Went down to the lab and showed Rana the setup. He's fine with me being down there as long as I let someone know. He also recommended using an adjustable mount  (three screws) for the test mirror instead of the mount with top bolt and two nubs on the bottom - he thinks the one with three screws as constraints for the silica will be easier to model (and be more symmetric constraints)

Mounted the f=8" lens (used a 2" pedestal) and placed it on the table so the image fit well on the CCD and so a sharp object in front of the lens resulted in a sharp image. The beam was clipping the f=4" lens (between gold mirror and test mirror) so I spent time moving that gold mirror and the f=4" lens around. I'll still need to finish up that setup.

The beam reflecting off the test mirror was clipping the lens between gold mirror and test mirror, so I reconfigured some of the optics, unfortunately resulting in a larger angle of incidence.

From the test mirror, the beam size increases much too rapidly to fit onto the 2-inch diameter lens with f=8 that was meant to resize the beam for the CCD of the HWS. It seems that the f=8 lens can go about 6 inches from the test mirror, and an f ~ 2.3 (60 mm) lens can go about 2 inches in front of the CCD to give the appropriate beam size. However, the image doesn't seem very sharp.

The beam is also not hitting the CCD currently because of the increase in angle of incidence on the test mirror and limitations of the box. I'd like to move the HWS closer to the SLED (and will then have to move the SLED as well).

The table is set up. The HWS and SLED were moved slightly, and a minimal angle between the test mirror and HWS was achieved.

There are two possible locations for the f=60mm lens that will achieve appropriate magnification onto the HWS: 64cm or 50 cm from the f=200mm lens. 

At 64cm away, approximately 79000 saturated pixels and 1054 average value.

At 50cm away, approximately 22010 saturated pixels and 1076 average value.

Currently the setup is at 64cm. Could afford to be more magnified, so might want to move the f=60mm lens around. Also, if we're going to need to be able to access the HWS (i.e. to screw on the array) we might want to move to the 50cm location.

With Jon's help, I changed the setup to include a mode-matching telescope built from the f=60mm (1 inch diameter) lens and the f=100mm lens. These lenses are located after the last gold mirror and before the test optic. The height of the beam was also adjusted so that it is more centered on these lenses. Note: these two lenses cannot be much further apart from each other than they currently are, or the beam will be too large for the f=100mm lens.

We considered different possible mounts to use for the test optic, and decided to move it to a mount where there is less contact. The test optic was also moved closer to the HWS to achieve appropriate beamsize on the optic coming from the mode-matching telescope.

The f=200 lens is now approximately 2/3 of the distane from the test optic to the HWS, resulting in an appropriately sized beam at the HWS.

Current was also turned down to achieve 0 saturated pixels.

Attached the grid array of the HWS.

Applied voltage (5V, 7V, 9.9V, 14V) to the heater pad and took measurements of T and spherical power (aka defocus).

The adhesive of the temperature sensor isn't very sticky. The first time I did it it peeled off. (Second time partially peeled off). We want to put it on the side of Al if possible.

Bonded a mirror (thickness ~6 mm) to aluminum disk (thickness ~5 mm) and it's still curing.

To the best of my ability, calculated the magnification of the plane of the test optic relative to the HWS (2.3) and input this value.

Increased the temperature slightly and saved data points of defocus to txt files when temperature leveled out. This was a slow process, as it takes a while for things to level out. I only got up to about 28.5C, and will need to continue this process.

I also plotted the best-fit defocus for each temperature from COMSOL (Temperature vs. Defocus), and looking at values from HWS it seems that we're off by a normalization factor of approx. 4.

 I reduced the height of the Hartmann sensor box. This is what it looks like now:

 See attached delivery note ...

30mm T-junctions, grounding straps and T-slot covers have arrived

 I labelled and strung 8 of the 16 custom 40' BNC cables from L-Com between the HWS table and the BNC feed-through on the rack. Each cable is labelled HWS TABLE CHxx where 01<= xx <= 08. I'm going to leave the other 8 until we have room in the BNC feedthrough on the rack.

Today I made the first characterization measurements of the mocked-up adaptive wavefront control system planned for the signal recycling mirrors.

