ELOG 40m

Last night I measured a bunch of transfer functions on the FSS loop.
All the loop gains were measured with the common gain = 30db and the fast gain = 18dB.

(1) The first attachment is the overall open loop transfer function of the FSS loop. I put a signal from the Test IN2 and observed signals from IN1 and IN2.
The UGF is about 180kHz.
By increasing the RF amplitude going to the EOM (i.e. increasing the sideband power), I can further increase the gain of the servo.
However, it made the PC drive immediately crazy. Probably it was some oscillation.

(2) Then I locked the ref. cav. with only the PZT actuator. I did so by simply unplugging the cable going to the PC.
Surprisingly, the cavity locked with the *same* gain setting as before. The second attachment shows the open loop transfer function measured in this configuration. It seems wrong, I mean, it should be unstable. But the cavity locked. A mystery.

(3) The third plot is the measured TF from the Test IN1 of the FSS board to the fast out (output to the PZT).

(4) By dividing the TF measured in (2) with the TF of (3), I got the response of the PZT times the cavity response. This is shown in the attachment 4.

(5) We can guess the open loop TF of the PC path by subtracting the TF in (2) from (1). It is shown in the attachment 5.

(6) The filter shape of the PC path is measured by injecting signal from the Test IN1 of the FSS board and observing it at the PC output. Since it is a high voltage output, I reduced the common gain to -8.5dB during the measurement. The attachment 6 is the measured filter shape. The gain is corrected to show what it should look like when the common gain = 30dB.

(7) By dividing (5) with (6), I plotted the response of the PC times the cavity response in the attachment 7. Since the 1/f cavity pole and the response of the PC, which is proportional to f, should cancel out, we expect a flat response above the cavity pole frequency (38kHz). You could say it is a sort of flat, if you have obscured eyes.

The measurement of the PZT open loop TF is very suspicious. According to this, the PC path has a very large gain even at very low frequencies (there is no cross over above 1kHz). This cannot be true. Maybe the cavity's optical gain was low when it was locked with only the PZT. I will re-measure it.
The plot (4) is also strange becaues it does not show the low pass feature expected from the cavity pole.

Attachment 1: OverallOPLTF.eps

Attachment 2: OpltfPZTOnly.eps

Attachment 3: PZTFilter.eps

Attachment 4: PZTxCavityPole.eps

Attachment 5: OpltfPCOnly.eps

Attachment 6: PCFilter.eps

Attachment 7: PCxCavityPole.eps

761

Tue Jul 29 23:04:34 2008

Quote:

The measurement of the PZT open loop TF is very suspicious. According to this, the PC path has a very large gain even at very low frequencies (there is no cross over above 1kHz). This cannot be true. Maybe the cavity's optical gain was low when it was locked with only the PZT. I will re-measure it.

I measured it again and found that the loop was oscillating at 13.5kHz. I think this oscillation prevented the ref. cavity from building up the power and consequently lowered the optical gain making it marginally stable. So the PZT path open loop TF posted in the previous entry is wrong.

I was able to stop the oscillation by lowering the gain down to CG=-7.6dB and FG=-8.78dB.
The first attachment shows the measured open loop transfer function.
Since the gain setting is different from when the over all open loop TF was measured, I scaled the gain (attachment 2).
However, this plot seems to have too much gain. Scaling it down by 20dB makes it overlap with the over all open loop TF.
Maybe the gain reading on the EPICS screen is wrong. I will measure the actual gain tomorrow.

Attachment 1: OpltfPZTOnlyRaw.eps

Attachment 2: OpltfPZTOnly.eps

767

Wed Jul 30 13:09:40 2008

We turned the PSL power down by a factor of 4, blocked one half of the Mach Zehnder and scanned the PMC by applying a ramp signal to PMC PZT. Eric will adding plots later today of those results.

We returned the power to close to original level and removed the block on the Mach Zehnder, and then relocked the PMC.

772

Wed Jul 30 16:35:56 2008

Graphs of the PMC scan data that I got earlier today.

PMCLongScanWide.tiff shows the transmission intensity and PZT voltage plotted against time for a longer scan of the PMC (~120 seconds for one sweep).

PMCLongScanPeak.tiff is the same scan zoomed in on the primary peak. This scan was done with the laser power at around 1/3 its original value. However, scans done at around 1/6 the original value have peaks that are just as messy.

PMCShortScanWide.tiff shows the intensity and voltage for a more rapid scan (~30 second for one sweep). The black lines show how the peak positions are at very different PZT voltages (a difference of ~10 volts in both cases).

PMCShortScanPeak.tiff is zoomed in on the primary peak. The peak is much cleaner than for the long scan (less time for the laser's heat to expand the mirror?), though it is likely still too messy to reliably fit to a lorentzian.

Attachment 1: PMCLongScanPeak.tiff

Attachment 2: PMCLongScanWide.tiff

Attachment 3: PMCShortScanPeak.tiff

Attachment 4: PMCShortScanWide.tiff

775

Thu Jul 31 10:27:17 2008

Quote:

Graphs of the PMC scan data that I got earlier today.

