I came in to check the status of the nitrogen and noticed that the striptool panels in the control room were all blank.

• PMC was unlocked but I was able to relock it using the usual procedure
• FB seems to be down: I was unable to ssh into it (or any of the FEs for that matter). I checked the lights on the RAID array, they are all green. I am holding off on doing a hard reboot of FB in case there is some other debugging that can be done first
• None of the watchdogs were tripped, but judging by the green spots on the mirrors, all of them are moving quite a bit. I've shutdown the watchdogs on all the optics except the MC mirrors, but the ITMs and ETMs still seem to be moving quite a bit.

I am leaving things in this state for now. It is unclear why this should have happened, it doesn't seem like there was a power glitch?

Attachment #1

Since I could not determine how many volts at the LO input of the pomona box input corresponds to how many volts at the laser PZT, I measured the transfer function between these points using the Agilent network analyzer. The measured TF suggests that for a function generator output of 2Vpp, we get approximately 75mrad of phase modulation, which compares reasonably well with the value of 120mrad reported here. I did not attempt to further increase the LO output signal to push this number closer to 120mrad, as with 2Vpp from the function generator we get +7dBm at the mixer, which is what it wants - so I wanted to avoid any attenuators etc...

Attachments #2 and #3

After ensuring that we have appreciable phase modulation, I set out to measure the PDH OLTFs and adjust the gain on the uPDH boxes accordingly. The X end gain is at 6.0, and the Y end gain is at 4.0. Before measuring the Y-end OLTF, I adjusted the steering mirrors to increase GTRY to ~0.45. GTRX remains a paltry 0.05... But the UGFs seem satisfactory..

Attachment #4

Finally, I took the ALS noise spectrum for the green beats. The beat note amplitudes on the network analyzer in the control room are still puny compared to what we had, -40dBm for Y and -45dBm for X. But the phase tracker Q values are ~1000 and ~3000 for X and Y respectively, which are pretty close to what these were if memory serves me right. There may still be some room for optimization of the PDH loop gains etc, and we could perhaps look at lowering the gain of the REFL PD at the X end? I also have yet to do the sweep for the 3 temperatures at which we can find a beatnote and park at the middle one...

These spectra suggest we could even possibly try locking? We are approximately a factor of 3 above the reference for X and on par with the reference for Y....

Unrelated to this work: I also realinged the PMC, PMC transmission is now 0.730V up from ~0.65V.

I did a quick sweep of the lab to find out what hardware has already been acquired for the X-end table upgrade. The attached PDF is an inventory check in the spirit of this elog.

Some things we have to decide:

• Are we okay with using the old green coloured faraday mount for the IR faraday? I have in hand a piece identical to the one used at the Y-end for the green faraday, that is red in colour, so I guess we can switch this out.
• The way in which the doubling oven is currently mounted at the X-end is using some posts cobbled together. The Y-end looks to have a custom mount machined for it (see Attachment #2). Do we want to go ahead and get something like this done?
• I suppose it is okay to reuse all the old optics (mirrors, lenses, harmonic separators) and PDs? It may be that we need to order som extra mirrors/lenses/posts (this will become clear once I do the layout)

I have not gotten around to planning the layout or doing drawings. I will try and first work through a mode-matching solution to make sure we have all the required lenses. It may be that we need some 1" or 2" mirrors as well. The beam from the lightwave NPRO is quite elliptical, but we have a number of cylindrical lenses in hand already if we decide we want to use these, so I guess we don't have to worry about this...

This is quite a preliminary list, and I will add/update over the coming days as I do more detailed planning, but have I missed out anything obvious?

I located the second doubler mount, it was sitting inside a cabinet along the Y-arm. So this will not have to be machined. The doubling oven mount is black in colour.

So as things stand now, the only thing that needs to be machined is a non-green mount for the IR faraday (IO-5-1064-HP) - is it possible to just coat the existing mount with a different color? I've got a drawing for this part ready, but it seems unnecessary to machine the whole thing from scratch when only the color is an issue. Steve was talking about dipping this in some sort of solution and taking the green off. But if this isn't possible, I'll send Steve the drawings tomorrow so that he can place the order with the machine shop...

I will work on the mode-matching calculations over the next couple of days to make sure we have all the mirrors and lenses we need.

Attachment 1: This is a photo of the current X end table optical layout with the beampaths of the various sub-systems overlaid. For the labels, see Attachment #2.

Attachment 2: This is a summary of all the optical components that are currently being used. I've noted some things we may want to change when we effect the swap. The important ones are:

• Switch out all 1" and 2" optic mounts which are not of the Polaris type to the Polaris type. I have checked that we have sufficient numbers of these in hand.
• Adjust the collimating lens of the fiber collimating telescope to get a better mode
• Many of the labels are probably outdated, now would be a good time to update them
• For the mode-matching of the AUX IR into the doubling crystal, a la mode suggests a better (i.e. less sensitive to lens position) solution is effected with L2 as a 100mm fl lens rather than 88.3mm. I did not change this during the laser swap in order to minimize the number of components changed. Since we are doing a wholesale change now, it may not be a bad idea to swap this out as well. I have checked that we have a suitable AR1064 coated lens.
• Some optics probably need to be cleaned...
• PZT mirror 2 has a new mount ready that is the "correct" height so we don't have to keep using makeshift stacked posts.
• The plan as it stands is to use the green coloured mount for the IR faraday (IO-5-1064-HP).

Have I missed anything important?

Attachment #3: I've made a CAD drawing of the proposed new layout and have overlaid the beampath in an amateur way because I couldn't figure OptoCad out - I figure this will suffice for now. I have adopted elements from the current Y-end layout, but have used Anders' mode-matching solution (same lenses, same positions of optics) to make sure we have good Guoy phase separation between the two PZT steering mirrors. Some notes:

• I've tried to palce the optics for the AUX IR into the doubler and subsequent steering of green into the arm cavity as per the mode matching solution. These should be pretty accurate, and the layout suggests we have some room to maneuver 
• The Green REFL beampath is exaggerated but I think we have enough room to place Y16 appropriately and steer the reflected beam into the PDA36A
• We need two more 1" 1064nm coated mirrors for the initial steering into the doubling oven, I have checked we have these in hand.
• The IR pickoff into the fiber coupler may change somewhat once we change the mode and redo the mode-matching calculations. But again, I think we have sufficient room to implement a workable solution.
• After accounting for the fact that the new endtable will be a little closer to the vacuum chamber, Y12 in the proposed layout will be ~10cm further away from ETMX than it is currently. But as discussed at the meeting today, the Rayleigh range of the green beam should be large enough here such that this shouldn't be a significant change.

Steve says the table is ready - so if we are happy with this layout, we can move forward...

The major changes from the previous layout:

1. I've depicted the Green reflected beam path more accurately - I approximately measured the angle of the rejected beam from the faraday from the Y-end setup. This looks like a workable solution, and is similar to what we have currently at the Y-end
2. I've added some optics to monitor the DC power and RIN of the AUX laser
3. I've added two lenses to the input path of the Oplev beam (the path is such that I think we can use the same lenses that are currently being used. 
4. I've now drawn the beams in CAD so that is marginally neater.

To do:

1. Post mode matching solutions for AUX laser to doubler and green beam to arm for this proposed layout (should be identical to what we have now, which at least according to the calculation is a good solution, but I will double check - I also need to quantify what the effect of the elliptical beam is)
2. Check the Gouy phase of the transmitted IR beam at the QPD - we may need to change some lenses in this path. But I think the path as such is close enough (distance-wise) to what we have currently at the X end (after accounting for the fact that the new endtable edge will be closer to the ETM) so I don't expect this to be a show-stopper.

Does any part of this layout need a radical redesign? 

I realized I had overlooked an important constraint in the layout, which is that the enclosure will have two supports that occupy some region of the table - these are denoted in blue in v3 of the layout (Attachment #1). I measured the dimensions for these from the existing Y-endtable. The main subsystem this has affected is the IR transmission monitors, but I've been able to move the photodiodes a little to accommodate this constraint.

I've also done the mode-matching calculations explicitly for the proposed new layout (Attachments #2 and #3, code in Attachment #4). While the layout was largely adopted from what Andres posted in this elog, I found that some of the parameters he used in his a la mode code were probably incorrect (e.g. distance between the 750mm lens and the ETM). More critically, I think the Gouy phase for the optimized solution in the same elog is more like 60 degrees. I found that I could get a (calculated) Gouy phase difference between the two PZT mirrors of ~81 degrees by changing the green path slightly, and making the two PZT mirrors Y7 and Y8 (instead of Y7 and Y11, for which the Gouy phase difference is more like 50 degrees). But this way the two steering mirrors are much closer to each other than they were before. Other misc. remarks about the mode matching calculations:

• The beam diameter at the locations where the Faraday isolators should go is well below 5mm, the aperture size of the Faraday isolators
• The calculated mode-matching efficiencies suggest that we don't need any cylindrical lenses though the mode from the NPRO is elliptical
• Attachment #5 is a CAD drawing of the layout with all dimensions used for the mode-matching calculations included (although they are in inches)

These changes also necessitated minor changes to the transmitted IR beampath and the Oplev system, but these changes are minor. I've also switched the positions of the AUX IR power monitoring PD and the fiber coupler as suggested by Koji. The shutter has also been included. 

