I realized I hadn't checked the PRM actuator as thoroughly as I had the others. I used the Oplev as a sensor to check the coil balancing, and I noticed that while all 4 coils show up with the expected 1/f^2 profile at the Oplev error point, the actuator gains seem imbalanced by a factor of ~5. The phase isn't flat because of some filters in the Oplev electronics I guess. The Oplev loops were disabled for the measurement, and the excitations were small enough that the beam stayed reasonably well centered on the QPD throughout. This seems very large to me - the values in the coil output filter gains lead me to expect more like a ~10% mismatch in the actuation strenghts, and similar tests on other optics in the past, e.g. ETMY, have yielded much more balanced results. I'm collecting some free-swinging PRM data now as an additional check. I verified that all the coils seem actuatable at least, by applying a 500 ct step at the offset of the coil output FM, and saw that the optic moved (it was such a test that revealed that MC1 had a busted actuator some time ago). If the eigenmode spectra look as expected, I think we can rule out broken magnets, but I suppose the magnets could still be not well matched in strength? |