Steve and I restored the power to the EX AUX electronics rack. The power strip on the lowest shelf of the AUX rack now goes to another power strip laid out vertically along the NW corner of 1X9. The EX green locks to the arm just fine now.

I worked on characterizing the green PDH setup at EX, as part of the ALS noise budgeting process. Summary of my findings:

1. Green doubling efficiency is ~ 1.5 %/W (3mW of green for 450mW of IR). This is ~half of what was measured on the PSL table. There are probably large errors associated with power measurement with the Ophir power meter, but still, seems like a big mismatch.
2. The green REFL photodiode is a Thorlabs PDA36A. 
   • It is being run on 30 dB gain setting, corresponding to a transimpedance of 47.5 kohm into high impedance loads. However, the PD bandwidth for this gain setting is 260 kHz according to the manual, whereas the PDH modulation sidebands on the green light are at twice the modulation frequency, i.e. ~560 kHz, so this is not ideal.
   • There was ~250 uW of green light incident on this photodiode, as measured with the Ophir power meter.
   • The DC voltage level was measured to be ~2.7 V on a scope (High-Z), which works out to ~280 uW of power, so the measurements are consistent.
   • When the cavity is locked, there is about 25% of this light incident on the PD, giving a shot noise level of ~25 nV/rtHz. The dark noise level is a little higher, at 40nV/rtHz.
   • Beam centering on the PD looked pretty good to the eye (it is a large-ish active area, ~3mmx3mm).
   • The beam does not look Gaussian at all - there are some kind of fringes visible in the vertical direction in a kind of halo around the main cavity reflection. Not sure what the noise implications of this are. I tried to capture this in a photo, see Attachment #1. Should an Iris/aperture be used to cut out some of this junk light before the reflection photodiode?
3. The in-going beam was getting clipped on the Faraday Isolator aperture (it was low in pitch).
   • I fixed this by adjusting the upstream steering, and then moving the two PZT mounted green steering mirrors to recover good alignment to the X arm cavity.
   • GTRX level of ~0.5 was recovered.
4. To estimate the mode-matching of the input beam to the cavity axis, I looked at the reflected light with the cavity locked, and with just the prompt reflection from the ETM:
   • DC light level on the reflection photodiode was monitored using the High-Z input o'scope.
   • Measured numbers are Plocked ~ 660 mV, Pmisaligned ~ 2.6V, giving a ratio of 0.253.
   • While locked, there was a ~ 10 Hz periodic variation in the DC light level on the green REFL photodiode - not sure what was causing this modulation.
   • However, this is inconsistent with a calculation, see Attachment #2. I assumed modulation depth of 90 mrad, round-trip loss of 100 ppm, and Titm = 1.094%, Tetm = 4.579%, numbers I pulled from the core-optics wiki page.
   • Not sure what effect I've missed out on here - to get the model to match the measurement, I have to either assume a higher cavity finesse, or a much higher round-trip loss (5000ppm), both of which seem implausible.

The main motivation was to get the residual frequency noise of the EX laser when locked to the X arm cavity - but I'll need the V/Hz PDH discriminant to convert the in-loop error signal to frequency units. The idea was to look at the PDH error signal on a scope and match up the horn-to-horn voltage with a model to back out said discriminant, but I'll have to double check my model for errors now given the large mismatch I observe in reflected power.

I decided to use the more direct method, of disconnecting feedback to the EX laser PZT, and then looking at the cavity flashes. 

Attachment #1 shows the cavity swinging through two resonances (data collected via oscilloscope). Traces are for the demodulated PDH error signal (top) and the direct photodiode signal (bottom). The traces don't look very clean - I wonder if some saturation / slew rate effects are at play, because we are operating the PD in the 30 dB setting, where the bandwidth of the PD is spec-ed as 260 kHz, whereas the dominant frequency component of the light on the PD is 430 kHz.

The asymmetric horns corresponding to the sideband resonances were also puzzling. Doing the modeling, Attachment #2, I think this is due to the fact that the demodulation phase is poorly set. The PDH modulation frequency is only ~5x the cavity linewidth, so both the real and imaginary parts of the cavity reflectivity contribute to the error signal. If this calculation is correct, we can benefit (i.e. get a larger PDH discriminant) by changing the demod phase by 60 degrees. However, for 230 kHz, it is impractical to do this by just increasing cable length between the function generator and mixer.

Anyway, assuming that we are at the phi=30 degree situation (since the measurement shows all 3 horns going through roughly the same voltage swing), the PDH discriminant is ~40 uV/Hz. In lock, I estimate that there is ~60 uW of light incident on the PDH reflection photodiode. Using the PD response of 0.2 A/W, transimpedance of 47.5 kohm, and mixer conversion loss of 6dB, the shot-noise limited sensitivity is 0.5 mHz/rtHz. The photodiode dark noise contribution is a little lower - estimated to be 0.2 mHz/rtHz. The loop does not have enough gain to reach these levels.

