ELOG 40m

Low-gain High-gain PD switching may not be working well

Osamu, Yoichi

This afternoon, I run the locking script while doing calculations for the upgrade.
The IFO lost lock even at lower arm powers (around 6) if it was operated for a while (~ 5min).
It seemed as if there were some intermittent glitches (seismic? laser?) causing the lock losses.
We also saw once the TRX and TRY signals saturated at around arm power = 11 when there was a large fluctuation in the arm power.
Osamu suggested that it looked like the high-gain to low-gain PD switching was not working.

I won't come tonight as I may have caught a cold, but if someone comes tonight, it is worth checking the PD switching.

1350

Tue Mar 3 19:26:44 2009

Low-gain High-gain PD switching may not be working well

I checked the switching of the QPDX from high gain to low gain.
Switching happens as expected, but the low gain QPDX output was very low compared to QPDY.
Also the digital gain for the high gain TRX was not matched with the low gain one. So when the switching happens, there is a large jump in the TRX.

I also found that the offset values for the low gain QPDX were totally wrong. I adjusted it.
Then I removed a beam splitter in front of the QPDX to increase the power falling on it.
But still the low gain QPDX output is four times lower than the low gain QPDY.

I'm still working on it. So don't expect the switching to work correctly at this moment.
I'm planning to be back after the dinner.

Quote:

1351

Tue Mar 3 23:59:26 2009

Low-gain High-gain PD switching may not be working well

Quote:

This sounds like the QPD whitening gain sliders may be stuck. The slider twiddling script should be run, or the sliders should be twiddled by hand.

1352

Wed Mar 4 03:37:51 2009

Low-gain High-gain PD switching may not be working well

Quote:

This sounds like the QPD whitening gain sliders may be stuck. The slider twiddling script should be run, or the sliders should be twiddled by hand.

Yes, it was indeed the whitening gain slider problem.
I moved them and the QPDX gain went up suddenly. I reinstalled the BS in front of the QPDX and adjusted the offsets, gains accordingly.
Now the high-gain to low-gain switching is fine.

1353

Wed Mar 4 03:50:17 2009

Still won't go above arm power 10

Yoichi, Kentaro

The IFO still loses lock at around arm power 10.
I attached time series of various error signals when losing lock.
In all of the three cases, both of the arm powers go up rapidly just before losing lock.
(The first attachment was taken before I fixed the QPDX switching, so you can see saturation in TRX.)
But PD1_DC (the DC power in the PRC) did not go up in the third case.

I should also check correlations with laser power, CARM length (OSEM signals), seismic noise etc.

Attachment 1: lockLoss1.png

Attachment 2: lockLoss2.png

Attachment 3: lockLoss3.png

1361

Thu Mar 5 05:07:09 2009

Wednesday night locking

Tonight, I was having a problem with the PO_DC hand-off.
It fails most of the time.
I increased the averaging time for the PD1_DC offset measurement.
I also wrote a script to match the gain of the transmission DC and the PO_DC signals.
This script (/cvs/cds/caltech/scripts/CM/matchPODCGain ) measures the gains of the old (TRX+TRY) and new (PO_DC) signals at 150Hz and returns the optimal value to be put into the input matrix.
cm_step script calls matchPODCGain to determine the matrix element value for the PO_DC signal.

Even with this script, the hand-off was still unreliable.
I checked the AO path loop gain just before the hand off. It looked normal.
Then I realized that the oscilloscope I hooked up to the PO_DC signal using a T-BNC may be introducing some noise into the channel.
So I removed it. Then the PO_DC hand off went well at least once.
The IFO still loses lock at around arm power 10.

I attached time series of the latest lock loss. The second attachment is a zoom of the first one.
This time, there is a glitch in the ETM feedback signals, which is also present in the DARM and CARM and error signals.
I saw this kind of glitches several times today.

Attachment 1: lockLoss5.png

Attachment 2: lockLoss5-zoom.png

1364

Fri Mar 6 05:44:14 2009

Locking distracted by the QPD whitenning problem again

Tonight, I was able to ramp up the arm power to around 20. Then the DARM loop started to oscillate and the IFO lost lock in a few seconds.
I repeated this several times, then realized that the transmission QPDs were not working properly again due to the well known sticky slider problem.
I should have run slider_twiddle script. Since the DARM RF signal is normalized by the sqrt(TRX+TRY), it is reasonable that the DARM loop got unstable.

