[Anchal, Paco]

After Koji reduced the output resistors on PR2/PR3 coil drivers, we got much better actuation range. We aligned TT1 TT2 again to get beam centered on PR2 and PR3. Then we used only PR2 and PR3 to do the input beam alignment to Y arm cavity. Using access in ETMY chamber, we aligned the input beam parallel to cavity axis. Slight changes were required in ETMY alignment offsets to get first roundtrip in same spot on ITMY. remaining alignment is finer and needs to be done with a help of a reflection photodiode and cameras in the control room. Immediate next step is to setup POY path for locking the Yarm with IR.

Side note: Because of the large PIT correction required in PR3, we found that our upper OSEMs were hitting totally bright limit and lower OSEMs were hitting totally dark limit on PR3. This also destablized our damping loops. We pushed the upper OSEMs slighlty and pulled back the lower OSEMs slightly to get the PD signal in half shadow region again. This worked and our damping loops are stable again. However, we think we should repeat free swing test in future to diagonalize the input matrix for new OSEM positions.

[Yuta Koji]

We took out the two coil driver units for PR3 and the incorrect arrangement of the output Rs were corrected. The boxes were returned to the rack.

In order to recover the alignment of the PR3 mirror, C1:SUS_PR3_SUSPOS_INMON / C1:SUS_PR3_SUSPIT_INMON / C1:SUS_PR3_SUSYAW_INMON were monitored. The previous values for them were {31150 / -31000 / -12800}. By moving the alignment sliders, the PIT and YAW values were adjusted to be {-31100 / -12700}. while this change made the POS value to be 52340.

The original gains for PR3 Pos/Pit/Yaw were {1, 0.52, 0.2}. They were supposed to be reduced to  {0.077, 0.04, 0.015}.
I ended up having the gains to be {0.15, 0.1, 0.05}. The side gain was also increased to 50.

----

Overall, the output R configuration for PR2/PR3 are summarized as follows. I'll update the DCC.

PR2 Coil Driver 1 (UL/LL/UR) / S2100616 / PCB S2100520 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH1/2/3

PR2 Coil Driver 2 (LR/SD) / S2100617 / PCB S2100519 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH3

PR3 Coil Driver 1 (UL/LL/UR) / S2100619 / PCB S2100516 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH1/2/3

PR3 Coil Driver 2 (LR/SD) / S2100618 / PCB S2100518 / R_OUT = (1.2K // 100) for CH3

I begin modeling the initial BHD setup using Finesse. I started with copying C1_w_BHD.kat from the 40m/bhd repo and making changes to reflect the current BHD setup:

1. OMCs were removed.

2. Only 1 PD per BHD port was left.

3. Transmission of PR2 was changed to 2.2%. The PRG was calculated to be ~15.5.

4. Actual RoCs of new optics were dialed in (Yesterday me and Paco went into the cleanroom to measure the RoCs and they seem to match the datasheets).

Here's a table comparing the old (design?) RoCs with the new RoCs:

The changes looked quite alarming, especially for LO4 and AS3, so I wrote a script to calculate the mode matching between the LO and AS beams called AS_LO_ModeMatching.ipynb and pushed it into the repo. In the notebook a bright AS beam is created by creating a small asymmetry between the arms of ~ 0.003 degrees (~10pm). Amplitude detectors were put at the input ports of the BHD BS to calculate the fields in the AS and LO beams. In particular TEM00, TEM02 and TEM20 were measured for each beam.

The calculation shows that with the old RoCs the mode matching between the LO and AS beams is 99% while for the new RoCs it is ~ 50%.

[Anchal, Paco, JC, Tega]

Today we have aligned the Yarm cavity for IR, with verified 1.5 roundtrips. We also placed following optics in the BS table.

• POXM1 (installed earlier, not eloged)
• SRMOL2
• POYM1
• SRMOL1
• POYM2

We also cleared the in-air BS table of all previous optics. JC and Tega setup HeNe laser for Oplevs roughly for now. Tega also transported the POY RFPD from ITMY in-air table to the BS in-air table. We aligned the POY path to the table, but we had to move ITMY after that to get 2nd roundtrip in the arm cavity, which misaligned our POY path again. POY path would need to be modified tomorrow.