Some time ago, I had done an actuator calibration of ITMX. This suspension hasn't been victim to the recent spate of suspension problems, so I can believe that the results of those measurement are still valid. So I decided to calibrate the in-loop error signal of the EX green PDH loop, which is recorded via an SR560, G=10, by driving a line in ITMY position (thereby modulating the X arm cavity length) while the EX green frequency was locked to the arm cavity length. Knowing the amount I'm modulating the cavity length by (500 cts amplitude sine wave at 33.14159 Hz using awggui, translating to ~17.2 kHz amplitude in green frequency), I demodulated the response in C1:ALS-X_ERR_MON_OUT_DQ channel. At this frequency of ~33 Hz, the servo gain should be large, and so the green laser frequency should track the cavity length nearly perfectly (with transfer function 1/(1+L), where L is the OLG).

The response had amplitude 5.68 +/- 0.10 cts, see Attachment #1. There was a sneaky gain of 0.86 in the filter module, which I saw no reason to keep at this strange value, and so updated to 1, correcting the demodulated response to 6.6 cts. After accounting for this adjustment, the x10 gain of the SR560, and the loop suppression, I put a "cts2Hz" filter in (Attachment #2). I had to guess a value for the OLG at 33 Hz in order to account for the in-loop suppression. So I measured the OLTF using the usual IN1/IN2 method (Attachment #3), and then used a LISO model of the electronics, along with guesses of the cavity pole (18.5 kHz), low-pass filter poles (4x real poles at 70 kHz), PZT actuator gain (1.7 MHz/V) and PDH discriminant (40 uV/Hz, see this elog) to construct a model OLTF. Then I fudged the overall gain to get the model to line up with the measurement between 1-10kHz. Per this model, I should have ~75dB of gain at ~33Hz, so the tracking error to my cavity length modulation should be ~3.05 Hz. Lines up pretty well with the measured value of 4.7 Hz considering the number of guessed parameters. The measured OLG tapers off towards low frequency probably because the increased loop suppression drives one of the measured inputs on the SR785 into the instrument noise floor.

The final calibration number is 7.1 Hz/ct, though the error on this number is large ~30%. Note that these "Hertz" are green frequency changes - so the change to the IR frequency will be half.

Attachment #4 shows the error signal in various conditions, labelled in the legend. Interpretations to follow.

G=10 or G=100?

wrong assumption - i checked the gain just now, it is G=10, and is running in the "low-noise" mode, so can only drive 4V. fixed elog, filter.

Note: While working at EX, I saw frequent saturations (red led blinking) on the SR560. Looking a the error mon signal on a scope, it had a pk-to-pk amplitude of ~200mV going into the SR560. Assuming the free-swinging cavity length changes by ~1 um at 1 Hz, the green frequency changes by ~15 MHz, which according to the PDH discriminant calibration of 40 uV/Hz should only make a 60 mV pk to pk signal. So perhaps the cavity length is changing by 4x as much, plausible during daytime with me stomping around the chamber I guess.. My point is that if the SR560 get's saturated (i.e. input > 13000 cts), the DQ-ed spectrum isn't trustworthy anymore. Should hook this up to some proper whitening electronics

Attachment #1 shows the drift of the polarization content of the light from EX entering the BeatMouth. Seems rather large (~10%). I'm going to tweak the X end fiber coupling setup a bit to see if this can be improved. This performance is also a good benchmark to compare the PSL IR light polarization drift. I am going to ask Steve to order Thorlabs K6XS, which has a locking screw for the rotational DoF. With this feature, and by installing some HWPs at the input coupling point, we can ensure that we are coupling light into one of the special axes in a much more deterministic way. 

There was no green light even though the EX NPRO was on. I checked the doubling oven temperature controller and found that its power cable was loose on the rear. I reconnected it, and now there is green light again. 

I have been puzzled as to why the duty cycle of the EX green locks are much less than that of the EY NPRO. If anything, the PDH loop has higher bandwidth and comparable stability margins at the X end than at the Y end. I hypothesize that this is because the EX laser (Innolight 1W Mephisto) has actuation PZT coefficient 1MHz/V, while the EY laser (Lightwave 125/126) has 5MHz/V. I figure the EX laser is sometimes just not able to keep up with the DC Xarm cavity length drift. To test this hypothesis, I disabled the LSC locking for the Xarm, and enabled the SLOW (temperature of NPRO crystal) control on the EX laser. The logic is that this provides relief for the PZT path and prevents the PDH servo from saturating and losing lock. Already, the green lock has held longer than at any point tonight (>60mins). I'm going to leave it in this state overnight and see how long the lock holds. The slow servo path has a limiter set to 100 counts so should be fine to leave it on. The next test will be to repeat this test with LSC mode ON, as I guess this will enhance the DC arm cavity length drift (it will be forced to follow MCL).