The fact that I was able to go up to arm power = 20 means there is nothing saturating below this power level.

1365

Fri Mar 6 15:23:39 2009

Locking distracted by the QPD whitenning problem again

By looking at the time series of DARM signal at the time of a lock loss, the oscillation frequency was about 3.5kHz (see the attm1 and its zoomed version attm2).
I will measure the DARM loop gain around this frequency next.

Quote:

Attachment 1: lockLoss3.pdf

Attachment 2: lockLoss3-zoom.pdf

1382

Tue Mar 10 04:55:41 2009

Locking: 3.7kHz large oscillation

Yoichi, Jenne, Alberto,

As I reported on the last Thursday, there is a large oscillation in CARM and DARM error signals (attm1).
I put notch filters (3.75kHz, Q=10, 30dB) in the CARM and DARM loops. This let us go up to the arm power of more than 20 and stay there for a while.
The dashed curves in the attm1 are the spectra when the notches are off, and the solid curves are when the notches are used.
We could somewhat suppress the DARM peaks but not CARM.
Of course this is clearly not a good solution. We should find the cause of the oscillation and kill it.

Attm2 is the spectrum of the PO_DC signal flowing in the CM board measured by the SR785. More specifically, CH1 is TP1A and CH2 is TP2A of the CM board.
This was taken right after the AO path was engaged. At this stage, the AO path gain is very low. But you can already see a seed of the oscillation in the spectrum.

Attm3 shows the same spectra taken after the arm power is increased to 4 but before the PO_DC hand off. You can see large peaks around 3.75kHz.
After this, the peaks grow as the power goes up.

Attm4 is the loop gain of the AO path after the PO_DC hand off (arm power = 4).
Attm5 is the zoom of the same TF around 3.7kHz. Clearly there is something wrong at this frequency. We should check the CM board and the MC board as well as the SPOB PD.

One time I was able to go up to arm power = 27 or so. At this power level, the DARM loop started to oscillate, probably, around the UGF.
However because of the 3.7kHz problem, we can't stay at this power level long enough to make diagnostic measurements (like open loop TF).
We should tackle the 3.7kHz issue first.

Attachment 1: CARM_DARM_Spectra.pdf

Attachment 2: PODC_Spe_AOPath_Engaged.png

Attachment 3: PODC_Spe_before_PODC_handoff.png

Attachment 4: AOGain3.png

Attachment 5: AOGain2.png

1388

Wed Mar 11 16:53:48 2009

Rana, Yoichi

Last night, we tried to find out the source of the kHz region peaks in the DARM and CARM error signals.
These peaks are also present in the error signal of the single arm locking by RF (both X and Y).
The attachment 1 shows spectra of MC_F and XARM error signal when XARM is locked by the POX PDH signal.
There is a sharp peak at 3.8kHz in MC_F. This peak was there in a reference spectrum taken on June 24 2008.

In the XARM error signal, there is also a broad peak around 3.8kHz. This peak moves between 3.75kHz and 3.8kHz from time to time.
(the brown curve was taken when the peak moved to 3.75kHz).
Also there is a notch like structure at 3.8kHz in the XARM error spectrum. Looks like the peak in the MC_F is creating a notch here, but
no idea why.

We tapped on the PSL table, the end chambers and the SPOB table and looked at the spectra to see if there is any change.
Rana also developed a cool Walkie-Talkie excitation technique, where he put one of the walkie-talkies on the PSL table by the MZ and yelled at the other one while looking at a DTT screen in the control room.
None of these had any effect on the XARM error, while MC_F responded to the disturbances.

We also turned on and off the steering mirror PZT closed loop buttons, moved the PMC, MZ and the ISS gain sliders and changed the MC gain, offset.
Nothing affected the XARM error.

Osamu found old spectra of the XARM signal (attm2). The legends say DARM but these are XARM signals.
Almost the same structures can be seen including the notch at 3.8kHz. Seems like it's been like this for long time.

We should check, RF-AM, MC coil dirivers, Piezo-Jena noise etc.