Ok, it turns out these optics were purchased on purpose, as this elog shows. Jon considered building a mode-matching telescope with stock optics as an initial step before purchasing the custom optics (referred to as "design" optics in my elog).

I dialed in the new distances between the optics into the .kat file as described in this elog and pushed the changes to the repo. With the new distances, I got mode-matching of 87% for the full IFO and 89% for FPMI so there's probably no need to worry as the mode-matching with these optics was already designed.

[Ian, Paco, Tega]

Paco and I opened the ETMY and ITMY chamber to work on yesterdays efforts to lock the y arm. We temporarily in stalled a camera behind the ETMY to look at the transmission as we adjusted the ETMY and ITMY. We then moved on to setting up the POY. the beam was too large for the apature of the PD so we installed a lens in the beam path to decrease it.

Once that was installed we saw some flashing on the C1:LSC-POYCD_OUT channel. We also could see the flashing on the monitors in the control room. The flashing beam seemed to be in the middle of ITMY but was slightly to the right on the ETMY. From here we tried to walk the beam using PR3 and ETMY to move the beam to the center of the ETMY.

[Paco, Koji]

I asked Koji for some advice regarding closing the loop on YARM using POY11. A few things seemed off including

• The YARM transmission; which was peaking at ~ 20 (typically, TRY is normalized so that under nominal input power conditions we see TRY in the range [0, 1])
• The POY11 DCPD level was quite low; we expect a few tens of uW in this low power configuration where no more than 100 mW are going through IMC.

We looked at the POY11 RFPD first. We tried flashing an incandescent lamp in-situ and saw some weak response using an oscilloscope and the DC Out readout. We then used the OPHIR power meter and recorded ~ 1.2 uW of light incident on the POY11 RFPD... Initially, we suspected our beam was not filling the PD sensitive area (~ 2 mm diameter), but a quick estimate using the 200 mm focusing lens currently installed in the ITMY table gave us quite a generous margin of error... so we questioned the OPHIR measurement. We swapped the power meter and this time got ~ 18.4 uW, which is more in line with what we expected (phew).

Moving on, from the POY11 RFPD responsivity, and our ~ 20 uW of incident power, we expected on the order of a 20 mV of DC Output, but weren't really seeing this on the scope, so we decided to test the pins on the power of the RFPD. The DB15 cable not only supplies bipolar 15 VDC but also monitors several other test points such as Tsens, or DCout in the RFPD. We quickly noticed a weird signal on the ENAB testpoint, so we removed POY11 RFPD from the ITMY table and took it to the PD testbench. After redoing the soldering on the breakout board and RF amplifier (ZXX-500LN+), which we tested separately, we saw the expected behavior using a +- 15 VDC power supply... thus verifying that the RFPD and breakout board seemed to work ok. We turned our attention to the upstream DB15 connection, and after quickly checking the newly run cables, we ended up debugging the eurocrate PD interface. After attempting a simple power cycle and failing, we removed this card and looked at the schematic. It would seem that the logic enabling ICs (one or both) failed, thus preventing the card from enabling its outputs correctly.... We bypassed the logic by soldering pins 4,8,14 on U1, U20 and then checked the circuit in-situ, and we saw it worked fine again.

Now none of the status LEDs (which are driven by the logic IC portion) work on this card, but the card itself works fine at least for POY11.

We moved on, and installed the DB15 cables, checking the functionality at every step... Then we looked at the POY11_I_ERR signal and were happy to see nice pdh wavelets. We pushed forward a little bit more to try and lock YARM. First, we went to the Y end and centered the ETMY Oplev so as to register the position where the YARM is flashing... The ITMY Oplev is still not online. Then, we optimized the ETMY damping gains somewhat to try and make it less noisy, and finally, played with the LSC YARM loop gain to attempt locking. This last push was not as successful, but we have an idea of what next steps are needed to reduce the SUS noise, including

• Install ITMY Oplevs, and close loop
• Optimize ITMY damping gains

To be continued....