Why do I care about this at all? If at some point we want to do arm feedforward, I thought the green PDH error signal is a great target signal for the Wiener filter calculations. So I'd like to keep the green locked to the arm for extended periods of time. Arm feedforward should help in lock acquisiton if we have reduced actuation range due to increased series resistances in the coil drivers.

As an aside - I noticed that the SLOW path has no digital low pass filter - I think I remember someone saying that since the NPRO controller itself has an in-built low pass filter, a digital one isn't necessary. But as this elog points out, the situation may not be so straightforward. For now, I just put in some arbitrary low pass filter with corner at 5Hz. Seems like a nice simple problem for optimal loop shaping...

gautam noon CNY2018: Looks like the green has been stably locked for over 8 hours (see Attachment #1), and the slow servo doesn't look to have railed. Note that 100 cts ~=30mV. For an actuation coefficient of 1GHz/V, this is ~30MHz, which is well above the PZT range of 10V-->10MHz (whereas the EY laser, by virtue of its higher actuation coefficient, has 5 times this range, i.e. 50MHz). Supports my hypothesis.

THIS CALCULATION IS WRONG FOR THE OVERCOUPLED CAV.

Summary:

Mode-matching efficiency of EX green light into the arm cavity is ~70*%, as measured using the visibility. 

Details:

I wanted to get an estimate for the mode-matching of the EX green beam into the arm cavity. I did the following:

1. Locked arm cavities to IR. Ran dither alignment servos to maximize the transmission of IR on both arms. The X arm dither alignment servo needs some touching up, I can achieve higher TRX by hand than by running the dither.
2. Aligned green PZT mirrors so as to maximize GTRX. Achieved level as 0.47.
3. Went to EX table and tweaked the two available mode-matching lens positions on their translational stages. Saw a quadratic maximum of GTRX about some equilibrium position (where the lenses are now).
4. Measured average value of the green PDH reflection DC level whiel green TEM00 mode was locked. .
5. Misaligned ITMX macroscopically. Measured the average value of the green PDH reflection DC level again. .
6. Closed EX Green shutter. Measured the average value of the green PDH reflection DC level. .
7. Modulation depth of the EX PDH was determined to be 90mrad. Based on this, power in sideband is negligible compared to power in the carrier, so I didn't bother correcting for sideband power in reflection.
8. Mode-matching efficiency calculated as .

Comments:

This amount of mode-matching is rather disappointing - using a la mode, the calculated mode-matching efficiency is nearly 100%, but 70% is a far cry from this. The fact that I can't improve this number by either tweaking the steering or by moving the MM lenses around suggests that the estimate of the target arm mode is probably incorrect (the non-gaussianity of the input beam itself is not quantified yet, but I don't believe this input beam can account for 30% mismatch). For the Y-arm, the green REFL DC level is actually higher when locked than when ITMY is misaligned. WTF?? Only explanation I can think of is that the PD is saturated when green is unlocked - but why does the ADC saturate at ~3000cts and not 32000?

This data is almost certainly bogus as the AA box at 1X9 is powered by +/-5VDC and not +/-15VDC. I didn't check but I believe the situation is the same at the Y-end.

3000 cts is ~1V into the ADC. I am going to change the supply voltage to this box (which also reads in ETMX OSEMS) to +/-15V so that we can use the full range of the ADC.

gautam Apr 26 630pm: I re-did the measurement by directly monitoring the REFLDC on a scope, and the situation is not much better. I calculate a MM of 70% into the arm. This is sensitive to the lens positions - while I was working on the EX fiber coupling, I had bumped the lens mounted on a translational stage on the EX table lightly, and I had to move that lens around today in order to recover the GTRX level of 0.5 that I am used to seeing (with arm aligned to maximize IR transmission). So there is definitely room for optimization here.

I installed a 10% BS to pick off some of the light going to the IR fiber, and have added a Thorlabs PDA55 PD to the EX table setup. The idea is to be able to monitor the power output of the EX NPRO over long time scales, and also to serve as an additional diagnostic tool for when ALS gets glitchy etc. There is about 0.4mW of IR power incident on the PD (as measured with the Ophir power meter), which translates to ~2500 ADC counts (~1.67V as measured with an Oscilloscope set to high impedance directly at the PD output). The output of the PD is presently going to Ch5 of the same board that receives the OL QPD voltages (which corresponds to ADC channel 28). Previously, I had borrowed the power and signal cables from the High-Gain Transmon PD to monitor this channel, but today I have laid out independent cabling and also restored the Transmon PD to its nominal state.