The Setup

Inside the light-tight enclosure on the center table, I've assembled and aligned a 10.2 micron CO₂ projector which provides a heating beam of up to 150 mW incident on an SRM-like test optic. A co-aligned 633 nm probe beam and Hartmann wavefront sensor are used to measure the resulting thermal lens. I've written and installed new software on the machine hws (10.0.1.167) for viewing the wavefront distortion in real time, as shown in the below screenshot. This viewer is launched from the terminal via the command $stream_gradient_CIT

There is also a second utility program for displaying the raw Hartmann sensor CCD image in real time, which is useful for aligning the probe beam. It is launched by the terminal command $stream_intensity_CIT

Initial Thermal Lens Measurements

Lens Formation Time Scale

First, I made a time-resolved measurement of the thermal lens formation on the test optic at maximum heating beam power (150 mW). The lens appears to reach steady-state after 30 s of heating. When the heating beam is turned off, the lens decays on a very similar time scale.

Lens Strength v. Incident Heating Power

Second, I measured the thermal lens strength as a function of incident heating beam power, which I measured via a power meter placed directly in front of the test optic. Below is the approximate maximum optical path difference induced at several heating beam powers.

The above optical path differences are approximate and were read-off from the live display. I recorded Hartmann sensor frame data during all of these measurements and will be analyzing it further.

I measured the reflectivity of a possible HWS replacement mirror at 532nm. Thorlabs BB2-EO3

Incident power = 1.28mW

Reflected power = 0.73mW

R = 56% at 45 degrees AOI.

Caltech Facilities has determined that the walls in the SE corner of the TCS Lab in West Bridge were water damaged during last weekend’s rain. They are going to remove the plaster from the walls and dehumidify the area for a week or so. All tables in the room are going to be covered with plastic for this process. In the short term I’ve shutdown all the equipment in the lab (including FB4). The 2-micron cavity-testing fabrication has been moved next door to the QIL.

I drew up one way we could set up the three available bake ovens in the TCS lab on the single oil pump. 

If this looks feasible to others, we can move the ovens into the TCS lab. Duo and I will be occupied at KNI during Tuesday and Monday morning, so the usual lab cleanup time may not be the best. Perhaps Monday afternooon we can at least get the ovens out of the hallway and get one of them set up for baking.

My preference is to have tubes back towards the wall where possible. We might be able to drill a large diameter hole in the table top to accommodate them.

We have to get confirmation that the exhaust can be extracted - otherwise this whole thing is moot.

I have borrowed TCS's label maker in CTN for few days. If you need it, you can take it from the top of blue cabinets.

In anticipation of the point absorber SURF project, I cleaned up the server rack and installed a new workstation today.

The workstation replaces the old one, whose hard drive had failed, with a more powerful machine. The hostname (tcs-ws), IP address (10.0.1.168), user name (controls), and standard password (written in the secret place) are all the same as before.

I moved the control consol from its old spot in the back corner of the lab to the bench beside the rack. This is a more convenient location because the Hartmann sensor realtime GUIs can now be easily seen from the optical tables. I mounted the HWS machine in the rack as well and reconnected the video multiplexer to all the machines.

I tested the Hartmann sensor Python software and confirmed it to be working. It required a minor bug fix to the realtime gradient field GUI code. It seems that since this script was last run, the input data file type has switched from pickled numpy to HDF5.

Aidan and I continued the lab clean-up today. There's still more to do, but we did fully clear the large optical table which formerly housed the 50 W CO2 laser. I moved the optical enclosure over from the small table to serve as the area for the point absorber experiment. Inside it I mounted the Hartmann sensor and a 532 nm Thorlabs LED source. The LED still needs collimating/focusing optics to be installed.

The VGA signal outputted by the multiplexer is too weak to drive two monitors. This has required video cables to be manually switched back and forth between the monitor mounted above the laser table and the desktop console.

Today I solved this problem by installing an amplifying (active) VGA splitter on the video output of the multiplexer. One output of the amplifier goes to the desktop monitor and the other to the laser table. We can now monitor the HWS realtime GUIs directly above the optical setup, with no cable swapping.

