While my checks of the AO signal path have thrown up some unanswered questions, I don't think there's any evidence in those measurements to suggest the AO crossover can't be realized. Thinking about it today though - I was wondering if it could be that the IN1 gain slider of the CM board is configured optimally. Looking back at some data, when the ALS CARM offset is zeroed, the CM_SLOW digitized data has a peak-to-peak range of ~200 cts. This is paltry. One possibility is that as I am upping the AO path gain, I'm simply injecting the electronics noise of the CM board into the IMC error point. I'd say it is safe to up the IN2 gain by 20dB to -12 dB, in which case the peak-to-peak would be ~2000 cts, still only 10% of the ADC range. It'll be straightforward to re-scale the CARM_B loop gain to account for this. Let's see if this helps.

I'd also like to measure the spectrum of the REFL11_I signal in a few different states. I think I should be able to do this using the OUT2 of the CM servo board. These are the things to try tonight:

• Try CARM RF handoff with CM_SLOW gain starting at -12dB instead of -32dB.
• Measure spectrum of REFL11_I when it is in the linear range.