Attachment 1: MC_F-XARM.pdf

Attachment 2: old-xarm.pdf

1390

Wed Mar 11 22:57:48 2009

Calibrated XARM error signal spectrum

I did a rough calibration of the XARM error spectrum.
See the attached calibrated spectrum.

I started from this Rana's elog entry.
http://www.ldas-sw.ligo.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=40m&task=view&date_to_view=04/07/2005&anchor_to_scroll_to=2005:04:07:20:28:36-rana

I first injected a 20Hz sin signal into C1:SUS-ETMX_LSC_EXC and measured the response to the ETMX SUSPOS.
Using the calibration of the SUSPOS given in the above entry, I calibrated the ETMX coil actuation efficiency.
It was 3.4e-12 m/cnt @20Hz for C1:SUS-ETMX_LSC_EXC.

Then I locked the X-arm and injected a calibration peak at 20Hz.
From the ratio of the peaks in C1:SUS-ETMX_LSC_IN2 and C1:LSC-XARM_IN1, I calibrated the X-arm error signal to be 4.2e-13 m/cnt.
We have to also take into account the cavity pole of the arm, 1525Hz (the design value, may not be actual).
So I used the following calibration in the DTT:

G: 4.2e-13
P: 1525
Z:

Note that the attached spectrum shows the actual motion of the X-arm (or equivalent frequency noise) after suppressed by the feedback servo,
unlike conventional noise spectra showing "virtual" displacement which would have been induced in the absence of servos.

Attachment 1: XarmErrorSpeCalibrated.pdf

1393

Thu Mar 12 02:18:42 2009

I took several spectra of MC_I signal (see attm1).

The blue curve is when the MC was locked. The green curve (RF_AM) shows the MC_I spectrum when the MC is unlocked and MC2 is mis-aligned,
so that no resonance should happen. The brown curve is when the PSL shutter was closed (dark noise).
There are some structures in the green curve but not at 3.8kHz.

The second attachment compares the MC_I spectrum (the same as the green one in the first attachment) with the Xarm error signal.
Of course these two spectra were taken at different times.

Some of the peaks in the X-arm error signal seem to be coming from the MC RF_AM.

Attachment 1: MC_I_Spe.png

Attachment 2: MC_I-Xarm.png

1399

Fri Mar 13 05:16:21 2009

Yoichi, Osamu,

With adjustments of the loop gains during the CARM offset reduction, the IFO reaches arm_power = 25 sort of robustly unless the 3.8kHz oscillation rings up.
At arm_power = 25, the CARM and DARM start to oscillate at around 400Hz. Probably I need more gain tweaks.
Annoying thing is that the 3.8kHz oscillation sometimes rings up suddenly and kills the lock.
This can happen anywhere above arm_power = 6 or so.
Because of a strange structure in the CARM loop gain around 3.8kHz, we cannot increase the CARM UGF beyond 1kHz.
The attached plots are the AO path open loop transfer function (attm2 is the zoom of attm1) measured at arm_power = 13.

Tomorrow, I will lock the X-arm and measure the transfer function from the AO path input to the X-arm error signal to see
if there is the same structure at 3.8kHz (X-arm error signal has the 3.8kHz peak).

Attachment 1: AOTF2.png

Attachment 2: AOTF2-zoom.png

1402

Fri Mar 13 22:07:14 2009

Calibrated XARM error signal spectrum

Of course I made a mistake.
I put a pole at 1525Hz whereas it should have been a zero.

The correct calibration factor is:
G: 4.2e-13
P:
Z: 1525

I attached a revised spectrum.

Quote:

Attachment 1: XarmErrorSpeCalibrated.pdf

1419

Tue Mar 24 03:05:25 2009

MC1 issue:
The MC1 seems to be drifting still. I found it was off from the SUS drift-mon reference values and restored the alignment using the SUS drift-mon before I went home for dinner.
But when I came back being happy with the Japanese victory over S-Korea at the WBC final, the MC was unhappy again.
I restored the alignment of the MC1 using the SUS drift-mon once again and centered the WFS QPDs.
I will leave the MC unlocked again tonight to see the drift. You are welcome to lock the MC in the morning as I will have corrected enough data by the time people come in.

Computer overloads:
I removed some filters from suspensions to off load susvme computers.
Nonetheless, both susvme1 and susvme2 are still over loaded during the dither alignment. The alignment results are in general ok. So this is not a too serious problem.
But still it would be nice to resolve.