Today, I set up a system consisting of the 520 nm laser, a 2'' mirror and two lenses of focal lengths f1 = 40 cm and f2 = 20 cm. The goal was to collimate the beam coming from the laser, so it goes parallel through the test optic at a radius of ~2.5 cm and then focus it to a radius of ~ 1.2 cm to fit the CCD dimensions of the HWS. The mirror was placed about 1 cm close to the laser and the first lens is setup at a distance~f1=40cm from the mirror. The test optic is placed between the two lenses and the second lens is placed about 10 cm from the CCD. The distance between the two lenses isn't important and could change in the future. The lenses and mirrors are all labeled.

I measured the approximate angle of divergence (0.06 rad) of the laser by taking the beam diameter at different positions along the propagation axis. This allowed for the ABCD matrix calculations to be finalized and the focal lengths of the lenses be chosen accordingly. 

In order to have more space in the box, I removed everything that was not necessary to the side.

The previous 2-lens setup focused the beam to a tight spot, however due to the divergence angle of the laser beam, a significant amount of power was not being captured by the fiirst lens at a distance of 40 cm from the source. The divergence angle seems to be bigger than 0.06 by a factor of 2, so a f = 20 cm lens was used to collimate the beam and a f = 30 cm lens was used to focus it. A mirror was used to reflect the beam, so we obtain steering control. Additionally, the focusing lens was placed on a small 1-axis stage in order to control the distance of the lens from the CCD, providing control over the focused beam size.

Note: The 30 cm lens was cleaned with methanol, however it still has some residue on the surface. The beam imaged to the Harrtmann Sensor looks good, however the lens will be cleaned by using a different solvent or replaced by a different 30 cm lens. The 3 lenses at the edge of the box will stay inside in order to prevent contamination, however they will not be used in the design.

Since we set up the 2-lens system focusing the laser beam to the CCD, the next step was to mount the spherical reflector (31 mm wide) and the heater (~3 mm diameter). I used a small 3-axis stage to mount the heater, providing 3 degrees of freedom that would allow to manipulate the height of the heater, its position with respect to the reflector (left-right and in-out). The reflector was mounted in such a way that we can control its rotation angle, height and horizontal displacement. The current design is not quite sophisticated as it is just a first test, however I will look into different tools in the lab to see if I can use less mounts to get the same degrees of freedom.

The new heaters are supposed to be heated using AC. We used a DC power supply and ran ~30V through the wire, however only about ~50 mA of current was running through it. Jon will look into the specs of the new heaters to see if the power supply was the problem.

Yesterday, we were able to take some data using the 120 V DC power supply. The reflectors cut at the focal point and radius were both tested; the semi-circle cut proved to give a better focus, likely because roughly half the heat is lost using the focal-point reflectors. For upcoming tests, the semicircle reflectors will be used. We varied the surface shine by using the dull and reflective side of Al foil, as well as using the machined Al itself. The best result was given by using the more reflective side of Al foil.

Figure 1 shows the steady-state surface deformation profile detected by the HWS. The heaters don't have a uniform distribution along the wire, so more heat is radiated in the center of it, thus more of it is being focused to the center of the test optic. The data needs to be analyzed to determine the radius of the focus. Our rough estimate is about ~1.5 - 2 cm. We cannot collect any more data until we get a new power supply (AC 120 V).

Today, I came up with a new design for mounting the reflectors. I used a big 3-axis stage and a small 4-axis stage. This provides 5 degrees of freedom: 3 translational and 2 rotational, which is what we need for fine-tuning the focus and directing it at different angles incident to the test optic. The only problem with this design is that the 3-axis stage is too tall for the box, so the lid won't close.There is a smaller one available, but I have to figure out a way to increase its height, since the screw size is different from the ones on the pedestals available.

Additionally, Chub used metal-to-metal epoxy to glue a screw to the back of a reflector. I will wait until tomorrow to test it, because it is a slow acting epoxy. If it works, I have the necessary tools to do the same with the other reflectors. With the current deisgn the reflector wil be screwed in to where the round screw is in the stage. If it heats up a lot and affects the material of the stages, a small optical post (top of stage) will be used to make up for the absorbed heat.

Facilities came in on Friday and teed off a new duct to provide exhaust for the proposed new vacuum bake area in the TCS Lab. Photos are attached. 

We installed a plastic sheet between the work area and the rest of the lab (the rest of the lab was overpressurized relative to the work area). Also, they use a vacuum when doing any drilling.

I cleaned up the HWS table in preparation for replacement with the 4x10 table. We still need to move the cabinet and get the enclosure out of the way.

