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ID Date Author Type Category Subject
11225   Sun Apr 19 15:03:26 2015 JenneUpdateElectronicsLow noise pre-amps?

Does anyone know where the Busby or Rai low noise pre-amp boxes are?

I think I need one in order to measure the noise of the Marconi.  Right now, I am trying to measure the amplitude noise, but I'm not seeing anything on the SR785 above the analyzer's noise level.

11226   Mon Apr 20 16:18:29 2015 JenneUpdateElectronicsLow noise pre-amps: returned

The Rai box was in the Cryo lab, and the Busby box was in the TCS lab.  Neither had been signed out.  Lame.  Anyhow, thanks to Evan and Zach's memories of having seen them recently, they have been returned to the 40m where they belong.  (Also, I grabbed a spare Marconi while I was over there, for the phase noise measurement).

11229   Tue Apr 21 01:17:13 2015 JenneUpdateModern ControlT-240 self-noise propagated through stack and pendulum

Going back to Wiener filtering for a moment, I took a look at what the T-240 noise level looks like in terms of pitch motion on one of our SOS optics (eg. PRM).

The self-noise of the T-240 (PSD, in dB referenced to 1m^2/s^4/Hz) was taken by pulling numbers from the Users Guide.  This is the ideal noise floor, if our installation was perfect.  I'm not sure where Kissel got the numbers from, but on page 13 of G1200556 he shows higher "measured" noise values for a T-240, although his numbers are already transformed to m/rtHz.

To get the noise numbers to meters, I use:  $\left[ \frac{\rm m}{\sqrt{\rm Hz}} \right] = \frac{\sqrt{10^{\frac{[\rm dB/\sqrt{Hz}]}{10}}}}{(2 \pi f)^2}$.  The top of that fraction is (a) getting to magnitude from power-dB and (b) getting to asd units from psd units.  The bottom of the fraction is getting rid of the extra 1/s^2.

Next I propagate this seismometer noise (in units of m/rtHz) to effective pendulum pitch motion, by propagating through the stacks and the transfer function for pos motion at the anchor point of the pendulum to pitch motion of the mirror (see eq 63 of T000134 for the calculation of this TF).   This gives me radians/rtHz of mirror motion, caused by the ground motion:

.

I have not actually calibrated the POP QPD, so I will need to do that in order to compare this seismometer noise to my Wiener filter results.

Attachment 1: T240selfnoise.png
Attachment 2: Limits.tar.gz
11242   Fri Apr 24 01:16:30 2015 JenneUpdateASCBroken Xass?

I ran the "off" script for the Xarm ASS, followed by the "on" script, and now the Xarm ASS doesn't work.  Usually we just run the freeze/unfreeze, but I ran the off/on scripts one time.

Koji, if you have some time tomorrow, can you please look at it?  I am sorry to ask, but it would be very helpful if I could keep working on other things while the ASS is taken care of.

Steve, can you please find a cable that goes from the LSC rack to the IOO rack (1Y2 to 1X2), or lay a new one?  It must be one single long cable, without barrels sticking it together.  This will help me actuate on the Marconi using the LSC rack's DAC.

Thank you!!

11243   Fri Apr 24 17:30:32 2015 JenneUpdateVACPressure watch script broken
 Quote: I made a script that checks the N2 pressure, which will send an email to myself, Jenne, Rana, Koji, and Steve, should the pressure fall below 60psi.

The script checking the N2 pressure is not working.  I signed into the foteee account to look at some of the picasa photos, and there are thousands of emails (one every 10 minutes for the past month!) with error messages.  Q, can you please make it stop (having errors)?

The error looks like it's mad about a "caget" command.  I don't have time to investigate further though.

11254   Sun Apr 26 14:17:40 2015 JenneUpdateLSCPOXDC, POYDC unplugged for now

I have unplugged POXDC and POYDC from their whitening inputs.  They have labels on them which whitening channel they belong to (POY=5, POX=6) on the DCPD whitening board.

TT3_LR's DAC output is Tee-ed, going to the POYDC input and also to an SR560 near the Marconi.

TT4_LR's DAC output is Tee-ed, going to the POXDC input and also to the CM board's ExcB input.

11255   Sun Apr 26 15:05:35 2015 JenneUpdateASCunBroken Xass?

Thank you both.

I have updated the .snap file, so that it'll use these parameters, as Rana left them.  Also, so that the "unfreeze" script works without changes (since it wants to make the overall gain 1), I have changed the Xarm input matrix elements from 1 to 0.1, for all of them.  This should be equivalent to the overall gain being 0.1.

11256   Sun Apr 26 15:34:34 2015 JenneUpdateSUSPRM oplev centered

After last week's work on the BS/PRM oplev table, I think the PRM oplev got centered while the PRM was misaligned.  With the PRM aligned, the oplev spot was not on the QPD.  It has been centered.

11258   Mon Apr 27 01:13:08 2015 JenneUpdateLSCPRCL angular FF not working, no locking :(

The PRCL angular feed forward is not working, and without it I am having a very difficult time keeping the PRMI locked while the arms are at high power (either buzzing, or the one time I got stable high power partway through the transition).  Obviously if the PRMI unlocks once CARM and DARM are mostly relying on the REFL signals, I lose the whole IFO.

Q and I had been noticing over the last few weeks that the angular feed forward wasn't seeming quite as awesome as it did when I first implemented it.  We speculated that this was likely because we had started DC coupling the ITM optical levers, which changes the way seismic motion is propagated to cavity axis motion (since the ITMs are reacting differently).

Anyhow, today it does not work at all.  It just pushes the PRM until the PRMI loses lock. I am worried that, even though Rana re-tuned the BS and PRM oplev servos to be very similar to how they used to be, there is enough of a difference (especially when compounded with the DC coupled ITMs) that the feed forward transfer functions just aren't valid anymore.

Since this prevents whole IFO locking, I spent some time trying to get it back under control, although it's still not working.

I remeasured the actuator transfer function of how moving PRM affects the sideband spot at the QPD, in the PRMI-only situation.  I didn't make a comparison plot for the yaw degree of freedom, but you can see that the pitch transfer function is pretty different below ~20Hz, which is the whole region that we care about.  In the plot below, black is from January (PRMI-only, no DC-coupled ITMs) and blue is from today (PRMI-only, with DC-coupled ITMs, and somewhat different BS/PRM oplev setup):

Pitch_oldVsNew.pdf

I calculated new Wiener filters, and tried to put them in, but sometimes (and I don't understand what the pattern is yet) I get "error" in the Alternate box, rather than the zpk version of my sos filter.  It seems to go away if you use fewer and fewer poles for fitting the Wiener filters, but then the fit is so poor that you're not going to get any subtraction (according to the residual estimation plot that uses the fitted filters rather than the ideal Wiener filters). The pitch filters could only handle 6 poles, although the yaw filters were fine with 20.

The feed forward just keeps pushing the PRM away though.  I flipped the signs on the Wiener filters, I tried recalculating without the actuator pre-filtering, I don't know why it's failing.  But, I'm not able to lock the interferometer.  Which sucks, because I was hoping to finally get most of my noise coupling measurements done today.

Attachment 1: Pitch_oldVsNew.pdf
11366   Fri Jun 19 16:54:20 2015 JenneUpdateComputer Scripts / ProgramsWiener scripts in scripts directory

I have put the Wiener filter scripts into  /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/Wiener/  .  They are under version control.

The idea is that you should copy ParameterFile_Example.m into your own directory, and modify parameters at the top of the file, and then when you run that script, it will output fitted filters ready to go into Foton.  (Obviously you must check before actually implementing them that you're happy with the efficacy and fits of the filters).

Things to be edited in the ParameterFile include:

• Channel names for the witness sensors (which should each have a corresponding .txt file with the raw data)
• Channel name for the target
• Folder where this raw data is saved
• Folder to save results
• 1 or 0 to determine if need to load and downsample the raw data, or if can use pre-downsampled data
• This should probably be changed to just look to see if the pre-downsampled data already exists, and if not, do the downsampling
• 1 or 0 to determine if should use actuator pre-weighting
• Data folder for measured actuator TFs (only if using actuator pre-weighting)
• Actuator TFs can be many different exported text files from DTT, and they will be stitched together to make one set of measurements, where all points have coherence above some quantity (that you set in the ParameterFile)
• Coherence threshold for actuator data (only use data points with coherence above this amount)
• Fit order for actuator transfer function's vectfit
• 1 or 0 to decide if should use preweighting filter
• zeros and poles for preweighting filters
• 1 or 0 to decide if should use lowpass after Wiener filters (will be provided corresponding SOS coefficients for this filter, if you say yes)
• Lowpass filter parameters: cuttoff freq, order and ripple for the Cheby filter
• New sample rate for the data
• Number of Wiener filter taps
• Decide if use brute force matrix inversion or Levinson method
• Calibrations for witnesses and target
• Fit order for each of the Wiener filters

I think that's everything that is required.

•
11507   Fri Aug 14 17:20:01 2015 JenneUpdatePEMGur interface box is wonky

IIRC, the Guralp box's 3rd set of channels do not have all of the modifications that were made on channels 1 and 2.

11639   Wed Sep 23 12:51:03 2015 JenneUpdateLSCDRMI + ALS Arms

Nice!!

