This week I've looked into finding an accurate sensitivity for the geophones in the STACIS. I found that when placing a geophone and accelerometer side by side, and using the sensitivity values I had from spec sheets, the readings were very different (see eLog 7054: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/7054).

I cut the shunt resistor off one of the STACIS geos and found it to be 4000 Ohm, which is one of the standard values for this geophone model. When it is connected to the geophone the net resistance is 2000 Ohm (I took a more careful measurement, I took the geophone out). Then the internal coil resistance should be 4000 Ohm, if they are connected in parallel. However, the geophone spec sheet does not have a sensitivity value for this exact scenario, so I'll have to find a different way to determine the calibration (maybe by putting it next to a seismometer with a known sensitivity). So I know for sure that the sensitivity value I was originally using is wrong, because it assumed an internal coil resistance of 380 Ohm, but I have to check if the value I found by forcing the geophones to agree with the accelerometers (eLog 7054 --> 0.25 (m/s)/V) is correct.

I've also been looking again at the open loop gains of the STACIS (see eLog 7058: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/7058). Attached is what TMC, which makes the STACIS, says it should look like (with a 4000 lb load on the STACIS). Today I am taking the open loop gains into higher frequencies to get a better comparison, but the plots look quite similar to what I have so far. So if it is an unstable open loop gain, then it's at least not new.

Yesterday I plugged the geophone and accelerometer output into the ADC, rather than the SR785, so I could collect for longer and take more data at once.

As per Rana's suggestion, I am also now taking the geophone output after the first op-amp in the circuitry following the geophone (a low-noise op-amp, OPA227). It acts as a buffer so I'm not just measuring other local noise sources (which explains why the geophone noise curve sort of matched the SR785 noise curve in my old plots).

With these changes, I remeasured the accelerometer and geophone noises as well as collected an ASD of a geophone sitting on the STACIS in open loop operation. I also looked up the noise specs for the various op-amps in the geophone pre-amp and high voltage board; everything I found, I added in quadrature to come up with an approximate op-amp noise value for the STACIS. All of this is plotted below:

I left the y-axis in V/rtHz instead of converting it to m/s/rtHz so that the op-amp noise could be compared to the other noises. All sensor data was taken with the sensors horizontal (noise data taken in granite and foam).

The accelerometer and geophone noise still appear to be similar, and the op-amp noise, at least according to specs, is low compared to the other noises. This implies there's not much to gain from switching the geophones with accelerometers nor with swapping out the op-amps for lower-noise components (unless the ones I couldn't find specs for were high-noise, though it seems like mainly low-noise components were used). 

As Rana pointed out (http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/7112), the geophone/accelerometer noise lines from my last eLog (http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/7109) were dominated by ADC noise. I checked this today by terminating the ADC channels with 50 Ohm terminators and measuring the noise. The ADC noise line is included on the plot below, and it is clearly dominating the sensor noise data.

I set the accelerometer gain to 100, and will hook up the geophones to the SR560 pre-amp today- this should put both signals above the ADC noise, and I can calculate the sensor noises without the ADC noise being significant.

I have also begun to make some progress in understanding the pre-amp circuitry, and I will post a schematic when I've sketched it all.

Another issue that seems increasingly relevant to me is the power supply to the high voltage amplifier. It appears to go into the high voltage board from the power supply, then into the geophone pre-amp, then back into the high voltage board (see block diagram below). I tested this by inputting a signal after the pre-amp, with the geophones disconnected- the signal only drives the PZT if the pre-amp is plugged in, so the power that returns from the pre-amp must be powering some chips on the high voltage amplifier.

Power flow through the STACIS :

This is somewhat inconvenient, because it means if I want to provide external feedback (with accelerometers, for example) or actuation (such as feedforward), which I want to input after the geophone pre-amp, the pre-amp still needs to be plugged in for the high voltage amplifier to work and drive the PZTs.  I am cataloging all of the pins on the high voltage amplifier and pre-amp so I can figure out how to reroute the power and cut out the geophone pre-amp entirely if necessary. I'll include a pin diagram with the pre-amp circuit sketch.

I hope you're not all tired of the STACIs noise budgets, because I have another one! Here, the main difference is my modeling of the geophone sensitivity according to a predicted physical model for the system (just a damped oscillator) instead of trying to fit it to the accelerometer motion signal with more arbitrary functions.

The result of this calibration is shown below (accel and geo signals taken for 5 minutes at the same time, in granite and foam):

The m/s/V sensitivity function I am using is g*[(w^2-2idww(0)-w(0)^2)/w^2], where g (the high freq. m/s/V sensitivity) was 2.5*10^-5 and d (damping) was set to 2.