3.8kHz hunting:
I made several measurements of the AO path loop gains (using the SR785) and the transfer functions from the CARM excitation (actuation to the ETMs) to the PO_DC signal as the arm powers are increased.
There is a similar structure as in the AO loop found also in the CARM->PO_DC transfer functions. This implies that the problem is likely to be in the PO_DC sensor not in the MC->VCO actuator. But the MC and the VCO could still be the
cause of the problem because they were in the control loop when the CARM->PO_DC TF were measured.
The peak frequency does not seem to depend on the arm power, but the conclusion is not definite because I was only able to measure the TFs from arm power 5 to 10 (not much difference).
I will make plots and post them later.

To Do for tomorrow:
Tonight the CARM error signal was noisier than the reference spectra (broad band white noise appeared). I should check the beam centering of the SPOB PD.
Also someone should center the oplevs of the mirrors as some of them are off.
Continue to measure the TFs at various power levels.
Try to put another (Thorlabs?) PD at the POB port to get PO_DC from it.

1426

Wed Mar 25 04:18:28 2009

After the new PO_DC PD was installed, I tweaked several gains to make the locking scripts work right.
First of all, I increased the gain of PD12 (PD12_I is SPOB) by a factor of 1.4 to compensate for the power decrease
by the insertion of the BS. SPOB is used by the PRM alignment script. I was too lazy to modify the scripts.

Then I optimized the SRC DD signal which is taken from the POB.

I also had to do some gain adjustments for the CARM loop.

The attachment (AO path open loop TF) shows a depressing fact that the 3.8kHz peak is still there with the new PO_DC PD. So it was not a problem of the SPOB PD.
Next, I will check the cross over frequencies of the PZT and PC paths in the FSS and the VCO/MCL cross over.

Attachment 1: AO-Loop-p9.png

1433

Thu Mar 26 04:27:26 2009

3.8kHz peak as a function of the arm power

During the power ramp-up, I actuated CARM using ETMs and measured the transfer functions to the PO_DC at several arm powers.
The peak grows rapidly with the power. It also seems like the frequency shifts slightly as the power goes up, but not much.

Some sort of an RSE peak ? An offset in the PRC lock point ?

Attachment 1: CARM-PODC.pdf

1436

Fri Mar 27 02:50:54 2009

DD demodulation phase suspicious

I noticed that the gain of PD6_Q (before the phase rotation) was 0 whereas PD6_I gain was 15.
This means the demodulation phase of the PD6 had no meaning other than changing the gain.
According to the conlog, it has been zero since March 2nd. I don't know how it happened.

While I was re-adjusting the DD phase, the MC started to unlock frequently (every 10 minutes or so).
MC1 is again drifting a lot (it is getting step-function like alignment changes intermittently).
This practically made it impossible to work on locking. So I decided to fix the MC first.
See Peter's elog entry for the MC work.

1449

Wed Apr 1 15:47:48 2009

3.8kHz peak looks like a real optical response of the interferometer

Yoichi, Peter

To see where the 3.8kHz peak comes from, we locked the interferometer with the CARM fed back only to ETM and increased the arm power to 4.
The CARM error signal was taken from the transmission DC (not PO_DC).
The attached plots show the CARM transfer functions taken in this state (called ETM lock in the legends) compared with the ones taken when the CARM is locked by the feedback to the laser frequency (called "Frequency lock").
The first attachment is the TFs from the CARM excitation (i.e. the ETMs were actuated) to the TR_DC and PO_DC signals.

The second attachment is the AO path loop TFs. This is basically the TF from the frequency actuator to the PO_DC error signal.
I injected a signal into the B-excitation channel of the common mode board (with SR785) and measured the TF from TP2B to TP2A of the board.
For the ETM lock case, the AO loop was not closed because I disabled the switch between TP2A and TP1B.

The observation here is that even with no feedback to the laser frequency, the 3.8kHz peak is still present.
This strongly suggests that the peak is a real optical response of the interferometer.

To realize the ETM lock with arm_power=4, I had to tweak the CM loop shape.
I wrote a script to do this (/cvs/cds/caltech/scripts/CM/ETM_CARM_PowerUp).
You can run this script after drstep_bang has finished.