11677   Fri Oct 9 11:24:06 2015 JenneUpdateLSCDRFPMI Progress

7677   Wed Nov 7 00:10:38 2012 Jenne UpdateAlignmentAlignment- POY and oplevs. photos.
Can we have a drawing of what you did, how you confirmed your green alignment as the same as the IR (I think you had a good idea
about the beam going to the BS...can you please write it down in detail?), and where you think the beam is clipping? Cartoon-level, 20
to 30 minutes of work, no more. Enough to be informative, but we have other work that needs doing if we're going to put on doors
Thursday morning (or tomorrow afternoon?).

The ETMs weren't moved today, just the beam going to the ETMs, so the oplevs there shouldn't need adjusting. Anyhow, the oplevs I'm
more worried about are the ones which include in-vac optics at the corner, which are still on the to-do list.

So, tomorrow Steve + someone can check the vertex oplevs, while I + someone finish looking briefly at POX and POP, and at POY in
more detail.

If at all possible, no clamping / unclamping of anything on the in-vac tables. Let's try to use things as they are if the beams are getting to
where they need to go.  Particularly for the oplevs, I'd rather have a little bit of movement of optics on the out-of-vac tables than any
changes happening inside.

I made a script that averages together many photos taken with the capture script that Rana found, which takes 50 pictures, one after
another. If I average the pictures, I don't see a spot. If I add the photos together even after subtracting away a no-beam shot, the
picture us saturated and is completely white. I'm trying to let ideas percolate in my head for how to get a useful spot.
10528   Tue Sep 23 17:56:13 2014 Jenne, EricQUpdateGeneralVent prep for SRC length change

As Q mentioned in elog 10527, (prompted by Koji's email this afternoon) we are prepping the IFO for vent.  Here is a copy of the pre-vent checklist from the wiki, updated as we work:

Pre-vent checklists

1. Center all oplevs/IPPOS/IPANG
2. Align the arm cavities for IR and align the green lasers to the arms.
3. Make a record of the MC pointing
4. Align the beam at the PSL angle and position QPDs
5. Reduce input power by adjusting wave plate+PBS setup on the PSL table BEFORE the PMC. (Using the WP + PBS that already exist after the laser.)
6. Replace 10% BS before MC REFL PD with Y1 mirror and lock MC at low power.
7. Close shutter of PSL-IR and green shutters at the ends
8. Make sure the jam nuts are protecting bellows

Notes:

1 & 2:  Locked arms on IR, ran ASS.  Unlocked IFO, aligned PRM for good POP flashes, aligned SRM for symmetric AS flashes.  Aligned all oplevs.  Used PZTs to align Xgreen to arm. Used knobs to align Ygreen to arm.  With PS:L green shutter closed, Xgreen  = 0.520, Ygreen = 0.680.

3:  Moved MC servo output cable that goes to ADC from OUT2 (which we had been using for monitoring AO path signals) back to its usual OUT1 (which is MC_L).  This is used in the spot position measurement script.  Spots at:  [2.32, -0.50, 1.97, -1.11, 0.26, -1.86] mm.

4: Done -Q

5:  Removed a PD that was monitoring the light coming backwards through the Faraday that sits just after the laser, just in case (confirmed that beam dump behind PD was catching beam).  Other port of PBS just had regular black hole dump.  Adjusted half wave plate until we had ~90mW just before injection into the vacuum.

6: Completed. Locked MC manually at transmission of ~1150, but low power autolocker isn't working. This isn't a critical thing, and can be fixed at any point during the vent. -Q

7: Shutters closed. Ready for Steve to check nuts and begin venting! -Q

10529   Wed Sep 24 08:39:32 2014 Jenne, EricQUpdateGeneralVent prep for SRC length change

 Quote: As Q mentioned in elog 10527, (prompted by Koji's email this afternoon) we are prepping the IFO for vent.  Here is a copy of the pre-vent checklist from the wiki, updated as we work:   Pre-vent checklists   Center all oplevs/IPPOS/IPANG Align the arm cavities for IR and align the green lasers to the arms. Make a record of the MC pointing Align the beam at the PSL angle and position QPDs Reduce input power by adjusting wave plate+PBS setup on the PSL table BEFORE the PMC. (Using the WP + PBS that already exist after the laser.) Replace 10% BS before MC REFL PD with Y1 mirror and lock MC at low power. Close shutter of PSL-IR and green shutters at the ends Make sure the jam nuts are protecting bellows Notes: 1 & 2:  Locked arms on IR, ran ASS.  Unlocked IFO, aligned PRM for good POP flashes, aligned SRM for symmetric AS flashes.  Aligned all oplevs.  Used PZTs to align Xgreen to arm. Used knobs to align Ygreen to arm.  With PS:L green shutter closed, Xgreen  = 0.520, Ygreen = 0.680. 3:  Moved MC servo output cable that goes to ADC from OUT2 (which we had been using for monitoring AO path signals) back to its usual OUT1 (which is MC_L).  This is used in the spot position measurement script.  Spots at:  [2.32, -0.50, 1.97, -1.11, 0.26, -1.86] mm. 4: Done -Q 5:  Removed a PD that was monitoring the light coming backwards through the Faraday that sits just after the laser, just in case (confirmed that beam dump behind PD was catching beam).  Other port of PBS just had regular black hole dump.  Adjusted half wave plate until we had ~90mW just before injection into the vacuum. 6: Completed. Locked MC manually at transmission of ~1150, but low power autolocker isn't working. This isn't a critical thing, and can be fixed at any point during the vent. -Q 7: Shutters closed. Ready for Steve to check nuts and begin venting! -Q

8379   Mon Apr 1 09:05:09 2013 Jenne, GabrieleConfigurationLSCPOP22 configuration

On Friday we modified the POP22 set up: now the PD output goes to a bias tee. The DC output goes to the ADC board, while the RF output goes to an amplifier (Mini-circuits ZFL-1000LN+), to a band pass filter at 21.4 MHz and then to the ADC

3093   Mon Jun 21 14:21:34 2010 Jenne, KiwamuUpdatePhotosInspection of Magnets for the TTs

Some pictures of "magnet inspection" from Picasa.

The coating of some magnets are chipped...

1823   Mon Aug 3 22:54:53 2009 Jenne, Koji, ranaUpdateIOOMC_trans is now better, but not best

Jenne, Koji, Rana

After fixing up the Mode Cleaner a bit more (fiddling more with the MC_align sliders to get the alignment before locking, making sure that it is able to lock), we noticed that the MC Trans path could use some help. To align the MC, we put MC1 and MC3 back into the position where Rob left it on Thursday and then maximized the transmission with MC2. Then we went back and maximized with MC1/3 keeping in mind the Faraday. We got a good transmission and the X-arm had a transmission of 0.8 without us touching its alignment.

Upon looking at the AP table portion of the MC_trans path, we decided that it was all pretty bad.  The light travels around the edge of the AP table, then out the corner of the table toward the PSL table.  A periscope brings it down to the level of the PSL table, and then it travels through a few optics to the MC_trans QPD.

The light was clipping on the way through the periscope, and so the MC_trans QPD was totally unreliable as a method of fine-tuning the alignment of the Mode Cleaner.  Ideally we'd like to be able to maximize MC_trans, and say that that's a good MC alignment, but that doesn't work when the beam is clipped.

Things done:

1. The first turning mirror on the AP table after the beam comes out of the vacuum was changed from a 1" optic to a 2" optic, because the spot size is ~4-6mm.  We were careful to avoid clipping the OMCT beam, by using a nifty U200 mount (C-shaped instead of ring-shaped).

2.  We placed a lens with a RoC of 1m (focal length for 1064nm is ~2m), a 2" optic, between the first two mirrors, to help keep the beam small-ish when it gets to the periscope, to help avoid clipping.

3. Rana adjusted the angle of the upper periscope mirror, because even when the beam was centered on the steering mirror directly in front of the periscope and the spot was centered on the first periscope mirror, the beam wouldn't hit the bottom periscope mirror.

4. We noticed that the bottom periscope mirror was mounted much too low.  It was mounted as if the optics after it were 3" high, which is true for all of the input optics on the PSL table.  However, for the MC_trans stuff, all the optics are 4".  We moved the periscope up one hole, which made it the correct height.

5. We removed the skinny beam tube which guided/protected the beam coming off the periscope after a steering mirror since it (a) wasn't necessary and (b) was clipping the beam. We cannot use such skinny tubes anymore Steve.

6. There was a lens just before the 2nd steering mirror on the PSL table portion, which we removed since we had placed the other lens earlier in the path.  2 lenses made the beam too skinny at the QPD.

7.  After this 2nd steering mirror, there had been a pickoff, to send a bit of beam at a crazy angle over to the RFAM mon, which we removed.  This results in a much brighter beam at the MC_trans QPD, and at the camera.  The QPDs readouts are now a factor of ~3.5 higher than they used to be.  These (especially the camera) could use some ND-filtering action.

8.  The steering optic directly in front of the MC_trans QPD is a beamsplitter, and instead of dumping the light which doesn't go to the MC_trans QPD, we used this to go over to the RFAM mon (instead of the pickoff which we had removed).