We took out the right most PD interface board D990543 and removed the 74LS04 chips. In fact two out of 4 were already replaced with enabling wires, however it seemed that one of the remaining two got failed.
These remaining two chips were removed and the enabling signals were connected to VCC (+5V). This operation made the status LED light not functional. (We didn't bother to fixed them by connecting them to the GND)

The new schematic diagram was attached here, and the corresponding DCC entry (https://dcc.ligo.org/D1900318-v1) was modified. Attachments #2-3 show the circuit after the changes, and the front view respectively.

[Paco, JC]

We realized the 2 in oplev mirrors (Thorlabs BB2-E02) for ITMYOL, SRMOL, and BSOL, are 0.47 in thick, while the LMR2V fixed mount is 0.46 in deep, even without taking the retaining ring into account. After a brief exchange with Koji, and Ian, we decided to glue the mirrors onto the mounts using Torr Seal (a vac compatible epoxy). They are curating in the clean room and should be ready to install in about 2 hours.

{JC, Paco, Yehonathan, Ian}

POY lens was moved to infront of the POY steering mirror to make the POU beam focused on the POY11 RFPD. We measured the DC output with an oscilloscope and optimized it with the steering mirrors. We get ~ 16.5mV.

The new lens position blocked the BS OpLev ingoing beam, so we repositioned the OpLev mirrors to make the beam path not hit the lens.

We went to the control room to observe the PDH signal. We observed a series of PDF osscillation and then the signal died infront of our eyes! There is just noise.

We go and check the +/-15V powering the RFPD and we find that the V- is ~ 14V which is good but the V+ was ~ 2.7V which is not.

We went to the PD interface and measure the POY11 output oltages using a breakout board and got the same result.

The PD interface was taken out for inspection. All the OP27 on channel 3 were replaced with new ICs (without need turns out)...

The PD interface card turned out to be OK. What happened is that one of the Kepcos in the RF rack died because its fan crumbled as seen in Attachment #2 (could this be the source of burning smell?). In response, the rack was drawing from the other Kepco (connected in parallel) way too much current  (4A) and the current limiter dropped its voltage from 15V to 2.7V.

The Kepco pair was removed and replaced with a single Sorensen. The POY PDH signal was restored (see attachment).

[Paco, Yehonathan]

We installed ITMYOL1 and ITMYOL2 on the ITMY chamber. We aligned the ITMY OpLev beam and closed the loop successfully, we then had a second round of YARM aligment, where we brought the Y peak transmission up from 0.04 counts to 0.09 counts (up by a factor of two). We still couldn't close the YARM loop but we have a better alignment.

[Paco]

In reply to Koji's questions;

Q1: What is the product number of the broken Kepco?

A1: Kepco JQE 0-25 V 4A (1/4 rack mountable 100 W linear power supply)

Q2: Do you feel the burning smell on this broken kepco?

A2: Not very clearly. It just smells like generic broken electronic, but the fan was already long gone by the time we detected its problem.

Q3: How much current does the +15 VDC line draw from the Sorensen?

A3: The Sorensen current monitor reads 6.3 Amps

Q4: Is there a linear power supply in the market that can handle this much current with some margin?

A4: Probably... but we would have to look around.

Q5: Do we really need a linear power supply there?

A5: Good question, I guess anything that is not contaminating the RF electronics with HF noise (e.g. switching PS) can work?

Q6: Is the same fan problem happening on other Kepcos?

A6: Other fans are on, but at least one or two have the "ill" sound... It may be worthwile to give them maintenance if we can.

I'm planning on simulating the BHD readout noise in a manner very similar to the ALS noise model using Simulink. I've made a sketch of the model for the longitudinal DOFs (attached). A model for ASC will be similar but with more measurement devices (OpLevs, QPDs, WFSs).

I'm not pretending to simulate everything in this diagram on the first go, it is just a sketch of the big picture.