Now, the recalculated noise plot looks like this:

The accel. specs I took from the Wilcoxon spec sheet, and the geo specs I found in https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0028/T950046/000/T950046-00.pdf, a LIGO document about the STACIS. The geo noise was measured for the STACIS geo and their pre-amp, while I was using the SR560 as the pre-amp. If anything, my noise should be lower, since the SR560 noise spec is lower than what I estimated for the STACIS geophone pre-amp, so I'm not sure about that order of magnitude difference between the experimental and expected geo noise. A sign that my noise values are at least reasonable is that the geophone noise flattens out above the geophone's resonant frequency (4.5 Hz), as Jan pointed out it should.

The sensor noise (either accel. or geo.) is the dominating signal below 1 Hz in the STACIS platform measurement, which then limits the closed loop performance at those frequencies. Since the noises I am finding are looking reasonable, I think it's fair to definitively state that accelerometers will not significantly help at low frequencies (there may be at most a factor of 2 lower noise below 1 Hz for the accel., but I need more data to say for sure).

The plan right now is to concentrate on using the STACIS as actuators, perhaps with seismometers on the ground and a feedforward signal sent into the high voltage amplifier.

I took the transfer function of the high voltage board itself (no pre-amp included) by driving the PZTs with a swept sine and measuring the accelerometer response (which I am now fairly confident is calibrated correctly). The input point was the signal IN on the extender board, but with the geophones disconnected from the pre-amp.

I took the coherence at just a few single frequencies (you can't do coherence measurements in swept sine mode on the SR785) to make sure I was really driving the PZTs, and it was near 1 (998, 999.9, etc) at the frequencies at which I drove. Without the extra notches at 1 Hz (which may be real, it's coherent there too), it looks like a 2-pole high pass filter (goes from -180 to 180 deg, approx. an f^2 dependence). This transfer function should be taken into account by the feedforward algorithm.

The current plan is to make a box with a switch that allows geophone feedback and/or external signals into the high voltage amplifier. It would act sort of like the extender card, except more compact so it could fit into the STACIS. It also would have the advantage of not having to reroute the power, since those lines from the pre-amp could all still be connected (see eLog 7118: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/7118).

In eLog 7148 (http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/7148), Koji pointed out that the op-amp and SR560 noise values (which I took from specs and then multiplied by the geophone calibration factor to get m/s/rtHz) were waaay too low. My error was an extra multiplication factor in the plotting script.

The other change was recalculating the ADC noise by splitting a signal into two ADC channels and subtracting the time series (then taking the PSD and converting to m/s/rtHz). It compares well to the value I got by terminating the ADC channels, which was the ADC noise line in my last eLog.

Both these changes are included in the below plot:

Den and I measured the differential motion of the x and y arms using Guralp 1 at the end of the y arm, Guralp 2 at the beamsplitter, and the Streckeisen at the end of the x arm.

I calibrated the Streckeisen to the Guralp by calculating the relative gain of the seismometer signals at the microseism. The Guralp 1-y amplitude was 1.0237 times Guralp 2-y and Guralp 2-x was 38.54 times STS-x. The Guralp calibration (to go from counts to meters) I used was 0.61/1000/800/80/(2*pi*f) m/count.

The differential motion should keep decreasing at low frequencies because the ground will move together at such large wavelengths. It goes up because the seismometer noise begins to dominate at low frequencies (below about 0.5 Hz). Another possible error source could be that the seismometers are not perfectly aligned along the arm.

This week I've been focusing mainly on two things: 1) Designing a port for the STACIS that will allow external actuation and/or local feedback and 2) Investigating the seismic differential motion along the interferometer arms.

The circuit for the port is just a signal summing junction (in case we want to do feedforward and feedback at the same time) with BNC inputs for the external signal and switches that allow you to turn the external signal or feedback signal on/off. I'll test this on a breadboard and post the schematic if it works. I looked at the noise of the geophone pre-amp and DAC, which would be the feedback and external signal sources, respectively. According to Rolf Bork, the DAC noise is 700 nV/rtHz, and I measured the pre-amp board's minimum noise level at 20*10^-6 V/rtHz (which seems quite high). Both these noises are higher than the op-amp noise for my circuit (I'm considering the op-amp LT1012), which according to the specs is 30 nV/rtHz. This confirms that my circuit will not be the limiting noise source. 

Along with Den, I calibrated the seismometers in the lab and measured the displacement differential arm motion (see eLog 7186: http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/7186). I'm trying to find a transfer function for the seismic stacks (and pendulum, but that's simpler) so I can calculate the differential motion in the chamber. After doing this offline, I'll make new channels in the PEM to look at the ground and chamber differential motion along the arms online.