Attachment 1: CARM-ETM-EXC.png

Attachment 2: AOpath-TFs.png

1450

Wed Apr 1 16:14:36 2009

3.8kHz peak does not change with SRC offset

Yoichi, Peter

We suspected that maybe the 3.8kHz peak is the DARM RSE somehow coupled to the CARM.
So we added an offset to the SRC error signal to see if the peak moves by changing the offset.
It didn't (at least by changing the SRC offset by +/-1000).
(I had a nice plot showing this, but dtt corrupted the data when I saved it. So no plot attached.)

I also played with the PRC, DARM offsets which did not have any effect on the peak.
The only thing, I could find so far, having some effect on the peak is the arm power. As the arm power is increased, the peak height goes up and the frequency shifts slightly towards lower frequencies.

1454

Fri Apr 3 17:20:05 2009

The 3.8kHz peak seems like the DARM RSE (not 100% sure though)

Yoichi, Kentaro,

Last night, we took several measurements of the AO path loop TFs with various offsets/demod. phases tweaked.
The first attachment shows the AO path loop TF as a function of the offset (in counts) added to the DARM error signal.
Though it is a bit crowded plot, you can see a general tendency that the peak becomes lower in height and higher in frequency as
the DARM offset goes from negative to positive. Since the peak height also depends on the arm power and it fluctuates during the measurements,
the change is not monotonic function of the offset though.

Being suspicious of the demodulation phase of the DARM error signal (AS166), we scanned it (see the second attachement).
But there is no significant change.
Note that the phase of the TF is 180 degrees different from the first attachment. This is because I changed the measurement point of the returning signal
on the CM board from TP2A to OUT2 to see POX_1I signal as well. These points should give the same signal for PO_DC except for the sign.

We also took the AO path TFs by changing the MICH offset (the third attachment). Again, there is no big change.

With the CARM locked with the PO_DC signal, we took the transfer function from the AO path actuation signal to the response of the POX_1I (4th attachment).
There is a huge 3.8kHz peak.

Finally, we measured the DARM response by exciting the ETMs differentially (the PDF attachment).
The shape of the 3.8kHz resonance looks like the DARM RSE peak.

It is speculated that somehow the DARM RSE resonance is coupled into the CARM loop. Don't know how though.
I'm now working on an Optickle simulation to get an insight into this issue.

Attachment 1: AO-TF-DARM-OFFSET.png

Attachment 2: AO-TF-DARM-DEMOD-PHASE.png

Attachment 3: AO-TF-MICH-OFFSET.png

Attachment 4: POX_1I.png

Attachment 5: DARM-Loop.pdf

1458

Wed Apr 8 02:47:42 2009

This is a summary of activities in the last few nights, although there is not much progress.

The attachment 1 and 2 show the CARM and DARM responses around 3.8kHz at different arm power levels.
The CARM error signal was PO_DC and the DARM error signal was AS2Q.
The excitations were both applied to the ETMs (I temporarily modified the output matrix so that the unsed XARM filter bank can be used to excite CARM and DARM).
DARM and CARM show very similar behavior as the power goes up.

The third attachment shows transfer functions to various signals from CARM and DARM excitations (ETMs).
Though the plot contains many curves, look at PO_DC curves (green and black).
PO_DC is used as CARM error signal but it has a larger response to DARM than CARM (by 10dB or so).
This is not good.

Although the 3.8kHz problem still exists, tonight I was able to go up to arm power = 80 a couple of times, where we are ready to hand off from PO_DC to the RF CARM signal. The hand off failed. I'm now optimizing the hand off gain, but it is difficult because the interferometer is unstable at this power level.

Attachment 1: CARM_TFs.pdf

Attachment 2: DARM_TFs.pdf

Attachment 3: DARM-CARM-Coupling.pdf

1463

Thu Apr 9 12:23:49 2009

pete

tuning ETM common mode

Pete, Yoichi

Last night, we put the IFO in FP Michelson configuration. We took transfer functions of CARM and DARM, first using CM excitations directly on the ETMs, and then using modulations of the laser frequency via MC excitation. We found that there was basically no coupling into DARM using the MC excitation, but that there was coherence in DARM using the ETM excitation. Therefore, I tuned the ETM common mode in the output matrix. I did this by taking transfer functions of PD1_Q with PD2_I (see attached plot). I changed the drdown_bang script to set C1:LSC-BTMTRX_14 0.98 and C1:LSC-BTMTRX_24 1.02.

