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Kiwamu and I have set about measuring the contrast of the signal on the RF PD. We can only do this when the end green laser is locked to the cavity. This is because the green transmission through the cavity, when unlocked, is too low. Unfortunately, once we lock the green beam to the cavity, we can't keep the beatnote on the RF PD stable to within a few hundred Hz of DC (remember that the cavity is swinging around by a couple of FSRs). So we also lock the PSL to cavity.

At this point we're stuck because we can't get both of these beams resonant within the cavity AND have the frequency difference between them be less 1kHz - when the lasers are locked to the cavity, their frequencies are separated by an integer number of FSRs + a fixed frequency offset, f_offset, that is set by the phase difference on reflection from the coating between the two wavelengths (532nm and 1064nm). We can never get the frequency difference between the lasers to be less than this offset frequency AND still have them both locked to the cavity.

So our contrast measuring method will have to use the RF signal.

So this is our method. We know the incident power from each beam on the RF PD (see Kiwamu's elog entry here), but to recap,

P_green_PSL = 72 uW (as measured today)

P_green_XARM = 560 uW (as measured by Kiwamu last week).

The trans-impedance of the RF PD is 240 Ohms. We'll assume a responsitivity of 0.25 A/W. So, if the XARM transmission and PSL green beams are perfectly matched then the maximum value of the RF beat note should be:

RF_amplitude_max = 2* SQRT(P_green_PSL*P_green_XARM) * responsivity * transimpedance = 240*0.25*2*(72E-6*560E-6)^(1/2) (volts)

= 24 mV = -19.5 dBm (or 27.5dBm after the +47 dB from the two  ZFL-1000LN+ amplifiers - with +15V in - that protrude from the top of the PD)

The maximum RF strength of the beat-note that we measure is around -75 dBm (at the RF output of the PD). This means the contrast is down nearly 600x from optimal. Or it means something is broken.

Final thought: at the end of this procedure we found that the RF beat note amplitude would jump to a different and much higher amplitude state. This renders a lot of the above useless until we discover the cause.