I also am looking at the noise of the geophones with their shunt resistor (4k resistor across the coil) removed, to see if it improves the noise at low frequencies. My motivation for this was that the geophone specs show a better V/m/s sensitivity at low frequencies when the shunt resistor is removed, so the actual signal may become larger than the internal noise at these frequencies.

I estimated the transfer function of the seismic stacks using a rough model I made based on the LIGO document LIGO T000058 -00. I used a Q of 3.3 for the viton springs, and resonant frequencies of 2.3, 7.5, 15, and 22 Hz (measured in that document for the horizontal motion). I multiplied the simple mass-spring transfer function four times for each layer of metal/spring, with the respective resonant frequency for each. The pendulum suspending the test masses has a resonant frequency of 0.74 and a Q of 3, according to the same document.

When I multiply the net transfer function (pendulum included, the green line above) by the differential motion of the x arm that I measured in eLog 7186, I find the differential motion of the test mass (NOTE: I converted the differential motion to displacement by multiplying by (1/2*pi*f)).

It agrees within an order of magnitude to the seismic wall from the displacement noise spectrum hanging above the control room computers.

Finally, I looked at how the geophone and accelerometer noise spectra looked compared to the ground differential motion (any STACIS sensor signal will also be multiplied by the stack/pendulum transfer function, so I'm comparing to the differential motion before it goes through the chamber). Below about 1 Hz, it is clear from the plot below that the STACIS could never be of any benefit, even with accelerometers rather than geophones as the feedback sensors.

 I made the plots a little nicer and added new sensor noises (from Brian Lantz's scripts and measurements). Click to enlarge.

The last plot shows that these other sensors' noises are lower than the differential ground motion below 1 Hz.  Though 3 seismometers per STACIS is impractical, this shows that such seismometers could be used as feedforward sensors and provide isolation against differential ground motion. At these noise levels, the noise of the high voltage amplifier circuit in the STACIS would probably be the limiting factor.

Below is the bottom view of the geophone preamplifier and controller for the STACIS. It slides into the upper part of the STACIS, under the blue platform. The geophone signal goes in the bottom left, gets amplified, filtered, and otherwise pampered, and goes out from the bottom right. From there it goes on to the high voltage amplifier, and finally to the PZT stacks. Below right is a closer view of the output port for the preamplifier, top and bottom.

I suggest de-soldering and bending up the pins that carry the geophone signal (so the signals don't go directly to the high voltage amplifier), and adding the circuit below between the preamp and amplifier. The preamp connector is still attached to the high voltage amplifier connector in this setup, only the geophone signal pins are disconnected.

More on the circuit and its placement:

The first op-amp is a summing junction, and the second is just a unity gain inverter so that signal doesn't go into the high voltage amplifier inverted. I tested this with the breadboard, and it seems to work fine (amplitudes of two signals add, no obvious distortion). The switches allow you to choose local feedback, external feedforward, or both.

The geo input will be wires from the preamp (soldered to where the pins used to go), and the external input will be BNC cables, with the source probably a DAC. The output will go to the bent up pins that used to be connected to the preamp (they go into the high voltage amplifier). This circuit can sit outside of the STACIS- there is a place to feed wires in and out right near where the preamplifier sits. For power, it can use the STACIS preamp supply, which is +/- 15V. The resistors I used in the breadboard test were 10 kOhm, and the op-amp I used was LT1012 (whose noise should be less than either input, see eLog 7190).

This is visually represented below, with the preamp pin diagram corresponding to the soldering points with the preamp upside down (top right picture):

I made the signal box as described in eLog 7210. It adds the geophone signal and an external signal.

It has six switches, for x, y, and z signals from both an external and local (geophone) source. The x signals add if both x switches are flipped down (and the same for the other directions). For example, if you want to feed in only an external signal in the x direction, flip down the external x direction switch (it's labeled on the box), leaving all others flipped up.

The x, y, and z outputs are wired to the pins from the preamplifier that go to the high voltage board. These I disconnected from the preamplifier by cutting at their base (there are spare connectors if this wants to be undone, or, a wire can just be soldered from the pin to its old spot on the board). The power (plus/minus) and ground are wired to the respective pins from the geophone preamplifier (naturally, the STACIS must be turned on for the box to work since the box shares its power source). Below, the front (switches and geophone/external inputs) and back (power, ground, outputs) of the box are shown:

The preamplifier can plug into its regular connectors- the x,y,and z signals will all be redirected to the signal box with these modifications. The box sits outside the STACIS, there is room to feed the wires out from underneath the STACIS platform.

NOTE: The geophone z switch is a little different than the others, just make sure it's flipped all the way down if you want that signal to be seen in the z output.

The MC1 accelerometer cube (3 accelerometers arranged in x,y,z) is under the PSL table, as I found it at the beginning of the summer.

The MC2 accelerometer cube is on the table where I worked on the STACIS, right when you walk into the lab from the main entrance. Their cables are dangling near the end of the mode cleaner, so the accelerometers are ready to be placed there if wanted.

All accelerometers are also plugged into their ADC channels.

The beginning of my first week was spent at various orientations and safety meetings, some for general SURF and some more specific to LIGO and the lab. In between these I started  work.

Jenne and I took out the spare STACIS and took it apart, taking out the circuit boards. I've spent some time looking through the boards and sketching various parts of the board in trying to understand the exact function without any useful technical diagrams (STACIS supplied us only with a picture of the board without components, not all that helpful). I think I now at least understand the basic block diagram of the circuitry: the STACIS geophone signal goes through a preamplifier and filters (the semi-circular board), and converts it into a signal for the PZT stacks. This signal then goes through a high voltage amplifer, and then goes to the five PZTs (3 in the z, one each in the x and y direction). The unit I am looking at has an extension board, which allows us to tap into the signal going into the preamp and the one leaving it. This should allow us to input our own signal instead of the geophone signal, and thereby drive the PZTs ourselves.

My next step, once I get a resistor to replace a burnt one on the high voltage amplifier, is to take a transfer function of the STACIS and see if it is possible to drive the PZT stacks with the cables from the extension board. If that does not work, I'll have to keep tracing the circuit to determine where to input our own signal.

Motivation

• Getting myself familiar with Python.
• Characterize statistical errors in the loss measurement.

Summary

​The precision of the measurement is excellent. We should move on to look for systematic errors. 

In Detail

According to Johannes and Gautam (see T1700117_ReflectionLoss .pdf in Attachment 1), the loss in the cavity mirror is obtained by measuring the light reflected from the cavity when it is locked and when it is misaligned. From these two measurements and by using the known transmissions of the cavity mirrors, the roundtrip loss is extracted.

I write a Python notebook (AnalyzeLossData.ipynb in Attachment 1) extracting the raw data from the measurement file (data20190216.hdf5 in Attachment 1) analyzing the statistics of the measurement and its PSD.

Attachment 2 shows the raw data. 

Attachment 3 shows the histogram of the measurement. It can be seen that the distribution is very close to being Gaussian.

The loss in the cavity pre roundtrip is measured to be 73.7+/-0.2 parts per million. The error is only due to the deviation in the PD measurement. Considering the uncertainty of the transmissions of the cavity mirrors should give a much bigger error.

Attachment 4 shows noise PSD of the PD readings. It can be seen that the noise spectrum is quite constant and there would be no big improvement by chopping the signal.

The situation might be different when the measurement is taken from the cavity lock PD where the signal is much weaker.

I reproduced Gautam's sketch of the 1x1 and 1x2 Eurocrates into a pdf image that contains links to the appropriate DCCs in the legend (see attachement).

Thanks. Please update this wiki page too.

https://wiki-40m.ligo.caltech.edu/Electronics/ElectronicsRacks#A1X1

Done.

I created a spreadsheet (Attached) by taking Koji's c1psl sheet from slow_channel_list and filtering out the channels that do not need an Acromag. I added in the QPD channels that are relevant to the PSL from the c1iool0 sheet.

I began mapping the PSL related Eurocrates connectors to their respective VME channels starting with the PMC electronics.

I am confused about the TTFSS interface (D040423): While it is a Eurocrate card, in the schematics it seems to have 50 pin connectors.

I found old wiring schematics that might help with identifying the channels once the connector issue is clarified.

{Gautam, Yehonathan}

In search of the source of discrepancy between the QPD readings in the X and Y arms, we look into the schematics of the QPD amplifier - DCC #D990272.

We find that there are 4 gain switches with the following gain characteristics (The 40m QPD whitening board has an additional gain of 4.5):

Switch 4 bypasses the amps controlled by switch 2 and 3 when it is set to 1 so they don't matter in this state.

Note that according to elog-13965 the switches are controlled through the QPD whitening board by a XT1111a Acromag whose normal state is 1.

Also, according to the QPD amplifier schematics, the resistor on the transimpedance, controlled by switch 1, is 25kOhm. However, according to the EPICS it is actually 5kOhm. We verify this by shining the QPD with uniform light from a flashlight and switching switch1 on and off while measuring the voltages of the different segments. The schematics should be updated on the DCC.

Surprisingly, QPDX switches where 0,0,0,0 while QPDY switches where 1,0,0,1. This explains the difference in their responses.

We check by shining a laser pointer with a known power on the different segments of QPDX that we get the expected number of counts on the ADC and that the response of the different segments is equal.
 

gautam edits:

1. Lest there be confusion, the states of the switches in the (S1, S2, S3, S4) order are (0,0,0,0) for QPDX and (0,1,0,1) for QPDY.
2. The Acromag XT1111 is a sinking BIO unit - so when the EPICS channel is zero, the output impedance is low and the DUT (i.e. MAX333) is shorted to ground. So, the state of the MAX333 shown on the schematics corresponds to EPICS logic level 1, and the switched state corresponds to logic level 0.
3. For the laser pointer test, we used a red laser pointer. Using a power meter, we measured ~100uW of 632nm power. However, we think this particular laser pointer had failing batteries or something because the spot looked sometimes brighter/dimmer to the eye. Anyways, we saw ~10,000 ADC counts when illuminating a single segment (with the QPD gain switches at the 0,0,0,0 setting, before we changed anything). We expect 100uW * 0.4 A/W * 500 V/A * 10 * 40 * 4.5 * 3267.8 cts/V = ~12000 cts. So everything seems to check out. We changed the gain to the 5kohm setting and bypassed the subsequent gain stages, and saw the expected response too. The segments were only balanced to ~10%, but presumably this can be adjusted by tweaking digital gains.

MC2 analog camera was rotated by 90 degrees. Orientation correctness was verified by exciting the MC2 Yaw degree of freedom.

Attached before and after photos of the camera setup.

{Yehonathan, Gavin}

Yesterday we tried to shake ITMX with a function generator in order to observe the 28.8kHz drum mode.

We laid a long BNC cable that runs from the YARM to the XARM. This cable either needs to be collected back to the BNC big plastic cable box under the IMC or be labeled so that it could be found easily in the future.

First, we tried to shake it at a lower frequency (100's of Hz) where the shaking should be easily observed in the POSX channel. We try driving the POS channel on the ITMX servo but nothing happens. Most likely it is disconnected.

While setting up for shaking the individual OSEM channels 4 CDSs crashed (c1lsc, c1ass, c1oaf, c1cal).

After the CDSs crashed we run the rebootC1LSC.sh script.

The script is a bit annoying in that it requires entering the CDSs' passwords multiple times over the time it runs which is long.

The resulting CDS screen is a bit different than what was reported before (attached). Also, not all watchdogs were restored.

We restore the remaining watchdogs and do XARM locking. Everything seems to be fine.

I check the seismometers in the last 14 hours (Attached). Seems like the coherenece is restored in the x direction.

{Yehonathan, Rana}

In order to setup a ringdown measurement with perfect extinction we need to align the first order beam from the AOM to the PMC instead of the zeroth order.

We connected a signal generator to the AOM driver and applied some offset voltage. We spot the first order mode and align it to the PMC. The achieved transmitted power is roughly as it was before this procedure.

Along the way few changes has been made in the PSL table:

1. Some dangling BNCs were removed.

2. Laser on the south east side of the PSL table was turned off.

3. DC power supplies were removed (Attachment 1 & 2). The rubber legs on the first one are sticky and leave black residue.

4. The beam block that orginally blocked the AOM high order modes was raised to block the zeroth order mode (Attachment 3).

5. The unterminated BNC T junction (Attachment 4 - before picture). from the PMC mixer to the PMC servo was removed.

However, we are currently unable to lock the PMC on high gain. When the gain is too high the PZT voltage goes straight to max and the lock is lost.

Just realized that the diffracted beam is frequency shifted by 80MHz. It would shift the PZT position in the PMC lock acquisition, wouldn't it?

nvm the PZT can scan over many GHz.

{Jon, Yehonathan}

We burt-restored the PSL and the PMC locked immediately.

The PMC is now locked on the AOM first order mode.

{Yehonathan, Jon}

We are able to lock the PMC on the TEM00 mode of the deflected beam.

However when we turn off the driving voltage to the AOM and back on the lock is not restored. It get stuck on some higher order mode.

There are plethora of modes present when the PZT is scanned, which makes us believe the cavity is misaligned.

To lock again on the TEM00 mode again we disconnect the loop (FP Test point 1), find a TEM00 mode using the DC output adjust and close the loop again.

Make sure to measure the power drop of the beam downstream of the AOM but before the PMC. Need to plot both together to make sure the chop time is much shorter than the 1/e time.

{Yehonathan, Rana, Jon}

To check whether we laser is being shut fast enough for the ringdown measurement we put a PD55 in the path that leads to the beat note setup. The beam is picked off from the back steering mirror after AOM and before the PMC.

@Shruti the PD is now blocking the beam to your setup.

As before, we drive the AOM to deflect the beam. The deflected beam is coupled to the PMC cavity. We lock the PMC and then shut the beam by turning off the output of the function generator that provides voltage to the AOM driver.

We measure the transmitted light of the PMC together with the light that is picked off before the PMC. In Attachment 1, the purple trace is the PMC transmission, the green trace is the peaked-off beam and the yellow trace is the function generator signal.

Rana was pointing out that the PDs, the function generator and the scope were not carefully impedance matched, which could lead to erroneous measurements. He also mentioned that the backscattered beam was too bright which might indicate that the PMC is oscillating. To remedy this we lowered the gain of the PMC lock to ~8.

We repeat the measurement after setting all the components to 50ohm (attachment 2). We then realize that the BNC T junction connected on the function generator is splitting the signal between the 50ohm AOM driver and 1Mohm oscilloscope channel which causes distortions as can be seen. We remove the T junction and get a much cleaner measurement (see next elog).

It seems like either the shutting speed or the PDs are only slightly faster than the PMC. I also check the AOM driver RF output fall time doing the same kind of measurement (attachment 3).

We suspect the PDs' bandwidth is to blame (although they are quoted to have 10MHz bandwidth).

In any case, this is fast enough for the IMC and arm cavities whose lifetime should be much longer than the PMC.

I will post an elog with some numbers tomorrow.

I grab the data we recorded yesterday from the scope and plot it in normalized units (remove noise level and divide by maximum). See attachment.

It can be seen that the measured ringdown time is ~ 17us while the shut-off time is ~12us.

I plan to model the PD+AOM as a lowpass filter with an RC time constant of 12us and undo its filtering action on the PMC trans ringdown measurement to get the actual ringdown time.

Is this acceptable?

I added to the PSL wiring list the ioo channels and the laser shutter (See attached pdf for an updated list).

The total channel numbers for now:

I counted each mbbo as 1 bo but I am not sure that's correct.

Still need to allocate Acromags.

Updated the channel list (Attached):

1. Removed the MC steering mirror PZT channels

2. Added Sourcing/Sinking column

3. Recounted the mbbos correctly

4. Allocated Acromags:

I think we can start wiring.

Final (hopefully) PSL channel list is attached with allocated Acromag channels. Wiring spreadsheet coming soon.

Current Acromag count:

PSL wiring spreadsheet is ready. (But the link was stripped. Koji)

Link to a wiki page  with the link to the wiring spreadsheet (Yehonathan)

I measured PMC ringdowns for several input powers. I change the input power by changing the DC voltage to the AOM.

First, I raise the DC voltage to the AOM from 0V and observe the signal on the picked off PD. I see that at around 0.6V the signal stops rising. The signal on the PD is around 4V at that point so it is not saturated.

Up until now, we provided 1.5V to the AOM, which means it was saturated.

I measured ringdowns at AOM voltages of 0.05, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 1 volt by shutting off the DC voltage to the AOM and measuring the signal at the PMC transmission PD and the picked off PD simultaneously for reference.

Attachment 1 shows the reference measurement for different AOM voltages. For low AOM DC voltages, the response of the AOM+PD is slower.

Attachment 2 shows the PMC transmission PD measurements which barely change as a function of AOM voltage but shows the same trend. I believe that if the AOM+PD response was much faster there would be no observable difference between those measurements.

Attachment 3 shows PMC transmissions and references for AOM voltages 0.05V and 1V. It seems like for low AOM voltages we are barely fast enough to measure the PMC ringdown.

I fitted the 0.3V ringdown and reference to a sum of two exponentials (Attachment 4).

The fitting function is explicitly a * nm.exp(-x/b) +c* nm.exp(-x/d) +e

For the PMC transmission I get:

a = 0.21
b = 3.64 (us)
c = 0.69, 
d = 39.62 (us)
e = 2.0e-04

For the reference measurement:

a = 0.34
b = 4.97 (us)
c = 0.58
d= 31.22 (us)
e = 1.11e-03

I am still not able to do deconvolution of the ref from the measurement reliably. I think we should do a network analyzer measurement.

Shruti, the PD is again in your beam path.

I try to measure the linewidth of the PMC by ramping the PMC PZT. 

I do it by connecting a triangular shape signal to FP Test 1 on the PMC servo front panel (I know, it is probably better to connect it to DC EXT. next time.) and turn the servo gain to a minimum.