[Paco, Ian]

We aligned the X-arm IR laser

• First fix pointing on the ITMX by moving the BS (mostly pitch)
• then open etmx chamber and fine tune the pointing using the BS until it is centered on ETMX
• using beam card we quickly see the third reflection back misaligned on pitch so we move ITMX pitch to center it on ETMX
• fine tune the ITMX alignment on ETMX and check higher order reflaction overlaping with input

at this point we checked C1:LSC-TRX_DQ using ndscope and luckly we see a tiny bit of flashing (about 0.04 in normalized high gain PD counts). So we closed ETM chamber and ITM chamber and go to control room to optimize this signal. The optimization was done in the following way:

• First, just reiterate on the last steps from above, by maximizing the peak transmission using ITMX/ETMX pair.
• Then, slide BS alignment, mostly in PIT, and return to ITMX/ETMX pair.
  • At some point, turning the BS PIT made a huge improvement, so I turned the control room light off and looked at the camera on the quad monitors.
• Based on the location of the flashes (now brighter) on the ITMX/ETMX, the beam seemed to be off in PIT more than YAW, so we focused on correcting the pointing (moving BS) and then correcting with ITMX/ETMX, until the flashes got centered around ETMX.

Final peak transmission (C1:LSC-TRX_DQ) was ~ 1.3 in normalized high gain PD counts. Power budgeting tells us the peak should be ~ 2.0. The flashing on this arm is much better than YARM, so we will press on by installing POX11 RFPD and attempt locking tomorrow. This also means that YARM can be improved by a combination of alignment and/or SUS damping.

In the end we turned on the ETMX oplev and centered it to "save" our flashing position using this reference.

[Yuta, Paco]

We set up POX11 beam path from ITMX chamber to the ITMX in-air table. To do this, we first identified the POX reflection on the ITMX chamber, and then steered the POXM1 (in the BSC) by hand until we cleared the viewport. We also checked that the POX beam is centered on POXM1.

We then decided to slide the LO1 YAW to clear the LO beam path, which was otherwise clipping on the PR2 SOS. The slider (DAC limited) range of -25000 counts was barely enough to clear the SOS comfortably and avoid hitting the POXM1. The LO beam is now hitting LO2 mirror, so LO alignment can proceed from BSC and ITMY chamber.

Finally, we aligned the input ITMX Oplev beam to ITMXOL2, then ITMX, then to ITMXOL2, and finally into the ITMX in-air optical table. We took some photos of the Oplev beam (see Attachments) to note their position.

By the end of in-vacuum work there was still some flashing in the arm cavities, but fine alignment is required.

After closing the ITMX Chamber, and BSC, we moved on to center the ITMXOL beam. We accomplished this by using two mirrors instead of one as was previously the case. This relaxed the angle of incidence a little, but we had to change the path and the position of the QPD. The QPD sum reads ~ 6600 counts versus the ~ >8000 counts it read right before the vent. One attempt at closing the OL loop, and the ITMX starting oscillating in YAW (PIT was ok), so we realized that maybe we flipped the order in which the OL1 / OL2 mirror were arranged and so the YAW loop needed to flip its sign. Indeed after changing the C1:SUS-ITMX_OL_YAW_GAIN from -6.0 to 6.0 the OL_YAW loop is stable.

Yesterday, I tried tuning the PR2 damping gains by increasing the gain until the damping gave the ~5 oscillations (by watching the damped motion using StripTool, and keeping an eye on the PD var). I noticed that often when I changed the gain, some OSEM sensors shifted (gained an offset!!) and the PD var values changed, typically increasing at higher damping gains. I reverted the changes until the PD var looked "normal" again (~ 2 mV) but it is hard to imagine that the damping filters can have such a "DC" effect, given the shape comprises single zero at 0 Hz (and pole at 30 Hz).

It seemed that it comes from the servo oscillation. This does not happen when the output limitters were set to be 100-ish. But even so the gains looked quite low.

I turned on the Cheby rool-offs for all the DOFs, and this allowed me to increase the damping gain A LOT.
The gains were 2~5 but now they are now 20-25 for the face OSEMs and 150 for SD.

The attached is the example of the damping when all the damping loops are on.