I'm planning to start removing components from the X endtable tomorrow morning at ~10AM - if anyone thinks I should hold off and do some further checks/planning, let me know before this so that I can do the needful.

As discussed in a Wednesday meeting some time ago, we don't need to be writing channels from BLRMS filter modules to frames at 16k (we suspect this is leading to the frequent daqd crashes which were seen the last time we tried setting BLRMS up for all the suspensions). EricQ pointed out to me that there conveniently exists a library block that is much better suited to our purposes, called BLRMS_2k. I've replaced all the BLRMS library blocks in the sus_single_BLRMS library block that I made with there BLRMS_2k blocks. I need to check that the filters used by the BLRMS_2k block (which reside in /opt/rtcds/userapps/release/cds/common/src/BLRMSFILTER.c) are appropriate, after which we can give setting up BLRMS for all the suspensions a second try...

I've begun cleaning the optics that will eventually go back onto the newly installed X-endtable. We decided that First Contact was the way to go (as opposed to methanol drag wiping). Koji demonstrated the application of the (red) First Contact solution onto a 2" mirror - I then proceeded to work on the rest of the optics. We are broadly following the procedure in E1000079 - first one coat of First Contact solution is applied, then a small piece of PEEK is embedded by applying a second layer of solution over it (this will enable us to pull off the First Contact once we are ready - the plan is to do this after roughly placing the optic on the table. As of now, I've finished coating most of the optics that are part of the IR Transmon path - I will continue later in the evening.

The new endtable is almost ready for re-population. Steve just needs to shim the enclosure which will be done tomorrow morning. The game-plan as discussed at the meeting today is to first try and set up the IR Transmon path. This will allow us to verify that the endtable height is such that we can maintain a beam height of 4" everywhere on the table (I suspect we may have to compromise at some poing and do some fine adjustment of 1/4 to 1/2" somewhere though). It will also allow me to define the cavity axis relative to the table, which will be useful to place the green steering optics eventually. Doing this will be challenging though as right now, I can't see any of the arm flashes on the endtable using an IR card. Ideally, we want to somehow lock the X arm and then do the checks mentioned at the endtable, before beginning to put the endtable back together. 

Steve has finished installing the enclosure on the new endtable. So Eric and I decided to try and lock the X arm and measure the beam height of the transmitted IR beam relative to the endtable. We initially thought of using POX DC as a the LSC trigger but this did not work as there was no significant change in it when the arm was flashing. Eric then tried misaligning the ITM and using AS110 as a trigger - this worked. We then recompiled the ASS model to take AS110 as an input, and ran the dither alignment. After doing so, I measured the beam height at two points on the new endtable.

Bottom line:

• The beam is roughly level across the table (along the North-South direction, within the precision to which I could place the irides and measure the height). The table has also been levelled pretty well...
• The beam height is ~4.7" across the endtable

So the beam is about 0.7" higher relative to the endtable than we'd like it to be. What do we do about this?

• Is it even possible to raise the table by 0.7" so we can have a level beam everywhere? Are there some constraints related to how the enclosure is attached to the window?
• Are we okay with tolerating a solution where we keep the beam level at 4", and use Y10 and Y11 (see layout in elog 12060) to raise the beam by 0.7", and then have slightly higher posts for the optics downstream of this point?

I've also placed two irides extending the cavity axis on the endtable. These should be helpful in aligning the green to the arm eventually.

Over the last couple of days, I've been working on restoring the optical layout on the X-endtable. Some notes about the status as of today:

Lightwave NPRO output power

The output power from the lightwave NPRO is about 210mW (as measured with the calorimeter). This is significantly lower than the value of ~300mW reported in this elog. It may be that the laser crystal temperature has changed compared to that measurement, but the "ADJ" parameter is at 0, both today and in that measurement. The laser has also been on for more than a day now, that should be sufficient time for the crystal to equilibriate to its final operating state? Is such a large change in output power possible just because of a change in laser crystal temperature? Or did the laser really lose ~1/3rd of its output power over the last two months?

Alignment into IR Faraday, and changes to the planned layout

I've set up the layout until steering the beam through the IR faraday. The input power into the IR Faraday is ~210mW. The output power is ~186mW, after optimizing the angle of the HWP. These numbers seem consistent with what I had reported in this elog (although this was for the Innolight NPRO). The alignment looks reasonably good to the eye as well.

I've made one change to the planned layout (latest version here). Y1 is now a 2" 99% reflective for S polarization beam splitter, instead of a 1" HR mirror. I made this change because we want some light from the NPRO to be transmitted through this optic to couple into the fiber eventually, for the IR beat. I measured the transmitted power to be ~1.5mW, which is around what we were coupling into the fiber before, and should suffice now. The Lightwave NPRO datasheet (page 4) suggests that the polarization of the output of the laser is S, and the measured power before and after this optic suggests that it is working as advertised. This means that HWP 1 also has to be moved downstream (to rotate the polarization so as to maximize transmission through the IR faraday). Space constraints meant that I could not mount HWP 1 on the baseplate+3/4" OD post assembly which is what we want where possible on the new table, so for this optic, I used a 1" OD post and a fork. There may be a couple of other optics in the final layout where space constraints dictate we compromise in this way.

I've also installed beam dumps for the rejected light from the Faraday. For now, these are the old beam dumps. They looked reasonably intact. I believe we have a bunch of new beam dumps on hand as well, so these can be swapped out if deemed necessary.

Cleaning of optics

All the optics are being cleaned using first contact before being installed on the table. 

As I found out the hard way, it is not a good idea to clean small optics like half-wave plates while in their mounts. The first contact tends to bond to the frame while drying, and doesn't come off cleanly. Koji helped me clean the offending pieces (he used tweezers to manually remove the residual first contact, and then some acetone to clean up any remaining residue). Subsequently, he re-cleaned these optics, again using first contact, but this time being careful not to extend all the way out to the edge of the optic. The idea is to cover as much area as possible with first contact, while staying clear of the edge. This approach worked reasonably well.

The next major step is to achieve optimal alignment into the doubler. I've placed the doubler on the table in it's approximate final position, I wanted to make sure the enclosure support wasn't in the way (it isn't). The cable from the oven won't run all the way to the Thorlabs temperature controller in it's usual place, we need to either extend the cable, or figure out a new place where we can keep the temperature controller.

[Koji,gautam]

Lightwave NPRO information:

Model: 126-1064-700

Serial Number: 337

Manufactured: December 1998!!

Details of checks performed:

Koji tuned the parameters on the laser controller and we observed the following:

1. Turning "ADJ" to +10 and the pumping current all the way up to the maximum (2.62A) allowed us to recover an output power of 300mW, at a laser crystal temperature of ~45degrees
2. The output power increased almost monotonically as a function of the laser crystal temperature - why? We were able to see powers as high as 250mW (at ADJ=0) for the maximum crystal temperature of ~60 degrees.
3. We checked that we could believe the readout of the power meter by measuring the power using the Scientech power meter - we saw ~270mW after the Faraday with this meter, accounting for ~10% loss through the Faraday, this corresponds to an output power of 300mW (all this was done at ADJ=+10, DC=2.62A). I suspect that the display is dodgy though, because changing the Diode Current from 2.52A to 2.62A increased the output power by almost 100mW, which seems hard to believe?
4. The Lightwave NPRO does not have heat dissipation fins attached - could this be affecting the power output somehow? In any case, this has to be rectified. So if we decide to keep the Lightwave NPRO, the layout will still need minor changes to accommodate the heat fins. Steve, do we have these in hand?

Way forward

Ericq has begun the characterization of the repaired Innolight. We checked that it outputs 1W of power. We will now have to perform the following measurements:

• Frequency noise using PLL
• AM/PM response of the PZT
• Laser power output as a function of diode current - this will be useful for diagnostic purposes in the future
• AUX temperature vs PSL temperature at which beatnotes can be found
• Waist measurement - the mode matching and optical layout upstream of the doubling oven at least will have to be modified significantly

All of these will have to be done before installing this laser at the endtable.

I believe the consensus as of now is to go ahead with carrying out the above measurements. Meanwhile, we will keep the Lightwave NPRO on and see if there is some miraculous improvement. So the decision as to whether to use the Innolight is deferred for a day or two.

I've performed the temperature sweep of PSL vs Innolight 1W AUX laser.

• I followed the procedure in this elog - started by turning of FSS and FSS Slow servos, closed the PSL shutter, noted down the value of PSL temperature
• As noted in elog 3759, there are multiple temperatures at which a beat can be found. I recorded all that I could find. The IR beat frequency was < 20MHz at the temperatures recorded (and had an amplitude of a few dBm, but I used a 20dB coupler to look at the signal on the HP spectrum analyzer
• The PMC unlocked each time I changed the PSL temperature, but the PMC autolocker worked for me every time
• We should use curve 3 in attachment 1, it is the most reliable set of temperatures at which a beat can be found
• PSL diode current was 2.100A, AUX laser diode current was 2.001A
• Attachment 2 is the data

It remains to measure the output power vs diode current, and the beam profile. I will do the latter on the SP table where there is a little more space. Because we have 1W from this NPRO, the knife-edge method requires a power meter that has a large dynamic range and is sensitive enough to profile the beam accurately. After consulting the datasheets of the power meters we have available (Scientech, Ophir and Coherent) together with Koji, I have concluded that the Coherent calorimeter will be suitable. Its datasheet claims it can accurately measure incident powers of up to 100uW, although I think the threshold is more like 5-10mW, but this should still be plenty to get sufficient resolution for a Gaussian intensity profile with peak intensity of 1W. We also checked that the maximum likely power density we are likely to have during the waist measurement process (1W in a beam of diameter 160um) is within the 6kW/cm^2 quoted on the datasheet.

