 5.7
PMC Servo gain: 7dB during the measurement (nominal 3dB)

Method

- Chose PMC actuation "BLANK" to disable servo
- Connect DS345 function generator to EXT DC input on the panel
- Monitor "MIX OUT MON" and "HV OUT MON" with an oscilloscope
- Inject a triangular wave with ~1Vpp@1 or 2Hz with appropriate offset to see the cavity resonance at about the middle of the sweep.
  The frequency of the sweep was decided considering the LPF corner freq formed by the output impedance and the capacitance of the PZT. (i.e. 11.3Hz, see next entry)

Result

- 4 sweep was taken (one 2Hz seep, three 1Hz sweep)
- The example of the sweep is shown in the attachment.
- The input triangular wave and the PDH slopes were fitted by linear lines.
- Spacing between the sideband zero crossing corresponds to twice of the modulation frequency (2x35.5MHz = 71MHz)
- The error signal slope was calibrated as V/MHz
- FSR of the PMC is given by google https://www.google.com/search?q=LIGO+pmc.m
  => Cavity round trip length is 0.4095m, FSR is 732.2MHz
- Convert frequency into round-trip displacement

- Convert HV OUT MON signal into displacement in the same way.
- The voltage applied to the PZT element is obtained considering the ratio of 49.6 between the actual HV and the HV OUT MON voltage.

[Rana, Jenne]

We have decided to keep better track (using new-fangled digital "computers") of our modifications to electronics boards. 

The idea will be to create a new DCC document for every electronics board (when we pull a board and modify it, it should receive this treatment) that we have, and that document will become a history of the board's life.  Version 1 will be a copy of the original drawing.  Version 2 should be a modified version of that drawing with the current situation.  All future versions should be modified from the most recent version, to reflect any changes.  Notes for each updated version should include an elog reference to the work, so that we know why we did things, and have a place to find photos of the actual modifications.  Elogs should also include a link to the DCC version.  DCC titles should include the phrase "40m Revisions" for ease of searching.

Patient Zero for this new system will be the PMC servo card.  The DCC number is D1400221.  As of this moment, this just has the V1 original drawing with no modifications.

This has been included in the 40m's DCC document tree that Jamie started back in November 2012.

Summary:

1. I investigated the stage-by-stage transfer functions of the PMC servo up till the HV stage. See Attachment #1. There were no unexpected features.
2. I replaced the AD602 used to implement the VGA capability. After the replacement, the gain of the VGA stage had the desired performance, see Attachment #2, Attachment #3.
3. The servo board was re-installed and the OLTF of the PMC loop was measured. See Attachment #4.

​To avoid driving the PA85 without the HV rails connected, I removed R23. This was re-installed after my characterization.

Input stage:

Since we do the demodulation of the PMC PDH signal off this servo board, the I/F mixer output is connected to the "FP1test" front panel LEMO input.

• A DG190 is used to enable/disable this path.
• Initially I tried checking the enable/disable functionality by measuring the resistance across the IC's I/O pins. However, this method does not work - the resistance read off from a DMM varied from ~23 ohms in the "ON" state to ~123 ohms in the "OFF" state. While the former value is consistent with the spec, the latter is confusing.
• But I confirmed that the switch does indeed isolate the input in the "OFF" state by injecting a signal with a function generator (100 Hz sine wave, 100mVpp) and monitoring the output on an oscilloscope.

Electronic TFs:

Using some Pomona mini-grabbers, I measured the electronic TFs between various points on the circuit. There were no unexpected features, the TFs all have the expected shape as per the annotations on the DCC schematic. I did not measure down to 0.1 Hz to confirm the low frequency pole implemented by U6, and I also didn't measure the RF low pass filter at the input stage (expected corner frequency is 1 MHz). 

VGA characterization:

After replacing the IC, I measured the transfer function between TP1 and TP2 for various values of the control voltage applied to pin 4A on the P1 connector, varying between +/- 5 V DC. 