Attachment 1: FPMI-DARM-CARM-ETM-fineScan.pdf

1465

Thu Apr 9 23:11:27 2009

Laser PM to PO-DC transfer functions at multiple CARM offsets

I've plotted some transfer functions showing the response at POB DC to laser frequency (phase) noise. There are transfer functions for multiple CARM offsets. Basically, the transfer function looks like the DARM transfer function when the CARM is at zero offset, and is super-wonky elsewhere. POB-DC is not a good CARM signal for intermediate stages of lock acquisition in a dual-recycled interferometer. We should look into switching back to REFL-DC.

Attachment 1: CARMoffs1.png

Attachment 2: CARMoffs2.png

Attachment 3: CARMcarpet.png

1466

Thu Apr 9 23:20:35 2009

Laser PM to REFL-DC transfer functions at multiple CARM offsets

Quote:

Here are the corresponding transfer functions for REFL-DC.

Attachment 1: CARMoffs1_r.png

Attachment 2: CARMoffs2_r.png

Attachment 3: CARMcarpet_r.png

1468

Fri Apr 10 03:10:08 2009

rana

Laser PM to REFL-DC transfer functions at multiple CARM offsets

I hereby award the previous rainbow transfer functions the plot innovation of the month award for its use of optical frequency to denote CARM offset.

The attached movie here shows the sensing matrix (minus MICH) as a function of CARM offset. There are 3 CARM signals plotted:

GREEN - tonights starting CARM signal - REFL_DC

RED - my favorite CARM signal - REFL 166 I

CYAN - runner up CARM signal - POX 33 I

1469

Fri Apr 10 04:54:24 2009

Suggested by Rob and Rana's simulation works, I tried to use REFL_DC for the CARM error signal.

My current guess for the cause of the 3.8kHz peak is the following.
The AF sidebands created by the laser frequency drive are reflected by the IFO to the symmetric port if the arms are perfectly symmetric.
However, if there is asymmetry in the arm cavities (such as loss imbalance, ITM transmission difference etc) the sidebands are scattered from the common mode to the differential mode. If our CARM error signal has a large response also to the differential mode (i.e. DARM), the loop is closed. At the DARM RSE frequency, the AF sideband in the differential mode is enhanced and creates a peak in the CARM response.
What Rob's plots show is that PO_DC has a larger response to DARM than REFL_DC has. You can see this from the curves of CARM offset = 0 (black ones).
When the CARM offset is zero, the CARM signal should go to zero. Therefore, the black curves show the residual DARM response. In the case of PO_DC, the black curve is very large suggesting a large DARM coupling.

Now I changed the cabling at the LSC rack to put REFL_DC into the REFL2 input of the CM board.
The REFL_DC signal is put through a 160kHz RC LPF and split to the ADC and the CM board (AC coupled by a large capacitor).
I modified the cm_step script to use PD4_DC as CARM error signal. (The old script is saved as cm_step.podc).
Since the polarity of the REFL_DC signal is opposite to the PO_DC, I flipped the polarity switch of the CM board.
This will flip the sign of the RF CARM signal because this switch flips the polarity of the both inputs.
We have to flip the sign of the RF CARM signal with the SR560 sitting on the LSC rack, which I haven't done yet.

With some tweaks of the gains and addition of two lag-lead filters to PD4_DC, I was able to completely hand off the CARM error signal to REFL_DC.
The attached plot shows the AO path loop gain at arm power = 7. The 3.8kHz is gone, although there is some phase ripple around 3.8kHz.

Since the gain behavior of the REFL_DC is different from the PO_DC, I'm now working on the power up part of the script, adjusting the gains as the power goes up.

Attachment 1: AO-loop-gain-CARM-REFL_DC.png

1480

Tue Apr 14 02:59:02 2009

Yoichi, Peter,

With careful adjustments of the common mode gains, we were able to go up to arm power = 26, sort of robustly (more 50% chance).
At this arm power level, the common mode loop shape still looks good. But the interferometer loses lock easily.
I have to check other DOFs, but the interferometer does not stay locked long enough.
Today, lock losses of the IFO were associated with the lock loss of the PMC whereas the FSS stayed locked.
Probably the AO path got large kicks, which could not be handled by the PMC PZT.