I re-measured the power levels today.

We have ~205mW out of the NPRO, and ~190mW after the Faraday. It doesn't look like the situation is going to improve dramatically. I'm going to work on a revised layout with the Innolight as soon as I've profiled the beam from it, and hopefully, by Monday, we can decide that we are going ahead with using the Innolight.

I have moved the 1W Innolight + controller from the PSL table to the SP table for beam profiling.

Summary

I've finished up the remaining characterization of the repaired 1W Innolight NPRO - the beamscan yielded results that are consistent with an earlier beam-profiling and also the numbers in the datasheet. The output power vs diode current plot is mainly for diagnostic purposes in the future - so the plot itself doesn't signify anything, but I'm uploading the data here for future reference. The methodology and analysis framework for the beamscan is the same as was used here.

Attachment #1 - Beam-scan results for X-direction

Attachment #2 - Beam-scan results for Y-direction

Attachment #3 - Beam profile using fitted beam radii

Attachment #4 - Beam-scan data

Attachment #5 - Output power vs Injection current plot

Even though I remember operating at a diode current of 2.1A at some point in the past, while doing this scan, attempting to increase the current above 2.07A resulted in the "Clamp" LED on the front turning on. According to the manual, this means that the internal current limiting circuitry has kicked in. But I don't think this is a problem as we don't really even need 1W of output power. This is probably an indicator of the health of the diode as well?

Attachment #6 - Output power vs Injection current data

It remains to redo the mode-matching into the doubling oven and make slight modifications to the layout to accommodate the new laser + beam profile. 

I plan to do these in the morning tomorrow, and unless there are any objections, I will begin installing the repaired 1W Innolight Mephisto on the X endtable tomorrow (18 April 2016) afternoon. 

Summary of work done over the last two days

1. Lightwave NPRO + controller moved to PSL table
   • ​​The interlock is not connected to the controller
   • Controller is not powered
2. Innolight NPRO + controller installed at endtable
   • ​​​​Interlock has been connected
   • For initial alignment purposes, I'm running it at an injection current of 1.000A (~50mW of IR out of the NPRO)
   • Temperature of crystal set to 31.66 degrees in anticipation of operation in the nominal state
3. Laying out optics
   • ​​Given that the mode out of the NPRO is different from that from the Lightwave, the mode-matching had to be re-done
   • Attachment #1 shows the mode-matching solution being implemented
   • Current state - I've placed all the optics up to and including the doubling crystal + oven. Alignment through IR Faraday is pretty good, QWP+HWP angles optimized to maximize transmission through the Faraday (<10% loss). Oven has been hooked up to temperature controller, and is currently set to 36.3 degrees. Coarse alignment into doubling crystal done at lower power. Even with the low IR power, I am able to see some green. It remains to turn the injection current up and do the fine alignment + lens position tweaking to maximize the green power from the doubling crystal - with ~1W of power, assuming 2%/W SHG efficiency, we should be seeing 20 mW of green (which is probably way too much)

Immediate next steps:

1. Some optimization to be done with regards to beam dumps for rejected beam from IR Faraday. Also double check to make sure that the reflected beam from L1 doesn't go back directly to the laser (at the moment it doesn't, is there a standard way to do this? I was trying to have the lens as close to normal incidence as possible, but I may not have been entirely successful which is why the reflected beam is not going straight back at the moment).
2. Optimize mode-matching into the doubling crystal
3. Once the desired green mode is obtained, continue with the rest of the layout
4. Update CAD drawing to reflect new layout

I've made progress on the new layout up to the doubling oven. After doing the coarse alignment with the diode current to the NPRO at ~1A, I turned it back up to the nominal 2A. I then rotated the HWP before the IR Faraday such that only ~470mW of IR power is going into the doubler (the rest is being dumped on razor beam dumps). After tuning the alignment of the IR into the doubling oven using the steering mirror + 4 axis translation stage on which the doubling oven is mounted, I get ~3.2mW of green after the harmonic separator and a HR mirror for green. The mode looks pretty good to the eye (see attachment #1), and the conversion efficiency is ~1.45%/W - which is somewhat less than the expected 2%/W but in the ballpark. It may be that some fine tweaking of the alignment + polarization while monitoring the green power can improve the situation a little bit (I think it may go up to ~4mW, which would be pretty close to 2%/W conversion efficiency). The harmonic separator also seems to be reflecting quite a bit of green light along with IR (see attachment #2) - so I'm not sure how much of a correction that introduces to the conversion efficiency. 

While doing the alignment, I noticed that some amount of IR light is actually transmitted through the HR mirrors. With ~500mW of incident light at ~45 degrees, this transmitted light amounts to ~2mW. Turns out that this is also polarization dependant (see attachment #3) - for S polarized light, as at the first two steering mirrors after the NPRO, there is no transmitted light, while for P-polarized light, which is what we want for the doubling crystal, the amount transmitted is ~0.5%. The point is, I think the measured levels are consistent with the CVI datasheet. We just have to take care find all these stray beams and dump them.

I will try and optimize the amount of green power we can get out of the doubler a little more (but anyway 3mW should still be plenty for ALS). Once I'm happy with that, I will proceed with laying out the optics for mode-matching the green to the arm.

Attachment #1

Layout as of today. Most of the green path is done. The Green REFL PD + PZT mirrors have not been hooked up to their respective power sources yet (I wonder if it's okay to start laying cables through the feedthroughs on either end of the table already, or if we want to put whatever it is that makes it airtight eventually in first?). A rough power budget has been included (with no harmonic separator just before the window), though some optimization can be done once the table is completely repopulated.

Attachment #2

A zoomed-in version of the REFL path.

Some general notes:

1. I've tried to use the custom 3/4" O.D. posts + baseplate arrangement wherever possible (only 1 steering mirror is on a 1" post clamped with a fork to the table because of space constraints). Where the baseplates could not be bolted onto the table directly, I've used Newport SS Dogs to do the job.
2. I checked for continuity between the PZT outer case and the table top with a multimeter, and found none. So I chose to leave the Thorlabs baseplates in place. For the REFL PD, I've used an insulating baseplate given to me by Steve.
3. I've used some custom length 3/4" O.D. posts to get the beam up to the right height (~4.75") just before sending the green beam in. The beam height is 4" elsewhere.
4. I was playing around with positioning the harmonic separator immediately before the vacuum chamber window - I found that there is a substantial amount of green light that is reflected, though there doesn't seem to be any IR leaking through. The mirror was labelled Y1-1037-45P, which is a code for CVI mirrors, though I believe it is a LaserOptik product and that we have a couple of other such mirrors in the optics cabinet - though they are all 1". This document suggests that from the back side, there should be <0.1% reflection of green while on the front side it should be < 3%. I will have to hunt a little more for the specs, and measure the powers to see if they match the previously quoted numbers. In any case, I'll have to think of how to separate the (unwanted) reflected green and the transmitted IR from the cavity in the IR transmon path.
5. There are some minor changes to the planned layout posted here - I will update these in due course once the Transmon path and Oplev have been set up.

I am closing the PSL shutter and the EX laser shutters for the night as I have applied a layer of first contact to the window for cleaning purposes, and we don't want any laser light incident on it. It may be that the window is so dirty that we may need multiple F.C. cleaning rounds, we will see how the window looks tomorrow...

The IR Transmon system is almost completely laid out, only the QPD remains to be installed. Some notes:

1. The "problem" with excessive green power reflected from the harmonic separator has been resolved. It is just very sensitive to the angle of incidence. In the present configuration, there is ~10uW of green power reflected from either side, which shouldn't be too worrisome. But this light needs to be dumped. Given the tiny amount, I think a black glass + sticky tape solution is best suited, given the space constraints. This does not reach the Transmon PDs because there is a filter in the path that is transmissive to IR only. 
2. I aligned the transmitted beam onto the Thorlabs PD, and reconnected the signal BNC cable (the existing cable wasn't long enough so I had to use a barrel connector and a short extension cable). I then reverted the LSC trigger for the X arm back to TRX DC and also recompiled c1ass to revert to TRX for the dither alignment. At the moment, both arms are stably locked, although the X arm transmission is saturated at ~0.7 after running the dither alignment. I'm not sure if this is just a normalization issue given the new beam path or if there is something else going on. Further investigations tomorrow.
3. It remains to dump some of the unwanted green light from the addition of the harmonic separator...
4. We may want to redesign some (or all) of the Transmon path - the lens currently in use seems to have been chosen arbitrarily. Moreover, it is quite stubbornly dirty, there are some markings which persist after repeated first contact cleaning...