• Pin 9A on the P1 connector has to be grounded for the signal to be allowed to pass through the VGA. 
• Note that there is an overall gain of -1/10 applied to the control voltage between pin 4A and pin #1 of the AD602, which is what actually sets the gain.
• Furthermore, the input impedance of the AD602 is spec-ed to be 100 ohms. Because of the series resistance of 500 ohms from TP1 to the input of the AD602 (so that the upstream OP27 isn't overdrawn for current), the relation between the control voltage applied to Pin 4A and gain (measured between TP1 and TP2) is modified to G [dB] = 32*(-0.1 * V_pin4A) - 6. 
• The gain behavior after the IC swap is as expected, both in terms of absolute gain, and the linearity w.r.t. the control voltage.
• Note that in Attachment #2, each color corresponds to a different control voltage to the AD602, varying from -5V DC to +5V DC in 1V steps. 

PZT Capacitance measurement

I confirmed that the PZT capacitance is 225 nF. The measurement was made using an LCR meter connected to the BNC cable delivering the HV to the PZT, at the 1X1 rack end.

OLTF measurement

After re-soldering R23, I put the board back into its Eurocrate, and was able to lock the PMC. For subsequent measurements, the PSL shutter was closed.

• I measured the OLTF using the usual IN1/IN2 prescription, implemented with the help of an SR560.
• At the original PMC Servo gain of +12dB, I found that the feature at ~8kHz results in an OLTF with multiple unity gain crossings.
• So I lowered it to +9dB. This yields an OLTF with ~60deg phase margin, ~2.3 kHz UGF. 
• The feature that sets the gain margin is actually not any of the peaks fit by LISO, but is one of the high frequency features at ~40 kHz. At the new setting of +9dB gain, the gain margin is ~10 dB.
• The measured TF (dots in Attachment #5) was fit with LISO (solid lines in Attachment #5) to allow inferring the out-of-loop servo noise by monitoring the in-loop noise (that plot to follow).

Summary:

The PDH discriminant of the PMC servo was measured to be ~0.064 GV/m. This is ~50 times lower than what is reported here. Perhaps this is a signature of the infamous ERA decay, needs more investigation.

Details:

• Calibration of the error and control points were done using 1 Hz triangle wave injection to the "EXT DC" input of the PMC servo. Two such sweeps are shown in Attachment #1 (measured data as points, fits as solid lines). For the control signal monitor, I've multiplied the signal obtained on the scope by 49.6, which is the voltage divider implemented for this monitor point.
• The PDH discrimiannt was calibrated into physical units knowing the modulation frequency of the PMC, which is 35.5 MHz. The error in this technique due to the free-running NPRO frequency noise is expected to be small since the entire fringe is crossed in <30 ms, in which time the laser frequency is expected to change by < 5 kHz.
• The drive to the PZT was calibrated into physical units using the same technique. This number is within a factor of 2 of the number reported here. 
• Attachment #2 shows the loop OLTF measured using the usual IN1/IN2 prescription (with an SR560). In fact, the 8kHz feature makes the loop unstable. For convenience, I've overlaid the OLTF from March 2017, when things were running smoothly. It is not clear to me why even though the optical gain is now lower, a smaller servo gain results in a larger UGF.

The light level hasn't changed by a factor of 50, leading me to suspect the modulation depth. Recall that the demodulation of the PMC is now done off the servo board using a minicircuits mixer (hence, the "C1:PSL-PMC_LODET" channel isn't a reliable readback of the LO signal strength over time). Although there is a C1:PSL-PMC_MODET channel which looks like it comes from the crystal reference card, and so should still work - this, however, shows no degradation over 1 year.

Somebody had removed the BLP-1.9 that I installed at the I/F output of the mixer to remove the sum frequency component in the demodulated signal, I reinstalled this. I find that there are oscillations in the error signal if the PMC servo gain is increased above 14.5 on the MEDM slider.

PMC follow up measurements have been done. The servo circuit was reviewed.

Now the PMC, IMC, X/Y arms are locked and aligned waiting for the IFO work although I still think something is moving (ITMX?)
as the FPMI fringe is quite fast.

The result of the precise inspection for the PMC servo board for the 40m was done.

The record, including the photo of the board, can be found at https://dcc.ligo.org/D1400221-v2

- I found some ceramic 1uF caps are used in the signal path. They have been replaced with film caps by WIMA.