The cause for the IFO lock loss is under investigation.

1489

Thu Apr 16 16:26:57 2009

yoichi, pete

We installed the watchLockLoss script in scripts/AutoDTT/.  This script monitors arm power and uses command line
DTT to save 5 s snapshot of the interferometer when it senses loss of lock.  We ran it on linux and it seemed to
save an xml file about half the time; we'll try it on solaris.  

I managed to get up to arm power of about 20 a couple of times.  IFO lost lock a couple of times after turning
off moving zero.  MC2 would often get tripped by lock loss and need resetting.  Maybe we will try to stiffen the
op levs.

1493

Fri Apr 17 11:05:22 2009

Thursday night locking status

The last night, it was sort of robust to go up until arm power = 26.
The REFL_DC gain seems to change a lot around this region. So I did fine adjustments of the gain with small incremental steps of the arm power.
This work will continue.
The AutoDTT shows that the lock loss happens with an oscillation of CARM at around 100Hz. This indicates that the cross-over is the culprit.
I was also able to increase the CM UGF up to 10kHz.

1495

Sun Apr 19 03:34:05 2009

Tonight I was able to go up to arm power = 33, by mainly tweaking the DARM gain. A small progress.
In order to give more phase margin to the CARM MC_L path, I added a 300:100 filter to C1:LSC-MC.
To reduce the load to the lsc computer I deleted several filters from the filter bank, which were not used in the locking scripts.
Before I deleted the filters, I checked in the current chans directory into the svn repository.
If you want to restore the deleted filters, go back to the revision 36142.

1498

Mon Apr 20 05:18:42 2009

Configuration

FM6 and FM10 of LSC-MC were restored

During tonight's locking work, I realized that FM6 and FM10 (both resonant gains around 20Hz) were actually activated by cm_step.
So I restored those filters from the svn history.
Instead, I removed a bunch of unused filters from LSC-DEMOD and LSC-DEMOD_A (moving zero filters) to off load c1lsc.

As for the locking itself, the DARM loop becomes unstable at around arm power = 30. I may have to add a filter to give a broader phase bubble.

1500

Mon Apr 20 18:17:44 2009

CARM offset/Power rubric

Plotted assuming the average arm power goes up to ~80. No DARM offset.

Attachment 1: ARMpowersCARM.png

1509

Thu Apr 23 16:27:24 2009

Locking with the cryo-pump

The last night, the IFO was unstabler than usual and the locking script often failed before reaching the power up stage.
The failure happened at random points.
I'm not sure if this is related to the operation of the cryo-pump.
The mode cleaner reflection image seemed to move around more than usual. Maybe it was just a high seismic night.

1514

Fri Apr 24 03:57:30 2009

Tonight, I was able to go up to arm power = 40 by tweaking the DARM demodulation phase.
I think the DARM loop became unstable because the demodulation phase was not right and the error signal contained some junk from I-phase.
I did not do any sophisticated demodulation phase optimization. Rather I just tweaked the phase so that the dark port image becomes stable.
I will do more careful demodulation phase tuning next time.

1515

Fri Apr 24 04:38:49 2009

Quote:

In the next try, I was actually able to go up to arm power = 70 stably.
At this power level we are ready for the RF CARM hand off.

1516

Fri Apr 24 11:34:32 2009

Quote:

In the next try, I was actually able to go up to arm power = 70 stably.
At this power level we are ready for the RF CARM hand off.

There's actually code in place in the LSC to dynamically adjust the demod phase for AS1. I've never made much use of it, because it's possible to get around the problem with some gain tweaking if you start at the right phase, or because I did the DC readout handoff earlier.

Attached is a cartoon showing how the demod phase at the dark port changes as the CARM offset is decreased.

Attachment 1: darm_phase_rotate.png

1519

Fri Apr 24 17:26:57 2009

Quote:

The cartoon is very nice.
I actually changed the demod phase continuously as the CARM offset was reduced to get up to arm power = 70.
As the CARM offset is changed, not only the DARM signal gain but also the phase margin around 100Hz changes if you use a fixed demodulation phase.
So it was necessary to change the demodulation phase to keep the DARM loop stable.