I feel like once the above are resolved, the next step would be to PDH lock the green to the arm and see what sort of transmission we get on the PSL table. It may be the polarization or just alignment, but for some reason, the transmitted green light from the X arm is showing up at GTRY now (up to 0.5, which is the level we are used to when the Y arm has green locked!). So a rough plan of action:

1. Install transmon QPD
2. PDH lock green to X arm
3. Fix the window situation - as Steve mentioned in an earlier elog, the F.C. cleaning seems to have worked well, but a little remains stuck on the window (though away from where any laser radiation is incident). This is resolved easily enough if we apply one more layer of F.C., but the bottle-neck right now is we are out of PEEK which is what we use to remove the F.C. once dried. Steve thinks a fresh stock should be here in the next couple of days...
4. Once 3 is resolved, we can go ahead and install the Oplev.
5. Which leaves the lst subsystem, coupling to the fiber and a power monitor for the NPRO. I have resolved to do both these using the 1% transmitted beam after the beamsplitter immediately after the NPRO rather than pick off at the harmonic separator after the doubling oven. I need to do the mode-matching calculation for coupling into the fiber and also adjust the collimating lens...
6. Clean-up: make sure cables are tied down, strain-relieved and hooked up to whatever they are supposed to be hooked up to...

Using the modulation frequency suggested here, I hooked up the PDH setup at the X-end and succeeded in locking the green to the X arm. I then rotated the HWP after the green Faraday to maximize TRX output, which after a cursory alignment optimization is ~0.2 (I believe we were used to seeing ~0.3 before the end laser went wonky). Obviously much optimization/characterization remains to be done. But for tonight, I am closing the PSL and EX laser shutters and applying first contact to the window once more courtesy more PEEK from Koji's lab in W Bridge. Once this is taken care of, I can install the Oplev tomorrow, and then set about optimizing various things in a systematic way.. MC autolocker has also been disabled...

Side note: for the IR Transmon QPD, we'd like a post that is ~0.75" taller given the difference in beam height from the arm cavity and on the endtable. I will put together a drawing for Steve tomorrow..

After a second round of F.C. application, I think the window is clean enough and there are no residual F.C. pieces anywhere near the central parts of the window (indeed I think we got most of it off). So I am going to go ahead and install the Oplev. 

With Steve's help, I installed the Oplev earlier today. I adjusted the positions of the two lenses until I deemed the spot size on the QPD satisfactory by eye. As a quick check, I verified using the DTT template that the UGF is ~5Hz for both pitch and yaw. There is ~300uW of power incident on the QPD (out of ~2mW from the HeNe). In terms of ADC counts, this is ~13,000 counts which is about what we had prior to taking the endtable apart. There are a couple of spots from reflections off the black glass plate in the vacuum chamber, but in general, I think the overall setup is acceptable.

This completes the bulk of the optical layout. The only bits remaining are to couple the IR into the fiber and to install a power monitoring PD. Pictures to follow shortly. 

Now that the layout is complete, it remains to optimize various things. My immediate plan is to do the following:

1. Maximize green transmission by tweaking alignment. I should also do a quick check using mirror specs to see that the measured transmitted green power compares favourably to what is expected.
2. Check the green PDH loop transfer function at the X end - this will allow me to set the gain on the uPDH box systematically.
3. Re-establish green beats, check noise performance.
4. There are possibly multiple beam dumps that have to be installed. For now, I've made sure that no high power IR beams are incident on the enclosure. But there are a couple of red and green beams that have to be accounted for.

I will also need to upload the layout drawing to reflect the layout finally implemented.

Not directly related:

The ETMx oplev servo is now on. I then wanted to see if I could lock both arms to IR. I've managed to do this successfully - BUT I think there is something wrong with the X arm dither alignment servo. By manually tweaking the alignment sliders on the IFOalign MEDM screen, I can get the IR transmission up to ~0.95. But when I run the dither, it drives the transmission back down to ~0.6, where it plateaus. I will need to investigate further. 

GV Edit: There was some confusion while aligning the Oplev input beam as to how the wedge of the ETM is oriented. We believe the wedge is horizontal, but its orientation (i.e. thicker side on the right or left?) was still ambiguous. I've made a roughly-to-scale sketch (attachment #1) of what I think is the correct orientation - which turns out to be in the opposite sense of the schematic pinned up in the office area.. Does this make sense? Is there some schematic/drawing where the wedge orientation is explicitly indicated? My search of the elog/wiki did not yield any..

[ericQ, gautam]

Today we spent some time looking into the PDH situation at the X end. A summary of our findings.

1. There is something that I don't understand with regards to the modulation signal being sent to the laser PZT via the sum+HPF pomona box - it used to be that with 2Vpp signal from the function generator, we got ~5mVpp signal at the PZT, which with the old specs resulted in a modulation of ~0.12rad. Now, however, I found that there was a need to place a 20dB attenuator after the splitter from the function generator in order to realize a modulation depth of ~0.25 (which is what we aim for, measured by locking to the TEM00 modes of the carrier and sidebands and comparing the ratio of powers). It could be that the PZT capacitance has changed dramatically after the repair. Nevertheless, I still cant reconcile the numbers. We measured the transfer function from the LO input of the pomona box to the output with the PZT connected, and figure there should be ~70dB of attentuation (with the 20dB additional attenuator in place). But this means 1Vpp*0.0003*70rad/V = 0.02rad which is an order of magnitude away from what the ratio of powers suggest. Maybe the measurement technique was not valid. In any case, this setup appears to work, and I'm also able to send +7dBm to the mixer which is what it wants (function generator output is 3Vpp).
2. In addition to the above, I found that the demodulated error signal had a peak-to-peak of a few volts. But the PDH servo is designed to have tens of mV at the input. Hence, it was necessary to turn down the gain of the REFL PD to 10dB and add a 20dB attenuator between mixer output and servo input.
3. While Johannes and I were investigating this earlier in the afternoon, we found that the waveform going to the laser PZT was weirdly distorted (still kind of sinusoidal in shape, but more rounded, I will put up a picture shortly). This may not be the biggest problem, but perhaps there is a better way to pipe the LO signal to the PZT and mixer than what is currently done.
4. We then looked at loop transfer function and spectrum of the control signal. Plots to follow. They look okay.
5. I measured the green power coming onto the PSL table. It is ~400uW. After optimizing alignment, the green transmission is ~0.4 according to whatever old normalization we are using.
6. We then recovered the X green beatnote and looked at the ALS noise spectrum. Beatnote amplitude at the beat PD is ~ -27dBm. The coherence in the region of a few hundred Hz suggests that some improvements can be made to the PDH situation (the gain of the PDH servo is maxed out at the X end at the moment...). But the bottom line is this is probably good enough to get back to locking...

I suggested in an earlier elog that after the repair of the NPRO, the PZT capacitance may have changed dramatically. This seems unlikely - I measured the PZT capacitance with the BK Precision LCR meter and found it to be 2.62 nF, which is in excellent agreement with the numbers from elogs 3640 and 4354 - but this makes me wonder how the old setup ever worked. If the PZT capacitance were indeed that value, then for the Pomona box design in elog 4354, and assuming the PM at ~216kHz which was the old modulation frequency was ~30rad/V as suggested by the data in this elog, we would have had a modulation depth of 0.75 if the Function Generator were set to output a Signal at 2Vpp (2Vpp * 0.5 * 0.05 * 30rad/V = 1.5rad pp)! Am I missing something here?

Instead of using an attenuator, we could instead change the capacitor in the pomona box from 47pF mica to 5pF mica to realize a modulation depth of ~0.2 at the new modulation frequency of 231.25 kHz. In any case, as elog 4354 suggests, the phase introduced by this high-pass filter is non-zero at the modulation frequency, so we may also want to install an all-pass filter which will allow us to control the demodulation phase. This should be easy enough to implement with an Op27 and passive components we have in hand...

It looks like the hardware reset did the trick. Previously, I had just tried ssh-ing into c0rga and rebooting it. At the time, however, Steve and I noticed that the various LEDs on the RGA unit weren't on, as they are supposed to be in the nominal operating state. Today, Steve reported that all LEDs except the RS232 one were on today, so I just tried following the steps in this elog again, looks like things are back up and running. I'm attaching a plot of the scan generated using plotrgascan MATLAB script, it looks comparable to the plot in elog 11697, which if I remember right, was acceptable.

Unless there is some reason we want to keep this c0rga machine, I will recommission one of the spare Raspberry Pis lying around to interface with the RGA scanner when I get the time...

This is a cold scan.

I've been working on putting together a Finesse model for the current 40m configuration. The idea was to see if I could reproduce a model that is in agreement with what we have been seeing during the recent DRFPMI locks. With Antonio and EricQs help, I've been making slow progress in my forays into Finesse and pyKat. Here is a summary of what I have so far.