- In later measurements with the openloop TF measurement, it was found that the notch frequency (14.6kHz) was off from the a sharp PZT resonance at 12.2kHz.
I replaced the combined caps of 1220pF to 1742pF. This resulted nice agreement of the notch freq with the PZT resonant freq.

Past related elogs:

SRA-3MH mixer installed in 2009: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/1502

R20 increased for more LO Mon gain: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/10172

I'm still analyzing the open loop TF data. Here I report some nominal settings of the PMC servo

Nominal phase setting: 5.7
Nominal gain setting: 3dB

After the tuning of the notch frequency, I thought I could increase the gain from 5dB to 9dB.
However, after several hours of the modification, the PMC servo gradually started to have oscillation.
This seemed to be mitigated by reducing the gain down to 4dB. This may mean that the notch freq got drifted away
due to themperature rise in the module. PA85 produce significant amount of heat.
(The notch frequency did not change. Just the 22kHz peak was causing the oscillation.)

While I have the board out, I'll try and do a thorough investigation of TFs and noise of the various stages. There is no light into the IFO until this is done.

The PMC servo was re-installed at ~345pm. HV supplies were re-energized to their nominal values. I will update the results of the investigation shortly. The new nominal PMC servo gain is +9dB.

The PMC transmission slow degration or it's input beam is not stable.

 We swapped the PMC s/n 2677 for s/n lho006.

The table below summarizes the power levels before and after the PMC swap.

- The power into the PMC (1.67 W) was measured with Scietech bolometer before the first steering PMC mirror. The leakage through the steering mirrors was measured with Ophir power meter to be 12+8 mW. There is also a lens between the mirrors which was not measured. 

- The power through the PMC was measured after the doubler pick off (105 mW), steering mirror (4 mW), and lens (not measured).

- The estimated reflection from four lens surfaces is 1-2% hence 1% uncertainty in the losses in the table.

- The beams into the PMC and on REFL PD were realigned. The beams downstream of the PMC are blocked as we did not realigned the PMC and doubler paths.

- The trans PD ND filters were removed. The VDC=1.28 V now.

- The NPRO current is 2.102 A

Atm 1 old

Atm2  new

Kiwamu and I aligned the PMC transmitted beam the incident beam going to PMC today.

I learnt how to lock the PMC using the digital controls.

• Nothing on the PMC (like it used to be)
  
• New ~14kg lead brick wrapped in copper foil on top of the PMC
  
• A stack of a piece of aluminum, a chunk of steel, and then the lead brick on top of the PMC
  
• The lead brick + Rob pushing on top of the PMC
  

I was a bit surprised by these numbers suggesting the PMC transmission is only 50-60%. I went to the table today and confirmed that it is more like 85% (1.3 W in, 1.1 W transmitted, both numbers from with the FieldMate power meter), as I claimed in 2019. Even being conservative with the power meter errors, I think we can be confident T_PMC will be >80% (modulo any thermal effects with higher power degrading the MM). There isn't any reliable record of what the specs of the PMC mirrors are, but assuming the IO couplers have T=4000ppm and the end mirror has T=500ppm as per Alan's plot, this is consistent with a loss of something like 300ppm loss per mirror - seems very high given the small beam spots, but maybe these mirrors just aren't as high quality as the test masses?

It's kind of unfortunate that we will lose ~20% of the amplifier output through the first filter, but I don't see an easy way to clean these mirrors. It's also not clear to me if there is anything to be gained by attempting a cleaning - isn't the inside of the cavity supposed to be completely isolated from the outside? Maybe some epoxy vaporization events degraded the loss?

Koji mentioned that the mode of the laser is different for lower diode currents. So that might be the reason why we got less transmission at the low input power but more afterward.

[JC, Paco, Yuta]

It seems like PMC transmission (C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD) dropped to ~0.68 from ~0.74 on Dec 27.
We tried to tweak PZT offset for PMC loop and input alignment to PMC, but PMC transmission didn't increased.
PSL laser temperature was also sweeped in the range 30.3 - 31.6 degC, but didn't help. The PSL temperature was reverted to original 30.61(1) degC.
Power measured at PSL output now is 893 mW (measured at our standard place shown in 40m/16672), which used to be 951 mW in June 2022 (40m/16886).
Power measured at PMC input (see attached photo) now is 1.18 W.

Next:
 - What was the previous PMC input power we had?
 - Sweep PSL laser temperature for larger range

The low PMC transmission alarm was on this morning. The PMC alignment needs a touch up.

 PMC trend of 400 and 1200 days

The Innolight 2W based PSL- IOO was implemented in the ~ summer of 2010

PMC has been unlocked since ~ 2:30 AM. Seems like the PZT got saturated. I moved the DC output adjuster and the PMC locked immidiatly although with a low transmission of 0.62V (>0.7V is the usual case) and high REFL.

IMC locked immidiately but IFO seems to be completely misaligned. The beams on the AS monitor are moving quite alot syncronously. BS watchdog tripped. I enabled the coil outputs. Waiting for the RMS motion to relax...

Its not relaxing. RMS motion is still high. I disabled the coils again and reenabled them. This seems to have worked. Arms were locked quite easily but the ETMs oplevs were way off and the ASS couldn't get the TRX and TRY more than 0.7. I align the ETMs to center the oplev. I realign everything else and lock the arms. Maximium TR is still < 0.8.

{Yehonathan, Anchal}

I went to get a sandwich around 10:20 AM and when I came back BS was moving like crazy. We shutdown the watchdog.

We look at the spectra of the OSEMs (attachment 1). Clearly, the UR sensing is bad.

We took the BS sattelite box out. Anchal opened the box and nothing seemed wrong visually. We returned the box and connected it to the fake OSEM box. The sensor spectra seemed normal.

We connected the box to the vacuum chamber and the spectra is still normal (attachment 2).

We turn on the coils and the motion got damped very quickly (RMS <0.5mV).

Either the problem was solved by disconnecting and connecting the cables or it will come back to haunt us.

PMC lost lock between 21:00 and 22:00 UTC on April 11th as seen in the summary pages:

https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:30889/detcharsummary/day/20210411/psl/#gallery-4

That's between 2pm and 3pm on Sunday for us. We're not sure what caused it. We will attempt to lock it back.

Mon Apr 12 08:45:53 2021: we used milind's python script in scripts/PSL/PMC/pmc_autolocker.py. It locked the PMC in about a minute and then IMC catched lock succefully.

However, the PMC transmission PD shows voltage level of about 0.7V. On medm, it is set to turn red below 0.7 and yellow above. In Summary pages in the past, it seems like this value has typically been around 0.74V. Simil;arly, the reflection RFPD DC voltage is around 0.063 V right now while it is supposed to be around 0.04 nominally So the lock is not so healthy.

We tried running this script and the bashscript version too (scripts/PSL/PMC/PMCAutolocker) a couple of times but it was unable to acquire lock.

Then we manually tried to acquire lock by varying the C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP (with gain set to -10 dB) and resetting PZT position by toggling Blank. After a few attempts, we were able to find the lock with transmission PD value around 0.73V and reflection RFPD value around 0.043. PZT control voltage was 30V and shown in red in medm to begin with. So we adjusted the output ramp again to let it come to above 50V (or maybe it just drifted to that value by itself as we could se some slow drift too). At Mon Apr 12 09:50:12 2021 , the PZT voltage was around 58V and shown in green.

We assume this is a good enough point for PMC lock and move on.

PMC lost lock again at around 16:00 April 12. I was able to lock it again but the transmission is only 0.6 now and REFL is 0.14.

Rana came in and realigned the PMC stirring mirrors. Now the transmission is 0.757V, and the REFL is 0.03V.

I noticed that the PZT was around 250V. Given that the PMC got unlocked at 16:00, which is around the peak temperature time in the lab (lagging behind the outside weather), due to the PZT voltage going down to 0V, I figured that the PZT voltage would go up during the night when the lab gets cold and therefore will likely go out of range again.

I found a different working point at 150V and relocked the PMC.