On the CDS side of things, I edited C1SCX to route the signal from ADC Ch28 to the ALS block. I also edited the ALS_END library part to have an additional input for the power monitor, to keep the naming conventions consistent. I have added a gain in the filter module to calibrate the readout into mW using these numbers. The channel is called C1:ALS-X_POWER_OUT, and is DQed for long-term trending purposes.

The main ALS screen is a bit cluttered so I have added this channel to the ALS overview MEDM screen for now..

Summary:

The EX PDH setup had what I thought was insufficient phase and gain margins. So I lowered the gain a little - the price paid was that the suppression of laser frequency noise of the end laser was reduced. I actually think an intermediate gain setting (G=7) can give us ~35 degrees of phase margin, ~10dB gain margin, and lower residual unsuppressed AUX laser noise - to be confirmed by measurement later. See here for the last activity I did - how did the gain get increased? I can't find anything in the elog.

During our EX AM/PM setups, I don't think we bumped the PDH gain knob (and I hope that the knob was locked). Possible drift in the PZT response? Good thing Shruti is on the case.

Is there a loop model of green PDH that agrees with the measurement? I'm wondering if something can be done with a compensation network to up the bandwidth or if the phase lag is more like a non-invertible kind.

The closest thing I can think of is here.

 [Koji, gautam]

Per this elog, we don't need any AIOut channels or Oplev channels. However, the latest wiring diagram I can find for the EX Acromag situation suggests that these channels are hooked up (physically). If this is true, there are 12 ADC channels that are occupied which we can use for other purposes. Question for Johannes: Is this true? If so, Kira has plenty of channels available for her Temperature control stuff..

As an aside, we found that the EPICS channel names for the TRX/TRY QPD gain stages are somewhat strangely named. Looking closely at the schematic (which has now been added to the 40m DCC tree, we can add out custom mods later), they do (somewhat) add up, but I think we should definitely rename them in a more systematic manner, and use an MEDM screen to indicate stuff like x4 or x20 or "Active" etc. BTW, the EX and EY QPDs have different settings. But at least the settings are changed synchronously for all four quadrants, unlike the WFS heads...

Unrelated: I had to key the c1iscaux and c1auxey crates.

It's true.

I went through the wiring of the c1auxex crate today to disentangle the pin assignments. The full detail can be found in attachment #1, #2 has less detail but is more eye candy. The red flagged channels are now marked for removal at the next opportunity. This will free up DAQ channels as follows:

This should be enough for temperature sensing, NPRO diagnostics, and even eventual remote PDH control with new servo boxes.

Do we really have 2 free ADC channels at EX now? I was under the impression we had ZERO free, which is why we wanted to put a new ADC unit in. I think in the wiring diagram, the Vacuum gauge monitor channel, Seis Can Temp Sensor monitor, and Seis Can Heater channels are missing. It would also be good to have, in the wiring diagram, a mapping of which signals go to which I/O ports (Dsub, front panel BNC etc) on the 4U(?) box housing all the Acromags, this would be helpful in future debugging sessions.

Bad wording, sorry. Should have been channels in excess of ETMX controls. I'll add the others to the list as well.

Updated channel list and wiring diagram attached. Labels are 'F' for 'Front' and 'R' for - you guessed it - 'Rear', the number identifies the slot panel the breakout is attached to.

Summary:

I'd like to confirm that the IR ALS scheme will work for locking. The X-arm performance so far has been encouraging. I want to repeat the characterization for the Y arm. So I inspected the layout on the EY table, and made a list of characterization tasks. The current EY beam routing is difficult to work with, and it will definitely benefit from a re-do. However, I don't know how much time I want to spend re-doing it, so for a start, I will just try and couple some amount of light into a fiber and bring it to the PSL table, and see what noise performance I get.

Details:

Attachment #1: Photo of the current beam layout. The powers indicated were measured with the Ophir power meter.

• I measure an SHG conversion efficiency of 0.87 %/W, which is considerably lower than the ~3.7%/W that is theoretically expected, and 1.5%/W that is realized at EX.
• Of the 0.5 mW of green light that is generated, I measure ~0.375 mW at the viewport into the EY chamber. So there is ~25 % loss in the green beam path on the EY table. Seems high to me.
• The previous solution of coupling IR light into the fiber realized at EY was to use the SHG leakage IR beam. While there isn't a measurement showing that this dirty beam is noisier than a cleaner pickoff, I'd like to adopt the solution used at EX, which is to use the leakage beam from the first steering mirror in the NPRO beam path. This will allow better mode-matching and polarization control of the beam being coupled into the fiber, which at least in principle, translates to less phase noise.
• However - the beam layout at the EY table offers much less freedom to work with this idea than EX. A constraint is the clamp that secures the enclosure to the optical table, labelled in the photo. Further behind it, the green steering optics occupy all available space. A more comprehensive photo of the EY table can be found here.
• Off the top of my head, I don't see any other good open spots on the EY table where we could couple IR light into the fiber. 
• One other change I'd like to make is to replace the first steering mirror after the NPRO head, which is currently a Y1 HR mirror, with a R=99% BS. This will make it easier to control the amount of power coupled into the fiber, which is something we'd like.