I think we need to tune the servo loops carefully for all the SUSs by actually looking at the openloop transfer functions rather than a personal feeling. => To Do

[Paco, JC, Yuta]

We aligned the BS oplev using the new BSOL mirror pair. The main change is now the AOI of the oplev on the BS is quite normal. The output beam in the in-air table was quite large (diverging?) so we had to place a short FL lens in front of the QPD.

Separately, I added the LO1 YAW offset of ~ -2500 counts (before the coil driver changes it was -24500 counts) and saw LO beam hitting LO2. This means the alignment of the LO beam can move downstream.

{Yehonathan, Paco}

BS, ITMX and ETMX were aligned to get flashing in the X arm.

I aligned the POX beam on the ITMX table using a mixture of the old POP and POX optics. The beam was stirred to the POX11 RFPD. We measure the DC power using a scope but we see nothing. We went and saw that the POX11 cable was not connected to RF rack so we connected it along with some other RFPD cables.

We return but there is still no DC. We ndscope C1:LSC-POX11_I_ERR_DQ C1:LSC-POX11_Q_ERR_DQ and maximize the signal (attachment). The readout is very weak though. It should be as strong as POY which we already observed to have good SNR.

We also noticed that the one of the beam dumps for the POX RFPD is not glued and easily falls down.

[Tega, Yuta, Paco]

We tried aligning the LO and AS beams on to the BHD beamsplitter. During the alignment process, we noticed that the damping loop for AS1 was not working. Paco drew our attention to the fact that the UR OSEM signal was alway close to zero, so we checked to ensure that the magnet was still within the OSEM recess and it looks OK. Next we checked the electrical connection at the interface between the copper OSEM cables to the blue in-vacuum flat cable and this too looks alright also. Since the AS1 coil driver was recently modified, it is possible we might find the problem there, so I'll ask Koji about this.

So Koji clarified that the coil driver board and SATAMP boards are different so we should connect this issue to the coil driver board.

Tega and Paco reported that the UR OSEM of AS1 lost the response.

- I have checked the LED MON (left) of the satellite amp for AS1. CH1/2/3 had 5V -> This indicates that the OSEM LEDs are (most likely) functioning.
- Then I went to the ITMY flange and connected the OSEM emulator instead of the Dsub25 cable. The attachment shows that the UR OSEM LED/PD worked fine with the OSEM emulator. WIth the vacuum flange connected it lost the response.

This indicates that the AS1 UR OSEM problem is localized in the chamber. Please check if the DSUB pins are touching the table or something else.

[JC, Tega, Ian, Paco]

We found that the UR cable was clamped to the table by one of the ITMY OPLEV steering mirror mounts that was recently installed. After freeing the cable, the UR signal is now active again.

If someone gets time, let's put in all the cable posts and clean up our cable routing on the tables.

[Anchal, Tega, JC]

We installed cable posts in ITMY, BS, and ITMX chambers for all the new suspensions. Now, there is no point where the OSEM connections are hanging freely.

In BS chamber, we installed one post for LO2 near the north edge of the table and another post for PR3 on the Western edge with the blue cable running around the table on the floor.

In ITMY chamber, we installed the cable post in between AS1 and AS4 with the blue cables running around the table on the floor. This is to ensure the useful part of the table remains empty for future and none of the OSEM cables are taught in air.

[Anchal, Paco, JC]

We had to open ITMY, ETMY chamber doors to get the cavity aligned again. Once we did that, we regained cavity flashing and were able to align the input injection and cavity alignment to get transmission flashing to 1.0 (C1:LSC-TRY_OUT_DQ). JC later centered both ITMY and ETMY oplevs. The ITMY oplev had become completely out of range.

We also opened ITMX, ETMX chamber doors to get Xarm alignment. Again, it seems that ITMX had moved a lot due to cable post installation.

To be continued

This would be a daily first task in the morning. We'll need to check the status of arm alignment and optimize it back to maximum every morning for the rest of the day's work.

Today, when I came, on openin gthe PSL shutter, IMC was aligned good, both arms were flashing but YARM maximum transmission count was around 0.7 (as opposed to 1 from yesterday) and XARM maximum transmission count was 0.5 (as opposed to 1 from yesterday). I did not change the input alignment to the interferometer. I only used ITMY-ETMY to regain flashing count of 1 on YARM and used BS and tehn ITMX-ETMX to regain flashing count of 0.9 to 1 in XARM.