Attachment 1 shows the PMC transmission PD as the PZT is swept with the EOM connected and when it is disconnected. It shows the PMC over more than 1 free spectral range.

For some reason, I cannot seem to be able to find the 35MHz sidebands which I want to use to calibrate the PZT scan. I made sure that the EOM is driven by a 35MHz signal using the scope. I also made sure that the PMC cannot to lock without the EOM connected.

I am probably doing something silly.

Turns out the 35MHz sidebands are way too weak to resolve from the resonance when doing a PZT scan.

I connect the IFR2023B function generator on the PSL table to the EOM instead of the FSS box and set it to generate 150MHz at 13dbm.

To observe the resulting weak sideband I place a PDA55 at the peak-off path from the transmission of the PMC where there is much more light than the transmission of the PMC head mirror. Whoever is using this path there is a PD blocking it right now.

I do a PZT scan by connecting a triangular signal to the EXT DC on the PMC servo with and without the EOM (Attachment 1). A weak sideband can clearly be spotted now.

Using the above 150MHz sideband calibration I can find the roundtrip time to be 1.55ns.

I take a high-resolution scan of a resonance peak and fit it to a Lorentzian (Attachment 2) and find a roundtrip loss of 1.3%.

Using the above results the cavity decay time is 119ns.

We should investigate what's going on with the ringdown measurements.

Done.

PSL controls on the sitemap went blank. Rebooted c1psl. PSL screens seem normal again.

As per Gautam's request, I list the changes that were made since he left:

1. The AOM driver was connected to a signal generator.

2. The first order beam from the AOM was coupled into the PMC while the zero-order beam is blocked. We might want to keep this configuration if the pointing stability is adequate.

3. c1psl got Burt restored to Dec 1st.

4. Megatron got updated.

Currently, c1susaux seems unresponsive and needs to be rebooted.

Today I noticed that the beam reflected from the PMC into the RFPD has a ghost (attachment) due to reflection from the back of the high transmission beam splitter that stirs the beam into the RFPD.

The two beams are focused into the RFPD.

In the past, the ghost beam was probably blocked by the BS mirror mount.

I put an iris to block the ghost beam.

I prepare for the ringdown measurement of the PMC according to Gautam's previous experiments.

1. I assembled the needed PDs and power supplies, lenses, beamsplitters and optomechanics needed for the measurement.

2. I surveyed the laser power with an Ophir power meter in the different parts of the experiment. All the measurements were done with the AOM driver excited with 1V DC.

For the PMC reflection, we chose to split off the beam that goes into the reflection camera. The power in that beam is ~ 0.11mW when the PMC is locked and 2.1mW otherwise.

For the PMC transmission, we chose to split the beam that is transmitted through the second steering mirror after the PMC. The power in that beam is 2mW.

For the peak off before the PMC, we chose to split the beam that goes into the fiber coupler. That path contains also the other AOM diffraction orders: 2.26mW in the 0th order beam, 6.5mW in the 1st order beam, 0.14mW in the 2nd order beam.

3. I placed a 10% beam splitter in the peak-off path such that 90% still goes into the fiber coupler (Attachment 1). I place a lens and PDA255 to measure the peak-off (Attachment 2).

It's getting late, I'll continue with the PD placements on Tuesday.

Zero order beam PMC ringdown

On Wednesday I installed 3 PDs (see attached photos) measuring: 

1. The input light to the PMC. Flip-mirror was installed (sorry Shruti) on the beam path to the fiber coupler.

2. Reflected light from the PMC.

3. PMC transmitted light.

I connected the three PDs to the oscilloscope and the AOM driver to a function generator. I drive the AOM with a square wave going from 1V to 0V.

I slowly increased the square wave frequency. The PMC servo doesn't seem to care. I reach 100KHz - it seems excessive but still works. In any case, I get the same results doing a single shut-down from a DC level.

I download the traces. I normalize the traces but I don't rescale them (Attachment 4) so that the small extinction can be investigated.

I notice now that the PDs show the same extinction. It probably means I should have taken dark currents data for the PDs.

Also, I forgot to take the reflected data when the PMC is out of resonance with the laser which could have helped us determine the PMC transmission.

Again, the shutdown is not as sharp as I want. There is a noticeable smoothening in the transition around t = 0 which makes the fit to an exponential difficult. I suspect that the function generator is the limiting device now. I hooked up the function generator to the oscilloscope which showed similar distortion (didn't save the trace)

I try to fit the transmission PD trace to a double exponential and to Zucker model (Attachment 5).

The two exponentials model, being much less restrictive, gives a better fit but the best fit gives two identical time constants of 92ns.

The Zucker model gives a time constant of 88ns. Both of these results are consistent with more or less with the linewidth measurement but this measurement is still ridden with systematics which hopefully will become minimized IMC ringdowns.

I resume my IMC ringdown activities now that the IMC is aligned again.

To avoid any accidental misalignments Gautam turned off all the inputs to the WFS servo.

I set up a PD and a lens as in attachment 1 (following Gautam's setup).

I connect the REFL, TRANS and INPut PDs to the oscilloscope.

I connect a Siglent function generator to the AOM driver. I try to shut off the light to the IMC using 1V DC waveform and pressing the output button manually. However, it produced heavily distorted step function in the PMC trans PD.

I use a square wave with a frequency of 20mHz instead with an amplitude of 0.5V offset of 0.25V and dutycycle of 1% so there will be minimal wasted time in the off state. I get nice ringdowns (attachment 2) - forgot to take pictures. The autolocker slightly misaligns the M2 every time it is acting, so I manually align it everytime the IMC gets unlocked.

Data analysis will come later.

I remove the PD and lens and reenable the WFS servo inputs. The IMC locks easily. The WFS outputs are very different than 0 now though.

I analyze the IMC ringdown data from last night. 

Attachment 1 shows the normalized raw data. Oscillations come in much later than in Gautam's measurement. Probably because the IMC stays locked.

Attachment 2 shows fits of the transmitted PD to unconstrained double exponential and the Zucker model.

Zucker model gives time constant of 21.6us

Unconstrained exponentials give time constants of 23.99us and 46.7us which is nice because it converges close to the Zucker model.

I extended the ringdown data analysis to the reflected beam following Isogai et al.

The idea is that measuring the cavity's reflected light one can use known relationships to extract the transmission of the cavity mirrors and not only the finesse.

The finesse calculated from the transmission ringdown shown in the previous elog is 1520 according to the Zucker model, 1680 according to the first exponential and 1728 according to the second exponential.

Attachment 1 shows the measured reflected light during an IMC ringdown in and out of resonance and the values that are read off it to compute the transmission.

The equations for m1 and m3 are the same as in Isogai's paper because they describe a steady-state that doesn't care about the extinction ratio of the light.

The equation for m2, however, is modified due to the finite extinction present in our zeroth-order ringdown.

Modelling the IMC as a critically coupled 2 mirror cavity one can verify that:

Where  is the coupled light power 

 is the power rejected from the cavity (higher-order modes, sidebands)

 is the cavity gain.

 and  are the power reflectivity and transmissivity per mirror, respectively.

 is the power attenuation factor. For perfect extinction, this is 0.

Solving the equations (m1 and m3 + modified m2), using Zucker model's finesse, gives the following information:

Loss per mirror = 84.99 ppm
Transmission per mirror = 1980.77 ppm
Coupling efficiency (to TEM00) = 97.94%

{Yehonathan, Jon, Jordan}

I tested the ai channels of the new PSL Acromag by looping an already-tested ao channel (C2:PSL-FSS-INOFFSET) back to the different ai channels.

I use Jon's IFOTest with /users/jon/ifotest/PSL.yaml.

I created a spreadsheet for the testing based on the current wiring spreadsheet. I added two columns for the high and low readings for each ai channel (attached pdf).

I marked in red the failed channels. Some of them are probably calibration issues, but the ones that show the same voltage for high and low are probably disconnected wires.

I redid the test on the channel that seemed disconnected to confirm.

I created a yaml file with all the failed channels for retesting called /users/jon/ifotest/PSL_failed_channels.yaml.

I checked the failed channels against the EPICS database definitions and the yaml file inputted to IFOTest. The channels where the readings are something other than +10/0 V, but the high/low values do change, I think can be attributed to one of two things:

• An incorrect gain and/or offset conversion parameter in the yaml file
• The EPICS SMOO parameter (smoothing) is set to some long value

I fixed the channel gains/offsets in the master yaml file (PSL.yaml). I also disabled smoothing in the EPICS defintions of the new PSL channels for the purpose of testing. We can uncomment those lines after installing the new chassis if noise is a problem. Please go ahead and re-test the channels again.

{Yehonathan, Jon}

We retested the failed ai channels. Most of them got fixed by applying the inverse calibration in the yaml file.

We still find some anomalous channels, mostly in the DB25 connector. Turns out, their limits were ill-defined in the EPICS database. Specifying the right limit fixed the issue.

We find one miswired channel (BNC4). We connected the BNC to the right channel on the Acromag unit which fixed the issue.

Overall all the ai channels were successfully bench-tested.