9.  Koji fixed up the optics directly in front of the RFAM mon, accomodating the new position of the input light (now at a much more reasonable angle, and about 15cm farther back from the PD). Note the beam dump which is preventing the cables from the FSS board from entering the beam path. This included removing an ND filter wheel, so the RFAM mon values will all be higher now.  Koji also has the beam going to the PD going at a slight angle, so that the beam isn't directly reflected on itself, so that it can be dumped.

10. We aligned the beam onto the MC_trans QPD using the first steering mirror on the PSL table.

11. We also removed the giant wall of beam dumps separating the squeezing section of the table from the rest of the table.

Alberto will elog things about the RFAM mon, including different values of the PD output, etc.

Still on the to-do list:

A.  Replace the second steering mirror on the AP table after the MC_trans light leaves the vacuum with a 2" optic, since the lens we placed isn't tight enough to make the spot small there yet.  Us a U200A mount if possible, because they are really nice mounts.

B.  Put an ND filter in front of the MC_trans camera, because the image is too bright.

C.  Normalize the MC_trans QPD - the horz and vert are pretty much direct voltage readouts, with no normalization.  They should be divided by the DC value.  This lack of normalization results in higher sensitivity to input pointing.

D.  Long term, next time someone wants to optimize the MC_trans path, move all the optics, including the MC_trans QPD and the camera closer to the periscope on the PSL table.  There's no reason for the beam to be traveling nearly the full width of the PSL table when we're not manuvering around squeezing stuff.

E. Never, ever purchase these horrible U100 or U200 mounts with the full ring and the little plastic clips. They are the "AC28" version. Bad, bad, bad.

Image 1:  The new setup of the AP table, Mc_trans portion.

Image 2:  New setup of the MC_trans part of the PSL table.

Attachment 1: P8030099_copy.JPG
Attachment 2: P8030102_copy.JPG
7370   Mon Sep 10 18:42:33 2012 Jenne, Mike J.UpdateCamerasXY beam scan tomorrow

We tweaked the mirror on the AP table to go through the center of the lens in order to get a more circular beam, but it seemed ineffective. So we put an IR card in front of the lens and behind the lens to see if the beam was circular or ovacular, but could not tell. We also moved the camera to see, but still couldn't see a distinct circle or oval. So Mike and Q will do a beam scan tomorrow in both the X and Y directions to see if the beam is circular or not.

1172   Wed Dec 3 20:10:09 2008 Jenne, RanaUpdatePEMComparing Wiener subtraction with different seismometers
Attached is a plot of MC_L, and then the residual MC_L after static Wiener filtering, using different combinations of our accelerometers and seismometers.

This is the same type of plot that Rana has included in the past few weeks, using Wiener filters calculated with c1wino.m

This data is from GPS 912312914, duration = 7200 sec, sometime during the night last night.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like adding the Guralp seismometer to the Accelerometers and the Ranger did much, especially at low frequencies (all sensors = black curve). We'll have to investigate why this is true, and what we can do to get some low-frequency subtraction going on.

In the legend, "Residuals Accels, Guralp, Ranger" implies that the residual has been calculated using all of the sensors listed.
Attachment 1: Dec032008_c1wino_seisCombos.png
1173   Wed Dec 3 20:36:07 2008 Jenne, RanaUpdatePEMComparing Wiener subtraction with different seismometers
The Ranger has now been moved over to sit underneath the MC2 tank (it was previously close to the PSL rack). It
is still pointed in the +Y direction (towards ETMY, aka south).

New spectra attached - looks like the coherence is still there between the Guralp and the Ranger which are now
seperated by the MC length (~12 m). At LLO, I have witnessed a coherence of less than 0.3 above 1 Hz for these
distances. Curious.

L960019-00-F describes measurements done at SLAC on seismic coherence. The iLIGO LSC PDD
(http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/T/T970122-00.pdf) discusses in sec 4.2 how this was incorporated into the LSC design.

When we get our next Guralp, it will be interesting to move them around and determine what the cross-spectrum
is between different points in the lab during typical times.

In the second attachment, I have plotted the square of the quantity used in the LSC PDD (S_xy) which I think is
what we now plot in DTT as 'Coherence'.

The third attachment shows the coherences among the TM SUSPOS_INs. I've turned off the oplev servos for this but
the OSEM damping is still on. Its not quite the same as the theory, but we could probably measure/tweak the
seismic velocity and then get better agreement.
Attachment 1: d.pdf
Attachment 2: sco.png
Attachment 3: fly.pdf
9190   Thu Oct 3 01:24:31 2013 Jenne, RanaUpdateIOOPMC

The PMC transmission was around 0.78 all day, rather than the usual 0.83ish.  Rana went out to the PSL table and fixed up the PMC alignment.  This should not need to be done very often, so things to check before touching the alignment are FSS / PMC settings (digital stuff).  Make sure that the PC RMS (on the FSS screen) is low (at least below 2, preferably below 1), and that the FSS Fast monitor is near 5ish (not near 0 or 10).

This is a capture of PMC REFL's camera after Rana was finished. If it doesn't look this good when you finish then you are not done. Never do PMC alignment without looking at the PMC REFL camera.

The attached trend shows 80 days of PMC REFL and TRANS. The bad alignment stuff started on Sep 21-24 time period. You know who you are.

Attachment 2: pmc80.png
9209   Sun Oct 6 22:52:09 2013 Jenne, RanaUpdateIOOinput beam to PMC aligned again

after

I wonder what's drifting between the laser and the PMC? And why is it getting worse lately?

10157   Tue Jul 8 22:53:02 2014 Jenne, RanaUpdateElectronicsTransmon QPD / whitening

We need to work farther on checking out the end transmission QPD electronics situation.

In bullet-point form, we need to:

* Ensure that the Weiss QPD head modifications have been made on these diodes.  (cf. Rai W's LLO elogs on QPDs)

* Ensure that the QPD biases are somewhere in the range of 10-15V, not the old 100V.  (Because we only need HV to make the capacitance low for RF use. Low voltage means less power dissipation in the head)

* Ensure the Rana/Rob modifications have been propagated to the whitening boards, so that we have full dynamic range.  (Steve is looking for the marked up paper schematics)

* Replace signal path resistors with low noise metal film resistors.

* Check QPDs / whitening boards for oscillation (with a scope probe), ensure that we chose an appropriate analog gain.

In thinking about the transimpedances that we want, we thought about the current that we expect.  We should get about 100 mW of light transmitted through the ETMs when we have full IFO lock.  There is a 50/50 BS to split the light between the QPD and the Thorlabs transmission diode, so we have about 50 mW incident on the QPDs, which is about 13 mW per quadrant.  With a sensitivity of about 0.15 Amps/Watt for silicon, this means that we're expecting to see about 2 mA of current per quadrant once we have the IFO fully resonant. We want this to correspond to about 5V, which means we want a transimpedance gain of around 2.5 kOhm.

For the things that need checking, each quadrant has:

Photodiode  ------  Gain Switch 1 ----- Gain Switch 2  ------ Gain Switch 3 ------ Variable Gain Amplifier ------- Whitening stage 1 (z @ 4 Hz, p @ 40 Hz)  ------- Whitening stage 2 (z @ 4 Hz, p @ 40 Hz)

We want to check on the status of each of these switches, and whether they actually do what they say on the QPD Head screens.  Q has checked out and fixed the bit outputs for the whitening stages, but the rest still needs to be checked out.  Also note that the Switch 1, Switch 2 and Switch 3 are common to all 4 quadrants (i.e. enabling switch 1 on one quadrant enables it on all quadrants), but the variable gains and the whitening stages are individual for each quadrant.

10408   Tue Aug 19 01:01:36 2014 Jenne, RanaUpdateGreen LockingYarm Green PDH

[ Rana, Jenne]

We remeasured the Yend PDH box.

When we first started, the green couldn't hold lock to the arm - it kept flickering between modes.  Changing the gain of the PDH box (from 7.5 to 6.0) helped.

We measured a calibration, from our injection point to our measurement point.

The concept was that we'd take the mixer output, and put that into an SR560, and put the swept sine injection into the other input port of the '560, and use A-B.  So, for this calibration, we left A unplugged, and just had the RF out of the 4395 going to input B of the '560.  The 600 Ohm output of the '560 went to the error point input on the PDH box (during normal operation the mixer output is connected directly to the error point input).  The SR560 was set to gain of 1, no filtering.  I don't recall if we were using high range or low noise, but we tried both and didn't really see a difference between them.

We had the 4395 take that calibration out, and then we measured the closed loop gain up to 1 MHz. (Same measurement setup as above, but we connected the mixer out to the input of the SR560 to close the loop, and made sure we were locked on a TEM00 green mode.) Rana used an ipython notebook to infer the open loop gain from our measurement.  Our conclusion is that we don't have nearly enough gain margin in our loop.  We found the PDH box gain knob at 7.5, and we turned it down to 6.0, but the loop is still pretty borderline. We used the high impedance active probe to measure the error point monitor, since we aren't sure that that point can drive a 50 Ohm load.