On the UNIX computers, one can use 'convert' to change these to PNG. A DC offset should be added to the transmitted
light so that the scan can be plotted with a log y-scale. And, of course, Acrobat can be used to make it into a
single PDF file.

The PMC scan always has this distortion and so the input power has to be decreased to a few mW to reduce the
thermal expansion effect; the expansion coefficient for SiO2 is ~5 x 10^-7 / K and we're worried about nm level
expansions.

778

Fri Aug 1 01:13:32 2008

PSL Quad change and new script

Koji and I changed a few optics so that now ~60% of the beam that went to the PSL POS QPD
now goes to the west side of the table for the aux. laser locking PLL. The beam is sort of
on the QPD again but needs a centering.

After this work I wrote a script SUS/freeswing-all.csh which puts a 30000 count offset into
the UL coil of each suspension and then disables it. This is just good enough to kick it up
so that the eigenfrequency can be measured. I ran it and it worked -- it finished running at

Fri Aug 1 00:44:30 PDT 2008

781

Fri Aug 1 16:33:52 2008

PSL Quad change and new script

Here's the sensor ringdown trend from the kick.

Attachment 1: Untitled.png

791

Mon Aug 4 13:43:02 2008

As a part of the effort to repair the FSS loop bandwidth, I tried to calibrate the FSS loop.

First, I scanned the MOPA frequency by injecting a triangular wave into the ramp-in of the FSS box, which goes to the PZT of the NPRO.
The first attachment shows the transmitted light curve (pink one) along with the PDH signal (light blue).
The sweep was very slow (0.1Hz for 2Vp-p). From this measurement, the FWHM was 6.8e-3V. Then fpol = FWHM/2=3.4e-3V, where fpol is the cavity pole frequency.
So the PZT's DC response is 294*fpol/V. If we use the canonical fpol=38kHz, it is 11.172MHz/V.

Then I tried to measure the cavity pole. First I tried the cavity ring down measurement, by blocking the beam abruptly. Unfortunately, my hand was not fast enough.
The ring down shape was not an exponential decay.
I then locked the reference cavity only using the PZT with very narrow bandwidth (UGF=2kHz). I injected signal into the external modulation input of the 80MHz VCO
for the AOM. The second attachment shows the transfer function from this input to the IN2 (mixer output monitor port) of the FSS servo box.
To plot this, I corrected the measurement for the open loop TF (i.e. multiplying the measured TF with (1+G)), and other filters in the path (8MHz LPF after the ext. mod.
input of the 80MHz VCO, and an RCL network after the mixter). The gain looks like a cavity pole, but the phase decreases very rapidly.
If you look at the third attachment showing a wider band transfer function, there are notches at 1.8MHz and above. I couldn't find this kind of filter in the schematic.
Maybe this is the RFPD's bandpass filter. I will check this later. From these plots, it is difficult to tell the cavity pole frequency. From the -3dB point, fpol is around 83kHz,
but from the phase=-45deg point, fpol is around 40kHz.

Finally, I calibrated the cavity's optical gain by locking the Ref. Cavity with only PZT, and injecting a signal into the loop.
The signal was injected from Test-In2 of the FSS servo box and the transfer function from the PZT output signal (TP10) to IN1 (mixer output) was measured.
The transfer function was corrected for a 10Hz LPF after TP10.
The attachment4 shows a nice flat response up to 30kHz. Above 30kHz, the measurement is too noisy. The optical gain at DC is about 22dB from the PZT drive to the error signal (IN1).
Using fpol=38kHz, it means 887kHz/V calibration factor for the signal at IN1. There is a mixer output monitor DAQ channel in the FSS but it seems to be not working at the
moment. I will look into this later. There is a gain of 10dB between IN1 and the mixer monitor channel.
By looking at the phase response of the attachement4, there is a cavity pole like behavior around 30kHz. If we assume the PZT response is flat up to this frequency, it is
roughly consistent with fpol=38kHz.

I was not able to take a sensible spectrum of IN1 using the network analyzer. When the FSS servo was engaged, the signal was too small.
I will try to use an AF spectrum analyzer later to get a calibrated spectrum.

Attachment 1: P7310048.JPG

Attachment 2: cavity-response.pdf

Attachment 3: cavity-response2.pdf

Attachment 4: cavity-gain.pdf

873

Sat Aug 23 09:39:51 2008

Jenne, Rana

We scoped out the PMC situation yesterday.

Summary: Not broke. UGF ~ 500 Hz. Needs some electronics work (notches, boosts, LPFs)

Ever since we swapped out the PMC because of the broken PZT of the previous one, the UGF has been
limited to a low value. This is because the notches no longer match the mechanical resonant
frequencies of the body. The old one had a resonance at 31.3 kHz which we were notching using
the LC notch on the board as well as a dangling Pomona box in the HV line to the PZT. The one
has a resonance at ~14.5 kHz which we don't yet have a notch for. Jenne has all the real numbers and
will update this entry with them.

