I will upload some plots later - but in summary, I set the HEPA speed to ~40%. I used (i)IMC transmission RIN, (ii) Arm cavity transmission RIN and (iii) ALS beat noise as 3 diagnostics, to see how noise in various frequency bands for these signals change as a function of the HEPA speed. The MC2T RIN shows elevated noise between 1-10Hz at even the lowest speed I tried, ~20% of the max on each blower. The elevated noise extended to ~50-70 Hz for HEPA speeds >40% of the maximum, and the arm cavity RIN and ALS signals also start to become noisy for speeds >60% of the maximum. So I think 40% is a fine speed to run at - for squeezing measurement we may have to turn off the HEPA for 10mins but for the usual single arm / PRMI / DRMI locking, this should be just fine. For the elevated ALS noise - I'm not sure if the coupling is happening over the top of the enclosure where the fiber bringing light from EX comes close to the HEPA filters, or if it is happening inside the PSL enclosure itself, near the beat mouth - but anyways, at the 40% speed, I don't see any effect on the ALS noise.
I checked with a particle counter at the SW corner of the PSL table (which is the furthest away we can be on the table from the HEPA blowers) after leaving the blowers on for ~30mins and it registered 0 for both 0.3um and 0.5um sized particles (if the blowers are off, the respective numbers are 43 and 9 but I forgot what the units were, and I believe they have to be multiplied by 10).
I have not yet marked the speed control units yet in case there is some other HEPA science that needs to be done before deciding what is the correct setting. But I think I can get the PRFPMI lock without much issue with this lower speed, which is what I will try later today evening. |