Attachment #2: A candidate mode-matching solution, given the constraints outlined above. It isn't great, with only 85% modematching even theoretically possible. The lenses required are also pretty fast lenses. But I think it's the best possible without a complete overhaul of the EY layout. I'm still waiting for the lens kit to arrive, but as soon as they get here, I will start this work.

Characterization tasks:

• Characterize SHG at EY [done 7/28]
• Characterize gPDH at EY (loop TFs, improve MM, PDH discriminant, check the polarization)
• Couple IR light into fiber with good MM at EY [done with 36% MM 8/9]
• Clean fiber at EY, and at the PSL table [done 8/9]
• Make the PSL + Y IR beat [done 8/9]
• Noise budget

Steve was calibrating the load cells at the EY table with the crane - we didn't get through the full procedure today, so the area near the EY table is kind of obstructed. The 100kg donut is resting on the floor on the North side of the EY table and is still connected to the crane. There are stopper plates underneath the donut, and it is still connected to the crane. Steve has placed cones around the area too. The crane has been turned off.

[chub, gautam]

1. Vented the EE annulus.
2. Took the heavy door off, put it on the wooden rack, put a light door on at ~11am.

[steve, rana, gautam]

• PSL and EY 1064nm laser (physical) shutters on the head were closed so that we and sundance crew could work without laser safety goggles. EY oplev laser was also turned off.
• Cylindrical heater setup removed:
  • heater wiring meant the heater itself couldn't be easily removed from the chamber
  • two lenses and Al foil cylinder removed from chamber, now placed on the mini-cleanroom table.
• Parabolic heater is untouched for now. We can re-insert it once the test mass is back in, so that we can be better informed about the clipping situation.
• ETMY removed from chamber.
  • EQ stops were engaged.
  • Pictures were taken
  • OSEMs were removed from cage, placed in foil holders.
  • Cage clamps were removed after checking that marker clamps were in place.
  • Optic was moved first to NW corner of table, then out of the vacuum onto the mini-cleanroom desk Chub and I had setup last week.
  • Hoepfully there isn't an earthquake. EY has been marked as off-limits to avoid accidental bumping / catasrophic wire/magnet/optic breaking.
  • We sealed up the mini cleanroom with tape. F.C. cleaning tomorrow or at another opportune moment.
  • Light door was put back on for the evening.

Rana pointed out that the OSEM cabling, because of lack of a plastic shielding, is grounded directly to the table on which it is resting. A glass baking dish at the base of the seismic stack prevents electrical shorting to the chamber. However, there are some LEMO/BNC cables as well on the east side of the stack, whose BNC ends are just lying on the base of the stack. We should use this opportunity to think about whether anything needs to be done / what the influence of this kind of grounding is (if any) on actuator noise.

Steve also pointed out that we should replace the rubber pads which the vacuum chamber is resting on (Attachment #1, not from this vent, but just to indicate what's what). These serve the purpose of relieving small amounts of strain the chamber may experience relative to the beam tube, thus helping preserve the vacuum joints b/w chamber and tube. But after (~20?) years of being under compression, Steve thinks that the rubber no longer has any elasticity, and so should be replaced.

While Chub is making new cables for the EY satellite box...

1. I removed the unused optic on the NW corner of the EY table. It is stored in a clean Al-foil lined plastic box, and will be moved to the clean hardware section of the lab (along the South arm, south of MC2 chamber).
2. Checked table leveling - Attachment #1, looked good, and has been stable over the weekend.
3. I moved the two oversized washers on the reflector, which I believe are only used because the screw is long and wouldn't go in all the way otherwise. As shown in Attachment #2, this reduces the risk of clipping the main IFO beam axis.
4. Yesterday, I pulled up the 40m CAD drawing, and played around with a rectangular box that approximates the extents of the elliptical reflector, to see what would be a good place to put it. I chose to go ahead with Attachment #3. Also shown is the eventually realized layout. Note that we'd actually like the dimension marked ~7.6 inches to be more like 7.1 inches, so the optic is actually ~0.5 inch ahead of the second focus of the ellipse, but I think this is good enough. 
5. Attachment #4 shows the view of the optic as seen from the aperture on the back of the elliptical reflector. Looks good to me.
6. Having positioned the reflector, I then inserted the heater into the aperture such that it is ~2/3rds the way in, which was the best position found by Annalisa last summer. I then ran 0.9 A of current through the heater for ~ 5 minutes. Attachment #5 shows the optic as seen with the FLIR with no heating, and after 5 minutes of heating. I'd say this is pretty unambiguous evidence that we are indeed heating the mirror. The gradient shown is significantly less pronounced than in Annalisa's simulations (~3K as opposed to 10K), but maybe the FLIR calibration isn't so great.
7. For completeness, Attachment #6 shows the leveling of the table after this work. Nothing has chanegd significantly.

