Jon brought over a box of parts for constructing the metal PMCs. I have stored it along the Y-arm, on top of the green optics cabinet.

I didn't do an exhaustive inventory check, but the following are the rough contents of the box:

• 41 deg AoI flat mirrors, R=99% @ 1064nm --- 11 pcs
• 6.8 deg AoI curved mirrors --- 5 pcs
• PZTs --- 3pcs
• Metal PMC body --- 2 pcs
• "Baked PZT endcaps" --- 3 pcs
• Ball bearings, clamps, misc hardware

I didn't inspect the optics but since we have so many, I am hoping we can find 3 good quality ones for one cavity at least. We should check that the geometry is suitable for our RF sideband frequencies.  

One factor which hampers locking efforts is the apparent drift of the input beam into the IFO. Over timescales of ~1 hour, I have noticed that the spot on the AS camera drifts significantly (~1 spot size) in pitch. The IPPOS QPD bears out this observation, see Attachment #1. The IMC WFS control signals do not show a correlated drift, hence my claim that the TTs are to blame.

I am able to correct this misalignment by moving TT1 in pitch (see Attachment #2, which shows some signals from a ~1 hour PRMI lock, during which time the pointing drifted, and I corrected it by moving TT1 pitch). Assuming the problem is purely TT1 pitch drifting, this corresponds to 3mm / 6m ~500urad of shift in 1 hour - seems very large. The fact that the drift is only present in pitch and doesn't really show up in yaw makes me think the problem is likely mechanical (unless the voltage to the top two coils is drifting relative to the bottom, but no LR drift, which would be very coincidental). At the moment, this is just an annoyance, but it'd be good for this problem to be fixed.

I haven't yet figured out how to make ndscope export these plots to SVG preserving the dark color theme, hence the weird light axes...

I could not find any level 3 mixers, but by adjusting the beat frequency the power in each of the delay line channels rose to almost 6.5 dBm.

In short: Delay line seems to work

Things I did earlier today:

1. Played with the slow servo on the FSS screen, but then reset the parameters to what was there before (Later found out that this was to lock the PSL freq to the IMC when the IMC power is significant.)
2. Connected the AG 4395A to the X PZT
3. Closed the PSL shutter

Transfer function measurement: (Refer Attachment 1)

Everything about the setup remained as I had left it earlier: described in elog 15174

except

• SR560 gain set to 10, DC coupled
• DC block at channel A of Agilent (The measurement was A/R)

I did not use a slow servo, but took individual sweeps adjusting the PSL temperature each time to bring the error voltage between +/-25 mV. The beat frequency was over 100 MHz.

For the plot posted in Attachment 1, the measurement paramters are the following. Will do further measurements/analysis tomorrow.

# AG4395A Measurement - Timestamp: Jan 30 2020 - 21:58:00
# Parameter File: TFAG4395Atemplate.yml
#---------- Measurement Parameters ------------
# Start Frequency (Hz): 50000.0, 50000.0
# Stop Frequency (Hz): 1000000.0, 1000000.0
# Frequency Points: 801, 801
# Measurement Format: LOGM, PHAS
# Measuremed Input: AR, AR
#---------- Analyzer Settings ----------
# Number of Averages: 1
# Auto Bandwidth: Off, Off
# IF Bandwidth: 1000.0, 1000.0
# Input Attenuators (R,A,B): 0dB 0dB 0dB 
# Excitation amplitude = -20.0dBm

You can trend the data for the past few hours and see what the appropriate value. I think these tests should only be done when whoever is running a test is in the lab.

P.S. I was surprised that the IMC didn't lose lock when this step was applied. I manually stepped this voltage between +/- 10 V and didn't see any response in the FSS readbacks. Either the channel doesn't work, or there is a divide by 40 in the physical circuit or something...

A script I was testing errantly set C1:PSL-FSS_INOFFSET => 10 V at about 5:30 pm. I manually reverted the channel value to 0, but I don't know what the value was initially. Someone please check this value if there are problems locking the FSS.

yes, its fine to use this with a level 3 or level 7 mixer; let's see some PM transfer functions !

Last night Yehonathan and I located the two steel PMCs in the QIL, with help from Anchal. They are currently sitting on my desk in Bridge, inside a box that also contains optics and other OMC parts. I will bring them over to the 40m the next time I come.

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.

 Today I began working on a TF measurement based on the delay line frequency discriminator setup in elog 4254 using a single mixer (without the 'I' and 'Q' readout).

For this, I re-organised the setup for the PLL measurement of the transfer function (elog 15148), increasing the HEPA for the initial changes while the PSL door was open, and then reverting it back to ~30%:

• I removed the 20dB coupler and connected the splitter directly after the amplifer to split the beat note signal into two coaxial cables one of which was ~1.5m longer than the other
• The recombined signals were combined in a mixer outside the PSL enclosure. I also replaced the 1.9 MHz LPF with a 5 MHz LPF.
• I used an SR 560 to amplify the signal after the LPF.

With the above setup the power that was seen at each channel of the delay line was <1dBm, which is not ideal for the any of the available mixers.

After the group meeting, I changed the amplifer to ZHL-3A (that is near the beat mouth) instead of a ZFL-500HLN because it had a higher gain (~28dB as opposed to ~19dB of the latter). The power seen at each of the delay line channels is over 5.5 dBm. This is consistent with the estimation 0 dBm beat -> -20 dBm after 20dB coupler -> 8 dBm after amplifier -> 5 dBm after splitter with insertion loss of 3 dB.

Is this sufficient enough for the mixer to work? In Attachment 1: A shows the mixer output (point B in Attachment 2) when the IMC is locked, in B the IMC is unlocked at the middle of the spectrum, and each of the dips show the DC voltage being sent to the PSL temperature servo being decreased by 0.01 V.

Gautam pointed me to the location of a few other RF amplifiers (ZHL-32A+, ZHL-1A) which don't possess a higher gain but can be used without disrupting the ALS related work (I was told).

For shorter duration changes that I made later, I opened and closed the PSL enclosure doors without changing the HEPA.

Attachment 2 shows the current setup as is, but I might add a PSL servo tomorrow to stabilise its frequency corresponding to a null mixer output without driving anything else.

In the last couple days, as the IMC ringdowns have been going on, we have noticed that the MC is behaving bad. Misaligning, drifting, etc.

Gautam told me a horror story about him, Koji, and melted wires inside the sat boxes.

I said, "Its getting too hot in there. So let's take the lids off!"

So then we:

1. Removed the lid (only 4 screws were still there)
2. cut off some of the shield - ground wires and insulated them with electrical tape
3. squished the IDC connectors on tightly
4. left it this way to see if MC would get better - certainly the painfully hot heatinks inside the box were now just 110 F or so

After some minutes, we saw no drifting. So maybe my theory of "hot heatsink partially shorting a coil current to GND through partially melted ribbon cable" makes sense? IF this seems better after a month, lets de-lid all the optics.

Let's look at some longer trends and be very careful next to MC2 for the next 3 days! I have put a dangerous mousetrap there to catch anyone who walks near the vacuum chamber.

gautam: the grounding situation per my assessment is that the shield of all the IDC cables are connected to a common metal strip at 1X5 - but in my survey, I didn't see any grounding of this strip to a common ground.

The goal tonight was to go through the locking scripts to see if I could recover the state from November 2019, when I could have the arm lengths controlled by ALS, and sit at zero CARM offset with the PRMI remaining locked and the arm powers fluctuating between 0-300. The IR-->ALS transitions went smoothly tonight, and the PRMI locking was also fairly robust when the CARM offset was large, but was less good when reduced to 0. Nevertheless, it is good to know that the system can be restored to the state it was late last year. Next step is to figure out how to keep the PRMI locked and get the AO path engaged, this was what I was struggling with before the new year.

To fix the apparent slowness of execution of the caput commands on megatron, I changed the "ewrite" macro in the mcup and mcdown scripts to use ezcawrite instead of caput. The old lines are simply commented out, and can be reverted to at any point if we so desire. After these changes, we saw that both scripts complete execution much faster.

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.

Over the past few days, I have been trying to make measurements of the phase modulation transfer function by modulating the X end laser PZT via PLL.

The setup was modified every time during the experiment in the same manner as mentioned in elog 15148.

I could not make the PLL lock for long enough to take a proper TF measurement, resulting in TFs that look like Attachment 1. The next step would be to use the method of a delay line frequency discriminator instead of the PLL.

Comments about locking with LB1005 PI controller:

1. I do not understand why the high PI corner frequency of 1kHz or 3kHz was required to lock.
2. The rms level of the error signal when locked was ~100 mV, which is 25% of the total mixer range (~400 mVpp). Decreasing the gain only caused the loop to go out of lock and did not decrease this noise in the error signal.
3. The setup was also partly inside the PSL enclosure, with the HEPA turned to 100%, which is probably a noisy environment for this measurement. Closing and opening the shutters or any disturbance near the enclosure resulted in movement of the beat note up to 5 MHz.
4. It may have been a better idea to actuate the PSL laser instead of the X NPRO because of its larger range, but would this solve the issue with the noise?

After some discussion with Gautam, I decided to build more spare channels into the new c1psl machine. This is anticipation of adding new laser and ISS channels in the near future, to avoid having to disconnect the installed chassis and pull it out of the rack. The spare channels will be wired to DB37M feedthroughs on the front side of the chassis, with enough wire length to be able to pull the breakout boards out of the front to reconfigure their wiring as needed (e.g., split off channels onto a separate connector).

To have enough overhead, this will require installing 1 additional ADC unit (XT1221) and 1 additional DAC (XT1541). We have enough spare BIO channels among the existing units (both sinking and sourcing). This will give us:

• 13 spare ADC channels
• 14 spare DAC channels
• 16 spare sinking BIO channels
• 12 spare sourcing BIO channels

The updated c1psl chassis wiring assignments are attached. It adds 4 new DB37M connectors for the spare channels (highlighted in yellow) and fixes one typo Jordan found while wiring today. The most current spreadsheet is available here.

[Jon, gautam]

We found that the caput commands were taking much longer to execute on megatron than on pianosa (for example). Suspecting that this had something to do with the fact that megatron was using EPICS binaries from the shared NFS drive which were compiled for a much older OS, I installed the latest stable release of EPICS on megatron. The new caput commands execute much faster. I also added the local EPICS directory to the head of the $PATH variable used by the MC autolocker and FSS Slow scripts, so that they use the new caput command. But mcup is still slow - maybe my new path definition isn't picked up and it is still using the NFS binaries? To be looked into...

With all of the shaking (man-made and divine), it was a hard to debug this problem. Summary of fixes:

1. The beam was misaligned on the WFS 1 and 2 heads, as well as the MC2 trans QPD. I re-aligned the former with the IMC unlocked, the latter (see Attachment) with the IMC locked (but the MC2 spot centering loops disabled).
2. I reset the WFS DC and RF offsets, as well as the QPD offsets (once I had hand-aligned the IMC mirrors to obtain good transmission).

At least the DC indicators are telling me that the IMC locking is back to a somewhat stable state. I have not yet checked the frequency noise / RIN.

There were a bunch of medm processes stalled on megatron (connected with screenshot taking). To see if they were interfering with the other scripts, I killed all of the medm processes, and commented out the line in the crontab that runs the screenshots every 10 mins. Let's see if this improves stability.

To conclude my PMC noise investigations: Attachment #1 shows the PMC noise inferred from the calibrations earlier in this thread and the fitted OLTF for the PMC loop. Attachment #2 compares the frequency noise (inferred from the error point of the PMC servo) when the IMC is locked / unlocked. I don't know what to make of the fact that the PMC suggests improvement from ~20 Hz onwards already - does this mean that the NPRO noise model is wrong by 1 order of magnitude at 30 Hz?

• The IMC was locked for the measurement shown in Attachment #1.
• The in-loop spectra of the error (at the I/F output of the mixer) and control (at TP3) signals were measured with the SR785.
• The control signal voltage monitors don't seem to work - neither the front panel LEMO nor the signals hooked up to the CDS system show me sensible shapes for the spectra between 1-3 Hz.
• To convert in loop to free-running, I multiplied the measured error (control) signal spectra by  (), where L is the OLTF. THe control signal was pre-processed by multiplying by a pole at 11.3 Hz, corresponding to the LPF formed by the 63.3 kohm series resistor and the 225 nF PZT capacitance.
• The "NPRO noise model" curve is 10^4/f Hz/rtHz.

While I initially thought the 1/f^2 rise below ~100 Hz is attributable to the IMC cavity length fluctuations, I found that this profile is present even in the measurement with the PSL shutter closed. I am not embarking on a detailed PMC noise budgeting project for now. Note however that we are not shot noise limited anywhere in this measurement band.

https://breakthrough.caltech.edu/magazine/2019-aug/#article-Listening-with-Light

It's fine to block the WFS while doing ringdowns but please return the config to normal so I don't have to spend time every night recovering the interferometer before doing the locking. As I mention in that post, it is possible to do this in a non-invasive way without having to run any extra cables / permanently block any beams. If there is some issue with the data quality, then we can consider a new setup. But I see no reason to re-invent the wheel.

The IMC was also massively misaligned. I had to re-align both MC1 and MC2 to recover the lock. I took this opportunity to reset the WFS offsets. Please do not disturb the alignment of the existing optical layout unless you verify that everything is working as it should be after your changes.

And for whatever reason, ITMX was misaligned. If you do something with the interferometer, no matter how minor it seems, please leave a note on the ELOG. It will save many painful debugging hours.

As I fix these, the seismic activity has gone up . I'll wait around for an hour, but not an encouraging restart to the locking 😢 

Zeroth order IMC ringdown setup

Following Gautam's IMC ringdown setup, I took the REFL PD form the PMC ringdown experiment and installed it in the IMC REFL path blocking WFS2 (Attachment 1).

I also ran a BNC cable from the transmission PD that Gautam installed on the IMC table to the vertex where the signals are measured on the scope. 

I offloaded the WFS servo output values onto the MC alignment (using the WFS servo relief script) so that its dc values would be correct when the servo is off.

Unfortunately, it seems like the script severely misaligned the MC mirrors at some point when the MC got unlocked. We should fix the script such that it stops when the offloading is complete.

We got the MC realigned but left it in a state where it is not locking easily.

I've also been noticing that the IMC Autolocker scripts are running rather sluggishly on Megatron recently. Some evidence - on Feb 11 2019, the time between the mcup script starting and finishing is ~10 seconds (I don't post the raw log output here to keep the elog short). However, post upgrade, the mean time is more like ~45-50 seconds. Rana mentioned he didn't install any of the modern LIGO software tools post upgrade, so maybe we are using some ancient EPICS binaries. I suspect the cron job for the burt snapshot is also just timing out due to the high latency in channel access. Rana is doing the software install on the new rossa, and once he verifies things are working, we will try implementing the same solution on megatron. The machine is an old Sun Microsystems one, but the system diagnostics don't signal any CPU timeouts or memory overflows, so I'm thinking the problem is software related...

The 24 V Sorenson (2nd from bottom) in the small rack west of 1x2 was repurposed to 12V 600 mA, and was run to a terminal block on the north side of 1X1. Cables were routed underneath 1X1 and 1X2 to the terminal blocks. 12V was then routed to the PSL table and banana clip terminals were added.

In preparation for resuming IFO locking activities, I measured the ALS noise with the arm lengths locked to IR, AUX laser frequencies locked to the arm lengths. Looks promising (y-axis units are Hz/rtHz).

Summary:

1. I investigated the stage-by-stage transfer functions of the PMC servo up till the HV stage. See Attachment #1. There were no unexpected features.
2. I replaced the AD602 used to implement the VGA capability. After the replacement, the gain of the VGA stage had the desired performance, see Attachment #2, Attachment #3.
3. The servo board was re-installed and the OLTF of the PMC loop was measured. See Attachment #4.

​To avoid driving the PA85 without the HV rails connected, I removed R23. This was re-installed after my characterization.

Input stage:

Since we do the demodulation of the PMC PDH signal off this servo board, the I/F mixer output is connected to the "FP1test" front panel LEMO input.

• A DG190 is used to enable/disable this path.
• Initially I tried checking the enable/disable functionality by measuring the resistance across the IC's I/O pins. However, this method does not work - the resistance read off from a DMM varied from ~23 ohms in the "ON" state to ~123 ohms in the "OFF" state. While the former value is consistent with the spec, the latter is confusing.
• But I confirmed that the switch does indeed isolate the input in the "OFF" state by injecting a signal with a function generator (100 Hz sine wave, 100mVpp) and monitoring the output on an oscilloscope.

Electronic TFs:

Using some Pomona mini-grabbers, I measured the electronic TFs between various points on the circuit. There were no unexpected features, the TFs all have the expected shape as per the annotations on the DCC schematic. I did not measure down to 0.1 Hz to confirm the low frequency pole implemented by U6, and I also didn't measure the RF low pass filter at the input stage (expected corner frequency is 1 MHz). 

VGA characterization:

After replacing the IC, I measured the transfer function between TP1 and TP2 for various values of the control voltage applied to pin 4A on the P1 connector, varying between +/- 5 V DC. 

• Pin 9A on the P1 connector has to be grounded for the signal to be allowed to pass through the VGA. 
• Note that there is an overall gain of -1/10 applied to the control voltage between pin 4A and pin #1 of the AD602, which is what actually sets the gain.
• Furthermore, the input impedance of the AD602 is spec-ed to be 100 ohms. Because of the series resistance of 500 ohms from TP1 to the input of the AD602 (so that the upstream OP27 isn't overdrawn for current), the relation between the control voltage applied to Pin 4A and gain (measured between TP1 and TP2) is modified to G [dB] = 32*(-0.1 * V_pin4A) - 6. 
• The gain behavior after the IC swap is as expected, both in terms of absolute gain, and the linearity w.r.t. the control voltage.
• Note that in Attachment #2, each color corresponds to a different control voltage to the AD602, varying from -5V DC to +5V DC in 1V steps. 

PZT Capacitance measurement

I confirmed that the PZT capacitance is 225 nF. The measurement was made using an LCR meter connected to the BNC cable delivering the HV to the PZT, at the 1X1 rack end.

OLTF measurement

After re-soldering R23, I put the board back into its Eurocrate, and was able to lock the PMC. For subsequent measurements, the PSL shutter was closed.

• I measured the OLTF using the usual IN1/IN2 prescription, implemented with the help of an SR560.
• At the original PMC Servo gain of +12dB, I found that the feature at ~8kHz results in an OLTF with multiple unity gain crossings.
• So I lowered it to +9dB. This yields an OLTF with ~60deg phase margin, ~2.3 kHz UGF. 
• The feature that sets the gain margin is actually not any of the peaks fit by LISO, but is one of the high frequency features at ~40 kHz. At the new setting of +9dB gain, the gain margin is ~10 dB.
• The measured TF (dots in Attachment #5) was fit with LISO (solid lines in Attachment #5) to allow inferring the out-of-loop servo noise by monitoring the in-loop noise (that plot to follow).

Looks like a M=4.6 earthquate in Barstow,CA tripped all the suspensions. ITMX got stuck. I restored the local damping on all the suspensions just now, and freed ITMX. Looks like all the suspensions damp okay, so I think we didn't suffer any lasting damage. IMC was re-aligned and is now locked.

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.

Jordan will write up the detailed elog but in summary,

1. Former +24V Sorensen in the AUX OMC power rack (south of 1X2) has been reconfigured to +12V DC.
2. The voltage was routed to a bank of fusable terminal blocks on the NW corner of 1X1.
3. An unused cable running to the PSL table was hijacked for this purpose.
4. The ZHL-1010+ were installed on the upper shelf of the PSL table, the two gain blocks draw a total of ~600mA of current when powered.

The PMC servo was re-installed at ~345pm. HV supplies were re-energized to their nominal values. I will update the results of the investigation shortly. The new nominal PMC servo gain is +9dB.

I've started a spreadsheet for the BHD optics specifications and populated it with my best initial guesses. There are a few open questions we still need to resolve, mostly related to mode-matching:

• PR2 replacement: What transmission do we need for a ~100 mW pickoff? Also, do we want to keep the current curvature of -700 m?
• LO mode-matching telescope: What are the curvatures of the two mirrors?
• Lenses: We have six of them in the current layout. What FLs do we need?

The spreadsheet is editable by anyone. If you can contribute any information, please do!

To facilitate wiring the c1psl chassis and scripting loopback tests, I've compiled a distilled spreadsheet with the Acromag-to-breakout board wiring, broken down by connector. This information is extractable from the master spreadsheet, but not easily. There were also a few apparent typos which are fixed here.

The wiring assignments at the time of writing are attached below. Here is the link to the latest spreadsheet.

While I have the board out, I'll try and do a thorough investigation of TFs and noise of the various stages. There is no light into the IFO until this is done.

Setup Update:

- No more SR 560, upgraded to LB1005 P-I controller.  Because: Elog 14687. Schematic of new setup shown in Attachment 1.

- For this, the Marconi was moved to the other (east) side of the PSL table and a power supply was also placed in the enclosure.

I think that the RF power at the mixer in this new configuration is 0 dBm (since the spectrum analyzer read ~ -20 dBm)

Progress Today:

- Turned up the HEPA to 100%, closed the PSL shutter, misaligned the ITMX, connected the LB1005 to the PZT. [The PZT has been reconnected to the X arm PDH servo, HEPA back to 20-30%]

- Tried to look for the PSL+X beat, but it was not there. Gautam identified the flipmount in the path which sorted it out (eventually), but there was no elog about it.

- After much trial, the loop seemed to lock with PI corner 1 kHz, gain ~2.9 (as read on knob), LFGL set to 90 dB. The beat note looked quite stable on the oscilloscope, but the error signal had an rms of ~100 mV (Rana pointed out that it could be the laser noise) and the lock lasted for ~1 min each time.

The parameters were similar to that in elog 14687. Why do we require such a high PI corner frequency and LFGL?

Summary:

The RF transimpedance of the PMC PDH RFPD was measured, and found to be 1.03 kV/A. 

Details:

With the new fiber coupled PDFR system, it was very easy to measure the response of this PD in-situ 🎉 . The usual transfer function measurement scheme was used, with the AG4395 RF out modulating the pump current of the diode laser, and the measured transfer function being the ratio of the response of the test PD to the reference PD.

I assume that the amount of light incident on the reference NF1611 photodiode and the test photodiode were equal - I don't know what the DC transimpedance of the PMC REFL photodiode is (can't find a schematic), but the DC voltage at the DC monitor point was 16.4 mV (c.f. -2.04 V for the NF1611). The assumption shouldn't be too crazy because assuming the reference PD has an RF transimpedance of 700 V/A (flat in the frequency range scanned), we get a reasonable shape for the PMC REFL photodiode's transimpedance.

The fitted parameters are overlaid in Attachment #1. The 2f notch is slightly mistuned it would appear, the ratio of transimpedance at f1/2*f1 is only ~10. The source files have been uploaded to the wiki.

Knowing this, the measured PDH discriminant of 0.064 GV/m is quite reasonable:

• expected optical gain from modulation depth assuming a critically coupled cavity is 0.089 GW/m.
• Assume 0.7 A/W responsivity for InGaAs.
• Account for the fact that only 0.8 % of the reflected light reaches the PMC photodiode because of the pickoff window.
• Account for a conversion loss of 4.5 dB in the mixer.
• Account for the voltage division by a factor of 2 at the output of the BLP-1.9 filter due to the parallel 50 ohm termination.
• Then, the expected PDH discriminant is 0.089e9 W/m * 0.7 A/W * 0.8e-2 * 1.03kV/A * 10^(-4.5/20) * 0.5 ~ 0.15 GV/m. This is now within a factor of ~2 of the measured value, and I assume the total errors in all the above assumed parameters (plus the cable transmission loss from the photodiode to the 1X1 rack) can easily add up to this. 

So why is this value so different from what Koji measured in 2015? Because the monitor point is different. I am monitoring the discriminant immediately after the mixer, whereas Koji was using the front panel monitor. The latter already amplifies the signal by a factor of x101 (see U2 in schematic). 

Conclusion:

I still haven't found anything that is obviously wrong in this system (apart from the slight nonlinearity in the VGA stage gain steps), which would explain why the PMC servo gain has to be lower now than 2018 in order to realize the same loop UGF.

doesn't seem so anomolous to me; we're getting ~25 dB of gain range and the ideal range would be 40 dB. My guess is that even thought this is not perfect, the real problem is elsewhere.

The burt snapshotting is still not so reliable - for whatever reason, the number of snapshot files that actually get written looks random. For example, the 14:19 backup today got all the snaps, but 15:19 did not. There are no obvious red flags in either the cron job logs or the autoburt log files. I also don't see any clues when I run the script in a shell. It'll be good if someone can take a look at this.

[jordan, gautam]

Summary:

The AD602 chip which implements the overall servo gain for the PMC seems to be damaged. We should switch this out at the next opportunity.

Details:

1. According to the PSL cross connect wiring diagram, the VME DAC that provides the control voltage to the VGA stage goes to pins 7/8 of cross connect J16.
   • Jordan and I verified that the voltage at this point [Vout], is related to the PMC_GAIN EPICS slider [dB] value according to the following relationship: .
2. On the PMC servo board, this voltage is scaled by a factor of -1/10. 
   • This was confirmed by peeking at this voltage using a DMM (I clipped onto R31) while the gain slider was varied.
   • This corresponds to +/- 1000 mV reaching the AD602.
   • However, the AD602 is rated to work with a control voltage varying between +/- 625 mV.
   • What this means is that the EPICS slider value is not the gain of the AD602 stage. The latter is given by the relation .
   • @team PSL upgrade: this should be fixed in the database file for the new c1psl machine.
3. Using TP1 and TP2 connected to the SR785, I measured the transfer function of the AD602 for various values of the EPICS slider.
   • Result is shown in Attachment #1.
   • I did this measurement with the PMC locked, so I'm using the in-loop error signal to infer the gain of the VGA stage.
   • As expected, the absolute value of the gain does not match that of the EPICS slider (note that the AD602 has an input impedance of 100 ohms. So the 499 ohm series resistor between TP1 and the input of AD602 makes a 1/5 voltage divider, so the gain seen between TP1 and TP2 has this factor folded in).
   • Moreover, the relative scaling of the gain for various slider values also doesn't appear to be liner.
   • For the highest gain setting of +15 dB, the servo began oscillating, so I think the apparent non-flatness of the gain as a function of frequency is an artefact of the measurement.
   • Nevertheless, my conclusion is that the IC should be changed.

I will pull the board and effect the change later today.

I pulled the board out at 345pm after dialling down all the HV supplies in 1X1. I will reinstall it after running some tests.

Summary:

The mixer + LPF combo used to demodulate the PMC PDH error signal seems to work as advertised.

Details:

Measurement setup --- Attachment #1. The IF signal was monitored using the scope in High-Z mode.

Results --- Attachment #2.

So the next step is to characterize the RF transimpedance of the PMC RFPD.

upgrade was done

cronjob testing wasn't one by one 😢 

burt snapshots were gone

i brought them back home 🏠 

wiped and install Debian 10 on rossa today

still to be done: config it as CDS workstation

please don't try to "fix" it in the meantime

Gautam and I debugged a communications problem with TP3 that was causing its python service to fail. We traced the problem back to the querying of the pump controller for its operational parameters (speed, voltage, temp). Some small percentage of the time (~5%, indeterministically), the pump controller is returning an invalid response which causes the service to shut itself down and signal a NO COMM error.

As a temporary fix, I wrapped the failing query in an exception handler to continue past this particular error. However, we suspect the microprocessor in the TP3 controller may be beginning to fail. There is a spare controller sitting right next to it in the vacuum rack. We will ask Chub to install the replacement in the near future.

gautam: this pump is responsible for pumping the annular volume under normal operations. while this problem is being resolved, the annular volume is valved off (as it has been since July 2019 anyway which is when this problem first manifested).

Summary:

I estimate the PMC servo modulation depth to be approximately 50 mrad. This is only 15% lower than what was measured in Jan 2018, and cannot explain the ~x50 reduction of optical gain measured earlier in this thread. Later in the day, I also confirmed that the LO input to the ZAD-6 mixer is +7 dBm. So the crystal is not to blame.

Details:

1. PSL frequency is locked to the IMC length.
2. Arm lengths are locked to the PSL frequency using POX/POY.
3. EX green laser locked to the X arm length using end PDH servo. GTRX was ~0.4 in this measurement, which is the nominal value.
4. The 20dB coupled port of the beat between the EX and PSL lasers was monitored using the AG4395A in "Spectrum" units.
5. The beat was set at ~90 MHz, and a spectrum was taken for ~100 MHz span centered at the beat frequency.
6. The modulation depth is estimated by considering the ratio of power at the beat frequency relative to that 35.5 MHz away. See Attachment #1.

Assuming a finesse of 700 for the PMC, we expect an optical gain of 2*Pin*J0(50e-3)*J1(50e-3)/fp  ~ 1.2e-7 W/Hz (=0.089 GW/m). I can't find a measurement of the PMC RFPD transimpedance to map this onto a V/Hz value. 

I looked into this a little more today.

1. The steering optic used to route PMC REFL to the RFPD is in fact a window (labelled W1-PW-1025-UV-1064-45P), not a High-T beamsplitter.
2. With the PMC unlocked, I measured ~10.70 mW in the stronger of the two beams, 5.39 mW in the weaker one. 
   • The window spec is Tp > 97%. Since we have ~1.3 W incident on the PMC, the primary reflection corresponds to T=99.2%, which is consistent with the spec.
   • There is no spec given for the coating on the back side of this window. But from the measured values, it seems to be R = 100* 5.39e-3 / (1.3*T^2) ~ 0.4%. Seems reasonable.

Currently, the iris is set up such that the stronger beam makes it to the PMC RFPD, while the weaker one is blocked by the iris. As usual, this isn't a new issue - was noted last in 2014, but who knows whether the new window was intalled...

Summary:

The PDH discriminant of the PMC servo was measured to be ~0.064 GV/m. This is ~50 times lower than what is reported here. Perhaps this is a signature of the infamous ERA decay, needs more investigation.

Details:

• Calibration of the error and control points were done using 1 Hz triangle wave injection to the "EXT DC" input of the PMC servo. Two such sweeps are shown in Attachment #1 (measured data as points, fits as solid lines). For the control signal monitor, I've multiplied the signal obtained on the scope by 49.6, which is the voltage divider implemented for this monitor point.
• The PDH discrimiannt was calibrated into physical units knowing the modulation frequency of the PMC, which is 35.5 MHz. The error in this technique due to the free-running NPRO frequency noise is expected to be small since the entire fringe is crossed in <30 ms, in which time the laser frequency is expected to change by < 5 kHz.
• The drive to the PZT was calibrated into physical units using the same technique. This number is within a factor of 2 of the number reported here. 
• Attachment #2 shows the loop OLTF measured using the usual IN1/IN2 prescription (with an SR560). In fact, the 8kHz feature makes the loop unstable. For convenience, I've overlaid the OLTF from March 2017, when things were running smoothly. It is not clear to me why even though the optical gain is now lower, a smaller servo gain results in a larger UGF.

The light level hasn't changed by a factor of 50, leading me to suspect the modulation depth. Recall that the demodulation of the PMC is now done off the servo board using a minicircuits mixer (hence, the "C1:PSL-PMC_LODET" channel isn't a reliable readback of the LO signal strength over time). Although there is a C1:PSL-PMC_MODET channel which looks like it comes from the crystal reference card, and so should still work - this, however, shows no degradation over 1 year.

Somebody had removed the BLP-1.9 that I installed at the I/F output of the mixer to remove the sum frequency component in the demodulated signal, I reinstalled this. I find that there are oscillations in the error signal if the PMC servo gain is increased above 14.5 on the MEDM slider.

For a few days, I've noticed that the PSL overview StripTool panel shows PMC transmission and FSS RMTEMP channels with variation that is too large to be believable. Looking at these signals on an oscilloscope, there was no such fuzziness in the waveform. I ruled out flaky connections, and while these are the only two channels currently being acquired by the temporary Acromag setup underneath the PSL enclosure, the Acromags themselves are not to blame, because once I connected a function generator to the Acromag instead of the PMC transmission photodiode, both channels are well behaved. So the problem seems to be with the PMC transmission photodiode, perhaps a grouding issue? Someone please fix this.

Summary:

1. The input beam to the PMC cavity was changed back to the zeroth order beam from the AOM. 
2. The PMC was locked and nominal transmission levels were recovered.
3. The AOM driver voltage was set to 0V DC. 
4. A razor beam dump was placed to catch the first (and higher order) beams from the AOM (see Attachment #1), but allow the zeroth order beam to reach the PMC cavity.
5. Some dangling cabling was cleared from the PSL enclosure.

Details

• HEPA turned to 100% while work was going on in the PSL enclosure.
• Input power to the PMC cut from ~1.3 W to ~20 mW using the first available HWP downstream of the laser head, before any realignment work was done.
• Next, the beam dump blocking the undeflected zeroth order beam was removed.
• Triangle wave was applied to the PZT servo board "EXT DC" input to sweep the cavity length to make the alignment easier.
• After some patient alignment, I could see a weak transmitted beam locked to some high order mode, at which point I increased the input power to 200mW, and did the fine alignment by looking at the mode shape of the transmitted beam.
• Once I could lock to a TEM00 mode, I bumped the power back up to the nominal 1.3W, I fine tuned the alignment further by minimizing PMC REFL's DC level. 
• Dialled the power back down (using HWP) for installation of the beam block to catch the AOM's first (and higher order) beams.
• Checked that the reflected beam from the PMC cavity is well centered on the PMC REFL PDH photodiode. The ghost from the AR coating of the high-T beamsplitter is blocked by the iris installed by yehonathan on Friday. 
• The beam was a little low on the PMC REFL CCD camera - I raised the camera by ~1cm.
• With the beam axis well matched to the PMC, I measured 1.33 mW going into the cavity, and 1.1 W transmitted, so . Whatever loss numbers we extract should be consistent with this fact.
• HEPA turned back down to 30% shortly after noon.

Note that for all the alignment work, only the two steering mirrors immediately upstream of the PMC cavity were touched.

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.

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.

Summary:

1. The ZHL-1010+ gain blocks acquired from MiniCircuits arrived sometime ago.
2. I packaged them in a box prepared  (Attachment #1).
3. Their performance was characterized by me (Attachment #2 and #3).

The measurements are consistent with the specifications, and there is no evidence of compression at any of the power levels we expect to supply to this box (<0dBm).

Details:

These "gain blocks" were acquired for the purpose of amplifying the IR ALS beat signals before transmission to the LSC rack for demodulation. The existing ZHL-3A amplifiers have a little too much gain, since our revamp to use IR light to generate the ALS beat.

Attachment #4: Setups used to measure transfer functions and noise.

For the transfer function measurement, I chose to send the output of the amplifier to a coupler, and measured the coupled port (output port of the coupler was terminated with 50 ohms). This was to avoid saturating the input of the AG4395. The "THRU" calibration feature of the AG4395 was used to remove the effect of cabling, coupler etc, so that the measurement is a true reflection of the transfer function of OUT/IN of this box. Yet, there are some periodic ripples present in the measured gain, though the size of these ripples is smaller than the spec-ed gain flatness of <0.6dB.

For the noise measurement, the plots I've presented in Attachment #3 are scaled by a factor of sqrt(2) since the noise of the ZFL-500-HLN+ and the ZHL-1010+ are nearly identical according to the specification. Note that the output noise measured was divided by the (measured) gain of the ZFL-500-HLN+ and the ZFL-1010+ to get the input referred noise. The trace labelled "Measurement noise floor" was measured with the input to the ZFL-500-HLN+ terminated with 50ohms, while for the other two traces, the inputs of the ZHL-1010+ were terminated with 50ohms.

Raw data in Attachment #5.

I will install these at the next opportunity, so that we can get rid of the many attenuators in this path (the main difficulty will be sourcing the required +12V DC for operation, we only have +15V available near the PSL table).