Even thought the oplevs were centered yesterday, I found the oplev had drifted from the center and the optimal position also is different for all ooptics except EMTY and BS. It is worth nothign that in optimal position both PIT and YAW of ITMY and ITMX are off by 70-90 uradians and ETMX Pit oplev is off by 55 uradians.

POP_SM4

I tried out this stack today and found some change of plans.

• The attachment in elog 40m/16640 says to use 1/4-20 silver coated non-vented screws for joining BA2V to PLS-T238, however PLS-T238's bottom hole is a blind hole and is not vented. So we actually required <1 in long silver plated vented 1/4-20 cap screw for this purpose. Jordan and I were only able to find the correct length silver plated screw but it is not vented. So we decided to make a venting hole on the post from the side.
• I had to use a 0.14" spacer as washer between PLS-T238 and BA1V. The 1" post shim that Koji got for this purpose had too small a hole in the center to let the 8-32 screw pass (I know, weird). but I think we had 3 spare 0.14" ad we bought 10 when we required 7, so we should be good.
• The attachment in elog 40m/16640 also says to use 8-32 silver coated vented setscrew for joining TR-1.5 to LMR1V mount. I found one vented silver coated set screw nearby in the clean room but it turned out to be too long. Worse, I overtightened the setscrew when trying this connection which damaged the inner threads of one of the LMR1V. So we need to buy one more LMR1V (maybe an additional spare too) for future installation of OMC1R1/OMC2R1.
  • Then Jordan and I searched for a smaller silver coated and vented 8-32 setscrew but didn't find any. Jordan also noted that LMR1V is an aluminium mount and we should not use silver coated setscrew with it. Since the TR-1.5 mount is ok to be sacrificed if a cold weld happens, we'll just use an uncoated SS 8-32 setscrew to join TR-1.5 and LMR1V. We could not such vented setscrews, but we have plenty of non-vented once. So Jordan is going to make a venthole in TR1.5 top end as well. LMR1V already has a vent hole on its side.

tl,dr; Jordan is preparing PLS-T238 and TR-1.5 with venting holes and C&B and they would be ready by tomorrow. I have collected all other parts for assembly, still looking for the mirror but I know other lab members know where it is, so no big issue there.

POP_SM5

The assemly of this mirror is complete. A slight change here as well, we were supposed to use the former POYM1 (Y1-2037-0) mirror for POP_SM5 but I could not find it. It was stored on the right most edge of the table (see 40m/16450), but it is not there anymore. I found another undocumented mirror on the flow bench on the left edge marked (2010 July: Y1-LW1-2037-UV-0-AR) which means this mirror has a wedge of 1 degree and an AR coating as well. We do not need or care about the wedge or AR coating, so we can use this mirror for POP_SM5. Please let me know if someone was saving this mirror for some other purpose.

I'll finish assembly of POP_SM4 tomorrow and install them in ITMX chamber and resurrect POP path.

[Anchal, Paco]

We investigated the low power issue with POX11 photodiode.

• We used a power meter to confirm that above 12 uW of power is reaching the ITMX oplev table.
• But the power reaching the photodiode was only 3 uW, because the 2 steering mirrors used were discarding half of the light. These mirrors were taken from former POP setup and are probably BS or meant for different incidence angle/polarization.
• We used flashlight to test that the photodiode gives a response, so it is not dead.
• We also put in a db15 breakout board in line to the PD and confirmed that power input is correct, temperature is nominal, enable is ON, and DC out is responsive to flashlight.
• So we decided to redo the path with Y1-45P 1inch mirrors. I found two such mirrors in the lab.
• When setting up the path again, I realized that the beam shape is not even. I took a photo of the beam on the card (see attachment 1) and indeed the POX beam that is coming to the table is half clipped.
• So tomorrow, we'll open the chamber and find out where this is happening. For now, I've setup a nominal path to the POX11 photodiode, but we'll tune it after we get a clear POX beam on the table.