While the position of the reflector could possibly be optimized further, since we are already seeing a temperature gradient on the optic, I propose pushing on with other vent activities. I'm almost certain the current positioning places the optic closer to the second focus, and we already saw shifts of the HOM resonances with the old configuration, so I'd say we run with this and revisit if needed.

If Chub gives the Sat. Box the green flag, we will work on F.C.ing the mirrors in the evening, with the aim of closing up tomorrow/Friday. 

All raw images in this elog have been uploaded to the 40m google photos.

[chub, bob, gautam]

We took the heavy door off the EY chamber at ~930am.

Chamber work:

• ETMY suspension cage was returned to its nominal position.
• Unused hardware from the annular heater setup was removed.
• The unused heater had its leads snipped close to the heater crimp point, and the exposed part of the bare wires was covered with Kapton tape (we should remove the source leads as well in air to avoid any accidental shorting)

Waiting for the table to level off now. Plan for later today / tomorrow is as follows:

1. Lock the Y arm, recover good cavity alignment.
2. Position parabolic heater such that clipping issue is resolved.
3. Move optic to edge of table for FC cleaning
4. Clean optic
5. Return suspension cage to nominal position.

While restoring OSEMs on ETMY, I noticed that the open voltages for the UR and LL OSEMs had significantly (>30%) changed from their values from ~2 years ago. The fact that it only occurred in 2 coils seemed to rule out gradual wear and tear, so I looked up the trends from Nov 25 - Nov 28 (Sundance visited on Nov 26 which is when we removed the cage). Not surprisingly, these are the exact two OSEMs that show a decrease in sensor voltage when the OSEMs were pulled out. I suspect that when I placed them in their little Al foil boats, I shorted out some contacts on the rear (this is reminiscent of the problem we had on PRM in 2016). I hope the problem is with the current buffer IC in the satellite box and not the physical diode, I'll test with the tester box and evaluate the problem further.

Chamber work by Chub and gautam:

1. Table leveling was checked with a clean spirit level
   • Leveling was substantially off in two orthogonal directions, along the beam axis as well as perpendicular to it.
   • We moved almost all the weights available on the table.
   • Managed to get the leveling correct to within 1 tick on the level.
   • We are not too worried about this for now, the final leveling will be after heater repositioning, ETMY cleaning etc.
2. ETMY OSEM re-insertion
   • OSEMs were re-inserted till their mean voltage was ~ half the open values.
   • Local damping seems to work just fine.

With Chub's help, I've setup a mini cleanroom at EY - Attachment #1. The HEPA unit is running on high now. All surfaces were wiped with isopropanol, we can wipe everything down again on Monday and replace the foil.

• Removed power monitoring PD (It was off anyways)
• Installed Steering mirror and collimator in K6XS mount (fast axis = p-pol to best effort by eye)
• Installed lens mounts in approx position
• Cleaned fiber at EY and connected to the collimator
• Coupled EY--->PSL and spare PSL-->EY fibers together at the PSL table to facilitate coupling.
• tbc tomorrow...

As part of characterization, I wanted to calibrate the EY uPDH error point monitor into units of Hz. So I thought I'd measure the PDH horn-to-horn voltage with the cable to the laser PZT disconnected. However, I saw no clean PDH fringe while monitoring the signal after the LPF that is immediately downstream of the mixer IF output. I then decided to measure the low pass filter OLTF, and found that it seems to have some complex poles (f0~57kHz, Q~5), that amplify the signal by ~x6 relative to the DC level before beginning to roll-off (see Attachment #1). Is this the desired filter shape? Can't find anything in the elog/wiki about such a filter shape being implemented...

The actual OLTF looks alright to me though, see Attachment #2.

                   filter Q seems too high,

but what precisely is the proper way to design the IF filter?

   seems like we should be able to do it using math instead of feelins

                              Izumi made this one so maybe he has an algorythym

I got confused. Why don't we see that too-high-Q pole in the OLTF? 