Todo:

Implement the 4th order Grote low pass after the mixer.
Replace the AD797 with an OP27.
Change servo filter to have a boost (need DC gain)
Make a 14.5 kHz notch for the bode mode.
Put a 20 lb. gold-foil wrapped lead brick on the PMC.

Here's the link about the modified PMC board which we installed at LHO:
LHO PMC elog 2006

874

Mon Aug 25 10:07:35 2008

Numbers for the PMC servo board (Re: entry # 873)

Jenne, Rana

These are the numbers that go along with Rana's entry #873:

The existing notch in the PMC servo is at 31.41kHz.

The power spectrum of the PMC has a peak at 14.683kHz when it is just sitting on the PSL table (no extra mass). When we put a pile of steel and aluminum (~20lbs) on top of the PMC, the body resonance moves to 14.622kHz, but is decreased by about 40 dB!

Rana has ordered a lead brick + foil that should arrive sometime this week. To complete the mechanical part of this installation, we need to extend the earthquake mounts around the PMC so that the lead brick can't fall off of the PMC onto the rest of the table.

876

Mon Aug 25 10:51:06 2008

steve

psl headtemp is coming down

The laser water cooler was overflowing this morning.
I removed 500 cc water from the chiller.

The 4 days plot shows clearly:
that the capacity of the chiller is depending on the water level.
Overflowing water is a heat load for the chiller, so laser head temp goes up.

Attachment 1: ht4dw.jpg

878

Mon Aug 25 12:13:49 2008

Broken PMC Servo Board

I broke the PMC servo board (on accident).

I was trying to measure the resistance of the extra resistor that someone put between the board and the HV OUT connector, since this is part of an RC filter (where C is the capacitance of the PZT on the PMC) that I need to know the values of as part of my mission to make a 14.6kHz notch for the PMC body mode. The resistance is 63.6k. I had to pull the board to get in to measure this resistance.

This resistor between the board and the center pin of the panel-mount HV OUT connector made a rigid connection between the board and the panel. When I was putting the board back in, I must have strained this connection enough that it broke. We don't have any of the same kind of resistor here at the 40m, so I'm waiting until after lunch to go to Wilson house and see if they've got any. The IFO is down until I get this sorted out.

879

Mon Aug 25 14:18:36 2008

PMC servo board is fixed

The PMC servo board is back in place, all fixed up with a shiny new resistor. The PMC locks, and the MC locks (I'm not saying anything either way about how long the MC will stay locked, but it is locked for now). The resistor is connected to the connector using a short piece of wire, so this problem won't happen again, at least with this connector on this board.

884

Tue Aug 26 09:04:59 2008

PMC Servo Board: Out for Repairs

I've started modifying our PMC board to bring it up to the 21st century - leave the screen alone or else you might zap something.

892

Wed Aug 27 13:55:43 2008

Board is back in. PMC is locked.

Nominal gain is now 15 dB with brick. We need to do more studies:

Find out why there is still 35 MHz signal at the error point. Order some low pass filters to cut off above 35 MHz.
Explore brick + no-brick loop shapes and error spectra.
Measure and set the OLG.

We've left the copper-wrapped lead brick installed to let it slowly conform to the glass better.

893

Thu Aug 28 18:56:14 2008

There was a beam block after the Mach Zender. Who or what put this there?

The going to the MC now looks distorted as if someone has left something funny in the beam or maybe the new PMC has started to degrade??

Use the ELOG people...its good for you.

895

Fri Aug 29 02:40:43 2008

Quote:

Board is back in. PMC is locked.

This entry has details about the low pass filter after the PMC mixer. This filter has a few purposes:

1] Remove the beat signal (at 2*f_mod) between the PD RF signal at f_mod and the LO signal at f_mod.
2] Remove the beat signal (at f_mod) between the PD RF signal at 2*f_mod (which comes from the
beating of the upper and lower RF sidebands) and the LO signal at f_mod.
3] Remove other RF signals from non-ideal behavior of the LO drive signal and distortion in the RF PD pre-amp.

So its important to have a very good rejection at 35 MHz and higher. I used the Hartmut LC network design which is
installed on H1, H2, & L1. Since there is a high gain in the audio amps right after the mixer we have to get rid of
the RF or else we'll get slew rate limited or otherwise rectified downconversion of the RF signal into our audio band.

Of course, what everyone immediately realizes from the above 3 points, is that this filter can't protect the PMC
noise performance from homodyne mixing (e.g. 2*f_mod in the LO and 2*f_mod in the RF PD). To get around that, we're
ordering some filters from Mini-Circuits to remove the 2f from those signals by ~30 dB. As long as we install
the same filters on the RF and LO legs, there should be no significant phase shift in the demodulated signal.

The attached 2 page PDF shows the calculated before and after TFs of this filter. The 2 attached .m files
calculate the TF's and have ascii art which shows how the filter works.