Restored arm algiment to get 0.8 max flashing on YARM and 1 max flashing on XARM. I had to move input alignment using TT2-PR3 pair and realign YARM cavity axis using ITMY-ETMY pair.

I would like to advertise this useful tool that I've been using for moving cavity axis or input beam direction. It's a simple code that makes your terminal kind of videogame area. It moves two optics together (either in same direction or opposite direction) by arrow key strokes (left, right for YAW, up, down for PIT). Since it moves two optics together, you actually control the cavity axis or input beam angle or position depening on the mode.

[Paco, Anchal, Yuta]

We opened the BSC and ITMX chamber in the morning (Friday) to investigate POX11 beam clipping. We immediately found that the POX11 beam was clipping by the recently installed cable posts, so luckily no major realingment had to be done after reinstalling the cable post in a better location.

Because we had the BSC open, we decided to steer the AS1 mirror to align the AS path from ITMY all the way to the vertex chamber.  Relatively small AS1 offsets (of ~ 2000 counts each) were added on PIT / YAW to center the beam on ASL (there is slight clipping along PIT, potentially because of the AS2 aperture. We then opened the vertex chamber and located the AS beam with relative ease. We decided to work on this chamber, since major changes propagate heavily downstream (simply changing the IMC pointing).

Anchal removed old optics from the vertex chamber and we installed the steering pair of mirrors for AS path. This changed the balance of the vertex table by a lot. By using the MC REFL camera beam spot we managed to coarsely balance the counterweights and recover the nominal IMC injection pointing. Simply reenabling the IMC autolocker gave us high transmission (~ 970 counts out of the typical 1200 these days).

The final IMC alignment was done by Anchal with delicate PIT motion on the input injection IMC miror to maximize the transmission (to our satisfaction, Anchal's motion was fine enough to keep the IMC locked). The end result was quite satisfying, as we recovered ~ 1200 counts of MC transmission.

Finally, we looked at the arm cavity transmission to see if we were lucky enough to see flashing. After not seeing it, we adjusted TT1 / TT2 to correct for any MMTT1 pitch adjustment needed after the vertex table rebalancing. Suprisingly, we didn't take too long and recovered the nominal arm cavity pointing after a little adjustment. We stopped here, but now the vertex table layout is final, and AS beam still needs to be aligned to the vertex in-air table.

[Paco, Anchal]

We found that one of the Y1-1037-45P marked mirror that we used was actually curved. So we removed it and used a different Y1-1037-45P mirror, adjusted the position of the lens and got the beam to land on POX11 RFPD successfully.

Then in control room, we maximized the POX11_I_ERR PDH signal amplitude by changing C1:LSC-POX11_PHASE_R to 42.95 from -67.7. We kept the C1:LSC-POX11_PHASE_D same at 90. We were getting +/- 200 PDH signal on POX_I_ERR.

Then in our attempt to lock the XARM, when we ran the "Restore XARM (POX)" script, YARM locked!

We are not sure why the YARM locked, we might have gotten lucky today. So we ran ASS on YARM and got the transmission (TRY_OUT) stable at 1. The lock is very robust and retrievable.

Coming back to XARM, we realized that the transmission photodiode used for XARM was the low-gain QPD instead of the thorlabs high gain photodiode. The high-gain photodiode was outputing large negative counts for some reason. We went to the Xend to investigate and found that the high gain photodiode was disconnected for some reason. Does anyone know/remember why we disconnected this photodiode?

We connected the photodiode back and it seems to work normally. We changed the photodiode selection back to high gain photodiode for TRX and on 40 dB attenuation, we see flashing between 1.4 to 1.6. However, we were unable to lock the XARM. We tried changing the gain of the loop, played a little bit with the trigger levels etc but couldn't get it to lock. Next shift team, please try to lock XARM.

[Anchal, JC]

I installed POP_SM4 and POP_SM5 in the ITMX chamber in the nominal positions. This must have affected the ITMX Oplev because I could see that one of the ITMX oplev beam was going through POP_SM5. It needs to be changed in order to follow the original plan. However, since POP_SM5 is a 1064 line mirror, it is transparent to the opleve beam, so maybe we can just use the ITMX oplev in the current fashion.