• Arm lengths were taken from some recent measurements done by yutaro and me 
• Recycling cavity lengths were taken from Gabriele's elog 9590 - it is likely that the lengths I used have errors ~1cm - more on this later. Furthermore, I've tried to incorporate the flipped RC folding mirrors - the point being to see if I can recover, for example, a power recycling gain of ~7 which is what was observed for the recent DRFPMI locks.
• I used Yutaro's most recent arm loss numbers, and distributed it equally between ITM and ETM for modeling purposes. 
• For all other optics, I assumed a generic loss number of 25ppm for each surface

Having put together the .kat file (code attached, but this is probably useless, the new model with RC folding mirrors the right way will be what is relevant), I was able to recover a power recycling gain of ~7.5. The arm transmission at full lock also matches the expected value (125*80uW ~ 10mW) based on a recent measurement I did while putting the X endtable together. I also tuned the arm losses to see (qualitatively) that the power recycling gain tracked this curve by Yutaro. EricQ suggested I do a few more checks:

1. Set PRM reflectivity to 0, scan ETMs and look at the transmission - attachment #1 suggests the linewidth is as we expect 
2. Set ETM reflectivity to 0, scan PRM - attachment #2 suggests a Finesse of ~60  for the PRC which sounds about right
3. Set ETM reflectivity to 0, scan SRM and verify that only the 55 MHz sidebands resonate - Attachment #3

Conclusion: It doesn't look like I've done anything crazy. So unless anyone thinks there are any further checks I should do on this "toy" model, I will start putting together the "correct" model - using RC folding mirrors that are oriented the right way, and using the "ideal" RC cavity lengths as detailed on this wiki page. The plan of action then is

• Evaluating the mode-matching integrals between the PRC and the arm cavities as a function of the radius of curvature of PR2 and PR3
• Same as above for the SRC
• PRC gain as a function of RoC of folding mirrors
• Mode overlap between the modes from the two arm cavities as a function of the RoC of the two ETMs (actually I guess we can fix RoC of ETMy and just vary RoC of ETMx).

Sidenote to self: It would be nice to consolidate the most recent cavity length measurements in one place sometime...

As we realized during the EX table switch, the transmitted beam height from the arm is not exactly 4" relative to the endtable, it is more like 4.75" at the X-end (yet to be investigated at the Y-end). As a result, the present configuration involves the steering optics immediately before the Oplev and TransMon QPDs sending the beam downwards at about 5 degrees. Although this isn't an extremely large angle, we would like to have things more level. For this purpose, Steve has ordered some Aluminium I-beams (1/2 " thick) which we can cut to size as we require. The idea is to have the QPD enclosures mounted on these beams and then clamped to the table. One concern was electrical isolation - but Steve thinks Delrin washers between the QPD enclosure and the mount will suffice. We will move ahead with getting these machined once I investigate the situation at the Y end as well.. The I beams should be here sometime next week...

Summary:

Having played around with a toy finesse model, I went about setting up a model in which the RC folding mirrors are not flipped. I then repeated the low-level tests detailed in the earlier elog, after which I ran a few spatial mode overlap analyses, the results of which are presented here. It remains to do a stability analysis.

Overview of model parameters (more details to follow):

• PRC length = 6.7727m (chosen using , N=0 - I adjusted the position of the PRM to realize this length in the model, while leaving all the other vertex optics in the same positions as in elog 9590
• SRC length = 5.4182 (chosen using  but not , M and N being integers, for M=2 - as above, I adjusted the position of the SRM to realize this in the model, while leaving all other vertex optics in the same positions as in elog 9590. It remains to be verified if it is physically possible to realize these dimensions in vacuum without any beam clipping etc but I think it should be possible seeing as the PRM and SRM had to be moved by less than 2cm from their current positions..
• For the losses, I used the most recent numbers we have where applicable, and put in generic 25ppm loss for all the folding mirrors/BS/AR surfaces of arm cavity mirrors/PRM/SRM. Arm round trip loss was equally distributed between ITMs and ETMs
• Arm lengths used: L_X = 37.79m, L_Y = 37.81m
• To set the "tunings" of the various mirrors, I played around with a few configurations to see where the various fields resonated - it turns out that for PRM, ITMX, ITMY, ETMX and ETMY, the "phase" in the .kat file can be set as 0. while that for the SRM can be set as 90. In the full L1/H1 interferometer .kat files, these are tuned even further to the (tenth?!) decimal place, but I think these values suffice for out purposes.

Results (general note: positive RoC in these plots mean a concave surface as seen by the beam):

• Attachments #1, #2 and #3 reproduce the low-level tests performed earlier for this updated model - i.e. I look at the arm transmission with no PRM/SRM, circulating PRC power with no ETMs, and circulating SRC power with no ETMs. Everything looks consistent here... In Attachment #2, there is no legend, but the (almost overlapping) red and green lines are meant to denote the +f1 and +f2 sidebands.
• Attachments #4 and #5 are a summary of the mode-overlap scans for the PRC and SRC. What I did was to vary the radius of curvature of the RC mirrors (finesse only allows you to vary Rcx and Rcy, so I varied both simultaneously) and calculate the mode overlap between the appropriate pairs of cavities (e.g. PRX and XARM) in the tangential and saggital planes. The take-away here is that there is ~5% mode-mismatch going from an RoC of 1000m to 300m. I've also indicated the sag corresponding to a given RoC - these are pretty tiny, I wonder if it is possible to realize a sag of 1um? I suppose it is given that I've regularly seen specs of surface roughness of lambda/10?
• Attachment #6 shows the PRC gain (calculated as T_PRC * (transmitted arm power with PRM / transmitted arm power without PRM) as a function of the RoC of PR2 and PR3. As a sanity check, I repeated this calculation with lossless HR surfaces (but with nominal 25ppm losses for AR surfaces of ITMs, and BS etc), shown in Attachment #7. I think these make sense too...
• Attachment #8 - in order to investigate possible mode mismatch between the arm modes due to different radii of curvature of the ETMs, I kept the ETMY RoC fixed at 57.6m and varied the ETMY RoC between 50m and 70m (here, I've plotted the mode matching efficiency as a function of the RoC of the ETM in the X and Y directions separately - the mode overlap is computed as  where x and y denote the overlap in the tangential and saggital planes respectively. It would seem that we only lose at most a couple of percent even if the RoCs are mismatched by up to 10m...
• Attachment #9 - .kat file and the various pykat scripts used to generate these plots...

Next step is to carry out a stability analysis...

Summary

In a previous elog, I demonstrated that the RoC mismatch between ETMX and ETMY does not result in appreciable degradation in the mode overlap of the two arm modes. Koji suggested also checking the effect on the contrast defect. I'm attaching the results of this investigation (I've plotted the contrast,   rather than the contrast defect 1-C).

Details and methodology

• I used the same .kat file that I had made for the current configuration of the 40m, except that I set the reflectivities of the PRM and the SRM to 0. 
• Then, I traced the Y arm cavity mode back to the node at which the laser sits in my .kat file to determine what beam coming out of the laser would be 100% matched to the Y arm (code used to do this attached)
• I then set the beam coming out of the laser for the subsequent simulations to the value thus determined using the gauss command in finesse.
• I then varied the RoC of ETMX (I varied the sagittal and tangential RoCs simultaneously) between 50m and 70m. As per the wiki page, the spare ETMs have an RoC between 54 and 55m, while the current ETMs have an RoC of 60.26m and 59.48m for the Y and X arms respectively (I quote the values in the "ATF" column). Simultaneously, at each value of the RoC of ETMX, I swept the microscopic position of the ETMX HR surface through 2pi radians (-180 degrees to 180 degrees) using the phi functionalilty of finesse, while monitoring the power at the AS port of this configuration using a pd in finesse. This guarantees that I sweep through all the resonances. I then calculate the contrast using the above formula. I divided the parameter space into a grid of 50 points for the RoC of ETMX and 1000 points for the microscopic position of ETMX. 
• I fixed the RoC of ETMY as 57.6m in the simulations... Also, the maxtem option in the .kat file is set to 4 (i.e. higher order modes with indices m+n<=4 are accounted for...)

Result:

Attachment #1 shows the result of this scan (as mentioned earlier, I plot the contrast C and not the contrast defect 1-C, sorry for the wrong plot title but it takes ~30mins to run the simulation which is why I didn't want to do it agian). If the RoC of the spare ETMs is about 54m, the loss in contrast is about 0.5%. This is in good agreement with this technical note by Koji - it tells us to expect a contrast defect in the region of 0.5%-1% (depending on what parameter you use as the RoC of ETMY). 

Conclusion:

It doesn't seem that switching out the current ETM with one of the spare ETMs will result in dramatic degradation of the contrast defect...

Misc notes:

1. Regarding the phase command in Finesse - EricQ pointed out that the default value of this is 3, which as per the manual could give unphysical results sometimes. The flags "0" or "2" are guaranteed to yield physical results always according to the manual, so it is best to set this flag appropriately for all future Finesse simulaitons. 
2. I quickly poked around inside the cabinet near the EX table labelled "clean optics" to see if I could locate the spare ETMs. In my (non-exhaustive) search, I could not find it in any of the boxes labelled "2010 upgrade" or something to that effect. I did however find empty boxes for ETMU05 and ETMU07 which are the ETMs currently in the IFO... Does anyone know if I should look elsewhere for these?
   EDIT 17Jun2016: I have located ETMU06 and ETMU08, they are indeed in the cabinet at the X end...
3. I'm attaching a zip file with all the code used to do this simulation. The phase flag has been appropriately set in the (only) .kat file. setLaserQparam.py was used to determine what beam parameter to assign to be perfectly matched to the Y arm. modeMatchCheck_ETM.py was used to generate the contrast as a function of the RoC of ETMX.
4. With regards to the remaining checks to be done - I will post results of my investigations into the HOM scans as a function of the RoC of the ETMs and also the folding mirrors shortly... 