We also measured the error point spectra and the control point spectra.  Unfortunately, the saved data from the analyzer (no matter what is on the screen) comes out in spectrum, not spectral density.  So, we need to check our conversion, but right now to get from Watts power to Volts, we do sqrt(50 ohm * data).  We then need to get to spectral density, and right now we're just dividing by the square root of the bandwith that is reported in the .par file. This last step is the one we want to especially check, by perhaps putting some known amount of noise (from an SR785?) into the 4395, and checking that our calibration math returns the expected noise spectrum.

What still needs to be done is to calibrate this into Hz/rtHz.  To do this, we were thinking that we should look at the error point on a 'scope while the cavity is flashing.

Anyhow, here is the uncalibrated error point spectrum.  Purple is a measurement up to 30kHz, with 30Hz bandwidth.  Blue is a measurement up to 300kHz with 300Hz bandwidth.  The gain peaking schmutz above 10kHz sucks, and we'd like to get rid of it.  We also see the same peak at ~150kHz that Q saw earlier today.  We were using the high impedance probe here too.

We have the data for the control point (all the data files are in /users/jenne/ALS/PDHloops/Yend_18Aug2014), but we haven't plotted it yet.

Things that need doing:

* (JCD) Think about this box's purpose in life.  What kind of gain do we need?  Do we need more / less than we're currently getting? NPRO freq noise is 1/f and is 10kHz/rtHz at 1Hz (this is from a plot of an iLIGO NPRO from Rana's thesis, but it's probably similar). Talk to Kiwamu; the noise budget in the paper seems to indicate that we had some kind of boost on or something.  Also, if we need much more gain than we already have, we'll definitely need a different box, maybe the PDH2 box that they have over in WBridge.

* (EQ, priority 1) Measure and calibrate error point noise down to lower freq for both arms.  What could we win by putting in a boost? If the residual noise is high, maybe the laser isn't good at following arm, so beatnote isn't good length info for the arm, and we can't succeed.

* (EQ, priority 2) Measure TF of PDH box, and a separate measurement of the Pomona box that is between the mixer and the error point - is that eating a bunch of phase?  It's already an LC circuit which is good, but do we really want a 120kHz lowpass when our modulation frequency is roughly 200kHz?  Ask ChrisW - he worked on one of these with Dmass.

* (EQ, priority 2ish) Measure TF of Xend PDH loop (unless you already have one, up to ~1MHz).

* (JCD) Make DCC tree leaf for PDH box #17.  Take photos of box.

10119   Wed Jul 2 11:32:44 2014 Jenne, TaraVUpdatePEMStatus of seismometer stations, Yend Guralp moved

[Jenne, TaraV]

We had a look this morning at the status of the seismometer array, so that we can get it all put together. While we were looking at the Guralp at the Yend, we noticed that it was pointing the wrong way.  The North-South nubbins were pointed East-West, so X and Y coming out of the seismometer were backward.

To fix the Yend's Guralp, we powered off the Guralp readout box, rotated the seismometer, re-leveled it, and then turned the power back on.  Now X from the seismometer lines up with the X data channel, and similarly for Y.

The Yend Guralp has all of the cabling needed, and is installed on the granite slab.  This seismometer doesn't need any more work for now.  When we get around to it, we'll need to do some kind of thermal insulation, but other than that, it's good to go.

The Xend will also have a Guralp (Zach still has it in the Gyro lab for now).  We have the long cable that should go from the readout box to the slab that we'll need to put into the cable tray.  The short cable from the slab's plate to the seismometer is already in place.  For this seismometer, we should just need to plop the instrument in place and lay the cable in the overhead cable trays.  We should also remove the now obsolete STS-2 cable while we're doing that.  So, the Xend seismometer station doesn't need too much work.

The corner station will need more work.  Zach made for us the long cable, although he still has it in the Gyro lab, so when we get the seismometer and cable back, we'll need to lay that cable in the overhead trays.  The short cable from the slab's plate to the seismometer does not exist yet.  We want to make sure that we can feed the finished cable and connector through the hole in the slab, and then we'll solder it up out here on the EE bench.  I think this is how Den was doing things.  If not, we'll have to do the soldering in-situ, which we don't want.  So, for the corner station, we need to make the short cable, lay the long cable, get the T-240 back from Zach and put it on the slab, re-install the readout box that Zach has, etc, etc.  We should also make sure that the spaghetti pot fits on the slab, underneath the piece of metal that's sticking out over the slab.  We think that it's the same amount of clearance that the Yend pot has, so it should be okay, but we'll check.  The O-ring seems to be sitting on the MC2 chamber, so we should remember that.

Neither the Xend nor the corner station had the yellow dog clamps, so we'll have to figure out where Den / Steve have hidden them.

EDIT:  We have checked, and the Guralp connector, which is larger than the Trillium connector, fits through the hole in the slab (with some disassembly), so we can solder together the short cable out here on the EE bench, and install it separately.  Eeeeexxxxxcelllent.

8990   Fri Aug 9 16:49:35 2013 Jenne, manasaUpdateElectronicsPost-vent alignment cont'd - RFPDs

Notes to the fiber team:

I am aligning beam onto the RFPDs (I have finished all 4 REFL diodes, and AS55), in preparation for locking.

In doing so, I have noticed that the fiber lasers for the RFPD testing are always illuminating the photodiodes!  This seems bad!  Ack!

For now, I blocked the laser light coming from the fiber, did my alignment, then removed my blocks.  The exception is REFL55, which I have left an aluminum beam dump, so that we can use REFL55 for PRM-ITMY locking, so I can align the POP diodes.

EDIT:  I have also aligned POP QPD, and POP110/22.  The fiber launcher for POP110 was not tight in its mount, so when I went to put a beam block in front of it and touched the mount, the whole thing spun a little bit.  Now the fiber to POP110 is totally misaligned, and should be realigned.

What was done for the alignment:

1. Aligned the arms (ran ASS).

2. Aligned the beam to all the REFL and AS PDs.

3. Misaligned the ETMs and ITMX.

4. Locked PRM+ITMY using REFL11.
The following were modified to enable locking
(1) PRCL gain changed from +2.0 to -12.
(2) Power normalization matrix for PRCL changed from +10.0 to 0.
(3) FM3 in PRCL servo filter module was turned OFF.

5. POP PDs were aligned.

2284   Tue Nov 17 21:09:17 2009 Jenne, ranaUpdateGeneralLittle Thorlabs Photodiode

[Rana, Jenne]

We opened up the little Thorlabs battery operated PD to see what was inside.  Rana took some pictures, and I drew a schematic (attached).  It's just a diode, biased with a battery (albeit a crazy 22.5V battery).

---------------
Comment by KA: PD is Hamamatsu S1223-01 Si PIN diode.

What a crazy battery. The main point is that it looks like this can be used for reasonable purposes: uses a load resistor on the BNC connector and you can use some pre-amp (e.g. Busby box or SR560) to have a low noise PD readout. You can also use the SR560 in its A-B mode as an 'opamp'. Ground the A input and the use a pole at 1 Hz and make the Output go into the B input through some large series resistor. The BNC from the PD gets Teed into the B input as well.

Then this becomes a transimpedance circuit readout of the diode, using the current noise of the SR560 as the limit.

Attachment 1: ThorlabsPD.png
3137   Tue Jun 29 16:44:12 2010 Jenne, ranaUpdateMOPAMOPA is NOT dead, was just asleep

 Quote: Not dead. It just had a HT fault. You can tell by reading the front panel. Cycling the power usually fixes this.

MOPA is back onliine.  Rana found that the fuse in the AC power connector's fuse had blown.  This was evident by smelling all of the inputs and outputs of the MOPA controller. The power cord we were using for this was only rated for 10A and therefore was a safety hazard. The fuse should be rated to blow before the power cord catches on fire. The power cord end was slightly melted. I don't know why it hadn't failed in the last 12 years, but I guess the MOPA was drawing a lot of extra current for the DTEC or something due to the high temperature of the head.

We got some new fuses from Todd @ Downs.

The ones we got however were fast-blow, and that's what we want  The fuses are 10A, 250V.  The fuses are ~.08 inches long, 0.2 inches in diameter.

10146   Mon Jul 7 21:36:33 2014 Jenne, ranaUpdatePSLPMC local oscillator is going wonky

The PMC local oscillator is going a little weird dyingWe need to check out why the level is fluctuating so much.

Here's a 6 month plot, where you can see that the lower level keeps getting lower (y-axis is dBm):

This LHO entry from 2008 shows where we first discovered this effect. As Rick Savage and Paul Schwinberg later found out, the ERA-5SM+ amplifier slowly degrades over several years and was replaced for both of the eLIGO interferometers. We have spares in the Blue box and can replace this sometime during the day.

Our PMC LO is made by this obsolete crystal oscillator circuit: D000419. There are many versions of this floating around, but they all have the ERA-5 issue.

1090   Fri Oct 24 22:30:38 2008 Jenne,ranaUpdatePEMNoise from Guralp Seismometer
Attached is a Power Spectrum of the noise on the Vert1 channel of the Guralp seismometer. The noise is in the several hundreds of nV/rtHz up near 50Hz and higher, but is in the several microV/rtHz range at lower frequencies. Our high frequency noise is almost definitely below the noise of the ADC, but the lower frequencies, where we actually care, it's not as clear.

To Do list:
• Measure the noise of the ADC - is the Guralp Box lower for all frequencies?
• Use conversion factors to convert this measured noise into the minimum ground motion that we can measure. Is this at least a factor of 100 lower than our regular ground motion?

** UPDATE: This is actually the noise of the Guralp breakout box, not the Guralp itself. It is the noise measured on the output of the box
with the input shorted. The board is configured to have a gain of 20 (10 from the AD620 and 2x for differential drive). We also measured
directly at the AD620 output and all of this noise comes directly from that chip. If Jenne calculates that this noise is too high we would
have to find a replacement with a better low frequency floor (e.g. LT1012 or LT1007 depending on the Guralps source impedance).
Attachment 1: Vert1_Noise_24Oct2008.png
5015   Thu Jul 21 23:36:51 2011 JennyUpdate Fitting beam waist with MATLAB

I am starting work on the PSL table at the 40m. My goal is to lock the laser coming from the nearby table to the FP cavity and get a measurement of the response to a temperature step on the surrounding can.

I have to mode match the beam to the cavity. Specifically, I have to mode match to the beam coming from the PMC through the EOM to the polarizing beam splitter. Yesterday David and I measured the beam width at various distances (from a particular lens through which the beam traveled), and I fit that data using MATLAB to find the beam's waist size and location. However, I'm not convinced that the fit is any good, since we only took measurements at five spots and they had large error bars.

 z (mm) 2w_vert (mm) 2w_horiz (mm) 180 4.68 3.38 230 4.64 3.49 305 4.68 3.47 370 5.1 3.81 510 5.5 4.17

Here is the fit I obtained using fminsearch. The horizontal beam width measurements were smaller than the vertical width measurements, suggesting that the incoming beam was elliptical. I fit the data for each set of measurements separately and got two waist locations. The red trace is the fit for the horizontal width and the blue represents the vertical width of the beam. Averaging the two fitted waist locations and sizes gives

vert z_0= -1760 mm (waist location)

horiz z_0= -1540 mm (waist location)

vert w_0 = 0.286 mm (waist size)

horiz  w_0 = 0.275 mm (waist size)

avg z_0= -1650 mm

avg w_0 = 0.281 mm

Here is the code I used:

I defined the function spotsize.m and then made a function gaussbeam.m that called it with input parameters and returned the least squares error. I then wrote another function twobeamfits.m that ran fminsearch to minimize the least squares error and made the above plot. I've pasted the code below.

spotsize

function omega = spotsize(z_0, w_0, z)
lambda=0.001064;
omega=w_0*(1+(lambda*(z-z_0)/(pi*w_0^2)).^2).^(1/2);

gaussbeam

function sse = gaussbeam(params,xvals,yvals)

%This f'n takes as its inputs
%three parameters (w_0, z_0, and lambda),
%a vector of x-values (distances),
%and an associated vector of y-values (spotsizes),

%It then generates a vector of fitted y-values by applying
%an exponential approach function (single pole), with the given parameters,
%to the x-values.

%It then returns the sum of the squares of the entries of the difference
%between the fitted y-vector and the actual y-vector

z_0=params(1);
w_0=params(2);
fityvals=spotsize(z_0, w_0, xvals);

error=(fityvals - yvals);% .*xvals;
% sse stands for sum of squares error
sse=sum(error.^2);

twobeamfits

function [outputs] = twobeamfits(guesses, dists, vert, horiz)

%This f'n takes as its inputs
%two starting guess parameters (w_0 and z_0),
%a vector of distances (x-values),
%and two associated vectors of measured beam radii,

%the radius measured along the vertical axis

%and the radius measured along a horizontal axis (y-values).

%It then calls the gaussbeam f'n for each set of y-values and minimizes its output (sum of squares error)
%using the fminsearch f'n. It outputs the fit parameters it settles on.

%It then plots the input data, the fitted curves, and the residuals

fminopts=optimset('TolFun',1e-6,'MaxIter', 100000);
vertparams=fminsearch(@gaussbeam,guesses,fminopts,dists,vert);
fitvert=spotsize(vertparams(1), vertparams(2), dists);
resid1=(vert-fitvert)./vert;
spoterror=[.1, .1, .1, .1, .1]; %uncertainties, all in mm

fminopts=optimset('TolFun',1e-6,'MaxIter', 100000);
horizparams=fminsearch(@gaussbeam,guesses,fminopts,dists,horiz);
fithoriz=spotsize(horizparams(1), horizparams(2), dists);
resid2=(horiz-fithoriz)./horiz;

points=linspace(-2000,1000,1000);
figure(1)
hold off
clf
subplot(2,1,1)
hold on
errorbar(dists, vert, spoterror, 'x')
grid
errorbar(dists, horiz, spoterror, 'r*');
plot(points,spotsize(vertparams(1), vertparams(2), points));
plot(points,spotsize(horizparams(1), horizparams(2), points),'r');
xlabel('Distance z (mm)')
title('Gaussian Beam Fits')
ylabel('Spotsize w (mm)')
legend('Vertical Spotsize','Horizontal Spotsize','Vertical Fit',...
'Horizontal Fit','Location','SouthEast')
hold off

subplot(2,1,2)
plot(dists,resid1,'x')
hold on
plot(dists,resid2,'r*');
xlabel('Distance (z)')
title('Residuals')
ylabel('Fractional Difference')
legend('Vertical Fit Residuals','Horizontal Fit Residuals',...
'Location','SouthEast')
grid

outputs=[vertparams horizparams];

Later on I may repeat some measurements and try to gain more certainty in my fit. In the mean time I will use this beam profile for mode matching.

5036   Tue Jul 26 09:01:53 2011 JennyUpdateComputer Scripts / ProgramsMode matching

I found a mode matching solution to match the beam coming to the PSL table from the AP table so that I can lock the laser beam coming onto the PSL table to the reference cavity on the table. I determined that at the polarizing beam splitter, I want a beam with a q=(147+25.1i)mm (w0=58mm). This came from applying the ABCD matrices for three distances,

• d1=693 mm,
• d12=660.4 mm, and
• d2=393.7 mm, separated
• an f=229.1 mm planoconvex lens and
• an R=300 mm curved mirror.

to a beam with q0 = 406.4i mm (w0=0.371 mm at the PMC).

I obtained the following mode matching solution, which I will try to implement on the PSL table:

The beam I have has waist 0.281 mm at -2.74 m (I set my origin at the polarizing beam splitter--the spot where I want my beam to match the beam coming from the PMC, so all waists are behind that point). These numbers  come from the beam-profiling and MATLAB-fitting I did (see 5015).

The solution I chose was: f = 1145.6 mm at -0.95 m and f = 572.7 mm at -0.62 m. This may need to be changed however, if I need to add in some beam steering, which would increase the path length traveled by the beam.

5069   Sat Jul 30 10:01:35 2011 JennyUpdatePSLPSL table work

I've been working on the PSL table to put together a setup so that I can measure the reference cavity's response to a temperature step increase at the can surrounding it. My first step was to mode match the beam coming from the AP table to the cavity.

I implemented my mode matching solution. I ended up using a different one from the one I last elogged about. Here is the solution I used:

Two lenses: f = 1016.7.6 mm at -0.96 m and f = 687.5 mm at -0.658 m. (I set my origin at the polarizing beam splitter--the spot where I want my beam to match the beam coming from the PMC, so all waists are behind that point). Below is what it should look like.

What I did on the table:

• Before placing lenses I aligned the beam and added a 1/2-wave plate between the two polarizing beam splitters to change the polarization of the beam from S to P.
• I aligned the beam so that it reflected off of the cavity opening (monitoring the reflected power with a photodetector connected to an oscilloscope and tweaking the alignment to maximize the reflected signal).
• I then placed the lenses at -0.93 and -0.64 mm because the exact spots were blocked by optics being used in another setup.
• I reasoned that since the fitting for the initial waist is so uncertain, the lens position being off by a few cm will not produce the dominating source of error. I am now driving the laser frequency using a lock-in as a function generator to drive the laser temperature at ~1 Hz. I'm then monitoring the power transmitted by the reference cavity with a camera connected to a TV monitor. I will use this setup to improve my mode matching.

Here's a picture of the PSL table with the lenses and mirror I added. The beam is redirected by a mirror and then a polarizing beam splitter. Past the beam splitter is another lens (f=286.5 mm), which was already in place from the mode matching of the beam from the PMC to the reference cavity.

Here is a block diagram of my intended experimental setup:

I am going to try to lock the laser to the cavity given my preliminary mode matching and then go back and improve it later. My next step is to find a frequency range for dithering the voltage sent to the PZT. To do this I will:

• Measure the transfer function (amplitude response) of the PZT using a photodiode. The power outputted by the laser varies with driving frequency.
• Find a frequency region in which the amplitude response is low.
Attachment 3: LIGO_block_diagram.png
5070   Sat Jul 30 10:03:32 2011 JennyUpdateComputer Scripts / ProgramsMode matching

I ended up having to switch to a different mode-matching solution, because I was unable to find the f = 572.7 mm lens. See my next elog entry (5069).