We ran the cables for the PMC: The RF cable for the 35.5 MHz drive was cheap and so we swapped the 29.5 MHz cable for it.

There now remain 1 RG-174 cable to drive the FSS PC (21.5 MHz) and 3 Heliax for the Kiwamu Tri-Mod EOM (11, 29.5, and 55 MHz).

We also changed the BLACK HV drive cable for the RED one (previously used for the MZ). All HV cables MUST be RED.

The BLACK cable is now used for the PMC_REFL DC.

The Heliax cables are routed onto the table - it remains a Alberto/Kiwamu job to strain relieve them and attach them to the TriMod box and EOM in the morning.

The PMC is locked and we did some partially bootless alignment and mode-matching. It locks easily on a TEM00 mode (with very poor visibility), but the

rest of the beam train can now be aligned while Valera does the PMC matching mambo.   

Relocked the PMC.  MC came back immediately.

The PMC was unlocked for a little over an hour.  I relocked it, and the MC locked itself.  Today, it looks like PMC yaw alignment is bad, and maybe pitch isn't so good either.  Transmission is 0.77

Wednesday night, there was ~0.4 V on the PMC transmission PD. I adjusted the steering mirrors into the PMC and got the transmission up to 0.81 V.

PMC and IMC were aligned on Friday (16th) and Today (19th).

The PD and lens for the ringdown experiment were removed as they were blocking the WFS.

[Yuta, Jenne]

PMC and MC alignment are both shit, although with the WFS on, the MC is pretty good.  We're leaving it for now, so that (a) we don't mess up Koji's work, and (b) we can work on the Xarm.  Steve is doing Yarm oplev stuff, so we'll do Yarm later.

The followings are a kind of daily check. Do this without any notice:

- Align PMC.

- Check MC spot position with the script (where is it located?). Ignore MC2 result as it can be arbitrary set.

- If the MC1/MC3 spots have moved it means that the PSL beam has moved. If the beam has moved, we should have some discussion what we should do.

- If the spot positions are about the same as before, align the MC mirrors. This should be done by nulling the WFS feedback. (Someone should make a simple script for this WFS offloading.)

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

Then, start locking both arms

 [Yuta, Jenne, Suresh]

We pushed on the MC SUS connectors at the back of the rack, and that helped bring MC3 back to where it should be.  Then we looked at MC RFPD DC, and adjusted the optics with the WFS off, so that the refl is ~0.56.  Then when we turn the WFS on, the alignment doesn't really change, so we have offloaded the WFS. 

Now we're measuring the spot positions to check where the MC is.  Then we'll align the arms, and align the green to the arms.

 [Keiko, Jenne]

PMC aligned.  Suresh is fixing the measure MC spot positions script, then we'll remeasure MC spot positions.

 [Suresh, Jenne, Yuta]

We measured the MC spot positions twice tonight. Procedure for measuring them is in elog #6688.
The results were;

spot positions in mm (MC1,2,3 pit MC1,2,3 yaw):
    3.3359    3.9595    2.3171   -7.7424   -0.8406    6.4884

spot positions in mm (MC1,2,3 pit MC1,2,3 yaw):
    3.2681    4.0052    2.2808   -7.3965   -0.7624    7.1302

The spot moved by about 0.5 mm since May 25, but we concluded that this displacement is negligible and difficult to be fixed by aligning PSL beam.

We'll align Y arm and X arm next.

Todo:
-----
1) Continue mode matching into the PMC. Its transmission now is around the same as the
   old one.

2) Put a UHV foil covered lead brick onto the PMC to quiet it down.

3) Characterize the PMC loop and retune the body notch for the new body.

4) Tweak the MZ alignment to minimize the RFAM. We can use StochMon to do this as
   long as we have the MC WFS turned off or we can put in a flipper to take the
   beam before the MC and send it to the StochMon RFPD.

5) Re-align onto the ISS.

6) Install irises around the periscope for the beam. The old iris there is way off.

7) Fix PSL ANG and center both POS and ANG.

  The aging of the laser came up when the noisy bearing showed.  ~10% down in in 4 years. That is pretty good.

Did it again.

PMC Trans ~0.739
IMC Trans ~15000