I'm not sure - maybe it was measurement error on my part, I will double check. Moreover, the EX and EY boxes don't seem to use identical designs, if one believes the schematics drawn on the Pomona boxes. The EY design has a 50ohm input impedance in the stopband, whereas the EX doesn't. Maybe the latter needs a Tee + 50ohm terminator at the input?

Judging by the schematics, the servo inputs to both boxes are driving the non-inverting input of an opamp, so they see high-Z.

Rana and I discussed this alogrythym a bit today - here are some bullet points, I'll work on preparing a notebook. We are still talking about a post-mixer low pass filter.

• We want to filter out the 2f component - attenuation relative to the 1f content and be well below the slew-rate of the first post-mixer opamp (OP27).
• We don't want to lose much phase due to the corner of the LPF, so that we can have a somewhat high UGF - let's shoot for 30kHz.
• What should the order of the filter be such that we achieve these goals?
• We will use a numerical optimization routine, that makes a filter that has
  • yy dB attenuation at high frequencies
  • sufficient stability margin
  • sufficiently small phase lag at 30 kHz so that we can realize ~30kHz UGF with the existing servo electronics.

Here are some loop transfer functions. I basically followed the decomposition of the end PDH loop as was done in the multi-color metrology paper. There is no post-mixer low pass filter at the moment (in my model), but already you can see that the top of the phase bubble is at ~10 kHz. Probably there is still sufficient phase available at 30 kHz, even after we add an LPF. In any case, I'll use this model and set up a cost function minimization problem and see what comes out of it. For the PZT discriminant, I used 5 MHz/V, and for the PDH discriminant, I used 40 uV/Hz, which are numbers that should be close to what's the reality at EY.

(i) Note that there could be some uncertainty in the overall gain (VGA stage in the servo).

(ii) For the cavity pole, I assumed the single pole response, which Rana points out isn't really valid at ~1 MHz, which is close to the next FSR

(ii) The PZT response is approximated as a simple LPF whereas there are likely to be several sharp features which may add/eat phase. 

Paco suggested I start putting together the beginnings of a heating system so that I can get a better idea of what parts and equipment we need and can order them ASAP. This is also to try and match the real data with simulation models for the basic system and then add complexities like insulation foam (which is also currently not in hand) later. This should give insights into loopholes in the models and also into the estimation of parameters like the convective transfer factor (h) which aren't trivial to accurately constrain in simulation according to what I've read.

I will edit in a circuit schematic by tomorrow (done), but the circuit is quite similar to the new one made by Kevin and Kira which I linked in a previous elog. For now, I have used a makeshift and messy combination of resistors (there are very few high wattage ones that we could find in both 40m and the EE shop) which manages to achieve a max current of around 0.25A through a resistive element of 50 ohms, leading to a peak power output of 3.22 W which is good enough for the puck. This resistor comes in a nice brass housing (visible below the puck in image) which makes it convenient to attach to the puck and pump heat into it relatively efficiently. I tested this circuit by turning it on for 30 minutes and the puck did warm up a bit. I will work on calibrating and attaching the old temperature sensor to this tomorrow so I can start doing step responses and quantifying things.

One critical difference from the old circuit is that this one is meant to drive the MOSFET only in fully-on or fully-off mode to minimize heat dissipation through it, so we basically use PWM to regulate the heat from zero to the peak value. JC and I also set up the ethernet wiring for the Raspberry Pi 2 at the experiment as well as my desk so that I can control it from my laptop over LAN. I tested PWM using Python with an LED that can be seen in the image. Now I basically just have to plug the Pi into the circuit input and measure the RMS current to confirm that it is also controllable in a similar way and linear as we would expect, and also check out the output waveform.

As this circuit is inefficient and can waste a lot of power through the R resistance, Rana asked me to come up with a better design that does not have this issue and mainly dissipates heat only through the heater.

I realised that the kind of circuit I originally made with the op-amp feeding into the FET is unnecessarily complicated, and came up with a more simple one that does the job and does not dissipate extra heat - 

The input to this is a RPi PWM signal that goes through an op-amp based non-inverting amplifier. I used this to comfortably clear the GS threshold of the MOSFET, which has a quoted maximum value of 4V. I implemented this on a breadboard and it seems to work fine with a 1 kHz PWM.

Please let me know if anybody has any feedback or suggestions for improvement.

 [Q, Chloe]

Chloe has been to the lab twice to start up her investigations in acoustic noise coupling to mirrors. The general idea for the setup is a HeNe laser bouncing off a mirror and onto a QPD, whose signal provides a measure of beam displacement noise. The mirror will be mounted and excited in various ways to make quantitative conclusions about the quality of different mounting schemes.