5096   Tue Aug 2 17:40:04 2011 JennyUpdatePSLReducing beam intensity incident on photodiode

I am using a PDA255 photodiode to measure the power outputted by the NPRO beam on the PSL table. (I'm going to then use a network analyzer to measure the amplitude response of the PZT to being driven at a range of frequencies. I'll detect the variation in in response to changing the driving frequency using this PDA255.)

The PDA255 has an active area of 0.8mm^2 and a maximum intensity for which the response is linear of 10mW/cm^2. This means that a beam I focus on the PD must have a power less than 0.08 mW (and even less if the spot size is smaller than the window size).

I used a power meter to measure the beam power and found it was 0.381 mW.

The second polarizing beam splitter in the setup transmits most of the beam power, but reflects 0.04 mW (according to the power meter). I'm going to place the photodiode there in the path of the reflected beam.

5114   Thu Aug 4 00:04:52 2011 JennyUpdatePSLNetwork analyzer and PD set up to measure amplitude response of PZT

Today I placed the PDA255 photodiode on the PSL table to catch the small amount of beam power reflected by the second polarizing beam splitter in my setup. I plugged the PD output to the oscilloscope to measure the voltage output and positioned the PD such that the voltage output was maximized. At best I was able to achieve a 300 mV DC output voltage from the PD, (which seems a bit low, as the PD is specified to go from 0 to 5 V and the specifications say that the response becomes nonlinear after 10 mW/cm^2 and my beam has an intensity of approximately 5 mw/cm^2. I would therefore expect to get more beam power but after over an hour of maneuvering, 300 mV was the highest voltage output I could get).

I am planning, tomorrow afternoon, to take a measurement of the amplitude response of the PZT driving the NPRO laser. I moved the 4395 spectrum/network analyzer to near the PSL table and connected the RF output to an RF splitter. I fed one output of that into the PZT and the other output into the R port on the network analyzer. I fed the PD output into the A port. I plan to measure A/R as a function of driving frequency, sweeping from 10 Hz to 30 mHz.

I also worked to improve the mode matching of the NPRO beam coming from the AP table to the reference cavity. I drove the temperature of the NPRO at 0.100 Hz with an amplitude of 0.300 V, which Koji told me corresponds to a 1GHz change in the laser frequency. The transmission from the cavity is being monitored by a camera connected to a TV monitor, and also by a PD connected to an oscilloscope. I then repositioned the second lens in my mode matching setup in an attempt to increase the transmission peaks from the zeroth order spacial mode and decrease the transmission peaks from higher order modes. I may have improved the mode matching slightly but I was unable to improve it significantly.

5126   Fri Aug 5 18:29:35 2011 JennyUpdatePSLNetwork analyzer and PD set up to measure amplitude response of PZT

 Quote: Today I placed the PDA255 photodiode on the PSL table to catch the small amount of beam power reflected by the second polarizing beam splitter in my setup. I plugged the PD output to the oscilloscope to measure the voltage output and positioned the PD such that the voltage output was maximized. At best I was able to achieve a 300 mV DC output voltage from the PD, (which seems a bit low, as the PD is specified to go from 0 to 5 V and the specifications say that the response becomes nonlinear after 10 mW/cm^2 and my beam has an intensity of approximately 5 mw/cm^2. I would therefore expect to get more beam power but after over an hour of maneuvering, 300 mV was the highest voltage output I could get). I am planning, tomorrow afternoon, to take a measurement of the amplitude response of the PZT driving the NPRO laser. I moved the 4395 spectrum/network analyzer to near the PSL table and connected the RF output to an RF splitter. I fed one output of that into the PZT and the other output into the R port on the network analyzer. I fed the PD output into the A port. I plan to measure A/R as a function of driving frequency, sweeping from 10 Hz to 30 mHz. I also worked to improve the mode matching of the NPRO beam coming from the AP table to the reference cavity. I drove the temperature of the NPRO at 0.100 Hz with an amplitude of 0.300 V, which Koji told me corresponds to a 1GHz change in the laser frequency. The transmission from the cavity is being monitored by a camera connected to a TV monitor, and also by a PD connected to an oscilloscope. I then repositioned the second lens in my mode matching setup in an attempt to increase the transmission peaks from the zeroth order spacial mode and decrease the transmission peaks from higher order modes. I may have improved the mode matching slightly but I was unable to improve it significantly.

The ABSL beam had been blocked so that it wouldn't enter the interferometer. I moved the block so that the beam I've been using is unblocked by the beam going to the interferometer is still blocked.

I positioned a fast lens (f=28.7mm) a little over an inch in front of the PDA255 in order to decrease the spot size incident on the PD. I adjusted the rotation angle of the half wave plate to maximize the transmitted power through the PBS to the cavity and minimize the power reflected to my PD. I then adjusted the lens potion to fix the beam on the PD. The voltage output of the PD is now 150mW, but I have the ability to increase the incident power by rotating the wave plate slightly.

Now all I need is to set up the network analyzer again to record the amplitude response to modulating the PZT from 10 Hz to 30 MHz, reduce the input voltage into the analyzer using a DC block.

5144   Mon Aug 8 20:23:14 2011 JennyUpdatePSLNetwork analyzer and PD set up to measure amplitude response of PZT

Quote:

 Quote: Today I placed the PDA255 photodiode on the PSL table to catch the small amount of beam power reflected by the second polarizing beam splitter in my setup. I plugged the PD output to the oscilloscope to measure the voltage output and positioned the PD such that the voltage output was maximized. At best I was able to achieve a 300 mV DC output voltage from the PD, (which seems a bit low, as the PD is specified to go from 0 to 5 V and the specifications say that the response becomes nonlinear after 10 mW/cm^2 and my beam has an intensity of approximately 5 mw/cm^2. I would therefore expect to get more beam power but after over an hour of maneuvering, 300 mV was the highest voltage output I could get). I am planning, tomorrow afternoon, to take a measurement of the amplitude response of the PZT driving the NPRO laser. I moved the 4395 spectrum/network analyzer to near the PSL table and connected the RF output to an RF splitter. I fed one output of that into the PZT and the other output into the R port on the network analyzer. I fed the PD output into the A port. I plan to measure A/R as a function of driving frequency, sweeping from 10 Hz to 30 mHz. I also worked to improve the mode matching of the NPRO beam coming from the AP table to the reference cavity. I drove the temperature of the NPRO at 0.100 Hz with an amplitude of 0.300 V, which Koji told me corresponds to a 1GHz change in the laser frequency. The transmission from the cavity is being monitored by a camera connected to a TV monitor, and also by a PD connected to an oscilloscope. I then repositioned the second lens in my mode matching setup in an attempt to increase the transmission peaks from the zeroth order spacial mode and decrease the transmission peaks from higher order modes. I may have improved the mode matching slightly but I was unable to improve it significantly.

The ABSL beam had been blocked so that it wouldn't enter the interferometer. I moved the block so that the beam I've been using is unblocked by the beam going to the interferometer is still blocked.

I positioned a fast lens (f=28.7mm) a little over an inch in front of the PDA255 in order to decrease the spot size incident on the PD. I adjusted the rotation angle of the half wave plate to maximize the transmitted power through the PBS to the cavity and minimize the power reflected to my PD. I then adjusted the lens potion to fix the beam on the PD. The voltage output of the PD is now 150mW, but I have the ability to increase the incident power by rotating the wave plate slightly.

Now all I need is to set up the network analyzer again to record the amplitude response to modulating the PZT from 10 Hz to 30 MHz, reduce the input voltage into the analyzer using a DC block.

I rolled the network analyzer over to the PSL table (on the south side). I'm borrowing the DC block from Kiwamu's green locking setup. I'm going to first measure the amplitude response of a low pass filter to made sure that the analyzer is outputting what I expect. Then I will measure the laser PZT amplitude response. I plan to finish the measurement and return the network analyzer to it's usual location tonight.

5149   Tue Aug 9 02:34:26 2011 JennyUpdatePSLPZT transfer function measurement

Using a PDA255 on the PSL table, I measured the amplitude response of the NPRO PZT, sweeping from 10kHz to 5 MHz.

I took a run with the laser beam blocked. I then took three runs with the beam unblocked, changing the temperature of the laser by 10 mK between the first two runs and by 100mK between the second and third runs.

At the end of the night I turned off the network analyzer and unplugged the inputs. I'm leaving it near the PSL table, because I'd like to take more measurements tomorrow, probing a narrow bandwidth where the amplitude response is low.

On the PSL table, I'm still monitoring the reflected light from the cavity and the transmitted light through the cavity on the oscilloscope. I'm no longer driving the NPRO temperature with the lock-in.

I closed the shutter on the NPRO laser at the end of the night.

I'll log more details on the data tomorrow morning.

5156   Tue Aug 9 16:00:58 2011 JennyUpdatePSLAmplitude response of PZT

The top plot shows a sweep from 10 kHz to 5 MHz of the ratio of the voltage output of the PD detecting power from the NPRO laser beam and the RF source voltage (the magnitude of the complex transfer function). The black trace was taken with the laser beam blocked. For runs 2 and 3 I changed the laser temperature set point by 10 mK and 100 mK respectively to see if there was a significant change in the AM response. The bottom plots shows runs 2 and 3 compared to run 1 plotted in dB (to be explicit, i'm plotting 10 times the base 10 log of the magnitude of the ratio of two complex transfer functions). Changing the temperature seems to have only a minor effect on the output except at around 450kHz, where the response has a large peak in run 1 and much smaller peaks in runs 2 and 3.