Here's a comparison of the attenuation (in dB) of 2 candidate Mini-circuits filters:

f(MHz)	SLP-30	SLP-50
31	0.5	0.4
35	1.3	0.4
38	6.1	0.4
40	10.8	0.42
61	46.3	14.8
71	60	29
91	76.9	48
107	80	60

We don't have tabulated data at the same frequencies for both filters so I just made up some of the points by eye-balling the
plots from the catalog - but you get the idea: we can get away with using the SLP-30 at 35 MHz since it only attenuates the
signals by ~1.5 dB. So if someone can find 4 of these then Steve doesn't have to order any from Mini-Circuits.

Attachment 1: pmclp-07.pdf

Attachment 2: pmclp_40m_080824.m

% PMCLP is a TF of the IF filter after the PMC mixer
%       

% Mixer_Voltage -- Rs -- L1 --- L2 ---------Vout
%                            |      |   |
%                           C1     C2   Rl                   
%                            |      |   |
%                           GND    GND  GND
%

... 58 more lines ...

Attachment 3: pmclp.m

% PMCLP is a TF of the IF filter after the PMC mixer
%       

% Mixer_Voltage -- Rs -- L1 --- L2 ---------Vout
%                            |      |   |
%                           C1     C2   Rl                   
%                            |      |   |
%                           GND    GND  GND
%

... 57 more lines ...

896

Fri Aug 29 10:20:32 2008

Quote:

I put the block. I was frequently reaching to the FSS box to change the test point probes. I put the block to protect my hands/clothes from being burnt accidentally.

901

Fri Aug 29 15:01:45 2008

steve

MOPA_HTEMP in increasing

The laser chiller temp is 21.9C ( it should be 20.0C )
Control room temp 73F ok, no obvious block

Ops, there is a piece of paper blocking the intake of the chiller

This is a four day plot. The paper was blocking the air flow all day.

Attachment 1: htcl.jpg

902

Fri Aug 29 16:35:18 2008

Quote:

The apparent distortion of the MC refl. was caused by mis-alignment of the MC mirrors.
Because the MC1 was mis-aligned, the reflected light was clipped by a steering mirror.
I restored the MC angle bias values from the conlog history and now the MC locks.
According to conlog, the MC alignment was changed at around 18:30 on Thursday PDT.
It could have been caused by the computer reboots.

903

Fri Aug 29 17:39:25 2008

The attached PNG shows the PMC error and controls signals with no calibration.

There are 3 states:

DARK - RF input disabled & output blanked. This should be a measure of the ADC noise

(-10 dB) - This is with the gain slider down at 5 dB instead of the nominal 15 dB.

Looks like the Generic DAQ board whitening is good enough for these signal levels above ~1 Hz.

From the low and high gain spectra it also looks like the UGF is ~500 Hz with the gain at 15 dB.

Attachment 1: mcf.png

904

Fri Aug 29 18:24:48 2008

I calibrated the PMC PZT at DC by using 'trianglewave' to drive the DC offset slider
and reading back PMC_PZT and PMC_TRANSPD_F (both are DC coupled DAQ channels).

The attached PDF illustrates the method: look at the voltage required to span 1 FSR and then divide.

PMC_cal (m/V) = (1064 nm)/2 / V_FSR

The calibration for our PZT is therefore 10.4 nm/V.
The full scale (0-300 V) range is 3.1 microns.

From Jenne's elog entry we know that the series resistor to the PZT is 63.6 kOhms. The PZT is labeled as
having a capacitance of 279 nF. So the PMC drive's pole frequency is 1/2/pi/63.6e3/279e-9 = 9 Hz +/- 0.5 Hz.
The cable capacitance is ~20 pF/foot so its not significant for this.

The template file is Templates/PMC-PZTcal.xml.

Using the above calibrations, also plot the calibrated PMC ERR and PZT spectra.

Attachment 1: pmc-pzt-cal.pdf

Attachment 2: mcf.png

905

Fri Aug 29 22:57:48 2008

I've been measuring a bunch of transfer functions of the FSS related stuffs.
There are a lot to be analyzed yet, but here I put one mystery I'm having now.
Maybe I'm missing something stupid, so your suggestions are welcome.

Here is a conceptual diagram of the FSS control board

TP3 TP4
^ ^
| |
RF PD -->--[Mixer]-----[Sum Amp]------>--[Common Gain]--->----[Fast Gain]----[Filter]--> NPRO PZT
^ | ^ | |
| V | V |
LO ---->------- TP1 IN TP2 -->---[Filter]--[High Volt. Amp.] --> Phase Corrector

What I did was first to measure a "normal" openloop transfer function of the FSS servo.
The FSS was operated in the normal gain settings, and a signal was injected from "IN" port.
The open loop gain was measured by TP1/TP2.
Now, I disconnected the BNC cable going to the phase corrector to disable the PC path and locked the ref. cav.
only using the PZT. This was done by reducing the "Common Gain" and "Fast Gain" by some 80dB.
Then I measured the open loop gain of this configuration. The UGF in this case was about 10kHz.
I also measured the gain difference between the "normal" and "PZT only" configurations by injecting
a signal from "IN" and measuring TP3/TP2 and TP4/TP3 with both configurations (The signal from the Mixer was
disconnected in this measurement).

