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ID Date Author Type Category Subject
15736   Thu Dec 17 15:23:56 2020 gautamUpdateASCWFS head characterization

Summary:

I think the WFS head performs satisfactorily.

• The (input-referred) dark noise level at the operating frequency of 55 MHz is ~40pA/rtHz (modelled) and ~60 pA/rtHz (measured, converted to input-referred). See Attachment #1. Attachment #5 has the input referred current noise spectral densities, and a few representative shot noise levels.
• The RF transimpedance gain at the operating frequency is ~500 ohms when driving a 50 ohm load (in good agreement with LTspice model). See Attachment #2 and Attachment #3.
• The resonant gain to notch ratios are all > 30 dB, which is in line with numbers I can find for the WFS installed at the sites (and in good agreement with the LTspice model as well).
• There are a few lines visible in the noise measurement. But these are small enough not to be a show-stopper I think.

Details and remarks:

1. Attachment #4 shows a photo of the setup.
• The QPD used was S/N #84.
• The heat sinks have a bunch of washers because the screw holes were not tappe at time of manufacture.
• There isn't space to have 8 SMA feedthroughs in the D-shaped cutouts, so we can only have the 4 "RF HI" outputs without some major metalwork.
• C9 has been remvoed in all channels (to isolate the "TEST INPUT").
2. I found that some quadrants displayed a ~35 MHz sine-wave of a few mV pk-pk when I had the back of the enclosure off (for tuning the notches). The hypothesis is that this was due to some kind of stray capacitance effect. Anyways, once I closed everything up, for the noise measurement, this peak was no longer visible. With an HP8447A preamp, I measured an RMS voltage of ~2mV rms on an oscilloscope. After undoing the 20 dB gain of the amplifier, each quadrant has an output voltage noise of ~200 uVrms (as returned by the "measure" utility on the scope, I don't know the specifics of how it computes this). Point is, there wasn't any clear sine-wave oscillations like I saw on two channels when the lid was off.
3. Some of the lines are present during some measurement times but not others (e.g. Q4 blue vs red curve in Attachment #1). I was doing this work in the elec-bench area of the lab, right next to the network switches etc so not exactly the quietest environment. But anyway, I don't see anything in these measurements that suggest something is seriously wrong.
4. In the transfer function measurements, above 150 MHz, there are all sorts of features. But I think this is a measurement artefact (stray cable capacitance etc) and not anything real in the RF signal path. Koji saw similar effects I believe, and I didn't delve further into it.
5. The dark noise of the circuit is such that to be shot noise limited, each quadrant needs 10 mA of DC photocurrent. The light bulb we have has a max current rating of 0.25A, with which I could only get 3 mA DC per quadrant. So the 55 MHz sideband power needed to be shot noise limited is ~50 mW - we will never have such high power. But I think to have better performance will need a major re-work of the circuit design (finite Qs of inductors, capacitors etc).
6. Regarding the transimpedance gains - in my earlier plots, I omitted the 50ohm input impedance of the AG4395A network analyzer. The numbers I report here are ~half of those earlier in this thread for this reason. In any case, I think this number is what is important, since the ADT-1-1 on the demod board RF input has an input impedance of 50ohm.
7. Regarding grounding - the RF ground on the head is actually isolated from the case pretty well. Two locations of concern are (i) the heat sinks for the voltage regulator ICs and (ii) the DB15 connector shield. I've placed electrically insulating (but thermally conducting) pads from TO220 mounting kits between both sets of objects and the case. However, for the Dsub connector, the shape of the pad doesn't quite fit all the way round the connector. So if I over-tighten the 4-40 mounting bolts, at some point, the case gets shorted to the RF ground, presumably because the connector deforms slightly and touches the case in a spot where I don't have the isolating pad installed. I think I've realized a tightness that is mechanically satisfying but electrically isolating.
8. I will do the fitting at my leisure but the eye-fit is already suggesting that things are okay I think.

If the RF experts see some red flags / think there are more tests that need to be performed, please let me know. Big thanks to Chub for patiently supporting this build effort, I'm pleasantly surprised it worked.

15920   Mon Mar 15 20:22:01 2021 gautamUpdateASCc1rfm model restarted

On Friday, I felt that the ASC performance when the PRFPMI was locked was not as good as it used to be, so I looked into the situation a bit more. As part of my ASC model revamp in December, I made a bunch of changes to the signal routing, and my suspicion was that the control signals weren't even reaching the ETMs. My log says that I recompiled and reinstalled the c1rfm model (used to pipe the ASC control signals to the ETMs), and indeed, the file was modified on Dec 21. But for whatever reason, the C1RFM.ini (=Dolphin receiver since the ASC control signals are sent to this model over the Dolphin network from the c1ioo machine which hosts the C1:ASC- namespace, and RFM sender to the ETMs, but this path already existed) file never picked up the new channels. Today, I recompiled, re-installed, and restarted the models, and confirmed that the control signals actually make it to the ETMs. So now we can have the QPD-based ASC loops engaged once again for the PRFPMI lock. The CDS system did not crash 🎉 . See Attachments #1-3.

I checked the loop performance in the POX/POY locked config by first deliberately misaligning the ETMs, and then engagin the loops - seems to work (Attachment #4). The loop shapes have to be tweaked a bit and I didn't engage the integrators, hence the DC pointing wasn't recovered. Also, added a line to the script that turns the ASC loops on to set limits for all the loops - in the testing process, one of the loops ran away and I tripped the ETMY watchdog. It has since been recovered. I SDFed a limit of 100cts just to be on the conservative side for model reboot situations - the value in the script can be raised/lowered as deemed necessary (sorry, I don't know the cts-->urad number off the top of my head).

But the hope is this improves the power buildup, and provides stability so that I can begin to commission the AS WFS system a bit.

15953   Mon Mar 22 16:29:17 2021 gautamUpdateASCSome prep for AS WFS commissioning
1. Added rough cts2mW calibration filters to the quadrants, see Attachment #1. The number I used is:
0.85 A/W         *       500 V/A            *          10 V/V                              *         1638.4 cts/V
(InGaAs responsivity)     (RF transimpedance)  (IQ demod conversion gain)      (ADC calibration)
2. Recovered FPMI locking. Once the arms are locked on POX / POY, I lock MICH using AS55_Q as a sensor and BS as an actuator with ~80 Hz UGF.
3. Phased the digital demod phases such that while driving a sine wave in ETMX PIT, I saw it show up only in the "I" quadrant signals, see Attachment #2.

The idea is to use the FPMI config, which is more easily accessed than the PRFPMI, to set up some tests, measure some TFs etc, before trying to commission the more complicated optomechanical system.

16267   Mon Aug 2 16:18:23 2021 PacoUpdateASCAS WFS MICH commissioning

[anchal, paco]

We picked up AS WFS comissioning for daytime work as suggested by gautam. In the end we want to comission this for the PRFPMI, but also for PRMI, and MICH for completeness. MICH is the simplest so we are starting here.

We started by restoromg the MICH configuration and aligning the AS DC QPD (on the AS table) by zeroing the C1:ASC-AS_DC_YAW_OUT and C1:ASC-AS_DC_PIT_OUT. Since the AS WFS gets the AS beam in transmission through a beamsplitter, we had to correct such a beamsplitters's aligment to recenter the AS beam onto the AS110 PD (for this we looked at the signal on a scope).

We then checked the rotation (R) C1:ASC-AS_RF55_SEGX_PHASE_R and delay (D) angles C1:ASC-AS_RF55_SEGX_PHASE_D (where X = 1, 2, 3, 4 for segment) to rotate all the signal into the I quadrature. We found that this optimized the PIT content on C1:ASC-AS_RF55_I_PIT_OUT and YAW content on C1:ASC-AS_RF55_I_YAW_OUTMON which is what we want anyways.

Finally, we set up some simple integrators for these WFS on the C1ASC-DHARD_PIT and C1ASC-DHARD_YAW filter banks with a pole at 0 Hz, a zero at 0.8 Hz, and a gain of -60 dB (similar to MC WFS). Nevertheless, when we closed the loop by actuating on the BS ASC PIT and ASC YAW inputs, it seemed like the ASC model outputs are not connected to the BS SUS model ASC inputs, so we might need to edit accordingly and restart the model.

16909   Fri Jun 10 20:11:46 2022 yutaUpdateASCYarm ASS re-tuning in progress

[Anchal, Yuta]

We tried to re-tune Yarm ASS today. It cannot be fully closed as of now. I think we need to play with signs.

Motivation:
- We want to make sure Yarm ASS work with current ITMY coil matrix (40m/16899).
- ASS makes the beam positions on test masses to be the same every day.