The traces in the top plot consist of 16 averages taken with a 300Hz IF bandwidth, 15 dBm source power (attenuated with a 6 dB attenuator) and with 20dB attenuation of the input power from the PD.

Next I'm going to probe a narrow band region where the response is low (2.0MHz or 2.4MHz perhaps) and choose a bandwidth for the dither frequency for the PDH locking.

Attachment 1: AMresponsePZT.png
5165   Wed Aug 10 02:40:40 2011 JennyUpdatePSLDither freq for PZT chosen: 2.418 MHz

I've finished using the network analyzer to characterize find a dither frequency for driving the PZT to use in my PDH locking. I found a region in which the amplitude response of the PZT is low: The dip is centered at 2.418 MHz. Changing the NPRO laser temperature by 100mK has no significant effect on the transfer function in that region. I will post plots tomorrow.

I'm finished with the network analyzer. It is unplugged, and the cart is still near the PSL table. (I'll roll it back tomorrow when it won't disturb interferometer locking).

I closed the shutter on the NPRO at the end of the night.

Tomorrow I plan to put together the fast locking setup. I'll drive the PZT at 2.418 MHz. More details to come tomorrow.

5179   Wed Aug 10 20:40:17 2011 JennyUpdatePSLPDH locking: got an error signal

I ended up choosing a different dither frequency for driving the NPRO PZT: 230 kHz, because the phase modulation response in that region is higher according to other data taken on an NPRO laser (see this entry). At 230 there is a dip in the AM response of the PZT.

I am driving the PZT at 230 kHz and 13 dBm using a function generator. I am then monitoring the RF output of a PD that is detecting light reflected off the cavity. (The dither frequency was below the RF cutoff frequency of the PD, but it was appearing in the "DC output", so I am actually taking the "DC output" of the PD, which has my RF signal in it, blocking the real DC part of it with a DC block, and then mixing the signal with the 230kHz sine wave being sent to the PZT.

I am monitoring the mixer output on an oscilloscope, as well as the transmission through the cavity. I am sweeping the laser temperature using a lock in as a function generator sending out a sine wave at 0.2 V and 5 mHz. When there is a peak in the transmission, the error signal coming from the mixer passes through zero.

My next step is to find or build a low pass filter with a pole somewhere less than 100 kHz to cut out the unwanted higher frequency signal so that I have a demodulated error signal that I can use to lock the laser to the cavity.

5202   Fri Aug 12 03:49:45 2011 JennySummaryPSLNPRO PDH-Locked to Ref Cav

DMass and I locked the NPRO laser (Model M126-1064-700, S/N 238) on the AP table to the reference cavity on the PSL table using the PDH locking setup shown in the block diagram below (the part with the blue background):

A Marconi IFR 2023A signal generator outputs a sine wave at 230 kHz and 13 dBm, which is split. One output of the splitter drives the laser PZT while the other is sent to a 7dBm mixer. Also sent to the mixer is the output of a photodiode that is detecting the reflected power from off the cavity. (A DC block is used so that only RF signal from the PD is sent to the mixer). The output of the mixer goes through an SR560 low-noise preamp, which is set to act as a low pass filter with a gain of 5 and a pole at 30 kHz. That error signal is then sent to the –B port of the LB1005 PDH servo, which has the following settings: PI corner at 10kHz, LF gain limit of 50 dB, and gain of 2.7 (1.74 corresponds to a decade, so the signal is multiplied by 35). The output signal from the LB1005 is added to the 230 kHz dither using another SR560 preamp, and the sum of the signals drive the PZT.

I am monitoring the transmission through the cavity on a digital oscilloscope (not shown in the diagram) and with a camera connected to a TV monitor. I sweep the NPRO laser temperature set point manually until the 0,0 mode of the carrier frequency resonates in the cavity and is visible on the monitor. Then I close the loop and turn on the integrator on the LB1005.

The laser locks to the cavity both when the error signal is sent into the A port and when it is sent into the –B port of the PDH servo. I determined that –B is the right sign by comparing the transmission through the cavity on the oscilloscope for both ways.

When using the A port, the transmission when it was locked swept from ~50 to ~200 mV (over ~10 second intervals) but had large high frequency fluctuations of around +/- 50 mV. Looking at the error signal on the oscilloscope as well, the RMS fluctuations of the error signal were at best ~40 mV peak to peak, which was at a gain of 2.9 on the LB1005.

Using the –B port yielded a transmission that swept from 50 to 250 mV but had smaller high frequency fluctuations of around +/- 20 mV. The error signal RMS was at best 10mV peak to peak, which was at a gain of 2.7. (Although over the course of 10 minutes the gain for which the error signal RMS was smallest would drift up or down by ~0.1).

The open loop error signal peak-to-peak voltage was 180 mV, which is more than an order of magnitude larger than the RMS error signal fluctuations when the loop is closed, indicating that it is staying in the range in which the response is linear.

In the above plot the transmission signal is offset by 0.1 V for clarity.

Below is the closed loop error signal. The inset plot shows the signal viewed over a 1.6 ms time period. You can see ~60 microsecond fluctuations in the signal (~17 kHz)

The system remained locked for ~45 minutes, and may have stayed locked for much longer, but I stopped it by opening the loop and turning off the function generator. Below is a picture of the transmitted light showing up on a monitor, the electronics I'm using, and a semi-ridiculous mess of wires.

I determined that it’s not dangerous to leave the system locked and leave for a while. The maximum voltage that the SR560 will output to the PZT is 10Vpp. This means that it will not drive the PZT at more than +/-5 V DC. At low modulation rates, the PZT can take a voltage on the order of 30 Vpp, according to the Lightwave Series 125-126 user’s manual, so the control signal will not push the PZT too hard such that it’s harmful to the laser.

5228   Sun Aug 14 04:12:37 2011 JennyUpdatePSLTemperature steps and slow actuator railing

Below are some plots from dataviewer of temperature-step data taken over the past 32 hours. (They show minute trends). I am looking at the thermal coupling from the can surrounding the reference cavity on the PSL table to the cavity itself, and trying to measure the cavity temperature response via the control signal sent to heat the NPRO laser, which is locked to the cavity.

• Top left: out-of-loop temperature sensor on can surrounding ref cav (RCTEMP)
• Top right: control signal sent to slow drive of laser (laser heater), which is supposed to follow the cavity temperature (TMP_OUTPUT)
• Bottom left: in-loop can temperature sensors (MINCOMEAS)
• Bottom right: room temperature reading (RMTEMP)

I stepped the temperature set point from 35 to 36 deg. C for the can at 12:30am last night. Then I waited to see the cavity temperature change and the slow actuator (laser heater: TMP_OUTPUT) follow that change.

I was a bit worried about the oscillations that were occuring in the TMP_OUTPUT signal even long after this temperature step was made, but I figured that they were simply room-temperature changes propagating into the cavity, since they seemed to have a similar pattern to the room-temperature variations, and since it is clear that the out-of-loop temperature sensor on the can (RCTEMP) experiences variations, even when the in-loop sensors are recording no variation.

At 8:46pm tonight I stepped the temperature down 2 degrees to 34 deg. C. The step had a clear effect on TMP_OUTPUT. The voltage to the heater dropped and eventually railed at its lowest output. I'm worried that the loop is unstable, although I haven't ruled out other possibilities, such as that a 2 deg. C temperature step is too large for the loop. I will investigate further in the morning.

5230   Sun Aug 14 15:37:39 2011 JennyUpdatePSLTemperature steps and slow actuator railing

 Quote: Below are some plots from dataviewer of temperature-step data taken over the past 32 hours. (They show minute trends). I am looking at the thermal coupling from the can surrounding the reference cavity on the PSL table to the cavity itself, and trying to measure the cavity temperature response via the control signal sent to heat the NPRO laser, which is locked to the cavity. Top left: out-of-loop temperature sensor on can surrounding ref cav (RCTEMP) Top right: control signal sent to slow drive of laser (laser heater), which is supposed to follow the cavity temperature (TMP_OUTPUT) Bottom left: in-loop can temperature sensors (MINCOMEAS) Bottom right: room temperature reading (RMTEMP)   I stepped the temperature set point from 35 to 36 deg. C for the can at 12:30am last night. Then I waited to see the cavity temperature change and the slow actuator (laser heater: TMP_OUTPUT) follow that change. I was a bit worried about the oscillations that were occuring in the TMP_OUTPUT signal even long after this temperature step was made, but I figured that they were simply room-temperature changes propagating into the cavity, since they seemed to have a similar pattern to the room-temperature variations, and since it is clear that the out-of-loop temperature sensor on the can (RCTEMP) experiences variations, even when the in-loop sensors are recording no variation. At 8:46pm tonight I stepped the temperature down 2 degrees to 34 deg. C. The step had a clear effect on TMP_OUTPUT. The voltage to the heater dropped and eventually railed at its lowest output. I'm worried that the loop is unstable, although I haven't ruled out other possibilities, such as that a 2 deg. C temperature step is too large for the loop. I will investigate further in the morning.

The lock was lost when I came in around noon today to check on it. The slow actuator was still railing.