This was an oversight on my part. I've updated the .kat file to have all the optics have the RoC as per the phase map page. I then re-did the tracing of the Y arm cavity mode to determine the appropriate beam parameters at the laser in the simulation, and repeated the sweep of RoC of ETMX while holding RoC of ETMY fixed at 60.2m. The revised contrast defect plot is attached (this time it is the contrast defect, and not the contrast, but since I was running the simulation again I thought I may as well change the plot). 

As per this plot, if the ETMX RoC is ~54.8m (the closer of the two spares to 60.2m), the contrast defect is 0.9%, again in good agreement with what the note linked in the previous elog tells us to expect...

The retiling work has finished, Steve and I restored the N2 supply configuration to its normal state. The sequence of steps followed was:

1. Went to the X end and closed the following valves, roughly in this order: VAEE, VAEV, VABS, VABSCI, VASV, VASE, V4, V1.
2. Checked the RPM on the various turbo pump controllers to make sure they were in their nominal states
3. Disconnect the electrical connections to V1, V4, V5 and VA6 - just to make sure some spurious signal doesn't unintentionally open any of these valves while we are mucking around with the N2 supply
4. Close the valves on the N2 cylinders in the drill room. Disconnect the temporary nitrogen line (at this point, the N2 pressure to the IFO valves goes down from ~7-PSI to 0), reconnect the old supply chain, taking care that we aren't unintentionally loosening any of the Swagelock connections while unscrewing stuff
5. Replaced one of the N2 cylinders that was running low.
6. Reopen the cylinders, restore N2 pressure to IFO valves to ~70PSI.
7. Do steps 1-3 in reverse: i.e. reconnect power to all valves, open them in the reverse order we closed them while monitoring the state of the various turbo pumps. 
8. Acknowledged the error message on the C0VAC medm screen

Note: the valve isolating the RGA automatically shutoff during this work, possibly because it detected a pressure above its threshold - after checking the appropriate pressure gauges, we reopened this valve as well. 

The attached screenshot suggests that everything went as planned and that the vacuum system is back to normal...

That is what the simulation suggests... I repeated the simulation for a PRFPMI configuration (i.e. no SRM, everything else  as per the most up to date 40m numbers), and the conclusion is roughly the same - the contrast defect degrades from ~0.1% to ~1.4%... So I would say this is significant. I also attempted to see what the contribution of the asymmetry in loss in the arms is, by running over the simulation with the current loss numbers of 230ppm for Yarm and 484ppm for the X arm, split equally between the ITMs and ETMs for both cases, and then again with lossless arms - see attachment #1. While this is a factor, this plot seems to suggest that the RoC mismatch effect dominates the contrast defect...

Having investigated the mode-overlap as a function of RoC of the PRC and SRC folding mirrors, I've now been looking into possible stability issues, with the help of some code that EricQ wrote some time back for a similar investigation, but using Finesse to calculate the round trip Gouy phase and other relevant parameters for our current IFO configuration. 

To do so, I've been using:

1. Most up to date arm length measurements of 37.81m for the Y arm and 37.79m for the X arm
2. RoCs of all the mirrors from the phase map summary page
3. Loss numbers from our November investigations

As a first check, I used flat folding mirrors to see what the HOM coupling structure into the IFO is like (the idea being then to track the positions of HOM resonances in terms of CARM offset as I sweep the RoC of the folding mirror). 

However, just working with the flat folding mirror configuration suggests that there are order 2 22MHz and order 4 44MHz HOM resonances that are really close to the carrier resonance (see attached plots). This seems to be originating from the fact that the Y-arm length is 37.81m (while the "ideal" length is 37.795m), and also the fact that the ETM RoCs are ~3m larger than the design specification of 57m. Interestingly, this problem isn't completely mitigated if we use the ideal arm lengths, although the order 2 resonances do move further away from the carrier resonance, but are still around a CARM offset of +/- 2nm. If we use the design RoC for the ETMs of 57m, then the HOM resonances move completely off the scale of these plots... 

[EricQ, gautam]

Last night, we set about trying to see if we could measure and verify the predictions of the simulations, and if there are indeed HOM sidebands co-resonating with the carrier. Koji pointed out that if we clip the transmitted beam from the arm incident on a PD, then the power of the higher order HG modes no longer integrate to 0 (i.e. the orthogonality is broken), and so if there are indeed some co-resonating modes, we should be able to see the beat between them on a spectrum analyzer. The procedure we followed was:

1. Choose a suitable PD to measure the beat. We chose to use the Thorlabs PDA10CF because it has ~150MHz bandwidth, and also the responsivity is reasonable at 1064nm.
2. We started our measurements at the Y-end. There was a sufficiently fast lens in the beam path between the transmon QPD and the high gain PD at the Y end, so we went ahead and simply switched out the high gain thorlabs PDA520 for the PDA10CF. To power the PDA10CF, we borrowed the power cable from the green REFL PD temporarily.
3. We maximized the DC power of the photodiode signal using an oscilloscope. Then to introduce the above-mentioned clipping and orthogonality-breaking, we misaligned the beam on the PD until the DC power was ~2/3 the maximum value. 
4. We then hooked up the PD output to the Agilent network analizyer (with a DC block).
5. We measured the spectrum of the PD signal around 11.066MHz (with 100kHz span) and higher harmonics up to 55MHz and used a narrow bandwidth (100Hz) and long integration time (64 averages) to see if we could find any peaks. More details in the results section.
6. Having satisfied ourselves with the Y-end measurements, we 

• restored the power cable to the green beat PD
• re-installed the thorlabs PDA520 
• verified that both IR and green could be locked to the arm

We then repeated the above steps at the X-end (but here, an additional lens had to be installed to focus the IR beam onto the PDA10CF - there was, however, sufficient space on the table so we didn't need to remove the PDA520 for this measurement).

Results:

Y-end: DC power on the photodiode at optimal alignment ~ 200mV => spectra taken by deliberately misaligning the beam incident on the PD till the DC power was ~120mV (see remarks about these values).

I converted the peak heights seen on the spectrum analyzer in volts to power by dividing by transimpedance (=5*10^3 V/A into a 50ohm load) * responsivity at 1064nm (~0.6A/W for PDA10CF).

Remarks:

1. This effect flagged by the simulations seems to be real. Unfortunately I can't get a more quantitative picture because we can't quantify the mode-overlap between the carrier 00 mode and any higher order mode on the beat PD (as we know nothing about the profile of these modes), but the simulations did suggets that the 2nd order 22MHz and 4th order 44MHz HOMs are the ones closest to the carrier 00 resonance (see Attachments #2 and #3), which is kind of borne out by these results. 
2. I disbelieve the conversions into power that I have done above, but have just put them in for now, because a DC power of 200mW at the Y-end suggests that there is >160uW of light transmitted from the arm, which is at least twice what we expect from a simple FP cavity calculation with the best-known parameters. If I've missed out something obvious in doing this conversion, please let me know! 
3. For the Y-arm, the region around 55MHz had a peak (presumably from the sideband HOM beating with the carrier) but also a bunch of other weird sub-structures. I'm attaching a photo of the analyzer screen. Not sure what to make of this...

With Koji's help, I've hacked together an arrangement that will allow us to monitor the output of the coil driver to the UL coil. 

The arrangement consists of a short custom ribbon cable with female DB25 connectors on both ends - the particular wire sending the signal to the UL coil has a 100 ohm resistor wired in series, because the coil has resistance ~20ohm, and the output of the coil driver board has a series 200(?) ohm resistor, so by directly monitoring the voltage at this point, we may not see a glitch as it may register too small. Tangentially related: the schematic of the coil driver board suggests that the buffered output monitor has a gain of 0.5. 

To monitor the voltage, I use the board to which the 4 Oplev signals are currently hooked up. Channel 7 on this particular board (corresponding to ADC channel 30 on c1scx) was conveniently wired up for some prior test, so I used this channel. Then, I modified the C1SCX model to add a testpoint to monitor the output of this ADC. Then, I turned OFF the input on the coil output filter for the UL Coil (i.e. C1:SUS-ETMX_ULCOIL_SW1) so that we can send a known, controlled signal to the UL Coil by means of awggui. Next, I added an excitation at 5 Hz, amplitude 20 counts (as the signal to the coil under normal conditions was approximately of this amplitude) to the excitation channel of the same filter module, which is the state I am leaving the setup in for the night. I have confirmed that I see this 5Hz oscillation on the monitor channel I set up. Oddly, the 0 crossings of the oscillations happen at approximately -1000 counts and not at 0 counts. I wonder where this offset is coming from? The two points I am monitoring the voltage across is shown in the attached photograph - the black clip is connected to the lead carrying the return signal from the coil.

I also wanted to set up a math block in the model itself that monitors, in addition to the raw ADC channel, a copy from which the known applied signal has been cancelled, as presumably a glitch would be more obvious in such a record. However, I was unable to access the excitation channel to the ULCOIL filter from within the SCX model. So I am just recording the raw output for tonight...