The first attachment shows the normal open loop gain (purple) and the PZT only open loop gain scaled by the
gain difference (about 80dB). The scaled PZT open loop gain should represent the open loop gain of the PZT
path in the normal configuration. So I expected that, at low frequencies, the scaled PZT loop TF overlaps the normal
open loop TF.
However, it is actually much larger than the normal open loop gain.
When I scale the PZT only TF by -30dB, it looks like the attachment #2.
The PZT loop gain and the total open loop gain match nicely between 20kHz and 70kHz.
Closer look will show you that small structures (e.g. around 30kHz and 200kHz) of the two
TFs also overlap very well. I repeated measurements many times and those small structures are always there (the phase is
also consistently the same). So these are not random noise.

I don't know where this 30dB discrepancy comes from. Is it the PC path eating the PZT gain ?

I have measured many other TFs. I'm analyzing these.
Here is the TO DO list:

* Cavity response plot from AOM excitation measurements.
* Cavity optical gain plot.
* Reconstruct the open loop gain from the electric gain measurements and the optical gain above.
* Using a mixer and SR560(s), make a separate feedback circuit for the PZT lock. Then use the PC path
to measure the PC path response.
* See the response of the FSS board to large impulse/step inputs to find the cause of the PC path craziness.
etc ...

Attachment 1: OPLTFs.pdf

Attachment 2: OPLTFsScaled.pdf

906

Sat Aug 30 13:28:01 2008

This is a list of changes made to the PMC board while we had it out for modifying the notch:

LC-LC 4th order low pass filter
Replace the AD797 (U2) with an OP27. AD797's are bad - do not use them anywhere for any reason. The OP27 is slower and has a 3x worse input noise but doesn't compromise the bandwidth or noise performance of the PMC by any significant amount. The rule is: use OP27 everywhere unless you have a very good reason why not.
There is no 'H1' jumper on board. R9 is 90.9 Ohms and R2=900 Ohms so that the U2 stage has a gain of 10.
Cut a trace and inserted a 500 Ohm resistor between U2-pin6 and U5A-pin2 (the AD602). The AD602 has a 100 Ohm input impedance which cannot be driven without limiting by the AD797 or the OP27. The 500 Ohm resistor makes it a driveable load for low level signals which is all that should be there since its the error point of the servo. it also becomes a 6:1 voltage divider. Since the AD602 has a fixed output voltage noise of 100 nV/rHz, this will limit the noise performance if the VGA gain is less than 20 dB, but whatever.
R11 7.87k -> 1.74k, R12 = 78.7k -> 700k. This increases the high frequency gain of that stage by 7.87/1.74 = 4.5 and lowers the low frequency pole from 2 to 0.2 Hz to give the PMC some more staying power at DC. The loop shape is now 1/f^2 in the 9-480 Hz band and so the phase dips enough to make it almost conditionally stable, but not quite.
C26 changed from ??? + a 30 pF trim cap into a fixed NNN pF cap to set the notch frequency for the 14.5 kHz body mode that we measured. Once our brick configuration is more settled we can increase the Q of this notch from small to big.
Grounded pin 5 of U14 & U15 (AD620). These have sometimes been used as "differential" drivers in LIGO by connecting this reference voltage pin to the remote ground of the next board. This has always lead to insidious oscillation and noise. This beauty also has an output noise of 100 nV/rHz. Just never use this chip if you can help it; we can make true differential drivers - we have the technology.

Of course, we didn't have a current version of a schematic sitting around so I printed out a Rev E schematic and marked it up with red pen. I'll post pictures later and put the schematic into the PSL schematics notebook. Would be useful to take the old schematic and update it in Acrobat so that we have something electronic.

907

Mon Sep 1 04:34:00 2008

I started from 6th item in Yoichi's todo list.

1) Increased the setpoint of the thermostat next to the framebuilder from 73F to 79F. Its freezing over there
in the room with the drill press. Steve's illegal mercury thermometer is reading 19 C.

2) Looked the RFPD's output spectrum using the 20 dB coupled output from the coupler that's in-line.
The first attached PDF file (n.pdf) has several plots:
page 1: 0-500 MHz anomolous peaks at 138 & 181 MHz but nothing too crazy
page 2: 0-100 MHz 80 MHz peak is RF pickup from the VCO Driver - not on the light
page 3: 10-30 MHz totally nuts
page 4: 18-25 MHz that's just wrong

The RF spectrum should only have some action around 21.5 MHz and a little peak at 2x 21.5 MHz. All that extra
junk means that something is broken!

3) To see if I could rid of any of the 80 MHz signal or any of that other trash from 18-25 MHz, I wound the RF cable
around a large toroidal ferrite core. This should have given us many uH of inductance for any signals common to
both the center and shield of the cable with no effect on the differential RF signals. There was no effect.