We have set up the laser+mirror+QPD on the SP table, and collected data via SR560s->SR785, with the main aim of evaluating the suitability of this setup. The data we collected is not calibrated to any meaningful units (yet). For now, we are just using QPD volts.

Chloe collected data of vertical displacement noise for the following schemes: Terminated SR785 input, Terminated SR560 inputs, Laser centered directly onto the QPD, Laser shining on mirror centered on QPD, laser/mirror/qpd with some small desktop speakers producing white noise from http://www.simplynoise.com. Data shown below. 

I can't believe that SR785 can have such a low input noise level (<1nV/rtHz). Review your calibration again.

It is also described in the manual that SR560 typically has the input noise level of 4nV/rtHz, although this number depends on which gain you use.

There was an earthquake around 2:30 am. Now all the mirrors except SRM are damped.

M4.7 - Santa Isabel, Mexico 2012-04-12 06:48:38 UTC

Mode Cleaner doesn't want to stay locked.  Seismic is coming down from an earthquake ~20min ago.  

We're in the process of measuring IPPOS, so this is obnoxious.

EDIT:  Followed by a 6.2 and a 7.1 at 07:06UTC and 07:15UTC in the same area.

We're following the tried and true tradition of going home when there's an earthquake big enough that the MC won't stay locked.

Several optics have rung up, PRM is the only one which has tripped so far, because the side sensor has the extra gain, but the watchdog threshold is set for the face OSEMs.

There was a 5.6 Earthquake that occurred near Tofino, Canada about 30 minutes ago. It showed up rather strongly on the BLRMS.

The neural network classification system also picked up on it, but oscillated from Earthquake (1.0) to Quiet (0.5) perhaps due to the filters we currently have installed. Here is a shot of the GUR1X classification channel at the time of the EQ:

There was a magnitude 6.6 earthquake just a few minutes ago. I am attaching photographs of the monitor feeds for reference here. Is there a standard protocol to be followed in this situation? I'm looking through the wiki now.

Further, the IMC seems to be misaligned and is not locking! As Koji has let me know, I really hope this is not too serious and can be fixed easily.

According to Rana, the following is the "new" (should always have been used, but now we're going to enforce it) earthquake stop backing-off procedure:

1. Back all EQ stops away from the optic, so that it is fully free-swinging.

2. Confirm on dataviewer that the optic is truely free-swinging.

3. One at a time, slowly move the EQ stop in until it barely touches the optic.  Watch dataviewer during this procedure - as soon as the time series of the OSEMs gets a 'kink', you've just barely touched the optic.

4. Back the EQ stop off by the calculated number of turns.  No inspections, no creativity, just math.  Each EQ stop should be between 1.5m and 2.0mm away from the optic.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each EQ stop.

Note: The amount that you need to turn the screws depends on what the threads are.

FACE and TOP stops are all 1/4-20, so 1.5 turns is 1.90mm

BOTTOM stops are either #4-40 or #6-32 (depending on the suspension tower).  If #4-40, 3 turns is 1.90mm.  If #6-32, 2.5 turns is 1.98mm

[Yuta, Paco, JC]

This eq  potentially tripped ETMY, PR2, PR3, AS1, AS4, SR2, LO1, LO2 suspensions during today's WB meeting. We restored them into normal local damping.

We aligned the arm cavities just to verify things were ok and then moved on to BHD comissioning. No problems spotted so far.

We came this morning and noticed the FSS_FAST channel was moving very rapidly. Short inspection showed that MC3 watchdog got tripped. After reenabling the watchdog the issue was fixed and the MC is stable again.

There is a spike in the seismometers 8 hours ago and it was probably due to the 4.2 magnitude earthquake that happened in Malibu beach around that time.

Earthquake Details

-----------------------------------------

MC1 and MC3 seem to have kept themselves together, but all the other optics' watchdogs tripped.

Some of the suspensions got watchdog tripped -> enabled -> damped.

The MC mirrors got slightly misaligned.

I found all suspensions including the MC suspensions tripped this morning after the earthquake.

I damped all the optics and realigned MC mirrors to lock at refl 0.57.

PRM and SRM tripped a couple of times due to the aftershocks that followed; but were damped eventually.

A couple of minutes ago, Larry W swapped the fibers to our 40m Edgeswitch (BROCADE FWS 648G) to a faster connection. This is the switch to which our gateway machine, NODUS, is connected. The actual swap itself happened at the core router in Bridge, and took only a few seconds. After the switch, I double checked that I was able to ssh into nodus from my laptop, and Larry informed me that everything is working as expected on his end.

Larry also tells us that the other edgeswitch at the 40m (Foundry Networks), to which most of our GC network machines are connected, is a 100MBPS switch, and so we should re-route the connections from this switch to the BROCADE switch at our convenience to take advantage of the faster connection.