The carpentry shop removed wet plaster sections from the wall following the flood (process was gentle scraping of wet plaster flakes, supervised by me). The wet section of wall needs a few days to dry and then they will plaster and paint it.

We (Aidan, Koji, Radhika, Aaron) partially tidied up the TCS Lab. The front table is clean and ready to recieve PD tesitng optics, electronics and vacuum hardware. We moved all electronics units (oscilloscopes, power supplies, etc) to the rack in the NE corner of the lab. The back table was partially tidied up. We need to schedule cleaning of the remaining tables in the lab and also an inventory and disposal of obsolete equipment in all the cupboards.

[Aidan, Jordan, Radhika]

Radhika and Jordan identified some particulates (hair and flecks of foil) on the O-ring on the IR labs dewer. Additionally, we saw a scratch in the O-ring groove and a nick on the metal of the base of the dewer where it meets the O-ring. All were in the leaky vicinity previously identified by the He testing.

We set up a cradle to hold the dewer while we are working on it. Still needs vertical supports.

R & J replaced the O-ring with a new one with Crytox applied. 

I've been trying to measure the ring heater transfer function (current to emitted power) by sweeping the supply voltage and measuring the emitted power with a photodector positioned right next to the ring heater.

Last night the voltage was sweeping with a 1000mV setting on the SR785 which was fed into the Voltage Control of the Kepco Bipolar Operational Power Supply/Amplifier which was biased around 10V.

The results are very, very strange. The magnitude of the transfer function decreases at lower frequency. I'll post the data just as soon as I can (ASCII dumps 13 and 14 on the disk from the SR785).

The circuit looks like this:

SR785 drive ----> Amplifier ----> Ring Heater : Photodetector ---> SR560 (5000x gain) ----> SR785 input

 This is wrong. It turns out the SR785 was wired up incorrectly.

Test entry

Just a note: this board was for the QPD not the Bull's eye detector.

After leaving the ring heater off for several hours I turned on a 40V, 0.2A supply at a gps time of 949 988 700

The channel recording the PD response is C2:ATF-TCS_PD_HGCDTE_OUT.

However, there is a delay between the time at which something is supposed to be recorded and the time at which it is recorded. I looked at the GPS clock and it read that time when I started the heater voltage. If you play the channel back in dataviewer you see the temperature start to increase around 80s BEFORE the heater current was switched on. This needs to be calibrated away!!!

I applied a step function to the silver WATLOW heater and measured the response with the photodiode. The power spectrum of the derivative of the PD response is attached. The voltage isn't calibrated, but that's okay because right now we're just interested in the shape of the transfer function. It looks like a single pole around 850uHz. The noise floor is too great above 4 or 5 mHz to say anything about the transfer function.

Hideously slow internet at airport is making me write a brief entry. This is the times series of the hesilver watlow heater radiative response to a step function.

Laso United airlines are a bit cheap ....

 I installed the EDT PCIe4 DV C-Link frame grabber in a spare Windows XP PC and connected the Dalsa 1M60 camera directly to it via the CameraLink cable. In this configuration I was able to access the menu system in the camera using the supplied serial_cmd.exe routine.

PC --> Frame-Grabber --> Camera-Link Cable --> Dalsa 1M60: works OK

Next, I attached the RCX C-Link: Fiber to Camera Link converters to either end of a 300' fiber, plugged them into the PC and the Dalsa 1M60 and then supplied them with 5V of power. Once again, I was able to access the on-board menu system in the camera (as the attached screen-capture shows). I also did a quick-test using the in-built video display program and verified that I could get an image from the camera - by waving around my hand in front of the CCD I was able to modulate the light in the image on the computer. This, therefore, demonstrates that the camera can be easily accessed and run at a distance of at least 300' via optical fiber.