4) Next went to look at the 21.5 MHz Crystal Oscillator Reference card (D980353...I bet you can't figure out how
this one works). These have the Mini-Circuits SMA 30 MHz low pass (SLP-30) filters on both the LO and EOM outputs.

FSSLO.PNG shows the waveform after 20 dB attenuation going into a scope terminated with 50 Ohms.
FSSLO-Spec.png shows the spectrum of this signal - its pretty distorted. Here's the levels

   f (MHz) |  before filter (dBm) | after filter (dBm)
   ---------------------------------------------------
     21.5  |       -12.8               -13.1       
     43            -24                 -46
     64.5          -50               < -80
     86            -64               < -80

This would be OK after the filter, but the level is very low. Only 7dBm (accounting for my 20 dB att) !!
The FSS uses a JMS-1H mixer which needs, as everyone knows, a +17 dBm LO signal. Que lastima.

There seems to be something wrong already, but wait...

5) PC25.PNG shows the output signal going to the EOM from 0 - 25 MHz. The step that's visible there at
around 10 MHz is just something inherent to the analyzer (??). But see all that crap there down below
5 MHz ? That is NOT supposed to be there.

pc.pdf shows on the first page the comparison in EOM drive with 2 different slider values on the
RF AM adjust screen for the FSS. But page 2 is the punchline of this long entry: There is a bunch of
excess junk on the drive signal going to the FSS's phase modulator. The FSS is then trying to handle
this extra frequency noise and getting into trouble.

We have to fix this board. I have also ordered a few SBP-21.4 from mini-circuits (SMA bandpass around 21.4 MHz)
just in case. Another option is to just replace this thing with a Marconi and an RF amp.

Attachment 1: n.pdf

Attachment 2: FSSLO.PNG

Attachment 3: FSSLO-Spec.png

Attachment 4: PC25.png

Attachment 5: pc.pdf

908

Mon Sep 1 19:23:17 2008

FSS on an auxiliary loop

Summary: The FSS is now temporarily disabled. Naturally, the MC won't lock. I will fix it tomorrow morning.

Today, I did the 4th item of my TO DO list.
Using a mini-circuit mixer and two SR560s, I constructed an auxiliary servo loop for the reference cavity.
With this loop, I was able to lock the reference cavity without using the FSS box.
By locking the reference cavity with this auxiliary servo, I was able to measure the PC path transfer function.
I will post the analyzed results later.

I borrowed the PD RF and the LO signals from the main FSS loop by power splitters. Therefore, the gain of the main FSS loop
is now about 3dB low. I tried to compensate it by increasing the EOM modulation depth, but the PC path is still a bit noisy.
Probably the already too low LO power is now seriously low (the LO power cannot be changed from EPICS).
Because I did not want to leave the PC path with large output overnight (it will heat up the PA85, and might cause damage, though unlikely),
I disabled the FSS for now.

909

Tue Sep 2 07:58:34 2008

Summary

FSS & PMC LO trends for 2 years

The attached plot is a 2 year minute trend of the EPICS readback of the PMC & FSS LO Monitors (FSS_LODET & PMC_LODET).
Clearly the FSS LO has been dying for at least 2 years. The step up from 10 months
ago is probably when Rob removed a 3dB attenuator from in front of the box.

Attachment 1: psl-lo-trend.png

910

Tue Sep 2 09:58:42 2008

FSS on an auxiliary loop

Quote:

Summary: The FSS is now temporarily disabled. Naturally, the MC won't lock. I will fix it tomorrow morning.

Now I removed the power splitters for the aux. reference cavity servo. The FSS is back and the MC locks.
I'm now returning one of the active high-impedance probes to the Wilson house. They need it today.
We are left with only one active probe. If anyone finds another active probe in the 40m lab.,
please let me know (according to Rana we should have one more).

911

Tue Sep 2 10:09:03 2008

steve

head temp is cooling down

The chiller was over flowing this morning.
800 cc of water was removed.
PSL-126MOPA_HTEMP peaked at 20.7 C (normal is 18.7 C)

912

Tue Sep 2 14:28:41 2008

FSS EOM driving signal spectra

Rich advised me to change the +10V input of the FSS crystal frequency reference board from whatever voltage supply we use now to a nice one.
This voltage is directory connected to the signal lines of both LO and RF output amps. Therefore, fluctuations in the voltage directly appear
in the outputs, though DC components are cut off by the AC coupling capacitors.

I changed the source of this voltage from the existing Sorensen one to a power supply sitting next to the rack.
The attached plots shows the difference of the RF output spectra between the two 10V sources.
The low frequency crap is almost gone in the new 10V spectrum.

I tried to increase the FSS gain with the new 10V, but still it goes crazy. I suspect it is because the LO power is too low.

Attachment 1: RFDrive1.png

Attachment 2: RFDrive2.png

913

Tue Sep 2 22:43:16 2008

Updated FSS open loop TF

Since the LO level of the FSS servo was too low, I replaced the RF oscillator board with a combination of
a Stanford signal generator and an RF amplifier.
Right now, the POY RF amplifier is used for this purpose temporarily.
Now the LO level is about 16dBm. The RF power going into the EOM is attenuated by 20dB from the LO level.
I played with the cable length to get the phase right.
Then I was able to lock the FSS with the new RF signal source.

Attached is the open loop transfer function of the current FSS. Now the UGF is a bit above 200kHz, a factor of 2 improvement.
This gain was achieved with the common gain slider at 13.5dB and the fast gain = 30dB.
With the old RF oscillator board, UGF=100kHz was achieved with the common gain =30dB. Therefore, the increase of the LO gave
us a large signal gain.

Increasing the gain further, again ,makes the PC path crazy.
Rich suggested that this craziness was caused either by the slew rate limit of the PA85 or the output voltage limit of the bypass Op-amp(A829)
is hit.

TO DO:
* Look at the error signal spectrum to see if there is any signal causing the slew rate saturation at high frequencies.
* Find out what the RF signal level for the EOM should be. 20dB attenuation is an arbitrary choice.
* Find out the cross over frequency. Determine where the fast gain slider should be.
etc ...

Attachment 1: OPLTF.png

918

Thu Sep 4 00:38:14 2008

Entry 663 has a plot of this using the PSL/FSS/SLOWscan script. It shows that the SB's were ~8x smaller than the carrier.

P_carrier   J_0(Gamma)^2 
--------- = ------------
P_SB        J_1(Gamma)^2

Which I guess we have to solve numerically for large Gamma?

919

Thu Sep 4 07:29:52 2008

Quote:

Entry 663 has a plot of this using the PSL/FSS/SLOWscan script. It shows that the SB's were ~8x smaller than the carrier.

P_carrier   J_0(Gamma)^2 
--------- = ------------
P_SB        J_1(Gamma)^2

Which I guess we have to solve numerically for large Gamma?

P_carrier/P_SB = 8 yields gamma=0.67.

923

Thu Sep 4 13:48:50 2008

I scanned the reference cavity with the NPRO temperature (see the attached plot).
The power ratio between the carrier and the sideband resonances is about 26.8.
It corresponds to gamma=0.38.
The RF power fed into the EOM is now 14.75dBm (i.e. 1.7V amplitude). The NewFocus catalog says 0.1-0.3rad/V. So
gamma=0.38 is a reasonable number.

Attachment 1: RCScan.png

924

Thu Sep 4 14:43:58 2008

I have measured the PMC's open loop gain. UGF is 629.7Hz, with a phase margin of 53 degrees.

I injected into FP2 on the front panel, and measured MixOut/Source from 100Hz to 100kHz using the SR785. I did this both when the loop was open, and when the loop was closed (open the loop by enabling FP1, which breaks the loop).

We have 2 transfer functions involved: The actual open loop gain of the PMC servo loop (G1), and the gain between FP2 and the MixerOut monitor point (G2). This gives us:

TF(closed loop) = G2*(1+G1)
TF(broken loop) = G2

G1 = TF(closed)/TF(broken) - 1

This G1 is the final open loop gain, and it is plotted below.

Attachment 1: OpenLoopTF04Sept2008.png

926

Thu Sep 4 17:03:25 2008

RF oscillator noise comparison

I measured current spectra of the RF signal going to the FSS EOM.
The attachment compares the spectra between a Stanford signal generator and a Marconi.
I borrowed the Marconi from the abs. length measurement experiment temporarily.
The measurement was done using the signal going to the EOM. That means the spectra include
noise contributions from the RF amp., splitter and cables.

21.5MHz peak was not included because that would overload the ADC and I would have to use a large attenuation.
This means the measurement would be totally limited by ADC noise everywhere except for 21.5MHz.

I noticed that with the Marconi, the FSS is a little bit happier, i.e. the PC path is less loaded
(0.9Vrms with Stanford vs. 0.7Vrms with Marconi). But the difference is small.
Probably the contribution from the 77kHz harmonics in the laser light is more significant (see entry #929).
Also the peaks in the Stanford spectrum are not harmonics of 77kHz, which we see in the FSS error signal.

I returned the Marconi after the measurement to let Alberto work on the abs. length measurement.

Attachment 1: RFSpectra.png

927

Thu Sep 4 17:12:57 2008

I changed the gain settings of the FSS servo.
Now the Common Gain is 5dB (the last night it was 2dB) and the Fast Gain is 12dB (formerly 16dB).
I measured the open loop TF with this setting (the attachment).
I also plotted the OPLTF when CG=2dB, FG=20.5dB. With this setting, the MC looses lock every 30min.

You can see that the OPLTF is smoother with FG=12dB.
When the FG is high, you can see some structure around 250kHz. This structure is reproducible.
This may be some interruption from the fast path to the PC path through a spurious coupling.