What we did:
- Adjusted A2L paths of C1:ASS-YARM_OUT_MTRX based on cavity geometry. For the paths to maximize the transmission using TT1 and TT2, we just assumed they are correctly calculated by someone in the past.
- Adjusted OSC_CLKGAINs so that ITMY and ETMY will be shaken in the same amplitude in terms of radians. The ratio of the excitation was determined to take into account for the oscillator frequency difference between DOFs.
- Checked the time constant of A2L paths by turning on A2L paths only, and checked that of max-transmission paths by turining on them only.
- Adjusted DEMOD_SIG_GAINs so that their time constants will be roughly the same, with C1:ASS-YARM_SEN_MTRX fully identity matrix and all servo GAINs to be +1.
- Re-tuned DEMOD_PHASEs to minimize Q signal. C1:ASS-YARM_ITM_PIT_L_DEMOD_PHASE and C1:ASS-YARM_ITM_YAW_T_DEMOD_PHASE were re-tuned within +/- 5 deg.
- These changes are recorded in /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/Git/40m/scripts/ASS/ASS_DITHER_ON.snap now.

Result:
- A2L loops seems to be working, but max-transmission paths seems to diverge at some point. I think we need to play with the signs/gains of max-transmission paths for C1:ASS-YARM_OUT_MTRX.
- Attached is the current configuration we achieved so far.

16911   Mon Jun 13 20:26:09 2022 yutaUpdateASCYarm ASS re-tuning in progress -part 2-

[Anchal, Yuta]

We are still in the progress of re-commissioning Yarm ASS.
Today, we tried to adjust output matrix by measuring the sensing matrix at DC.
Turning on yaw loops kind of works, but pitch does not. It seems like there is too much coupling in pitch to yaw.
We might need to adjust the coil output matrix of ITMY and ETMY to go further, and/or try measuring the sensing matrix including pitch - yaw coupling.

What we did:
- Confirmed that turning on TT1 and TT2 loops (max-transmission loops) work fine. When we intentionally misalign TT1/2, the ASS loops correct it. So, we moved on to measure the sensing matrix of A2L paths, instead of using theoretical matrix caluclated from cavity geometry we used last week (40m/16909).
- Instead of +/-1's, we put +/-2's in the ITMY coil output matrix to balance the actuation between ETMY and ITMY to take into account that ITMY is now using only two coils for actuating pitch and yaw (40m/16899).
- Measured the change in C1:ASS-YARM_(E|I)TM_(PIT|YAW)_L_DEMOD_I_OUT16 error signals when offset was added to C1:SUS-(E|I)TMY_ASC(PIT|YAW)_OFFSET. We assumed pitch-yaw coupling is small enough here. Below was the result.

                            ETM PIT error  ITM PIT error ETM PIT OFFSET of +100cnts: -3.0cnts       -2.99cnts ITM PIT OFFSET of +100cnts: -11.94cnts      -5.38cnts

                            ETM PIT error  ITM PIT error ETM YAW OFFSET of +100cnts: -3.42cnts      -16.93cnts
ITM YAW OFFSET of +10 cnts: +1.41cnts      +0.543cnts

- Inverted the matrix to get A2L part of C1:ASS-YARM_OUT_MTRX. Attachment #1 is the current configuration so far.
- With this, we could close all yaw loops when pitch loops were not on. But vise versa didn't work.
- Anyway, we aligned the IFO by centering the beams on test masses by our eyes and centered all the oplevs (Attachment #2).

Next:
- Do coil balancing to reduce pitch-yaw coupling
- Measure sensing matrix also for pitch-yaw coupling
- Xarm ASS is also not working now. We need to do similar steps also for Xarm

16915   Tue Jun 14 20:57:15 2022 AnchalUpdateASCYarm ASS working now

I finally got YARM AS to work today. It is hard to describe what worked, I did a lot of monkey business and some dirty offset measurements to create the ASS output matrix that gave results. Note that I still had to leave out ITMY PIT L error signal, but transmission was maximizing without it. The beam does not center fully on ITMY in Pit direction right now, but we'll mvoe on from this problem for now. Future people are welcome to try to make it work for this last remaining error signal as well.

commit

16930   Mon Jun 20 19:46:04 2022 TomislavUpdateASCSimulation plots

In the attachment please find IMC ASC simulation plots. Let me know what you think, if you want some other plots, and if you need any clarification.

16934   Tue Jun 21 18:41:46 2022 TomislavUpdateASCSimulation plot

In the attachment please find a comparison of error signals of simulation and reality. For C1:IOO-WFS1/2_PIT_IN1 excess signal ('belly') between a few Hz up to 70-80 Hz might be caused by air turbulence (which is not included in the simulation).

16937   Tue Jun 21 22:22:37 2022 TomislavUpdateASCPlots

In the attachment please find a comparison of error signals of simulation and reality after including air turbulence as input noise.

16948   Sat Jun 25 22:18:41 2022 TomislavUpdateASCSimulation and reality comparisons

In the attachment please find plots comparing controller output, local damping output, and error signals.

Input noises of the simulation are seismic noise, osem noise, input power fluctuations, sensing noises of WFSs and QPD, and air turbulence noise for WFSs. There is also optical torque noise (radiation pressure effect).

The procedure to get optical gains and sensing noises:
Having the actuator response A rad/cnts @ 3 Hz. I was shaking MC1/2/3 in pitch with B cnts @ 3 Hz and getting WFS1/2 QPD signals of C cnts @ 3 Hz, which means WFS1/2 QPD optical gain is D cnts/rad = C / (A * B) cnts/rad. So, if WFS1/2 QPD IN1 has a noise spectrum (at higher freqs) of E cnts/rtHz, that corresponds to E/D rad/rtHz of sensing noise for WFS1/2 QPD.

Actuator response [rad/cts] I was getting shaking mirrors at 3 Hz and measuring amplitudes of OSEM output (knowing the geometry of the mirror). I scaled it to DC. From here I was getting ct2tau_mc (knowing the mirror's moment of inertia, Q, and natural pitch frequencies). OSEM calibration factors [cts/rad] I was getting from the input matrix and geometry of the mirror.

The flat noise at higher frequencies from the local damping and controller output channels is presumably quantization/loss of digits/numerical precision noise which I don't include in simulations for now?!

Regarding air turbulence, in KAGRA it has been reported that air turbulence introduces phase fluctuations in laser fields that propagate in air. According to Kolmogorov’s theory, the PSD of phase fluctuations caused by air turbulence scales as ∝ L*V^(5/3)*f^(−8/3). Here, L is the optical path length and V is a constant wind speed. Since it is not obvious how can one estimate typical V in the beam paths I was taking this excess noise from the error signals data between 10 Hz and 50 Hz, extrapolated it taking into account ∝ f^(−8/3) (not for frequencies below 2 Hz, where I just put constant, since it would go too high). I expect that I won't be able to get a parameterized model that also predicts the absolute value. The slope is all I can hope to match, and this I already know. QPD chamber is much smaller (and better isolated?) and there is no this excess noise.

Regarding other things in simulations (very briefly): beam-spots are calculated from angular motions, length change is calculated from beam-spots and angular motion, cavity power depends on length change and input power, and torque on the mirrors depends on beam-spots and cavity power. From other things, local-sensor basis conversion (and vice versa) is worth noting.

17217   Mon Oct 31 21:04:43 2022 KojiUpdateASCWFS inspection

Inspected the lab to see what we can do about the IFO WFS:

• WFS heads
• 1 functional WFS head (tuned at 11/55MHz) @AS Table [40m ELOG 15736]
• 1 WFS head case (empty) @Section Y10 below the tube, plastic box
• 2 WFS PCBs, components stuffed, tuning freq unknown @Section Y10 below the tube, plastic box
• Deomdulators
• no 4ch IQ demod unit (some component possibly spare)
• Build 4 iLIGO demods?
• Whitening / AA
• No permanent unit: Maybe we can borrow something from the BHD
• ADC CHs
• c1ioo seems to have just 8 more spare channels.
• Borrow a card from bhd? This will require an AI. But their location would be close to the final positions.
17255   Thu Nov 10 20:46:32 2022 ranaUpdateASCIMC WFS servo diagnosis

To check out the bandwidths and cross-coupling in the WFS loops, I made a script (attached) to step the offsets around, sleeping between steps. Its also in the scripts/MC/WFS/ dir.

You can see from the steps that there is some serious cross coupling from WFS1-PIT to MC_TRANS PIT. This cross-coupling is not a disaster because we run the MC2 centering loop with such a low gain. This gain hirearchy means that you can effectively consider the IMC with the WFS loops closed to be an "open loop" plant that the MC TRANS loop is trying to control.

I've started another run at 4:40 UTC since my previous one only paused for 30 seconds after turning each offset OFF/ON. This is clearly not long enough to grab the MC_TRANS loop; although you can tell sort of how slow it is from the slope of the error signal after the step is applied.

To make the plot, I used diaggui in the time series mode, with a 3 Hz BW. I applied a 4th order Butterworth filter at 0.3 Hz to low pass the data using the foton string in the time series tool.

17272   Wed Nov 16 12:53:36 2022 ranaUpdateASCIMC WFS ongoing

In the middle of aportioning gains and signs in the IMC WFS screen, so beware. More updates soon.

17288   Fri Nov 18 23:21:54 2022 ranaUpdateASCIMC WFS ongoing

On Wednesday, I did some rework of the MC WFS gains. I think it should still work as before as long as the overall input gain is set to 0.1 (not 1.0 as the button on the screen sets it to).

1. The MC_TRANS P/TY signals were very small because they are normalized by the SUM. I added a '+80 dB' gain filter to the MC2_TRANS_PIT and MC2_TRANS_YAW filter banks which increase the signal gain before the digital signals are sent from the MC2 model to the MC_WFS control screen's Input Matrix. Now if you plot the MC_TRANS and WFS signals on dataviewer, the time series all have roughly the same magnitude.
2. I put a "-80 dB" gain button into the MC2_TRANS servo filter banks. This should make it have the same overall gain as before, since the (sensor to servo) Input Matrix is diagonal.
3. The servo gains (WFS1_PIT, WFS2_YAW, etc.) had some negative signs. To make all the servo gains positive, I moved those signs into the Output Matrix.
4. The Output Matrix had some values with 4-5 significant digits. I think its not necessary to have more than 2 places after the decimal point since out measurements are not that accurate, so I rounded them off. We can/should change that screen to reduce the PREC field on the matrix element display.
5. Now, if the overall INPUT_GAIN slider is increased beyond 0.1, there is some pitch oscillation. I think that is happening because the Output Matrix is not that great. In principle, if we have diagonalized the system, putting offsets into the various loops' error points won't make offsets in the other loops, but this is not the case. The pitch loops have a lot of cross coupling (my guess is that the off-diagonal elements are of order 0.1); the yaw loops are several times better. I suggest someone redo the Output Matrix diagonalization and then use the error point offset method to check that they are diagonal.

We mainly want these loops to work well at DC, so it is perhaps better if we can measure the matrix at DC. Its less automatic than at 13 Hz, but I think it could be done with a script and some iterative matrix inversion:

1. IMC locked, IMC ASC loops all open (by setting the overall input gain slider to zero)
2. apply an offset in the WFS1_P basis (turn off the integrators in all the servo loops, and apply a ~400 count offset in the error point)
3. tweak the WFS1_P output matrix until the WFS2_P and MC2_TRANS_P signals go to zero.
4. repeat for all 6 loops.

I haven't tried this procedure before, but I think it should work. You can use something like "cdsutils servo" to slowly adjust the Output Matrix values.

17311   Thu Nov 24 15:37:45 2022 AnchalUpdateASCIMC WFS output matrix diagonalization effort

I tried following the steps and the method I was using converged to same output matrix upto 2 decimal points but there is still left over cross coupling as you can see in Attachment 1. With the new output matrix, WFS loop can be turned on with full overall gain of 1.

### Changes:

• I switched off +20dB FM2 on C1IOO-WFS1_PIT and increased gain C1:IOO-WFS1_PIT_GAIN from 0.1 to 1 to be uniform with other filters.
• Output matrix change:
• Old matrix:
-2.   4.8 -7.3
3.6  3.5 -2.
2.   1.  -6.8
• New Matrix:
3.44  4.22 -7.29
0.75  0.92 -1.59
3.41  4.16 -7.21
• I think the main change that allowed the WFS loop to become stable was the 0,0 element sign change.

### Method:

• I made overall gain C1:IOO-WFS_GAIN 0
• Switched of (0:0.8) FM3 on PIT filter modules (IOO-WFS1_PIT, IOO-WFS2_PIT, IOO-MC2_TRANS_PIT)
• Changed ramp time to 2 seconds on all these modules
• Used offset of 10000 for WFS2 and MC2_TRANS, and 30000 for WFS1 (for some reason, response to WFS1 step was much lower than others)
• Measured the following sensor channels
• C1:IOO-WFS1_I_PIT_OUT
• C1:IOO-WFS2_I_PIT_OUT
• C1:IOO-MC_TRANS_PIT_OUT
• First I took 30s average of these channels, then applied the offsets in the three modules one by one and recorded steps in each sensor.
• Measured step from reference value taken before, and normalized each step to the DOF that was actually stepped to get a matrix.
• Inverted this matrix and multiplied with existing output matrix. Made sure column norm1 is same as before and column signs are same as before.
• Repeated a few times.

Note: The standard deviation on the averages was very high even after averaging for 30s. This data should be averaged after low passing high frequencies but I couldn't find the filter module medm screens for these signals, so I just proceeded with simple averaging of full rate signal using cdsultis avg command.

Fri Nov 25 12:46:31 2022

The WFS loop are unstable again. This could be due to the matrix balancing done while vacuum was disrupted. The above matrix does not work anymore.

17320   Mon Nov 28 20:14:27 2022 AnchalUpdateASCAS WFS proposed path to IMC WFS heads

In Attachment 1, I give a plan for the proposed path of AS beam into the IMC WFS heads to use them temporarily as AS WFS. Paths shown in orange are the existing MC REFL path, red for the existing AS path, cyan for the proposed AS path, and yellow for the existing IFO refl path.  We plan to overlap AS beam to the same path by installing the following new optics on the table:

• M1 will be a new mirror mounted on a flipper mount reflecting 100% of AS beam to SW corner of the table.
• M2 will be a new fixed mirror for steering the new AS beam path to match with MC WFS path.
• M3 will be the existing beamsplitter used to pick off light for MC refl camera. We'll just mount this on a flipper so that it can be removed from the path. Precaution will be required to protect the CCD from high intensity MC reflection by putting on more ND filters.
• The AS beam would need to be made approximately 1 mm in beam width. The required lenses for this would be placed between M1 and M2.

I request people to go through this plan and find out if there are any possible issues and give suggestions.

PS: Thanks JC for the photos. I got it from foteee google photos. It would be nice if these are also put into the 40m wiki page for photos of optical tables.

RXA: Looks good. I'm not sure if ND filters can handle the 1 W MC reflection, so perhaps add another flipper there. It would be good if you can measure the power on the WFS with a power meter so we know what to put there. Ideally we would match the existing power levels there or get into the 0.1-10 mW range.

13157   Tue Aug 1 19:23:06 2017 ranaUpdateALSX - arm alignment

Rana, Naomi

We dither locked the X arm and then aligned the green beam to it using the PZTs. Everything looks ready for us to do a mode scan tomorrow.

We got buildup for Red and Green, but saw no beat in the control room. Quick glance at the PSL seems OK, but needs more investigation. We did not try moving around the X-NPRO temperature.

Tomorrow: get the beat, scan the PhaseTracker, and get data using pyNDS.

13177   Wed Aug 9 12:35:47 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS

Last week, we were talking about reviving the Fiber ALS box. Right now, it's not in great shape. Some changes to be made:

1. Supply power to the PDs (Menlo FPD310) via a power regulator board. The datasheet says the current consumption per PD is 250 mA. So we need 500mA. We have the D1000217 power regulator board available in the lab. It uses the LM2941 and LM2991 power regulator ICs, both of which are rated for 1A output current, so this seems suitable for our purposes. Thoughts?
2. Install power decoupling capacitors on the PDs.
3. Clean up the fiber arrangement inside the box.
4. Install better switches, plus LED indicators.
5. Cover the box.
6. Install it in a better way on the PSL table. Thoughts? e.g. can we mount the unit in some electronics rack and route the fibers to the rack? Perhaps the PSL IR and one of the arm fibers are long enough, but the other arm might be tricky.

Previous elog thread about work done on this box: elog11650

13180   Wed Aug 9 19:21:18 2017 gautamUpdateALSALS recovery

Summary:

Between frequent MC1 excursions, I worked on ALS recovery today. Attachment #1 shows the out-of-loop ALS noise as of today evening (taken with arms locked to IR) - I have yet to check loop shapes of the ALS servos, looks like there is some tuning to be done.

On the PSL table:

• First, I locked the arms to IR, ran the dither alignment servos to maximize transmission.
• I used the IR beat PDs to make sure a beat existed, at approximately.
• Then I used a scope to monitor the green beat, and tweaked steering mirror alignment until the beat amplitude was maximized. I was able to improve the X arm beat amplitude, which Koji and Naomi had tweaked last week, by ~factor of 2, and Y arm by ~factor of 10.
• I used the DC outputs of the BBPDs to center the beam onto the PD.
• Currently, the beat notes have amplitudes of ~-40dBm on the scopes in the control room (there are various couplers/amplifiers in the path so I am not sure what beatnote amplitude this translates to at the BBPD output). I have yet to do a thorough power budget, but I have in my mind that they used to be ~-30dBm. To be investigated.
• Removed the fiber beat PD 1U chassis unit from the PSL table for further work. The fibers have been capped and remain on the PSL table. Cleaned the NW corner of the PSL table up a bit.

To do:

• Optimization of the input pointing of the green beam for X (with PZTs) and Y (manual) arms.
• ALS PDH servo loop measurement. Attachment #1 suggests some loop gain adjustment is required for both arms (although the hump centered around ~70Hz seem to be coming from the IR lock).
• Power budgeting on the PSL table to compare to previous such efforts.

Note: Some of the ALS scripts are suffering from the recent inablilty of cdsutils to pull up testpoints (e.g. the script that is used to set the UGFs of the phase tracker servo). The workaround is to use DTT to open the test points first (just grab 0.1s time series for all channels of interest). Then the cdsutils scripts can read the required channels (but you have to keep the DTT open).

13204   Mon Aug 14 16:24:09 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS

Today, I borrowed the fiber microscope from Johannes and took a look at the fibers coupled to the PDs. The PD labelled "BEAT PD AUX Y" has an end that seems scratched (Attachments #1 and #2). The scratch seems to be on (or at least very close to) the core. The other PD (Attachments #3 and #4) doesn't look very clean either, but at least the area near the core seems undamaged. The two attachments for each PD corresponds to the two available lighting settings on the fiber microscope.

I have not attempted to clean them yet, though I have also borrowed the cleaning supplies to facilitate this from Johannes. I also plan to inspect the ends of all other fiber connections before re-installing them.

 Quote: Last week, we were talking about reviving the Fiber ALS box. Right now, it's not in great shape. Some changes to be made: Supply power to the PDs (Menlo FPD310) via a power regulator board. The datasheet says the current consumption per PD is 250 mA. So we need 500mA. We have the D1000217 power regulator board available in the lab. It uses the LM2941 and LM2991 power regulator ICs, both of which are rated for 1A output current, so this seems suitable for our purposes. Thoughts? Install power decoupling capacitors on the PDs. Clean up the fiber arrangement inside the box. Install better switches, plus LED indicators. Cover the box. Install it in a better way on the PSL table. Thoughts? e.g. can we mount the unit in some electronics rack and route the fibers to the rack? Perhaps the PSL IR and one of the arm fibers are long enough, but the other arm might be tricky. Previous elog thread about work done on this box: elog11650

13222   Wed Aug 16 20:24:23 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS

Today, with Johannes' help, I cleaned the fiber tips of the photodiodes. The effect of the cleaning was dramatic - see Attachments #1-4, which are X Beat PD, axial illumination, X Beat PD, oblique illumination, Y beat PD, axial illumination, Y beat PD, oblique illumination. They look much cleaner now, and the feature that looked like a scratch has vanished.

The cleaning procedure followed was:

• Blow clean air over the fiber tip
• First, we tried cleaning with the Q-tip like tool, but the results weren't great. The way to use it is to dip the tip in the cleaning solvent for a few seconds, hold the tip to the fiber taking into account the angled cut, and apply 10 gentle quarter turns.
• Next, we tried cleaning with the wipes. We peeled out an approximately 5" section of the wipe, and laid it out on the table. We then applied cleaning solvent liberally on the central area where we were sure we hadn't touched the wipe. Then you just drag the fiber tip along the soaked part of the wipe. If you get the angle exactly right, the fiber glides smoothly along the surface, but if you are a little misaligned, you get a scratchy sensation.
• Blow dry and inspect.

I will repeat this procedure for all fiber connections once I start putting the box back together - I'm almost done with the new box, just waiting on some hardware to arrive.

 Quote: Today, I borrowed the fiber microscope from Johannes and took a look at the fibers coupled to the PDs. The PD labelled "BEAT PD AUX Y" has an end that seems scratched (Attachments #1 and #2). The scratch seems to be on (or at least very close to) the core. The other PD (Attachments #3 and #4) doesn't look very clean either, but at least the area near the core seems undamaged. The two attachments for each PD corresponds to the two available lighting settings on the fiber microscope. I have not attempted to clean them yet, though I have also borrowed the cleaning supplies to facilitate this from Johannes. I also plan to inspect the ends of all other fiber connections before re-installing them.

13229   Fri Aug 18 23:59:53 2017 gautamUpdateALSX Arm ALS lock

[ericq, gautam]

• I was just getting the IFO aligned, and single arm lock going, when EricQ came in and asked if we could get some ALS data.
• ALS beats seemed fine, in particular the X-Arm. The broad hump around ~70Hz that was present in my previous ALS update was nowhere to be seen - reasons unknown.
• Copied over /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/YARM/Lock_ALS_YARM.py to /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/XARM/Lock_ALS_XARM.py. Could be useful when we want to do arm cavity scans.
• Made appropriate changes to allow ALS locking of Xarm - the testpoint inaccessibility makes things a little annoying but for tonight we just used DQ channels in place (or slow channels when DQ chans were not available)
• Calibration of X arm error signal seemed off - so we fixed it by driving a line in ETMX and matching up the peaks in the ALS error signal and POX11. We then updated the gain of the filter in the CINV filter bank accordingly.
• Got some decent data - X arm stayed locked on ALS for >60mins, during which time the Y arm stayed locked on POY11, and the Y green also reained locked . There was no evidence of the X arm 00 mode randomly dropping out of lock tonight.
• EQ will update with a sick comparison plot - today we looked at the ALS noise from the perspective of the Green Locking Izumi et. al. paper.
• Y arm ALS noise didn't look so hot tonight - to be investigated...

Leaving LSC mode OFF for now while CDS is still under investigation

Not really related to this work: We saw that the safe.snap file for c1oaf seems to have gotten overwritten at some point. I restored the EPICS values from a known good time, and over-wrote the safe.snap file.

13230   Sat Aug 19 01:35:08 2017 ericqUpdateALSX Arm ALS lock

My motivation tonight was to get an up-to-date spectrum of a calibrated measurement of the out-of-loop displacement of an arm locked on ALS (using the PDH signal as the out-of-loop sensor) to compare the performance of ALS control noise with the Izumi et al green locking paper.

I was able to fish out the PSD from the paper from the 40m svn, but the comparison as plotted looks kind of fishy. I don't see why the noise from 10-60Hz should be so different/worse. We updated the POX counts to meters conversion by looking at the Hz-calibrated ALSX signal and a ~800Hz line injected on ETMX.

13237   Mon Aug 21 23:38:55 2017 gautamUpdateALSALS out-of-loop noise

I worked a little bit on the Y arm ALS today.

• Started by locking the Y arm to IR with POY, and then ran the dither alignment script to maximize Y arm transmission.
• Green TRY DC monitor was around 0.16, whereas I have seen ~0.45 when we were doing DRFPMI locking.
• So I went to the Y end table and tweaked the steering mirrors a little. I was able to get GTRY to ~0.42. I think this can be tweaked a little further but I decided to push on for tonight.
• The beat amplitude on the network analyzer in the control room is comparable to the X arm beat now.
• Adjusted the gain of the phase tracker servos, cleared phase history.
• Looking at the ALS beat noise with the arms locked to IR and the slow ALS temperature control loops ON (see Attachment #1), the current measurements line up quite well with the reference traces.

I am now going to measure the OLTFs of both green PDH loops to check that the overall loop gain is okay, and also check the measurement against EricQ's LISO model of the (modified) AUX green PDH servos. Results to follow.

Some weeks ago, I had moved some of the Green steering optics on the PSL table around, in order to flip some mirror mounts and try and get angles of incidence closer to ~45deg on some of the steering mirrors. As a result of this work, I can see some light on the GTRY CCD when the X green shutter is open. It is unclear if there is also some scattered light on the RFPDs. I will post pictures + a more detailed investigation of the situation on the PSL table later, there are multiple stray green beams on the PSL table which should probably be dumped.

As I was writing this elog, I saw the X green lock drop abruptly. During this time, the X arm stayed locked to the IR, and the Y arm beat on the control room network analyzer did not jump (at least not by an amount visible to the eye). Toggling the X end shutter a few times, the green TEM00 lock was re-acquired, but the beatnote has moved on the control room analyzer by ~40MHz. On Friday evening however, the X green lock held for >1 hour. Need to keep an eye on this.

13238   Tue Aug 22 02:19:11 2017 gautamUpdateALSALS OLTFs

Attachment #1 shows the results of my measurements tonight (SR785 data in Attachment #2). Both loops have a UGF of ~10kHz, with ~55 degrees of phase margin.

Excitation was injected via SR560 at the PDH error point, amplitude was 35mV. According to the LED indicators on these boxes, the low frequency boost stages were ON. Gain knob of the X end PDH box was at 6.5, that of the Y end PDH box was at 4.9. I need to check the schematics to interpret these numbers. GV Edit: According to this elog, these numbers mean that the overall gain of the X end PDH box is approx. 25dB, while that of the Y end PDH box is approx. 15dB. I believe the Y end Lightwave NPRO has an actuator discriminant ~5MHz/V, while the X end Innolight is more like 1MHz/V.

Not sure what to make of the X PDH loop measurement being so much noisier than the Y end, I need to think about this.

More detailed analysis to follow.

 Quote: I am now going to measure the OLTFs of both green PDH loops to check that the overall loop gain is okay, and also check the measurement against EricQ's LISO model of the (modified) AUX green PDH servos. Results to follow.

13244   Tue Aug 22 23:27:14 2017 ranaUpdateALSALS OLTFs

Didn't someone look at what the OLG req. should be for these servos at some point? I wonder if we can make a parallel digital path that we switch on after green lock. Then we could make this a simple 1/f box and just add in the digital path (take analog control signal into ADC, filter, and then sum into the control point further down the path to the laser) for the low frequency boost.

13246   Wed Aug 23 17:22:36 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS - reinstalled

I completed the revamp of the box, and re-installed the box on the PSL table today. I think it would be ideal to install this on one of the electronic racks, perhaps 1X2 would be best. We would have to re-route the fibers from the PSL table to 1X2, but I think they have sufficient length, and this way, the whole arrangement is much cleaner.

Did a quick check to make sure I could see beat notes for both arms. I will now attempt to measure the ALS noise with this revamped box, to see if the improved power supply and grounding arrangement, as well as fiber cleaning, has had any effect.

Photos + power budget + plan of action for using this box to characterize the green PDH locking to follow.

For quick reference: here is the AM/PM measurement done when we re-installed the repaired Innolight NPRO on the new X endtable.

13254   Fri Aug 25 15:54:14 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS noise measurement

[Kira, gautam]

Attachment #1 - Photo of the revamped beat setup. The top panel has to be installed. New features include:

• Regulated power supply via D1000217.
• Single power switch for both PDs.
• Power indicator LED.
• Chassis ground isolated from all other electronic grounds. For this purpose, I installed all the elctronics on a metal plate which is only connected to the chassis via nylon screws. The TO220 package power regulator ICs have been mounted with the TO220 mounting kits that provide a thin piece of plastic that electrically insulates its ground from the chassis ground.
• PD outputs routed through 20dB coupler on front panel for diagnostic purposes.
• Fiber routing has been cleaned up a little. I installed a winding fixture I got from Johannes, but perhaps we can install another one of these on top of the existing one to neaten up the fiber layout further.
• 90-10 light splitter (meant for diagnostic purposes) has been removed because of space constraints.

Attachment #2 - Power budget inside the box. Some of these FC/APC connectors seem to not offer good coupling between the two fibers. Specifically, the one on the front panel meant to accept the PSL light input fiber seems particularly bad. Right now, the PSL light is entering the box through one of the front panel connectors marked "PSL + X out". I've also indicated the beat amplitude measured with an RF analyzer. Need to do the math now to confirm if these match the expected amplitudes based on the power levels measured.

Attachment #3 - We repeated the measurement detailed here. The X arm (locked to IR) was used for this test. The "X" delay line electronics were connected to the X green beat PD, while the "Y" delay line electronics were connected to the X IR beat PD. I divided the phase tracker Hz calibration factor by 2 to get IR Hz for the Y arm channels. IR beat was at ~38MHz, green beat was at ~76MHz. The broadband excess noise seen in the previous test is no longer present. Indeed, below ~20Hz, the IR beat seems less noisy. So seems like the cleaning / electronics revamp did some good.

Further characterization needs to be done, but the results of this test are encouraging. If we are able to get this kind of out of loop ALS noise with the IR beat, perhaps we can avoid having to frequently fine-tune the green beat alignment on the PSL table. It would also be ideal to mount this whole 1U setup in an electronics rack instead of leaving it on the PSL table.

 Quote: Photos + power budget + plan of action for using this box to characterize the green PDH locking to follow.

GV Edit: I've added better photos to the 40m Google Photos page. I've also started a wiki page for this box / the proposed IR ALS  system. For the moment, all that is there is the datasheet to the Fiber Couplers used, I will populate this more as I further characterize the setup.

13255   Fri Aug 25 17:11:07 2017 ranaUpdateALSFiber ALS noise measurement

Is it better to mount the box in the PSL under the existing shelf, or in a nearby PSL rack?

 Quote: Further characterization needs to be done, but the results of this test are encouraging. If we are able to get this kind of out of loop ALS noise with the IR beat, perhaps we can avoid having to frequently fine-tune the green beat alignment on the PSL table. It would also be ideal to mount this whole 1U setup in an electronics rack instead of leaving it on the PSL table

13257   Sun Aug 27 11:57:31 2017 ranaUpdateALSFiber ALS noise measurement

It seems like the main contribution to the RMS comes from the high frequency bump. When using the ALS loop to lock the arm to the beat, only the stuff below ~100 Hz will matter. Interesting to see what that noise budget will show. Perhaps the discrepancy between inloop and out of loop will go down.

13266   Tue Aug 29 02:08:39 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS noise measurement

I was having a chat with EricQ about this today, just noting some points from our discussion down here so that I remember to look into this tomorrow.

• I believe that currently, the channels C1:ALS-BEATX_FINE_PHASE_OUT_HZ_DQ and the Y arm analog read out the frequency of the green beat, in Hz.
• In the comparison I plotted, I WRONGLY divided the spectrum of the IR beat by 2, instead of multiplying in by 2, which is what should actually be done for an apples-to-apples comparison.
• The deeper question is, what should this channel actually readout?
• Looking at my codes from past arm scans etc, I see that I am dividing the downloaded data by 2 in order to convert the X-axis of these scans to "IR Hz". But this should really be all we care about.
• So I think I will have to re-do the cts-to-Hz calibration in the ALS models. It should be possible to do ~10FSR scans with the IR beat, and then we can use the sideband resonances (presumably the sideband frequencies are known with better precision than the arm length, and hence the FSR) to calibrate the phase tracker.
• I don't think this changes the fact that the Fiber ALS situation has been improved - but I will have to repeat the measurement to be sure. The improvement may not be as stellar as I tried to sell in my previous elog .

Other thoughts:

• Can we make use of the Jetstor raid array for some kind of consolidated 40m CDS backup system? Once we've gotten everything of interest out of it...

13288   Fri Sep 1 19:15:40 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS noise measurement

Summary:

I did some work today to see if I could use the IR beat for ALS control. Initial tests were encouraging.

I will now embark on the noise budgeting.

Details:

• For this test, I used the X arm
• I hooked up the X-arm + PSL IR beat to the X-arm DFD channel, and used the Y-arm DFD channels to simultaneously monitor the X-arm green beat.
• I then transitioned to ALS control and used POX as an out-of-loop sensor for the ALS noise.
• Attachment #1 shows a comparison of the measurements. In red is the IR beat, while the green traces are from the test EricQ and I did a couple of nights ago using the green beat.
• I also wanted to do some arm cavity scans with the arm under ALS control with the IR beat - but was unsucessful. The motivation was to fix the ALS model counts->Hz calibration factors.
• I did however manage to do a 10 FSR scan using the green beatnote - however, towards the end of this scan, the green beat frequency (read off the control room analyzer) was ~140MHz, which I believe is outside (or at least on the edge) of the bandwidth of the Green BBPDs. The fiber coupled IR beat photodiodes have a much larger (1GHz) spec'd bandwidth.

I am leaving the green beat electronics on the PSL table in the switched state for further testing...

13325   Thu Sep 21 01:32:00 2017 gautamUpdateALSAUX X Innolight AM measurement running

[rana,gautam]

We set up a measurement of the AUX X laser AM today. Some notes:

• PDA 55 that was installed as a power monitor for the AUX X laser has been moved into the main green beam path - it is just upstream of the green shutter for this measurement.
• AUX X laser power into the doubling crystal was adjusted by rotating HWP upstream of IR Faraday (original angle was 100, now it is 120), until the DC level of the PDA 55 output was ~2.5V on a scope (high impedance).
• BNC-T was installed at the PZT input of the Innolight - one arm of the T is terminated to ground via 50 ohms. The purpose of this is to always have the output of the power splitter from the network analyzer RF source drive a 50 ohm load.
• The output of the Green PDH servo to the Innolight PZT was disconnected downstream of the summing Pomona box - it is now connected to one output of a power splitter (borrowed from SR function generator used to drive the PZT) connected to the RF source output of the AG4395.
• Other output of power splitter connected to input R of AG4395.
• PDA55 output has been disconnected from CH5 of the AA board. It is connected to input A of the AG4395 via DC block.

Attachment #1 shows a preliminary scan from tonight - we looked at the region 10kHz-10MHz, with an IF bandwidth of 100Hz, 16 averages, and 801 log-spaced frequencies. The idea was to get an idea of where some promising notches in the AM lie, and do more fine-bandwidth scans around those points. Data + code used to generate this plot in Attachment #2.

Rana points out that some of the AM could also be coming from beam jitter - so to put this hypothesis to test, we will put a lens to focus the spot more tightly onto the PD, repeat the measurement, and see if we get different results.

There were a whole bunch of little illegal things Rana spotted on the EX table which he will make a separate post about.

I am running 40 more scans with the same params for some statistics - should be done by the morning.

 Quote: I borrowed the HP impedance test kit from Rich Abbott today. The purpose is to profile the impedance of the NPRO PZTs, as part of the AUX PDH servo investigations. It is presently at the X-end. I will do the test in the coming days.

Update 12:00 21 Sep: Attachment #3 shows schematically the arrangement we use for the AM measurement. A similar sketch for the proposed PM measurement strategy to follow. After lunch, Steve and I will lay out a longish BNC cable from the LSC rack to the IOO rack, from where there is already a long cable running to the X end. This is to facilitate the PM measurement.

Update 18:30 21 Sep: Attachment #4 was generated using Craig's nice plotting utility. The TF magnitude plot was converted to RIN/V by dividing by the DC voltage of the PDA 55 of ~2.3V (assumption is that there isn't significant difference between the DC gain and RF transimpedance gain of the PDA 55 in the measurement band) The right-hand columns are generated by calculating the deviation of individual measurements from the mean value. We're working on improving this utility and aesthetics - specifically use these statistics to compute coherence, this is a work in progress. Git repo details to follow.

There are only 23 measurements (I was aiming for 40) because of some network connectivity issue due to which the script stalled - this is also something to look into. But this sample already suggests that these measurement parameters give consistent results on repeated measurements above 100kHz.

TO CHECK: PDA 55 is in 0dB gain setting, at which it has a BW of 10MHz (claimed in datasheet).

Some math about relation between coherence $\gamma_{xy}(f)$ and standard deviation of transfer function measurements:

$\mathrm{SNR}(f) = \sqrt{\frac{\gamma_{xy}^{2}(f)}{1-\gamma_{xy}^{2}(f)}}$

$\sigma_{xy}^{2} = \frac{1-\gamma_{xy}^{2}(f)}{2N\gamma_{xy}^{2}(f)}|H(f)|^2$  --- relation to variance in TF magnitude. We estimate the variance using the usual variance estimator, and can then back out the coherence using this relation.

$\sigma_{\theta_{xy}} = \mathrm{tan}^{-1}\left [ \sqrt{\frac{1-\gamma_{xy}^{2}(f)}{2N\gamma_{xy}^{2}(f)}} \right ]$ --- relation to variance in TF phase. Should give a coherence profile that is consistent with that obtained using the preceeding equation.

It remains to code all of this up into Craig's plotting utility.

13326   Thu Sep 21 01:55:16 2017 ranaUpdateALSX End table of Shame

Image #1: No - we do not use magnetic mounts for beam dumps. Use a real clamp. It has to be rigid. "its not going anywhere" is a nonsense statement; this is about vibration amplitude of nanometers.

Image #2: No - we do not use sticky tape to put black glass beam dumps in place ever, anywhere. Rigid dumps only.

Image #3: Please do not ruin our nice black glass with double sticky tape. We want to keep the surfaces clean. This one and a few of the other Mickey Mouse black glass dumps on this table were dirty with fingerprints and so very useless.

Image #4: This one was worst of all: a piece of black glass was sticky taped to the wall. Shameful.

Please do not do any work on this table without elogging. Please never again do any of these type of beam dumping - they are all illegal. Better to not dump beams than to do this kind of thing.

All dumps have to be rigidly mounted. There is no finger contacting black glass or razor dumps - if you do, you might as well throw it in the garbage.

13327   Thu Sep 21 15:23:04 2017 gautamOmnistructureALSLong cable from LSC->IOO

[steve,gautam]

We laid out a 45m long BNC cable from the LSC rack to the IOO rack via overhead cable trays. There is ~5m excess length on either side, which have been coiled up and cable-tied for now. The ends are labelled "TO LSC RACK" and "TO IOO RACK" on the appropriate ends. This is to facilitate hooking up the output of the DFD for making a PM measurement of the AUX X laser. There is already a long cable that runs from the IOO rack to the X end.

13333   Tue Sep 26 19:10:13 2017 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS setup neatened

[steve, gautam]

The Fiber ALS box has been installed on the existing shelf on the PSL table. We had to re-arrange some existing cabling to make this possible, but the end result seems okay (to me). The box lid was also re-installed.

Some stuff that still needs to be fixed:

1. Power supply to ZHL amplifiers - it is coming from a table-top DC supply currently, we should hook these up to the Sorensens.
2. We should probably extend the corrugated fiber protection tubing for the three fibers all the way up to the shelf.

Beat spectrum post changes to follow.

Quote:

Is it better to mount the box in the PSL under the existing shelf, or in a nearby PSL rack?

 Quote: Further characterization needs to be done, but the results of this test are encouraging. If we are able to get this kind of out of loop ALS noise with the IR beat, perhaps we can avoid having to frequently fine-tune the green beat alignment on the PSL table. It would also be ideal to mount this whole 1U setup in an electronics rack instead of leaving it on the PSL table

13335   Wed Sep 27 00:20:19 2017 gautamUpdateALSMore AM sweeps

Attachment #1: Result of AM sweeps with EX laser crystal at nominal operating temperature ~ 31.75 C.

Attachment #2: Tarball of data for Attachment #1.

Attachment #3: Result of AM sweeps with EX laser crystal at higher operating temperature ~ 40.95 C.

Attachment #4: Tarball of data for Attachment #2.

Remarks:

• Confirmed that PDA 55 is in the "0dB" setting - the actual dial is unmarked, and has 5 states. I guessed that the left-most one is 0dB, and checked that if I twiddled the dial by one state to the right, the DC level on the scope increased by 10dB as advertized. Didn't check all the states.
• DC level is ~2.3V on a high-impedance scope. So it will be ~1.15V to a 50ohm load, which is what the DC block is. The inverse of this value is used to calibrate the vertical axis of the TF measurement to RIN/V.
• Input R (split RF source signal) attenuation: 20dB. Input A (PDA55 output) attenuation: 0dB.
• Main problem is still network hangups when trying to do many sweeps.
• Seems to persist even when I connect the GPIB box to one of the network switches - so don't think we can blame the WiFi.
• Need to explore possibility of speedup - takes >2hours to run ~50scans!

To-do:

• Overlay median and uncertainty plots for the two temp. settings. There is a visible diference in both the locations and depths/heights of various notches/peaks in the AM profile.
• Repeat test with a fast focusing lens to focus the beam more tightly on the PD active area to confirm that the measured AM is indeed due to the PZT drive and not from beam-jitter (presently, spot diameter is ~0.5x active area diameter, to eye).
• Get the PM data.
• Depending on what the PM data looks like, do a more fine-grained scan around some promising AM notches / PM peaks.
13337   Wed Sep 27 23:44:45 2017 gautamUpdateALSProposed PM measurement setup

Attachment #1 is a sketch of the proposed setup to measure the PM response of the EX NPRO. Previously, this measurement was done via PLL. In this approach, we will need to calibrate the DFD output into units of phase, in order to calibrate the transfer function measurement into rad/V. The idea is to repeat the same measurement technique used for the AM - take ~50 1 average measurements with the AG4395, and look at the statistics.

Some more notes:

• Delay line box is passive, just contains a length of cable.
• IQ Demodulation is done using an aLIGO 1U chassis unit, with the actual demod board electronics being D0902745
• The RF beatnote amplitude out of the IR beat PD is ~ -8dBm.
• The ZHL-3A amplifiers have gain of 24dB, so the amplified beat should be ~16dBm
• At the LSC rack, the amplified beat is split into two - one path goes to the LO input of D0902745 (so at most 13dBm), the other goes through the delay line.
• On the demod board, the LO signal is amplified with a AP1053, rated at 10dB gain, max output of 26dBm, so the signal levels should be fine for us, even though the schematic says the nominal LO level is 10dBm - moreover, I've ignored cable losses, insertion losses etc so we should be well within spec.
• The mixer is PE4140. The datasheet quotes LO levels of 17dBm for all the "nominal" tests, we should be within a couple of dBm of this number.
• There is no maximum value specified for the RF input signal level to the mixer on the datasheet, but I expect it to be <10dBm.
• We should park the beatnote around 30MHz as this should be well within the operational ranges for the various components in the signal chain.
13346   Fri Sep 29 11:16:52 2017 SteveUpdateALSY End table corrected

The first Faraday isolater rejected beam path from the NPRO is fixed.

13366   Fri Oct 6 17:08:09 2017 SteveUpdateALSX End table beam traps corrected

There are no more double sided tape on this table.

13502   Thu Jan 4 12:46:27 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

Attachment #1 is the updated diagram of the Fiber ALS setup. I've indicated part numbers, power levels (optical and electrical). For the light power levels, numbers in green are for the AUX lasers, numbers in red are for the PSL.

I confirmed that the output of the power splitter is going to the "RF input" and the output of the delay line is going to the "LO input" of the demodulator box. Shouldn't this be the other way around? Unless the labels are misleading and the actual signal routing inside the 1U chassis is correctly done :/

• Mode-matching into the fibers is rather abysmal everywhere.
• In this diagram, only the power levels measured at the lasers and inputs of the fiber couplers are from today's measurements. I just reproduced numbers for inside the beat mouth from elog13254.
• Inside the beat mouth, the PD output actually goes through a 20dB coupler which is included in this diagram for brevity. Both the direct and coupled outputs are available at the front panel of the beat mouth. The latter is meant for diagnostic purposes. The number of -8dBm of beat @30MHz is quoted using the direct output, and not the coupled output.

Still facing some CDS troubles, will start ALS recovery once I address them.

Attachment #2 is the svg file of Attachment #1, which we can update as we improve things. I'll put it on the DCC 40m tree eventually.

13519   Tue Jan 9 21:38:00 2018 gautamUpdateALSALS recovery
• Aligned IFO to IR.
• Ran dither alignment to maximize arm transmission.
• Centered Oplev reflections onto their respective QPDs for ITMs, ETMs and BS, as DC alignment reference. Also updated all the DC alignment save/restore files with current alignment.
• Undid the first 5 bullets of elog13325. The AUX laser power monitor PD remains to be re-installed and re-integrated with the DAQ.
• I stupidly did not refer to my previous elog of the changes made to the X end table, and so spent ages trying to convince Johannes that the X end green alignment had shifted, and turned out that the green locking wasn't going because of the 50ohm terminator added to the X end NPRO PZT input. I am sorry for the hours wasted
• GTRY and GTRX at levels I am used to seeing (i.e. ~0.25 and ~0.5) now. I tweaked input pointing of green and also movable MM lenses at both ends to try and maximize this.
• Input green power into X arm after re-adjusting previously rotated HWP to ~100 degrees on the dial is ~2.2mW. Seems consistent with what I reported here.
• Adjusted both GTR cameras on the PSL table to have the spots roughly centered on the monitors.
• Will update shortly with measured OLTFs for both end PDH loops.
• X end PDH seems to have UGF ~9kHz, Y end has ~4.5kHz. Phase margin ~60 degrees in both cases. Data + plotting code attached. During the measurement, GTRY ~0.22, GTRX~0.45.

Next, I will work on commissioning the BEAT MOUTH for ALS beat generation.

Note: In the ~40mins that I've been typing out these elogs, the IR lock has been stable for both the X and Y arms. But the X green has dropped lock twice, and the Y green has been fluctuating rather more, but has mangaged to stay locked. I think the low frequency Y-arm GTRY fluctuations are correlated with the arm cavity alignment drifting around. But the frequent X arm green lock dropouts - not sure what's up with that. Need to look at IR arm control signals and ALS signals at lock drop times to see if there is some info there.

13531   Thu Jan 11 14:22:40 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

I did a cursory check of the ALS signal chain in preparation for commissioning the IR ALS system. The main elements of this system are shown in my diagram in the previous elog in this thread.

Questions I have:

1. Does anyone know what exactly is inside the "Delay Line" box? I can't find a diagram anywhere.
• Jessica's SURF report would suggest that there are just 2 50m cables in there.
• There are two power splitters taped to the top of this box.
• It is unclear to me if there are any active components in the box.
• It is unclear to me if there is any thermal/acoustic insulation in there.
• For completeness, I'd like to temporarily pull the box out of the LSC rack, open it up, take photos, and make a diagram unless there are any objections.
2. If you believe the front panel labeling, then currently, the "LO" input of the mixer is being driven by the part of the ALS beat signal that goes through the delay line. The direct (i.e. non delayed) output of the power splitter goes to the "RF" input of the mixer. The mixer used, according to the DCC diagram, is a PE4140. Datasheet suggests the LO power can range from -7dBm to +20dBm. For a -8dBm beat from the IR beat PDs, with +24dB gain from the ZHL3A but -3dB from the power splitter, and assuming 9dB loss in the cable (I don't know what the actual loss is, but according to a Frank Seifert elog, the optimal loss is 8.7dB and I assume our delay line is close to optimal), this means that we have ~4dBm at the "LO" input of the demod board. The schematic says the nominal level the circuit expects is 10dBm. If we use the non-delayed output of the power splitter, we would have, for a -8dBm beat, (-8+24-3)dBm ~13dBm, plus probably some cabling loss along the way which would be closer to 10dBm. So should we use the non-delayed version for the LO signal? Is there any reason why the current wiring is done in this way?

13534   Thu Jan 11 20:51:20 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

After labeling cables I would disconnect, I pulled the box out of the LSC rack. Attachment #1 is a picture of the insides of the box - looks like it is indeed just two lengths of cabling. There was also some foam haphazardly stuck around inside - presumably an attempt at insulation/isolation.

Since I have the box out, I plan to measure the delay in each path, and also the signal attenuation. I'll also try and neaten the foam padding arrangement - Steve was showing me some foam we have, I'll use that. If anyone has comments on other changes that should be made / additional tests that should be done, please let me know.

20180111_2200: I'm running some TF measurements on the delay line box with the Agilent in the control room area (script running in tmux sesh on pianosa). Results will be uploaded later.

 Quote: For completeness, I'd like to temporarily pull the box out of the rack, open it up, take photos, and make a diagram unless there are any objections.

13552   Tue Jan 16 21:50:53 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

With Johannes' help, I re-installed the box in the LSC electronics rack. In the end, I couldn't find a good solution to thermally insulate the inside of the box with foam - the 2U box is already pretty crowded with ~100m of cabling inside of it. So I just removed all the haphazardly placed foam and closed the box up for now. We can evaluate if thermal stability of the delay line is limiting us anywhere we care about and then think about what to do in this respect. This box is actually rather heavy with ~100m of cabling inside, and is right now mounted just by using the ears on the front - probably should try and implement a more robust mounting solution for the box with some rails for it to sit on.

I then restored all the cabling - but now, the delayed part of the split RF beat signal goes to the "RF in" input of the demod board, and the non-delayed part goes to the back-panel "LO" input. I also re-did the cabling at the PSL table, to connect the two ZHL3-A amplifier inputs to the IR beat PDs in the BeatMouth instead of the green BBPDs.

I didn't measure any power levels today, my plan was to try and get a quick ALS error signal spectrum - but looks like there is too much beat signal power available at the moment, the ADC inputs for both arm beat signals are overflowing often. The flat gain on the AS165 (=ALS X) and POP55 (=ALS Y) channels have been set to 0dB, but still the input signals seem way too large. The signals on the control room spectrum analyzer come from the "RF mon" ports on the demod board, and are marked as -23dBm. I looked at these peak heights with the end green beams locked to the arm cavities, as per the proposed new ALS scheme. Not sure how much cable loss we have from the LSC rack to the network analyzer, but assuming 3dB (which is the Google value for 100ft of RG58), and reading off the peak heights from the control room analyzer, I figure that we have ~0dBm of RF signal in the X arm. => I would expect ~3dBm of signal to the LO input. Both these numbers seem well within range of what the demod board is designed to handle so I'm not sure why we are saturating.

Note that the nominal (differential) I and Q demodulated outputs from the demod board come out of a backplane connector - but we seem to be using the front panel (single-ended) "MON" channels to acquire these signals. I also need to update my Fiber ALS diagram to indicate the power loss in cabling from the PSL table to the LSC electronics rack, expect it to be a couple of dB.

 Quote: After labeling cables I would disconnect, I pulled the box out of the LSC rack. Attachment #1 is a picture of the insides of the box - looks like it is indeed just two lengths of cabling. There was also some foam haphazardly stuck around inside - presumably an attempt at insulation/isolation. Since I have the box out, I plan to measure the delay in each path, and also the signal attenuation. I'll also try and neaten the foam padding arrangement - Steve was showing me some foam we have, I'll use that. If anyone has comments on other changes that should be made / additional tests that should be done, please let me know. 20180111_2200: I'm running some TF measurements on the delay line box with the Agilent in the control room area (script running in tmux sesh on pianosa). Results will be uploaded later.

13557   Thu Jan 18 00:35:00 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

## Summary:

I am facing two problems:

1. The X arm beat seems to be broadband noisier than the Y arm beat - see Attachment #1. The Y-axis calibration is uncertain, but at least the Y beat has the same profile as the reference traces, which are for the green beat from a time when we had ALS running. There is also a rather huge ~5kHz peak, which I confirmed isn't present in the PDH error/control signal spectra (with SR785).
2. The Y-arm beat amplitude, at times, "breathes" in amplitude (as judged by control room analyzer). Attachment #2 is a time-lapse of this behaviour (left beat is X arm beat, right peak is the Y arm peak) - I caught only part of it, the the beat note basically vanishes into the control room noise floor and then comes back up to almost the same level as the X beat. The scale is 10dB/div. During this time, the green (and IR for that matter) stay stably locked to the arm - you'll have to take my word for it as I have no way to sync my video with StripTool Traces, but I was watching the DC transmission levels the whole time. The whole process happens over a few (1< $\tau$ <5) minutes - I didn't time it exactly. I can't really say this behaviour is periodic either - after the level comes back up, it sometimes stays at a given level almost indefinitely.

## More details:

• Spent some time today trying to figure out losses in various parts of the signal chain, to make sure I wasn't in danger of saturating RF amplifiers. Cabling from PSL table -> LSC rack results in ~2dB loss.
• I will upload the updated schematic of the Beat-Mouth based ALS - I didn't get a chance to re-measure the optical powers into the Beat Mouth, as someone had left the Fiber Power Meter unplugged, and it had lost all of its charge .
• The Demod boards have a nice "RF/LO power monitor" available at the backplane of the chassis - we should hook these channels up to the DAQ for long term monitoring.
• The schematic claims "120mV/dBm" into 50ohms at these monitoring pins.
• I measured the signal levels with a DMM (Teed with 50ohm), but couldn't really make the numbers jive - converting the measured backplane voltage into dBm of input power gives me an inferred power level that is ~5dBm higher than the actual measured power levels (measured with Agilent analyzer in Spectrum Analyzer mode).
• Looking at the time series of the ALS I and Q inputs, the signals are large, but we are well clear of saturating our 16-bit ADCs.
• In the brief periods when both beats were stable in amplitude (as judged by control room analyzer), the output of the Q quadrature of the phase tracker servo was ~12,000 cts - the number I am familiar with for the green days is ~2000cts - so naively, I would say we have ~6x the RF beat power from the Beat Mouth compared to green ALS.
• I didn't characterize the conversion efficiency of the demod boards so I don't have a V (IF)/V (RF) number at the moment.
• I confirmed that the various peaks seen in the X arm beat spectrum aren't seen in the control signal of the EX Green PDH, by looking at the spectrum on an SR785 (it is also supposedly recorded in the DAQ system, but I can't find the channel and the cable is labelled "GCX-PZT_OUT", which doesn't match any of our current channels).
Note to self from the future: the relevant channels are: C1:ALS-X_ERR_MON_IN1 (green PDH error signal with x10 gain from an SR560) and C1:ALS-X_SLOW_SERVO_IN1 (green PDH control signal from monitor point - I believe this is DC coupled as this is the error signal to the slow EX laser PZT temp control). I've changed the cable labels at the X end to reflect this reality. At some point I will calibrate these to Hz.
• The control room analyzer signals come from the "RF mon" outputs on the demod board, which supposedly couple the RF input with gain of -23dBm. These are then routed reverse through a power splitter to combine the X and Y signals, which is then plugged into the HP analyzer. The problem is not local to this path, as during the "breathing" of the Y beat RF amplitude, I can see the Q output of the phase tracker also breathing.

## Next steps (that I can think of, ideas welcome!):

1. For Problem #1 - usual debugging tactic of switching X and Y electronics paths to see if the problem lies in the light or in the electronics. If it is in the electronics, we can swap around at various points in the signal chain to try and isolate the problematic component.
2. For Problem #2 - hook up the backplane monitor channels to monitor RF amplitudes over time and see if the drifts are correlated with other channels.
3. There is evidence of some acoustic peaks, which are possibly originating from the fibers - need to track these down, but I think for a first pass to try and get the red ALS going, we shouldn't be bothered by these.

13559   Fri Jan 19 11:34:21 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

I swapped the inputs to the ZHL-3A at the PSL table - so now the X beat RF signals from the beat mouth are going through what was previously the Y arm ALS electronics. From Attachment #1, you can see that the Y arm beat is now noisier than the X. The ~5kHz peak has also vanished.

So I will pursue this strategy of switching to try and isolate where the problem lies...

Somebody had forgotten to turn the HEPA variac on the PSL table down. It was set at 70. I set it at 20, and there is already a huge difference in the ALS spectra

 Quote: For Problem #1 - usual debugging tactic of switching X and Y electronics paths to see if the problem lies in the light or in the electronics. If it is in the electronics, we can swap around at various points in the signal chain to try and isolate the problematic component.
13562   Fri Jan 19 23:04:11 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

[rana, kevin, udit, gautam]

quick notes of some discussions we had today:

1. Earlier in the day, Udit and I measured (with a 20dB coupler and AG4395) ~20dBm of RF beat power at input to power splitter (just before delay line box) at the LSC rack. This means that we have ~17dBm going into the LO input of the demod board. The AP1053 can only really handle a max of 16dBm at the input. After discussion with Rana, I put a 3dB attenuator at the input to the power splitter so as to preserve the LO/RF ratio in the demod circuit.
2. Need to make a detailed optical and RF power budget for both arms.
3. The demod circuit board is configured to have gain of x100 post demod (conversion loss of the mixer is ~-8dB). This works well for the PDH cavity locking type of demod scheme, where the loop squishes the error signal in lock, so most of the time, the RF signal is tiny, and so a gain of x100 is good. For ALS, the application needs are rather different. So we lowered the gain of the "Audio IF amplifier" stage of the circuit from x100 to x10, by effecting the resistor swaps 10ohms->50ohms, 1kohm->500ohms (more details about this later).
4. There is some subtlety regarding the usage of the whitening interface boards - I need to look at the circuit again and understand this better, but Rana advised against running with the whitening gain at low values. Point #3 above should have helped with this regard.
5. I wanted to test the new signal chain (with 3dB attenuation and modified IF gain) but ETMX is not happy now, and is making it impossible to keep the X arm locked. Will try again tomorrow.
6. Eventually: need to measure the mode of the fiber, and up the MM efficiency to at least 80%, which should be doable without using any fancy lenses/collimators.
7. Udit and I felt that the back panel RF power monitor wasn't working as expected - I will re-investigate this when I have the board out again to make the IF gain change permanent with the right footprint SMD resistors.

RXA: 0805 size SMD thin film resistors have been ordered from Mouser, to be shipped on Monday. **note that these thin film resistors are black; i.e. it is NOT true that all black SMD resistors are thick film**

13571   Wed Jan 24 00:33:31 2018 gautamUpdateALSFiber ALS assay

I did some work on the PSL table today. Main motivations were to get a pickoff for the BeatMouth PSL beam before any RF modulations are imposed on it, and to improve the mode-matching into the fiber. Currently, we use the IR light reflected by the post doubling oven harmonic separator. This has the PMC modulation sideband on it, and also some green leakage.

So I picked off ~8.5mW of PSL light from the first PBS (pre Faraday rotator), out of the ~40 mW available here, using a BS-80-1064-S. I dumped the 80% reflected light into the large beam dump that was previously being used to dump this PBS reflection. Initially, I used a R=10% BS for S-pol that I found on the SP table, but Koji tipped me off on the fact that these produce multiple reflected beams, so I changed strategy to use the R=80% BS instead.

The transmitted 20% is routed to the West edge of the PSL table via 2 1" Y1-1037-45S optics, towards the rough vicinity of the fiber coupler. For now it is just dumped, tomorrow I will work on the mode matching. We may want to cut the power further - ideally, we want ~2.5mW of power in the fiber - this is then divided by 4 inside the beat mouth before reaching the beat PD, and with other losses, I expect ~500mW of PSL power and comparable AUX light, we will have a strong >0dBm beat.

Attachment #1 is a picture of my modifications. For this work, I

• Closed PSL shutter, turned HEPA up
• Moved HP GHz spec analyzer to the side for ease of access to the table.
• Moved several optics that look to me as to have once been part of the RefCav setup - I don't think this would have been a useful alignment reference in any case as we moved the RefCav in a non-deterministic way for the PSL secondary shelf install.
• Used one 1" 45 deg S-pol optic from the optics cabinet - remaining optics were scavenged from PSL table and SP table.
• Removed an SMA cable connected to an EOM, whose other end wasn't connected to anything.
• Turned HEPA back down, IMC locks fine now.

ELOG V3.1.3-