1) I got lock back for a few minutes, by varying the laser temperature set point manually. TMP_OUTPUT was still reading -30000 cts (minimum allowed) and the transmission was not as high as it had been.

2) I toggled the second filter button off. The TMP_OUTPUT started rising up to ~2000 cts. I then toggled the second filter back on, and TMP_OUTPUT jumped the positive maximum number of counts allowed.

3) I lost the lock again. I turned off the digital output to the slow actuator.

4) I have so far failed at getting the lock back. My main problem is that when the BNC cable to the slow port is plugged in, even when I'm not sending anything to that port, it makes it so that changing the temperature set point manually has almost no effect on the transmission (it looks as though changing the setpoint is not actually changing the temperature, because the monitor shows the same higher order mode even when with +-degree temperature setpoint changes).

5271   Fri Aug 19 19:08:40 2011 JennyUpdatePSLRelocking NPRO to reference cavity.

I am trying again to measure a temperature step response on the reference cavity on the PSL table.

I have been working to relock the NPRO to the cavity. I unblocked the laser beam, reassembled the setup described in my previous elog entry: 5202. I then did the following:

1) Monitored error signal (from LB1005 PDH servo), transmitted signal, and control signal sent to drive PZT on oscilloscope.

2) With loop open, swept through 0,0-mode resonance, saw a peak in the transmission, saw an accompanying error signal similar to the signal shown in 5202.

3) Tried to lock. Swept the gain on the LB1005 and could not find a gain that would make it lock. Tried changing the PI-corner freq. from 10 kHz to 30 kHz and back and still could not lock.

4) Noticed that the open loop error signal displayed on the scope was DC-offset from zero. Changed the offset to zero the error signal.

5) Tried to lock again and succeeded.

6) Noticed that upon closing the loop, the error signal became offset from zero again. Turning on the integrator on the LB1005 increased DC-offset.

7) Reduced the gain on the SR560 being used as a low pass filter from 5 to 1. Readjusted the open loop error signal offset on the LB1005.

8) Closed the loop and locked. Closing the loop then caused a much smaller DC change in the signal than I had seen with the larger gain (now around 3mV). RMS fluctuations in error signal are now 1 mV (well within the linear region of the error signal).

9) Noticed transmission has a strange distorted harmonic oscillation in it a 1MHz. (Modulation freq is 230kHz, so it's not that). Checked reflected signal and also saw a strange oscillation--in a sawtooth-like pattern.

I intend to

1) Post oscilloscope traces here showing transmitted and reflected signal when locked.

2) Look upstream to see if the sawtooth-like oscillation is in the laser beam before it enters the cavity:

• Sweep the temperature of the laser so that the beam is no longer resonating in the cavity.
• Compare the reflected signal off the cavity to the signal detected before being directed into the cavity (using the PDA255 that I used for measuring the AM response of the PZT) both with and and without the frequency modulation.

3) At some point, try to close the slow digital loop, perhaps readjusting the gain.

4) Try to measure a temperature step response.

5272   Fri Aug 19 23:41:20 2011 JennyUpdatePSLRelocking NPRO to reference cavity.

 Quote: I am trying again to measure a temperature step response on the reference cavity on the PSL table. I have been working to relock the NPRO to the cavity. I unblocked the laser beam, reassembled the setup described in my previous elog entry: 5202. I then did the following: 1) Monitored error signal (from LB1005 PDH servo), transmitted signal, and control signal sent to drive PZT on oscilloscope. 2) With loop open, swept through 0,0-mode resonance, saw a peak in the transmission, saw an accompanying error signal similar to the signal shown in 5202. 3) Tried to lock. Swept the gain on the LB1005 and could not find a gain that would make it lock. Tried changing the PI-corner freq. from 10 kHz to 30 kHz and back and still could not lock. 4) Noticed that the open loop error signal displayed on the scope was DC-offset from zero. Changed the offset to zero the error signal. 5) Tried to lock again and succeeded. 6) Noticed that upon closing the loop, the error signal became offset from zero again. Turning on the integrator on the LB1005 increased DC-offset. 7) Reduced the gain on the SR560 being used as a low pass filter from 5 to 1. Readjusted the open loop error signal offset on the LB1005. 8) Closed the loop and locked. Closing the loop then caused a much smaller DC change in the signal than I had seen with the larger gain (now around 3mV). RMS fluctuations in error signal are now 1 mV (well within the linear region of the error signal). 9) Noticed transmission has a strange distorted harmonic oscillation in it a 1MHz. (Modulation freq is 230kHz, so it's not that). Checked reflected signal and also saw a strange oscillation--in a sawtooth-like pattern.   I intend to 1) Post oscilloscope traces here showing transmitted and reflected signal when locked. 2) Look upstream to see if the sawtooth-like oscillation is in the laser beam before it enters the cavity: Sweep the temperature of the laser so that the beam is no longer resonating in the cavity. Compare the reflected signal off the cavity to the signal detected before being directed into the cavity (using the PDA255 that I used for measuring the AM response of the PZT) both with and and without the frequency modulation. 3) At some point, try to close the slow digital loop, perhaps readjusting the gain. 4) Try to measure a temperature step response.

I decided to go forward and try to close the digital loop in spite of the unexplained oscillations in the transmission.

1) Plugged the 20dB attenuator into the slow port on the laser drive. This pushed the laser out of lock and, for some reason, made the laser temperature stop responding to sweeping the set point manually with the knob.

2) Plugged the output from the digital system into the slow port (with the attenuator still in place).

3) Displayed the beam seen by the camera on a monitor in the control room

4) Stepped the laser temperature using MEDM until finding the 0,1 mode. Locked to that mode.

5) Closed the digital loop (input to slow laser drive attenuated 20dB attenuator). Gain 0.010

6) Loop appeared stable for 30 minutes, then temperature began shooting off. I opened the loop, cleared history, reduced the gain to 0.008, and started it again. Loop appears stable after 15 minutes of watching. I'm going to leave it for a few hours, then come back to check on it and, if it's stable, step the can temperature.

5274   Sat Aug 20 23:01:39 2011 JennyUpdatePSLTaking temperature step-response data: successes and tribulations

After finishing my last elog entry, I monitored the digital loop's error signal (the control signal for the fast loop) and the output to the laser heater remotely, (from West Bridge), using dataviewer. The ref cav surrounding can temperature was set to 36 degrees C.

With the loop closed and a gain of 0.008, after seeing the output voltage to the laser heater (TMP_OUTPUT) remain fairly constant and the error signal (TMP_INMON) stay close to zero for ~3 hours, I tried to step the temperature. (This was at 2am last night). I was working remotely from West Bridge. To step the temperature I used the following command:

ezcawrite C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT 35.5

Rather than change the can temperature to 35.5 C, it outputted:

C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT=0.

It had set the setpoint to 0 degrees C, which was essentially turning the heater off. I tried resetting it back to 36 and had no luck. I tried changing the syntax slightly.: ezcawrite C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT=36 and ezcawrite C1:PSL-FSS_RCPID_SETPOINT (36). No success.

I ran over to the 40m and changed the temperature back to 36 manually. The in-loop temp sensor had decreased to 31.5 degrees C before I was able to step the setpoint back up. The system seems to have recovered from this large impulse though, and the laser has remained locked.

(5 hours of minute-trend data)

From left to right:

Top: Out-of-loop can temp sensor; Voltage sent to heat can

Middle: signal sent to heat the laser (TMP_OUTPUT); room temp

Bottom: Error signal for slow loop (sampled control signal from fast loop); In-loop can temp sensor

At 9:30 this morning (7 and a half hours after accidentally setting the setpoint to zero), I came in to the 40m. TMP_OUTPUT was still decreasing but was slowing somewhat, so I decided to step the can temperature up half a decree to 36.5 C.

TMP_OUTPUT responded to the step, but it is also oscillating slowly with room-temperature changes, and these oscillations are on the same order as the step response. The oscillations look like the room-temp oscilations, but inverted. (TMP_OUTPUT reaches maxima when RMTEMP reaches minima). Oddly, there does not appear to be much of a time delay between the room temperature and TMP_OUTPUT signals. I would expect a time delay since there's a time constant for a room-temperature change to propagate into the cavity. Perhaps the laser itself is susceptible to room-temperature changes and those propagate into the laser cavity on a much faster time scale. I don't know the thermal coupling of ambient temperature changes into the laser.

(24-hours of second-trend data)

Options are:

--If the system can handle it, do a larger temperature step (3 degrees, say), so that I can more clearly distinguish the oscillations with room temp from the step response.

--Insulate the cavity with foam (will in principle make the temperature over the can surrounding the ref cav more uniform and less affected by room temperature changes).

--Insulate the laser? Is this possible?

--Leave the system as is and, as a first approximation, fit the room-temp data to a sine wave and subtract it off somehow from my data to just see the step response.

--Don't bother with steps and just try to get the transfer function from out-of-loop temperature (RCTEMP, which is affected by temperature noise from the room) to TMP_OUTPUT via taking the Fourier transforms of both signals.

I'm flying out tomorrow morning, so I'll either need to figure out how to step the temperature set point of the can remotely, successfully, or I'll need someone to manually enter in the temperature steps for me in the control room.

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