PC --> Frame-Grabber --> RCX C-Link --> 300' optical fiber --> RCX C-Link --> Dalsa 1M60: works OK

The attached images:

 hartman_sensor.JPG: a screencap of the Dalsa 1M60 on-board menu system captured with the C-Link to fiber connector running

Fiber_Camera_Link_1.jpg: A RCX C-Link and one end of the 300' fiber connected to the Dalsa 1M60

Fiber_Camera_Link_3.jpg: A RCX C-Link and the other end of the 300' fiber connected to the PC

dV = 0.385V

Responsivity= 0.65A/W

Transimpedance = 1.5E4 V/A

therefore power= 0.385V / (1.5E4 * 0.65 V/W) = 40uW

Verified that the test-point for the current limit pot on the driver (Wavelength Electronics - LDTC 0520) was at 0.5V. Driver is set to INTERNAL set point at the moment. This is down about 10% below the current limited point.

Voltage across TP7 and TP9 = 0.970V = LD Current Mon

Voltage across TP2 and TP3 = 0.017V = LD P Mon

--- Hartmann sensor ---

-set the sampling rate on the CCD to 16HZ. With the current alignment and intensity this gives as maximum intensity of around 3850 out of 4095. Thus the pixels are not saturated.

- centroid_image located some of the spots - see attached image of spots where those located by the algorithm and circled. I need to play with the threshold level and spot_radius to get this to work properly.

 8:10AM - I removed the base plate from the Hartmann sensor. I want to know what steady-state temperature the HWS achieves without the plate.

The photo below shows the current configuration.

11:22AM - (Digitizer - 52.2C, Sensor - 43.8C, Ambient - 21.8C)

I removed the cooling fins from the Hartmann sensor to see what steady-state temperature it reached without any passive cooling elements. I also dropped the set-point temperature for the lab to help keep for getting too hot.

After nearly 3 hours the temperature is:

(Digitizer: 54.3C, Sensor: 46.6C, Ambient: 19.6C)

I switched in just the base piece of the Hartmann sensor. The cooling fins are removed. I bolted the camera securely to the base plate and I bolted the plate securely to the table.

 5:00PM - (Digitizer = 41.9C, Sensor = 33.8C, Ambient = 19.3C)

 Back to Configuration 1 again - this time the fins were bolted very securely to the camera.

 7:25 PM - [about 2 hours later] - Digitizer = 39.7C, Sensor = 31.4C, Ambient = 19.0C

 Hour-long trend puts the lab temperature at 19.51C

Dalsa temperature:

 I added some 0.004" thick indium sheet to the copper heat spreaders and and the heat sinks on the side of the HWS to try and improve the thermal contact. Once installed the steady state temperature of the sensor was the same as before. It's possible that the surface of the copper is even more uneven than 0.004".

 The measurement from the on-board PD of the Superlum SLED seems to be falling. This effect started around 5PM last night which is right about the time we moved the position of the PD that the SLED is illuminating on the optical table (via optical fiber).

Curiously, the current set point and delivered current to the SLED are dropping as well. 

Here's the data from the last 2 1/2 days of running the SLED. The decrease in photo-current measured by the on-board photo-detector is consistent with the decrease in the current set-point and the delivered current, but it is not clear why these should be changing.

Strictly speaking I should add some analysis that shows that delta_PD_voltage_measured = delta_I_set_measured * [delta_PD_voltage/delta_I_set (I_set)]_calculated ...

I've attached the Acceptance Test Report data from SUPERLUM for this SLED. I've also determined the expected percentage decrease in power/photo-current per mA drop in forward current.

The measured decrease in forward current over the last 2 1/2 days is around 1.4mA from around 111mA. The expected drop in power is thus (4.5% per mA)*(1.4mA) = 6.3%.

The drop in photo-current is around 37.5mA to 35mA = 2.5mA. The percentage drop is around 100*(2.5mA)/(36.3mA) = 6.9%. 

Therefore, the drop in measured power is consistent with what we would expect given the decrease in forward current (which is consistent with the drop in the set point). Why the set-point is dropping is still a mystery.

 I measured the AC and DC channel transfer functions of the eLIGO L1 TCSY ISS board for PD1 and PD2. The gain is quite high on the AC channels so I added +40dB of attenuation to the source from the SR785. As Frank pointed out, even though this isn't exactly +40dB at low frequencies, it still attenuates and that attenuation is common to both the input to the Channel 1 of the SR785 and the input to the ISS board.

The results are shown in the attached plot. I didn't bother including the phase, I'm just interested in the magnitude for calibration purposes.

 The original data files from the SR785 are attached below: 

 The 200W Thermopile power head from Thorlabs arrive today. The scanned delivery note and calibration info are attached.