Next steps:

• Get flashing back on the XARM.
• Try to get the correct phase angle in POX11 so that we can lock XARM with IR too.
• Inspect ITMX Oplev. The quadrant sum is low so maybe it needs adjustment in the in-ar table.
• Check if ITMX oplev path needs to be adjusted inside the chamber.

[Tega, Yehonathan, Koji, Yuta]

We tried to align AS path this afternoon.
IMC is not aligned now after the work today
Green mirrors/perisocope in IMC chamber were removed since some of them was clipping the AS beam, and this changed the balance of the IMC stack and thus MC1 and MC3 alignment.

Summary of changes:
ITMY chamber
  - Rotated AS2 in roll by 90 deg to have more aperture for the transmission (photo)
  - IR beams are now centered on AS1, AS2, AS3 and AS4 (photo, photo)

BS chamber
  - Moved ASL towards -X direction for about 1/4 inch
  - Installed GRY_SM2 at the nominal position (re-used GR_SM3 from IMC chamber)

IMC chamber
  - Removed green optics GR_SM4, GR_SM3, GR_PERI2L (GR_PERI2L is now stored at Xend)
  - Removed IFI camera mirrors FIV1, FIV2 (they are now stored at Xend) (photo, photo)
  - GR_SM4 mount is now reused as GRY_SM1 (Y2-2037-0 is now mounted instead of previously mounted Y2-LW1-2050-UV-45P/AR), and GRY_SM1 is installed at the nominal position (photo)
  - Moved weights to balance the stack

OMC chamber (we don't have OMC in this chamber...)
  - We swapped AS5 and AS6 so that the nobs comes in -X direction to have more spacing between AS beam and IMC REFL beam (photo)
  - Moved weights to balance the stack

What we did:
1. Misaligned ITMX and use ITMY reflected beam to align AS path
2. Centered the IR beam on AS1 using SR2
3. Centered the IR beam on AS2 and ASL using AS1. AS2 was rotated in roll by 90 deg to have more aperture for the transmisson.
4. Centered the IR beam on AS3 using AS2 nobs, centered the IR beam on AS4 by rotating AS3 in yaw.
5. "AS beam" (it turned out that what we are looking was actually not the AS beam!! Some stray light) was in +X direction by 1 inch or so at AS5. Moving AS5 to center the beam would clip IMC REFL beam. So we swapped AS5 and AS6 so that the nobs comes in -X direction to have more spacing between AS beam and IMC REFL beam.
6. Balanced OMC chamber stack again using IMC REFL beam as a referece (bring the IMC REFL beam to the reference red circle on the monitor).
7. Tweaked the alignment of TT1 and TT2 to have Yarm flashing to ~0.9 in TRY.
8. Moved AS5 towards +X by an inch or so to center the "AS beam."
9. Moved ASL towards -X direction for about 1/4 inch and re-centered the beam by AS1 to see if the "AS beam" gets far from IMC REFL at OMC chamber, but the "AS beam" didn't move much.
10. By blocking the beam from ITMY, we found that "AS beam" was not the actual one.
11. Opened IMC chamber and found that AS beam is blocked by the past optics.
12. Removed old green optics and IFI camera mirrors. GR_SM4 mount and GR_SM3 were reused as mentioned above.
13. Tried to balance IMC chamber stack to recover IMC alignment. We used IMC REFL beam as a reference, but it was hard to completely bring the IMC REFL beam to the reference red circle on the monitor. It is now off by a beam diameter or so. No IMC flashing now.

Next:
Theoretically, balancing IMC chamber stack would recover all the IFO alignment, but maybe tough. It is maybe easier to align MC1 and MC3 to have IMC locked. Assuming input pointing to IMC is not drifted too much, we should be able to recover Yarm flashing by tweaking TT1 alignment only. However, MC3 SD OSEM is at the edge of the range. We might have to balance the stack more or tweak SD OSEM position.

I feel like there is an instability in my thought process on this. