Alberto, Steve,

While I was moving a cart near by the PSL table I pushed the red emergency button that turns off the PSL laser. We had to unlock the button and then power cycle the laser driver to turn the laser back on.

I relocked MZ, FSS, PMC and I'm now waiting for the power to finish ramping up back to the previous value.

In the revival of the experiement length measurement for the recycling cavities, I turned the auxiliary NPRO back on. The shutter is closed.

I also recollected all the equipment of the experiment after that during the summer it had been scattered around the lab to be used for other purposes (Joe and Zach's cameras and Stephanie and Koji's work with the new EOM).

Inspecting the AS table to make an inventory of the photodiodes in use around the interferometer, I found a mysterious photodetector hiding behind PD1 (AS166).

It turned out the detector was an old type of QPD from the Squeezing Experiment a few years ago.

We removed the box and the cable to which it was connected from the table. We stored it in the optics cabinet along the X arm.

I uploaded on the Wiki (here) the results of an inventory over our current PDs, a list of the new ones that we're going to need for the new control scheme.

On behalf of Steve and of the rest of the not-native-English community at the 40m willing to have their browser's spell checker working while editing the Elog, I fixed the Elog's feature that prevented Firefox' context menu (that one which pops up with a mouse right click) to work when using the HTML editing interface (FCKeditor).

That let also Firefox spell checker to get enabled.

To get the browser context menu just press CTRL right-clicking.

To make sure that the features works properly on your browser, you might have to fully clear the browser's cache.

Basically I modified the FCKeditor config file (/cvs/cds/caltech/elog/elog-2.7.5/scripts/fckeditor/fckconfig.js). I added this also to the elog section on our Wiki.

I'm going to work on the X arm to measure the arm cavity finesse.

The idea is to measure the cavity transfer function to estimate the frequency of its cavity pole. That should be a more accurate measurement than that based on the cavity decay time.

I'm starting now and I'm going to inject a swept sine excitation on the OMC_ISS_EXC input cable laying on the floor nearby the AP table (see pic).

In orderf to do that I disconnected the cable from the OMC breakout box laying on the floor. I'm going to plug the cable back in as soon as I'm done.

 Since I need to measure the transfer function between TRX and MC_TRANS_DC I picked off the beam going to RFAM PD to send it to a PDA255 photodiode (cannibalized from the AbsL's PLL) which I installed on the PSL table.

I centerd the beam on the PD and I was able to see the injected signal.

I think I'm ready to measure the transfer function.

Except for the RFAM PD everything is as before.

I'm gonna go grab dinner and I should be back to keep working on that in about one hour.

 Back from dinner. Taking measurements.

I measured the transfer function between MC_TRANS and TRX and I'm attaching the result.

That looks quite strange. Something's wrong. I'll repeat it tomorrow.

for the night I'm putting everything back. I'm also reconnecting the OMC_ISS_EXC and opening again the test switch on the ISS screen.

The RFAM monitor remains disable

On Rana's suggestion I measured the trasfer function between the two photodiodes PDA255 that I'm using.

I took the one that I had on the end table and put it on the PSL table. I split the MC transmitted beam with a 50% beam splitter and sent the beams on the two diodes. (Rana's idea of picking off the beam and interposing the PDs before the ISS PDs was not doable: ISS PDs would be too close and there would be no room to install the PDA255 before them). See picture with the final setup.

The transfer function also includes the 40m long cable that I was using for the Arm Cavity measurement.

Here's what I got. It looks rather flat. Yesterday the calibration was probably not the problem in that measurement.

 I'm now going to install the PD back on the end table and measure the TFs between the excitation and several points of the loop.

(Trivia. At first, the PDs were saturating so Koji attached attenuation filters on to them. Suddenly the measurement got much nicer)

It seems that just repeating the measurement was enough to get a good transfer function of the x arm cavity. Here's what I got.

I'm going to fit the data on matlab, but at first sight, the pole seems to be at about 1.7KHz (that is where the phase is 45deg): as expected.

Probably it was useful to realign the beam on the Transmission PD. (btw, I'm using the PDA255 that was still on the X end table since the AbsL experiemtn that measured the arm length)

As for the X Arm, this the transfer function I measured for the Y arm cavity.

This time I'm using a different photodiode than the PDA255 on the Y end table.

The diode I'm using is the PDA520 from where TRY comes from.

I'm going to repeat the measurement with PDA255.

The elog just crashed and I rebooted it

 Measurement repeated with the PDA255 PD at the end but not big changes

I disconnected the setup for the arm cavity TF measurement. I opened the scitation switch on the ISS medm screen. I reconnected the OMC ISS EXC cable to the breakout box on the floor.

The photodiode on the Y end is stilll connected.

Also the RFAm (whish is not disbaled anymore) still has a 50% beam splitter before it.

I'm also running the Align Full IFO script.

This afternoon I re-enabled the ETMY coils after I found that the watchdogs for the mirror had tripped last night at 2:06am.

Tonight I aligned the IFO by running the scripts one by one.

