I've seen this before. At that time, the problem was gone spontaneously the next day.

You could stop just before the offset reaches zero and then try to slowly reduce the offset manually to see where is the threshold.

Koji, Yoichi

The inner and outer screw holes of the EQ stop Jenne is talking about are shown in the photo below.

 Since we had a similar trouble with the DAC at CLIO, I checked if this problem comes from the same origin.

The origin of the problem we had was that although the board was sold as 16 channel DAC, the firmware was set to use only 8ch.

To see if this problem exist in the DAC boards of c1sus, I added the following code to the /cvs/cds/caltech/cds/advLigoRTS/src/fe/map.c

printk("DAC ASSC = 0x%x\n",dacPtr[devNum]->ASSC);

in the definition of mapDac() function.

This code prints the information of the ASSC (Assembly Configuration) register of the PMC66-16AO16 board as a kernel message at the start up time of the realtime code. You can check the message with dmesg command.

After the modification, I recompiled the c1sus and installed it.

make c1sus; make install-c1sus

After starting c1sus, I checked the dmesg. Then found that the ASSC register was set to 0x130006. To decipher this magic number, you have to consult with the manual of the DAC, which is available online.

http://www.generalstandards.com/view-products.php?product=pmc66-16ao16

The manual says the 17th and 18th bits of this number set the number of channels. Those bits are 11 for 0x130006. According to the manual, 11 means 16 channels are present. So it seems that the ASSC register is correctly set. In the case of CLIO, the ASSC register was 0x110003, meaning only 8 channels are present.

Unfortunately, the ASSC register was not the cause of the problem, but at least this possibility was checked.

I added COMSOL example files to the 40m svn to demonstrate how to make transfer function measurements in COMSOL.

https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:30889/svn/trunk/comsol/MechanicalTF/

The directory also contains an (incomplete) explanation of the method in a PDF file.

inline cdsToggle /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/userapps/release/cds/common/src/cdsToggle.c

void cdsToggle(double *in, int inSize, double *out, int outSize){
  static double x = 0;
  static double y = 0;

  if (*in != y){
    y = *in;
    if (y == 1){
      x = (x == 1) ? 0 : 1;
      *out = x;
    }
  }
}

Yoichi, Rana

Here is the open loop gain of the XARM loop.

The reference is from the pre-upgrade era. We get the extra phase delay because we have two anti-aliasing filters. One is the hardware filter at about 7kHz for 16kHz sampling. This filter should have been replaced to the one for 64kHz sampling but it has not yet happened. The second one is the software anti-aliasing filter applied when down sampling from 64kHz to 16kHz. So we have double AA filters, which are the culprits for the extra phase delay.

We should either replace the hardware AA filter to the 64kHz one (preferred way), or change the software AA filter to a less aggressive one (easier temporary fix).

Yoichi, Rana

Here is the noise spectrum of the X-arm error signal along with the TRX DC power fluctuations.

The spectra were taken while the whitening filters for POX11 were OFF.

EDIT (Integrity Fairy): Shall we assume these units are "Intergalactic translational qubits/sqrt(Hz)"?

 I started working on the characterization of the MC servo.

The current MC servo topology is shown in the figure attached along with a simplified schematic diagram of the MC board. 

A usual way to measure the open loop gain of this servo is to inject a signal from, say, EXCA of the MC board and measure the transfer function from TP2A to TP1A. It works OK at frequencies around the UGF. The second attachment is the OPLTF measured in this way with the Agilent 4395A. The UGF is about 100kHz with the phase margin of 40 to 50 deg. 

Now we have two issues here. First, I expected the UGF to be more than 100kHz, like 300kHz or so. The phase babble is peaked around 100kHz. According to our old measurement (http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/1431) the phase babble peak was at a much higher frequency when the FSS was using the reference cavity. One reason could be that the MC is located much farther from the laser than the reference cavity, so that there is some phase lag caused by the time delay. I will make a model of the MC servo system later to check this theory.

The second issue is that, as you can see in the plot, the OPLTF measurement becomes noisy at lower frequencies. With 4395A, which has the minimum IFBW of 2Hz, OPLTF measurement below 10kHz was impossible with the traditional method. We could use SR785 with a long averaging time to improve the SNR, but it requires a patience which I don't have.

The measurement becomes difficult at low frequencies because the loop gain is too high. When the open loop gain (G) is high, the injected signal (x) from EXCA is immediately suppressed by a factor of 1/(1+G) at TP2A. This makes the injected signal hidden in other noises at TP2A.