I've made a few changes to the monitoring setup in the hope we catch a glitch in the DAC output/ sus coil driver electronics. Summary of important changes:

1. I'm using a CDS oscillator to send a signal of 20counts amplitude, 5.0 Hz to the coil rather than an excitation point. This way, I have access to the known signal we are sending, and can subtract it from the measured signal. 
2. To account for the phase delay between the excitation from the oscillator to the measured excitation, I am using an all-pass filter to manually delay the oscillator signal (internally in the model) before subtracting it from the measured output.

It remains to see if we will actually be able to see the glitch in long stretches of data - it is unclear to me how big a glitch will be in terms of ADC counts.

The relevant channels are : C1:SCX-UL_DIFF_MON and C1:SCX-UL_DIFF_MON_EPICS (pardon the naming conventions as the setup is only temporary after all). Both these should be hovering around 0 in the absence of any glitching. The noise in the measured signal seems to be around 2 ADC counts. I am leaving this as is overnight, hopefully the ETMX coil drive signal chain obliges and gives us some conclusive evidence...

I have not committed any of the model changes to the SVN. 

One of the pianosa monitors has ceased to function  For now, it has been set up to operate with just the one monitor.

One of Donatella's monitors has a defective display as well. Maybe we should source some replacements. Koji has said we will talk to Larry Wallace about this..

The amplitude of the applied signal (20) was indeed chosen to roughly match what goes to the coils normally when the OSEM damping is on.

There appears to be no evidence of a detectable glitch in the last 10 hours or so (see attachment #1 - of course this is a 16Hz channel and the full data is yet to be looked at)... I guess the verdict on this is still inconclusive.

Yesterday, I expanded the extent of the ETMX suspension coil driver investigation. I set up identical monitors for two more coils (so now we are monitoring the voltage sent to UL, UR and LL - I didn't set one up for LR because it is on a second DB25 connector). Furthermore, I increased the excitation amplitude from ~20 to ~2000 (each coil had an independent oscillator at slightly different frequency between 5Hz and 8.5 Hz), the logic being that during LSC actuation we send signals of approximately this amplitude to the coils and we wanted to see if a larger amplitude signal somehow makes the system more prone to glitches.

Over ~10 hours of observation, there is no clear evidence of any glitch. About 2 hours ago (~930am PDT Fri Jul 8), the watchdog tripped - but this was because even though I had increased the trip threshold to ~800 for the course of this investigation, megatron runs this script every 20 minutes or so that automatically reduces this threshold by 17 counts - so at some point, the threshold went lower than the coil voltage, causing the watchdog to trip. So this was not a glitch. The other break around 2am PDT earlier today was an FB crash.

Do we now go ahead and pull the suspension out, and proceed with the swap?

While ETMX is out, I'm leaving the larger amplitude excitations to the coils on over the weekend, in case any electronic glitch decides to rear its head over the weekend. The watchdog should be in no danger of tripping now that we have removed the ETM.

Unrelated to this work: while removing the ETMX suspension from the chamber, I also removed the large mirror that was placed inside to aid photo taking, so that there is no danger of an earthquake knocking it over and flooding the chamber with dust.

I have obtained 2x100cc bottles of in-date first contact from Garilynn (use before date is 09/14/2016) for cleaning of our test-masses. They are presently wrapped in foil in the plastic box with all the other first contact supplies.

[ericq, gautam]

Summary:

Today, we attempted to progress as far as we could towards getting the mirror suspended and gluing the second wire standoff. We think we have a workable setup now. At this stage, the suspension wire has been looped around the magnet, the second wire standoff has been inserted, coarse pitch balancing has been done, and we have verified that side OSEM/magnet positioning is tenable. Details below.

Details:

1. First we verified that the epoxy on the side magnet re-glued yesterday had dried (verified using control setup of epoxy in aluminum foil + copper wire - we didn't perform any further tests like pulling the magnet off the tabletop as we were satisfied)
2. We placed the optic inside the suspension cage, resting on the 4 lower earthquake stops.
3. We looped the suspension wire around the optic. This is a somewhat challenging procedure. After consulting the documentation, we decided to follow the given advice and loop the wire around from the bottom of the optic, one side at a time. It is tricky to thread the wire between the two lower earthquake stops and get it up around the side. The side magnets were an unexpected ally in this effort as they served as some sort of intermediate checkpoint from which we could pull the wire further up. We then lightly clamped it to the winches mounted atop the suspension cage.
4. After verifying that we had routed the wire correctly through the various stages (primary and secondary suspension points at the top of the cage), we placed the wire under very slight tension by had, and then tightly clamped the wires in the winches (we then cut off the excess length).
5. In this state, we proceeded to install the second wire standoff (having verified that the wire was indeed sitting in the groove on the other side). 
6. We then proceeded to raise the optic to the desired height (center of optic to 5.5 inches above the table top) with the help of the microscope and the lines on the barrel side. 
7. Next, we attempted to freely suspend the optic (i.e. no contact with the viton tips). We were initially unsuccessful but Eric did some fine adjustment of the (unglued) standoff to achieve a stable configuration. However, the wire is now really close to the magnet - although it is not clear to me if it is touching the magnet as we initially suspected - see Attachment #1, it may be that if the wire is touching something, it is the dumbbell and not the magnet itself. While this is clearly not ideal, we think that this setup is workable as is. If after doing the pitch balancing, if the deviation of the wire becomes much more pronounced, we may have to re-glue the side magnet. In any case, both the horizontal scribed lines are now 5.5 inches above the table top.
8. We then brought over the OSEMs from the ETMX vacuum chamber to the cleanroom. As a first check, we wanted to ensure that one of the side magnets could accommodate an OSEM (because both side magnets have been re-attached after the optic was removed from the old suspension). Attachment #2 suggests that this is possible, even though the relative positions of the side magnet and the shadow sensor may be sub-optimal. We will only really know after hooking up the electronics.

Remarks:

1. We found that after a few hours, there was some sag introduced in the wire, presumably it stretched into an equilibrium position under the weight of the optic. We will re-check the heights tomorrow while conducting further tests.

Immediate to-do:

1. Insert all OSEMS. Ensure that the magnet positions relative to the coil are compatible.
2. Enable damping loops. We have a cable coming from the IFO area into the cleanroom through a hole-in-the-wall. We are missing a DB25 gender changer at the moment. 
3. Do the pitch balancing.
4. Glue the second standoff in place. 

Other attachments:

Attachment #3 - Unglued stand off with wire in the groove, mirror freely suspended.

Attachment #4 - Glued stand off with wire in the groove, mirror freely suspended. Clearance between wire and magnet looks reasonable.

Attachment #5 - Barrel of optic (underside), mirror freely suspended. The wire seems to be in a reasonable orientation along the barrel, albeit not perfectly parallel.

Koji just pointed out that we should check that the unglued ruby standoff is in good contact with the barrel of the optic. Attachment #1 suggests that maybe this is not the case. If you zoom into Attachment #1, it is not clear if the standoff is sitting on the glue.

[Lydia, gautam]

Summary: We did some preliminary tests to check if at least one of the side magnet positions is usable for the side OSEM. We mainly wanted to check how much dynamic range we lose because of the sub-optimal longitudinal positioning of the side magnet. We found that when the side magnet was mainly moving along the axis of the side OSEM (with minimal yaw motion as gauged by eye), the PD voltage bottomed out at ~80 counts (while the completely unoccluded readout was ~800 counts). 

Details:

1. First, we placed the face OSEMs into their holders one by one, and adjusted their position till the readout was approximately half the saturation value (as judged by the average value of the readout, at this point, the mirror was still swinging around a fair bit).
2. Next, we enabled the POS, PIT and YAW damping (with all existing settings unchanged), but with the SD coil input and output disabled. We had to increase the watchdog threshold to ~600mV.
3. Once the optic was reasonably well damped (~70mV on the watchdog was the best we saw), I put in the side OSEM till the PD was completely occluded. At this point, I enganed the earthquake stops, and then released the mirror such that it was freely hanging. I then observed the optic by eye, and noted a time when the dominant motion was along the axis of the side OSEM coil (i.e. minimal YAW motion). 
4. Attachment #1 shows time series plots of the 5 OSEM PD voltage monitors. Perhaps because the side OSEM input was disabled, the damping wasn't as efficient as it normally is (also there is a fan blowing air around the clean bench). But at the point indicated on the plot, the YAW motion was negligible to the eye, while the dominant motion was along the axis of the coil. During this time, the readout bottomed out at approximately 10% of the saturation value (towards the end of these plots, I disabled the damping loops and began pulling the OSEMs out one by one). Because the damping was imperfect, this is only an approximate guess of how much dynamic range we are losing. But does this warrant regluing the side magnet?

Other remarks:

• The 4 face magents were reasonably well centered in the coil. While Eric and I were looking at this earlier today, the LL magnet looked a little close to the coil, but after putting all 4 OSEMs in, the situation looked reasonable to the eye. I couldn't take pictures because of space constraints, and furthermore, it's almost impossible to hold the camera in the correct vertical position. 
• Steve, Eric and I couldn't find the OSEM gender changer anywhere in the lab and it wasn't in the box it was advertised to be in. So we made a custom cheater cable, and cleaned it by wiping with Isoprop., and wrapped it in foil for use in this test. The OSEM pins should probably be cleaned before we put these back in vacuum. 

Today, we did the following:

• Once again, inserted all four face OSEMs till the sensor voltage readouts were approximately half their saturation value. The presence of some ferromagnetic material in the Honeywell components makes this tricky as each coil is coupled to the other three, but we were able to converge to a point where all the voltage readouts were oscillating around a mean value of ~40-60% of their maximum value, with all the damping loops OFF.
• Turned on all damping loops, and verified that the OSEM positioning was indeed such that the sensor readout is nominally around 50% of the saturation value. The air buffeting around the clean bench means that the damping isn't nearly as effective as it is inside the vacuum chamber.
• Attempted to increase the gain on the damping loops - we first switched out the Chebyshev low-pass filter in all the damping loops for something a little less aggressive, to allow us to turn up the gain. However, this experiment wasn't a success, when we turned the damping loops on, they were ringing the optic up.
• At this point, Eric checked the offset sliders (summed in via the slow system) and saw that they were not zero. We zeroed these, but naturally, they destroyed the OSEM positioning equilibrium we had established earlier. So we had to go back and re-position the OSEMs
• After re-centering the face OSEM magnets relative to the LED-PD pair, we insertd the side OSEM such that the side magnet completely occluded the PD. Interestingly, Eric noticed that the magnetic attraction between OSEM and magnets conspired to center the side magnet fairly well in the side OSEM, when it completely blocked the PD. However, when he returned the side OSEM coil to its nominal operating position of approximately half-blocking the PD, some minor misalignment was re-introduced (i.e. even when the optic was swinging mostly along the axis of the side OSEM, the voltage readout did not quite go down to 0). 
• We then decided to compare the spectra for the error signals for the 4 DOFs with the current configuration (i.e. suspension clamped down to table top, optic freely hanging, all OSEMs reasonably well centered, and with the ETMX SUS model reverted to its normal state) to some reference (see Attachment #1). I initially thought I would wait for the optic to settle down a bit more before taking the spectra, but it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of getting any quieter in the last one hour. In Attachment #1, I have plotted as reference the spectra of the error signals from the early hours of 4 July 2016, at which point we were at atmosphere but the heavy doors were not yet off, so this is not really a fair comparison, but we don't really have a period in which the optic was exposed to the atmosphere and with the OSEMs in place, at least from this vent. Colors are identical for a given DOF, with todays trace as a solid line, and the reference dashed.
• We did not check the room available to install some shimming piece of metal in the side OSEM holder, as a possible solution to solve the misalignment problem. Steve has already found pieces of varying thickness, and they are soaking in acetone right now, we plan to air bake them tomorrow. 

I will have another look at the spectra tomorrow morning, to see if the damping improves overnight. 

Attachment #1 - After multiple trials shimming the magnet gluing rig with teflon spacers, we think that we managed to find a configuration in which the side magnet edge is between 0.25 mm and 0.5 mm from the groove in the ruby wire standoff in which the wire will sit. 

Attachment #2 - Zoomed in view of the side magnet.

Of course we won't know until we suspend the optic, but we believe that we have mitigated the misalignment between the side OSEM axis and side magnet.

The short term plan is to try and suspend ETMY in the end chamber and have a look at the alignment between all magnets and OSEM coils for it. Once the epoxy on ETMX is cured, we will try and suspend the optic again, this time taking extra care while tightening the wire clamps.

Unrelated to this work: Bob just informed me that we had left the air bake oven on overnight - this unfortunately melted the plastic thermocouple inside.

While ETMX magnets were curing, I wanted to try and suspend ETMY in the endchamber, put in the OSEMS and see if the magnets aligned well with the coils, and run the same type of diagnostics we have been doing for ETMX. However, while I was trying to slip the optic into the wire, the UL magnet on ETMY broke off. I recovered the magnet and now both optic and magnet are back in the cleanroom. The magnet dumbbell has been cleaned with acetone and then sandpaper to remove residual epoxy - it remains to clean the residue off the optic itself before re-gluing the magnet tonight

I also noticed that the existing wire in the suspension had a kink in it. It looks fairly sharp, and I think we should change the wire while re-inserting the optic. Putting the optic into an existing loop of wire is tricky, as if you go in from the front of the suspension cage, the magnets on the AR side attract the wire, and makes it quite difficult to loop the wire around. I have to think of some way of holding the wires in place while the optic is being placed, and then, once the optic is roughly in position, slip the wire into the grooves in the standoffs. 

I took the opportunity to replace the face OSEM coil holder screws while the chamber was open. 

EDIT 9 August 2016: It was in fact the LR magnet that was knocked off.

[lydia, gautam]

Summary: Third unsuccessful attempt at getting ETMX suspended. I think we should dial the torque wrench back down to 1.0 N m from 1.5 N m for tightening the primary clamp at the top of the SOS tower. No damage to magnets, standoff successfully retrieved (it is sitting in the steel bowl)

Details:

• We burned through two sets of wires today.
• First, the assembly Eric and I had put together last night failed when Eric tightened the wire clamp (no torque wrench was used I think?)
• This afternoon, Lydia and I re-assembled the suspension once again. Standoff was successfully inserted, coarse pitch balancing was achieved relatively easily - we think that the coarse pitch balance can be achieved if the end of the wire standoff closer to the groove is ~0.5mm ahead (i.e. towards HR side) of the guide rod.
• Checked leveling of scribe lines, gave an extra 0.25 turns on the winches in anticipation of the wire sagging
• Inserted OSEMs just short of magnets, verified that they were approximately centered, if anything, slightly above center, again in anticipation of the wire sagging. 
• After taking pictures, we went ahead and attempted to clamp the wire (ALL EARTHQUAKE STOPS WERE ENGAGED)
• Eric commented that the clamp piece did not slide in smoothly on the dowels (indeed it does not come off very easily either, I have just left it on for now). I don't remeber it being so difficult prior to us sending it into the maching shop to get rid of the grooves made by the suspension wire the first time around. But with the torque wrench, the piece moved in relatively easily (we had sanded down rough edges prior to putting this piece onto the suspension earlier in the afternoon.
• I could feel that the torque wrench coming up on its limit. But the wire snapped before the torque wrench clicked. As far as I am aware, there were no rough edges on the piece, but perhaps we missed a spot?
• I took the opportunity to discharge the optic using ionized nitrogen at 40psi. After about 2-3 minutes of a steady stream, I verified that a piece of the suspension wire no longer gets attracted to the barrel, as was the case earlier today.

Unfortunately I don't know of a more deterministic way of deciding on a "safe" torque with which to tighten the bolts except by trial and error. It is also possible that the clamping piece is damaged in some way and is responsible for these breakages, but short of getting the edges chamfered, I am not sure what will help in this regard.

Unrelated to this work: earlier today before the first wire failure, while I was optimistic about doing fine pitch balancing and gluing the standoff, I set up an optical lever arm ~3m in length, with the beam from the HeNe on the clean bench at 5.5 in above the table, and parallel to it (verified using Iris close to the HeNe and at the end of the lever arm). I also set up the PZT buzzer - it needs a function generator as well for our application, so I brought one into the cleanroom from the lab, isopropanol wiped it. The procedure says apply 5Vrms triangular wave at 1000Hz, but our SR function generators can't put out such a large signal, the most they could manage was ~2Vrms (we have to be careful about applying an offset as well so as to not send any negative voltages to the PZT voltage unit's "External input". All the pieces we need for the fine pitch balancing should be in the cleanroom now.

[lydia, steve, ericq, gautam]

Summary:

• ETMX is now suspended by wire clamps (winches have been removed) 
• Wire clamp was machined by shop, D groove widened to spec, old wire grooves removed from face
• We also sanded the part of the suspension tower in contact with the primary wire clamp, as there were a couple of craters there which looked dangerous (pictures to follow)
• Height was adjusted by centering magnets on OSEMs. We then winched an extra half turn in anticipation of wire sag
• I then proceeded to tighten, first, the primary wire standoff (I reduced the torque on the torque wrench to ~1.25Nm), and then the secondary wire clamps.
• Checked that the ruby standoff is sitting on the optic barrel and not on glue 
• Later in the evening, I inserted OSEMs, centered magnets, and checked that the damping scheme set up last week works (I'm leaving the damping on, bottom EQ stops are ~0.5mm from the optic)
• Checked the pitch balancing - initially, we were ~60mrad off. By using the tweezers to gently adjust the position of the ruby standoff (after clamping the optic, turning the damping off), I was able to improve the situation a little bit - now we are ~20 mrad off. I am not attempting to do the fine pitch balancing tonight, but all parts of the PZT buzzer set up are ready to go in the cleanroom.
• Unfortunately, in the process of doing the pitch balancing, the position of the magnets relative to the OSEM coils have moved. Now the UR magnet looks a little high relative to the coil, but perhaps after any sag has set in, we should be alright. Else, we can probably get away by inserting one of the little metal shim pieces, the adjustment required is small.
• Lydia will upload some photos soon. 

  ---

• We actually went through another failed attempt today - this time, the problem was that the winches were not sufficiently secure at the top, such that when the range of the winch was nearing its end, the whole assembly twisted and took the wire along with it. Perhaps this would not have happened if we had a winch adaptor plate handy...

  ---

• Plan for tomorrow:
  • ​Fine pitch balancing using PZT buzzer
  • Clean ETMY epoxy residue from knocked off magnet
  • Glue wire standoff
  • Glue ETMY magnet