1522

Sat Apr 25 03:27:34 2009

Yoichi, Peter,

We are working on the final step of the lock acquisition, RF CARM hand off.
I was able to hand off the CARM error signal to RF once, but lost lock when decreasing the CARM offset to zero (it was too rapid).
I will try to make the process more robust tomorrow.

1523

Sun Apr 26 02:13:18 2009

Two more successes of RF CARM handoff

Tonight, the RF CARM hand off (mostly) succeeded twice.
But still, the IFO lost lock when I reduced the REFL_DC gain in the AO path to zero.

At the beginning of tonight's work, MICH DD hand off failed several times. This was because the the PD9 gains were set to zero.
I found that the offset script, which I called before starting the locking, fails to restore the gain values sometimes.
This happens when ezcaread fails to read the current gain. We have to be careful when running the LSCoffsets script.

1526

Tue Apr 28 04:30:16 2009

Yoichi, Peter

I believe we have succeeded in the full lock of the interferometer with the RF signals.
The lock process is reasonably robust and repeatable.

I did a scan of the RF CARM offset and plotted the arm power as a function of the CARM offset (see the attachment).
The arm power goes maximum at non-zero CARM offset. I guess the RF CARM error signal has some offset.
Maybe the demodulation phase is wrong ? I will tweak this tomorrow.
The script to do this scan can be found at /cvs/cds/caltech/scripts/CM/CARMSweep.

I haven't tried DC readout yet.

Attachment 1: Sweep1.png

1529

Tue Apr 28 16:36:24 2009

HowTo

setting the RF CARM demod phase

To set the demod phase for RF CARM, sensed at REFL2 (REFL 166I), it suffices to set the demod phase for REFL2 to be the optimal phase for controlling SRCL in a no-arm state.

Attachment 1: CARM_phases_REFL.pdf

Attachment 2: SRCL_phases_REFL.pdf

1530

Tue Apr 28 17:51:13 2009

HowTo

setting the RF CARM demod phase

Quote:

To set the demod phase for RF CARM, sensed at REFL2 (REFL 166I), it suffices to set the demod phase for REFL2 to be the optimal phase for controlling SRCL in a no-arm state.

For POX33, the ideal phase for single arm locking does not yield a zero-offset CARM signal. So the offset needs to be manipulated digitally.

Attachment 1: XARM_phases_POX.pdf

Attachment 2: CARM_phases_POX.pdf

1531

Wed Apr 29 04:03:51 2009

CARM RF changed to REFL_2I

Yoichi, Peter

As Rob suggested, the optimal demodulation phase is easier to find for REFL_2I than POX_1I.
Moreover, for 166MHz LO, we have a phase shifter (delay line) already installed. So we can easily change the demodulation phase of REFL_2I.
Tonight, we switched the RF CARM signal to REFL_2I.
To do so, I changed the signal going to the REFL1 input of the common mode board from POX_1I to REFL_2I.
I moved a BNC-T installed at the output of POX_1I to the REFL_2I output to split the REFL_2I signal and send it to the CM board.
Since the gain of the REFL_2I was about 20dB lower than that of POX_1I, I increased the gain of the SR560, which is installed between the REFL_2 demodulation board and the CM board, from 1 to 10.

With some gain tweaks, we were able to hand off the CARM from REFL_DC to REFL_2I. We also succeeded in switching the REFL_2I ADC channel from PD11 to PD2_DC (the output of the length path from the CM board). This switching is necessary in order to engage the boost on the CM board.

There remains some offset in the CARM when the arm power is maximized. This is expected because the REFL_2I demodulation phase is probably not exactly right.
I will optimize the demodulation phase tomorrow.

1533

Wed Apr 29 15:56:43 2009

effect of SRCL detune on ARM powers in a CARM sweep

With no DARM offset, sweeping CARM shows an asymmetry between the state where we lock to a DARM spring and the state with a DARM anti-spring. This is why we have a link between the DARM and CARM optical springs.

For each DARM detune direction (positive or negative, spring or anti-spring), there is only one CARM direction which can yield a DC-based error signal lock with a CARM offset but no DARM offset, which is what we want.

Attachment 1: CARMsweep_DARMspringnospring.png

1534

Thu Apr 30 05:49:06 2009