How do we solve this problem ? Let's consider a simple servo model shown in the third attachment. A traditional OPLTF measurement is done by injecting a signal from EXC port and measuring the TF from TP2 to TP1. The problem was that at TP2, the signal is attenuated by 1/(1+G1*G2), which is too much when G (=G1*G2) is large. However, at TP3, the attenuated signal is amplified by G1. So the injected signal x becomes x*G1/(1+G) at TP3. If G1's contribution to the overall gain G is large enough,  the signal at TP3 is not so small. Then we can easily measure G2 using TP3 and TP1. In a typical situation, G1 is the transfer function of the electric circuits, which we can know either from standalone measurements or from model calculations, and G2 is an interferometer response, which we want to measure. So, by combining the knowledge of G1 and the measurement of G2, we can obtain the overall loop gain G even at lower frequencies.

 The final attachment shows an example of the measurement of G2. In our case, this is the transfer function from MC_Out_Mon to Q-Mon (see the first attachment) . G1 is the transfer function of the MC board. Since G1 is large at low frequencies, we can measure G2 down to 100Hz with a reasonable integration time (10000 cycles per point).

Last night, I took a bunch of TFs with this method. Now I'm analyzing the data to recover the overall gain G. I will post the results later.

 I calculated the MC open loop transfer function with the combination method. For that, I made a circuit model of the MC board (from the input to the output). The transfer function of this circuit is calculated by SPICE (attachment1). Then it is multiplied by the measured transfer function from the output of the MC board to the input of the MC board (attachment 2) to get the overall transfer function.

The result is shown in the attachment 3. The blue curve is the OPLTF measured with the traditional method. The red curve is the combination method described above. There are some discrepancies between the two curves. The ratio of the two curves (Traditional)/(Combination) is plotted in attachment 4. It seems there is a pole(s) missing from my model of the MC board at around 1MHz. This may come from the omitted op-amps in the MC board model (there are so many op-amps which have flat responses below 1MHz and I omitted most of those). Also the MC board includes many generic filter stages to customize the frequency response. I will open the MC board box to examine what is actually implemented on the board. 

At low frequencies, the two curves are similar but the slope is still different.

I also had to add 83dB of gain to the combined TF to match with the traditional one. I will check where does it come from.

The MC board model (Altium project) is attached as attachment 6. The schematic is attachment 5.

 I took out the MC board. Unfortunately, most of the components are surface mounted. So the values of the capacitors are not legible.

I will try my best to guess what is implemented on the board.

 I noticed that the IFO restore scripts have some problems. They use burt request files to store and restore the settings. However, the request files contain old channel names.

Especially channels with _TRIG_THRES_ON/OFF are now _TRIG_THRESH_ON/OFF, note the extra "H".

These scripts reside in /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/burt/c1ifoconfigure/.

I fixed the PRMI_SBres and MI scripts. Someone should fix all other files.

Tonight, I worked on the X-arm locking again. I did not have any significant progress, but observed several issues and will give some suggestions for future work here.

What I did tonight was basically re-alignment of the X-arm (because Rana touched the PZT mirrors for the Y-arm alignment, the X-arm alignment was screwed up). Then I measured the open loop gain. Of course it was almost identical to the one posted in this entry. It reminded myself of how small the phase bubble is. This means we have to finely adjust the gain to set the UGF at the right frequency, i.e. 100Hz. So I decided to do the signal normalization using the TRX power. Using the MC path method described here,  the appropriate normalization coefficient was determined to be 1.6, when the XARM gain is set to 0.05. Using burtgooey, I updated the burt snapshot used by the X-arm restore script.

Now I observed the following things:

When the normalization is used, the lock itself is stable, but the lock acquisition takes loner (i.e. fails more often).

I don't know the exact reason, but here is my guess: Usually, the error signal is divided by the square root of the transmitted power to widen the linear range of the PDH error signal. However, what I'm doing here is dividing the error signal with the power itself, not the sqrt. This might distort the error signal in a not-friendly-for-lock way ? I don't know.

I checked the c1lsc FE code. There seems to be the sqrt(TRX) and sqrt(TRY) signals computed in the code. However, these are not used for the normalization. 

Now, there are two requirements. When dragging the mirrors into the resonance, we want to normalize the error signal with sqrt(TRX). When the mirrors reach the resonance, the gain of the loop must be normalized by TRX. How do we smoothly connect those two states ? Someone should spend some time on this. Maybe I will work on this in Japan.  

We really need a time delay in the filter trigger

The automatic filter trigger is awesome. However, the [0^2:5^2] filter, which is an integrator, takes time to switch on and off. Every time the cavity passes by a resonance, this filter gets turned on and off slowly, giving some large transients. This transient combined with the bad coil balance of ETMX sometimes made the optical lever of ETMX crazy. This can be avoided by turning on this filter a few seconds after the power reaches the threshold. As Rana suggested, we should be able to put an arbitrary time delay to the filter trigger.

Someone should balance the coils

The coil balance of ETMX is bad and causing the above mentioned problem. I tweaked the coil balance by injecting a sinusoidal signal (10Hz) into ETMX pos and trying to minimizing the spectral peak in the optical lever signals. Of course, this is a cheesy work. Someone should put more serious effort on this.

A civilized interferometer should have an auto-alignment capability

After my alignment work, the X-arm power got to about 0.7. (This is probably because the MC transmission power has been low for the past 5 hours or so (attachment 1)).

In anyway, after the cavity locked to the TEM00 mode, the alignment has to be automatically improved by dithering. It is anachronism to sit down and click on the MEDM screen until the power gets big enough.

 To taste the strangeness of the current 40m PRC, I locked the PRMI with the guide of Koji.

We first aligned MICH by mostly tweaking ITMX, assuming that ITMY is in a good place as the Y-arm locks. MICH lock was stable.

Then we restored the IFO to the PRM_SBres mode. With a bit of alignment work on PRM and gain tweaking, the PRMI locked.

Yes, the beam spots look UGLY !

Also the PRMI was not so stable. Especially, when the alignment fluctuates, the optical gain changes and the loop becomes temporarily unstable. We took POP_DC as the guide for the gain change and normalized the PRCL error signal with it. To do this smoothly, we first changed the input matrix to route the PRCL error signal, which is REFL33_I, so that the signal also goes to the MC filter bank. Then with dtt, we monitored the spectra of the PRCL_IN1 and MC_IN1. We tweaked the value of the element in the normalization matrix for the MC path until the two spectra look the same (at this moment, the normalizing factor for the PRCL path was still zero). During this process, we noticed that the MC path signal (normalized by POP_DC) is noisier at above 500Hz. This was because the POP_DC has a large noise at high frequencies. So we put a low pass filter (100Hz 2nd order Butterworth) to the POP_DC filter bank to reduce the noise. Then the two spectra looked almost the same. The correct normalization factor found in this way was 0.03. So we put this number in the normalization matrix for PRCL. It did not break the PRMI lock.

After the normalization is turned on, the PRMI lock became somewhat more stable. However, the POP_DC was still fluctuating a lot, especially when the alignment is good. So I made a boost filter: 5Hz pole Q=2, 15Hz zero Q=1.5. I also made this filter automatically triggered when the PRMI is locked. This made the PRMI lock acquisition quicker. However, still the POP_DC fluctuation is large. It seems that the alignment of PRC is really fluctuating a lot.

 The current UGF of PRMI is about 150Hz with the phase margin over 50deg.

This week, I've been reading some literature concerning PLL and familiarizing myself with LINUX, MATLAB, and high-pass filter circuits.  In MATLAB, I started constructing matrices to be used for a beam path analysis from the laser output to the ccd camera.  I also built a simple high-pass filter on a bread-board that Joe and I are currently testing with the spectrum analyzer.

This past week, I have building a sine wave rectifier and trying to write a simple program that displays a ccd image to familiarize myself with the code.  I also wrote a progress report in which I included the following images of the sine wave rectifier circuit as well as the optical chain including the phase-locked loop.  The hirose connector arrived so I can begin soldering the electronics together and testing the trigger box with the ccd.  I am waiting on the universal PDH box as well as another fiber coupler to begin setting up the optics.  In order to avoid the frustrations associated with sending a laser beam down a long pipe to an optical bench across the room, I will be transmitting laser 1 to the ccd by means of a fiber optic cable and dealing with the alternative new and exciting frustrations.

The plan for the optical setup has been corrected after it was realized that it would be impossible to isolate a 29.501 MHz frequency from a 29.499 MHz one because they are so close in value.  Instead, we decided to adopt the setup pictured below.  In this way, the low-pass filter should have no trouble isolating 29.501-29.5 MHz from 29.501 + 29.5 MHz.  Also, we decided to scrap the idea of sending Alberto's laser through a fiber optic cable after hearing rumors of extra lasers.  Since I shouldn't have to share a beam when the second laser comes in, I plan on setting up both lasers on the same optics bench.  I've been working on the software while waiting for supplies, but I should be able to start building the trigger box today (assuming the four-pair cable is delivered).

Today, I moved the router from on top of the PSL into the control room in order to perform dark field tests on the GC650 (which I also moved).  The GC750 along with the lens that was on it and the mount it was on has been lent to Ricardo's lab for the time being.  I successfully triggered the GC650 externally and I also characterized the average electronic noise.  For exposure times less than 1 microsecond, the average noise contribution appears to be a constant 15 on a 12-bit scale.

Lately, I have been able to externally trigger the camera using a signal generator passing through the op-amp circuit that I built.  The op-amp circuit stabilizes the jitter in the sine wave from the signal generator and rectifies the wave.  I wrote the calculations into the code allowing me to find the phase and amplitude from the images I take.  I still need to develop code that will plot these arrays of phase and amplitude.

The mysterious dark band at the top of the ccd images continues to defy explanation.  However, I have found that it only appears for short exposure times even when the lens is completly covered.  During the next couple of days, I will try to write a routine to correct for this structure in the dark field.

Koji recommended that we use the optical setup pictured below.  This configuration would require fewer optics and we would have to rely on slight misalignments between the carrier and reference beams to test the effectiveness of the phase camera instead of a wavefront-deforming lens.

This past week, I have mostly been debugging my software.  I have tried to use the fluorescent lights to test the camera, but I can't tell for sure if my code is finding the correct amplitude and phase or not.  I am currently using Mathematica to double check my calculations in solving for the phase and amplitude.

Also, I have taken dark field images using a lens with a closed shutter.  I have found that the dark band across the top of the images only appears after the camera heats up.  Also, there is an average electronic noise of 14 with a maximum of 40.  However, this electronic noise as well as any consistent ambient noise will be automatically corrected for in the calculations I'm using because I'm taking the differences between the CCD images to calculate relative phases and amplitudes.

I should be able to start setting up optics and performing better tests of my software this week.

This week, Joe and I have been setting up the laser and optics.  The mephisto laser is emitting a very ugly beam that we can hopefully remedy using an iris and a lens.  After scanning the beam width at a few different distances from the laser, I am currently trying to determine the appropriate lenses to use.

While aligning the optics, we tried to start up the CCD.  Although nothing should have changed since the last time I used it, the code claimed it could not find the camera.  All the right leds are lit up.  The only indication that something is awry is that the yellow led on the camera isn't blinking as it does when there is ethernet activity.  

The camera wasn't working because the router has no built-in dhcp server.  We had to manually start the server after rebooting the computer.

Shown below are the plots of the amplitude and phase of the Mephisto laser light modulated with a chopper as a square wave at about 1 kHz.  The color bar for the phase should run from -pi to pi, and it does when I don't accidently comment out the color bar function.  Anyway, the phase is consistently pi/4 or pi/4 plus or minus pi.  Usually all three of these phases occur within the same image, as shown below.  Also, the amplitude is a factor of two or so higher than it should be where this phase jump occurs.  I think these problems are associated with the nature of the square wave.  However, there is a software bug that appears to be independent of the input data: there is a rounding error that causes the amplitude to jump to infinity at certain points.  This happened for only a dozen or so pixels so I deleted them from the amplitude plot shown below.  I am currently working on a more robust code that will use the Newton-Raphson method for nonlinear systems of equations. 

The images that I just posted were taken with the CMOS camera.  We switched from the CCD to the CMOS because the CCD was exhibiting much higher blooming effects.  Unlike the CCD, there is a slight background structure if you look carefully in the amplitude image, but I can correct for this consistent background by taking a uniformly exposed image by placing a convex lens in front of the CMOS.  I will then divide each frame taken of the laser wavefront by the background image. 

I have been commissioned to take pictures of the PSL table so that it can be diagrammed. I am starting now (1:42 pm, 10/5/09).

All done (for now). That wasn't so bad, was it?

I'm back to terrorize the PSL table again. The pictures I took yesterday were rubbish--today I'm using a clamp that Steve was nice enough to loan me. I'm starting now, at 10:09 am.