SRC was far off and I had to align SRM by hand before the script could work. SPOB is still low when DRM is aligned.

I'm restoring the full IFO now that I'm taking off.

The MC2 watchdogs tripped. I just restored them.

I also had to relock the MZ and then the Mode Cleaner.

I'm working on the PSL table to set up the PLL setup for the AbsL experiment.

I laid down the floor a BNC cable from the Y End table to the BNC Chamber. The cable runs next to the east wall.

I'm leaving the cable because it can turn useful in the future.

I'm tying the end of the cable to a big threaded steel rod on the side of the BS chamber.

I've also labeled as TRY

I turned the auxialiary NPRO for the AbsL Experiment on. Its shutter stays closed.

We have thousands of miles of BNC cables in the lab but we still don't find one when we need it. I decided to solve the problem.

This morning I tried to tidy up the several cable rack the we have in the lab.

i tried to dedicate each rack to a speecific type of cables: special cables, hand made cables, BNCs, LEMOs, etc.

In particular I tryed to concentrate BNC cable of several lengths on the rack near by the ITMX chamber.

People are invited to preserve the organization.

This would be a good trial once you put the label "BNC only" on the wall.

I removed the beam splitter and the PDA 255.

the beam path to the RFAM photodiode is clear again.

Yesterday Rana and I needed some room on the white board in the Control Room. We had to erase some of the stuff present on the board despite the bif warning "Do Not Erase".

This is how it looked like before erasing.

This afternoon I inadvertently disconnected one of the power cables coming from the power supply on the floor next to the OMC cabinet and going to the DCPD Interface Box.

Rob reconnected the cable as it was before.

From fitting the arm cavity transfer functions I got the following values for the cavity pole frequencies.

X ARM: fp_x = (1720 +/- 70) Hz

Y ARM: fp_y = (1650 +/- 70) Hz

Attached are the plots from the fitting.

This afternoon, while I was trying to add the StochMon channels to the frames, I rebooted the c1ioovme and c1iool0.

I had to do it twice because of a mispelling in the C1IOO.INI file that the first time prevented the computer to restart properly.

Eventually I restored the old .ini file, as it was before the changes.

After rebooting I also burtrestored.

During the process the mode cleaner got unlocked. Later on the autoclokcer couldn't engage. I had to run the MC_down and MC_up scripts.

I found this interesting entry by Rana in the old (deprecated) elog : here

I wonder if Rolf has ever written the mentioned GUI that explained the rationale behind the test point number mapping.

I'm just trying to add the StochMon calibrated channels to the frames. Now I remember why I kept forgetting of doing it...

Aligning the beam for the PLL of the AbsL Experiement I rotated the polarizer along the path of the MC Input pick off beam (= the pick off coming from the MC periscope).

I've been trying to lock the PLL for the AbsL Experiment but I can't see the beat (between the auxiliary NPRO and the PSL).

I believe the alignment of the PLL is not good. The Farady Isolator is definitely not perfectly aligned (you can see it from the beam spot after it) but still it should be enough to see something at the PLL PD.

it's probably just that the two beams don't overlap well enough on the photodiode. I'll work on that later on.

I'm leaving the lab now. I left the auxiliary NPRO on but I closed its shutter.

All the flipping mirrors are down.

This morning, after Steve pointed out that the readout RFAMPD_DC was zero, I thought of realigning the beam on the photodiode. Maybe I touched the lens or the beam splitter that send the beam on the diode when I installed an other beam splitter to make the measurement of the calibration between two ThorLabs PDA255 photodiodes.

After aligning the beam on the RFAMPD, the voltage of the DC readout was lower than it used to be (C1:IOO-RFAMPD_DC ~ 0.4 now vs. 4 as it was on November 4th).

I maximized the DC readout but the problem seems to be that the beam spot is not a round TEM00. In particular the spot looks like that of a TEM10 mode.

Since we're looking at the MC transmitted beam, is it possible that the MC is locked on the wrong mode?

Check out the attached picture.

I've opened the AP table and I'm working on it.

I re-aligned the Faraday on the AP table. I also aligned the beam to the periscope on the PSL and all the other optics along the beam path.  Now I have a nice NPRO beam at the PLL which overlaps with the PSL beam. The alignment has to be further improved because I see no beat yet.

I wonder if the all the tinkering on the PSL laser done recently to revive the power has changed the PSL NPRO temperature and so its frequency. That could also explain why the beat doesn't show up at the same temperature of the NPRO as I used to operate it. Although I scanned the NPRO temperature +/- 2 deg and didn't see the beat. So maybe the misalignment is the casue.

Not feeling very well right now. I need to go home for a while.

AP table closed at the moment.

NPRO shutter closed

This morning I found a frequency generator connected to something on the PSL table sitting on the blue step next to the sliding doors.

Is anyone using it? Has it been forgotten there? If that's the case, can the interested person please take care of removing it?

I've opened the AP table and I'm working on it.

Also auxiliary NPRO turned on and mechanical shutter opened.