Attachment 1: FSS-OPLTFs.png

929

Thu Sep 4 17:44:27 2008

FSS error signal spectrum

Attached is a spectrum of the FSS error signal.
There are a lot of sharp peaks above 100kHz (the UGF of the servo is about 200kHz).
These are mostly harmonics of 77kHz. They are the current suspects of the FSS slew rate saturation.
I remember when I blocked the light to the PD, these peak went away. So these noises must be
in the light. But I checked it a few weeks ago. So I will re-check it later.

One possible source of the lines is a DC-DC converter in the NPRO near the crystal.
We will try to move the converter outside of the box.

Attachment 1: FSS-Error-Spe.png

931

Fri Sep 5 08:34:03 2008

The MC is happy.
The MZ can be locked if you move the slider by hand.

Attachment 1: mzhv.jpg

937

Mon Sep 8 15:38:57 2008

POY RF amp is back to its original task

I temporarily fixed the busted ZHL-32A RF amplifier's power connector by simply soldering a cable to the internal circuit and pulling the cable out of the box through a hole for the power connector.
So I released the POY RF amplifier from the temporary duty of serving the FSS RF distribution and put it back to the original task,
so that Rob can finally re-start working on the lock acquisition.
Now the temporarily fixed ZHL-32A is sitting next to the IOO rack along with the power supply and a Stanford signal generator.
Please be careful not to topple over the setup when you work around there. They will be there until Peter's Wentzel RF box arrives.

951

Tue Sep 16 16:47:01 2008

pete

Prototype FSS reference installed

After verifying output, I installed the new prototype 21.5 MHz FSS reference (Wenzel crystal oscillator and ZHL-2 amp). Yoichi and I successfully locked the MC, and have left the new reference in place. It's temporarily sitting on the corner of the big black optics table (AP table?).

954

Wed Sep 17 13:43:54 2008

I'm doing a cavity sweep of the RC. Please leave the IFO untouched until the meeting is over.

957

Wed Sep 17 15:22:31 2008

Quote:

I'm doing a cavity sweep of the RC. Please leave the IFO untouched until the meeting is over.

The measurement is still going on.
I will post an entry when it is done.
Thank you for the patience.

958

Wed Sep 17 17:31:24 2008

I calibrated the reference cavity error signal with the following procedure.

(1) I disconnected the PC path BNC cable and locked the RC only using the PZT. To do so, I had to insert a 20dB attenuator
in the RF signal path going to the EOM to reduce the gain of the loop sufficiently.
The normal RF level going to the EOM is 17dBm. With the attenuator it is of course -3dBm.

(2) Using the SR785, I injected signal into the Test-IN2 (a sum-amp after the mixer) of the FSS box and measured the TF from the Ramp-IN to the IN1.
When the Ramp-In switch is off, the Ramp-IN port can be used as a test point connected to the PZT drive signal path just before the output.
There is a RC low-pass filter after the Ramp-IN. IN1 is the direct output from the mixer (before the sum-amp).
The attm1 is the measured transfer function along with the fitting by a first order LPF.
From this measurement, the DC transfer function from the applied voltage on the PZT to the error signal is determined to be 163.6 (V/V).
Since the RF level is lowered by 20dB, the cavity gain in the normal operation mode is 10 times larger (assuming that the modulation depth is
linearly proportional to the applied voltage to the EOM).

(3) According to elog:791, the conversion factor from the voltage on the PZT to the frequency change of the NPRO is 11.172MHz/V. Combining this with the
number obtained above, we get 6.83kHz/V as the calibration factor for converting the error signal (mixer output) to the frequency at DC.
Using 38kHz cavity pole frequency, the calibration factor is plotted as a function of frequency in the attm2.

(4) I took a spectrum of the error signal of the FSS and calibrated it with the obtained calibration factor. See attm3.
The spectrum was measured by SR785. I will measure wide band spectra with an RF analyzer later.

TO DO:
1: Use the actual modulation depth difference to extrapolate the calibration factor obtained by with a low RF signal for the EOM.
The cavity sweep was already done.

2: I assumed 38kHz cavity pole. I will measure the actual cavity pole frequency by cavity ringdown.

3: Measure out-of-the-loop spectrum of the frequency noise using PMC and MC.

Attachment 1: PZTresp.png

Attachment 2: Calibration.png

Attachment 3: FreqNoiseSpectrum.png

959

Wed Sep 17 17:58:35 2008

The cavity sweep is done. The IFO is free now.

967

Thu Sep 18 23:31:26 2008

ISS: Saturating too often at nominal gain

The ISS has been saturating whenever the MC relocks and puts the gain up to +8dB. I have
lowered the gain to +1 dB for now to stop this, but we need to revisit the ISS loop and
performance. Stefan can fix it up for us as penance when he returns from the hedonism of Amsterdam.

Attachment 1: FIRE_BLOWER.jpg

971

Fri Sep 19 08:09:55 2008

I have just turned on the PSL HEPA filters at 60% operational speed.

978

Mon Sep 22 18:54:54 2008