 Beat found at 30MHz with auxiliary NPRO temperature of 37.19 degrees, vs. ~48 deg as it used to be.

The beat is small (-70dBm). PLL alignment has to be improved.

I added the StochMon calibrated channels to the data trend by including the following channel names in the C0EDCU.ini file:

[C1:IOO-RFAMPD_33MHZ_CAL]
[C1:IOO-RFAMPD_133MHZ_CAL]
[C1:IOO-RFAMPD_166MHZ_CAL]
[C1:IOO-RFAMPD_199MHZ_CAL]

Before saving the changes I committed C0EDCU.ini to the svn.

Then I restarted the frame builder so now the new channels can be monitored and trended.

On Rana's suggestion I checked the MC transmission QPD (C1:IOO-MC_TRANS_SUM). I found that the readout is almost zero when the MC is unlocked.

I unlocked the Mode Cleaner turning off the LSC control and disabling the autolocker. The QPD reads 0.014. It seems that there is no offset.

I also checked with the IR card around the photodetector and I didn't see any stray beam.

 PLL alignment improved. Beat amplitude = -10dBm. Good enough.

DC readouts at the PLL photodiode:

V_NPRO = -4.44V

V_PSL = -3.76V

The NPRO beam is attenuated by a N.D.=1 attenuator just before going to the photodiode.

Something strange happened at the last. Right before -10dBm, the amplitude of the beat was about -33dBm. Then I was checking the two interfering beams with the IR card and saw that they overlapped quite well. I then turned my head back to the spectrum analyzer and suddenly the beat was at -10dBm. Not only, but a bunch of new peaks had appeared on the spectrum. Either I inadvertently hit the PD moving it to a better position or something else happened.

Like if someone was making some other modulation on the beam or the modulation depth of the PSL's sidebands had gone up.

I locked the PLL and made some first measuremtns of the spectrum of the error signal. I'll post them later.

I closed the shutter of the NPRO.

This afternoon, I tried to lock the interferometer again after a few days.

After a couple of failed attempts, and relocks of the MZ, the interferometer stayed locked continuously for about 50 minutes, with arm power of about 92.

I just wanted to check the status of the interferometer so I didn't do any particular measurement in the meantime.

We want the elog process to run in verbose mode so that we can see what's going. The idea is to track the events that trigger the elog crashes.

Following an entry on the Elog Help Forum, I added this line to the elog starting script start-elog-nodus:

./elogd -p 8080 -c /cvs/cds/caltech/elog/elog-2.7.5/elogd.cfg -D -v > elogd.log 2>&1

which replaces the old one without the part with the -v argument.

The -v argument should make the verbose output to be written into a file called elogd.log in the same directory as the elog's on Nodus.

I haven't restarted the elog yet because someone might be using it. I'm planning to do it later on today.

So be aware that:

We'll be restarting the elog today at 6.00pm PT. During this time the elog might not be accessible for a few minutes.

 I tried applying the changes but they didn't work. It seems that nodus doesn't like the command syntax.

I have to go through the problem...

The elog is up again.

The 40m produces a large amount of paper and cardboard waste. It would be worth it if we disposed those kind of garbages for recycling.

I set up two new garbage bins in the lab: one in the control rooms that adds up to the can/bottle recycling bin, and one other one in the office area, next to the printer for general paper disposal.

People in the lab are strongly invited to make use of the two new garbage bins and recycle their paper and cardboard waste.

Boxes can be larger than the garbage bin, so I'd recommend people to crash them before throwing them into the bin.

I'm working on the AP table. I also opened the auxiliary NPRO shutter. The auxiliary beam is on its path on the AP table and PSL table.

 Closing the AP table and the NPRO shutter now.

I'm working on the AP table. I also opened the auxiliary NPRO shutter. The auxiliary beam is on its path on the AP table and PSL table.

Last night something happened on the beat between the PSL beam and the auxiliary NPRO beam, that spoiled the quality of the beating I had before. As a result the PLL has become unable to lock the two lasers.

The amplitude of the beat at the spectrum analyzer has gone down to -40 dBm from -10 that it was earlier. The frequency has also become more unstable so that now it can be seen writhing within tens of KHz.

Meanwhile the power of the single beams at the PLL photodiode hasn't changed, suggesting that the alignment of the two beam didn't change much.

Changes in the efficiency of the beating between the two beams are not unusual. Although that typically affects only the amplitude of the beat and wouldn't explain why also its frequency has become unstable. Tuning the alignment of the PLL optics usually brings the amplitude back, but it was uneffective today.

It looks like something changed in either one of the two beams. In particular the frequency of one of the two lasers has become less stable.

Another strange thing that I've been observing is that the amplitude of the beat goes down (several dBm) as the beat frequency is pushed below 50 MHz. Under 10 MHz it even gets to about -60 dBm.

I noticed the change yesterday evening at about 6pm, while I was taking measurements of the PLL open loop tranfer function and everything was fine. I don't know whether it is just a coincidence or it is somehow related to this, but Jenne and Sanjit had then just rebooted the frame builder.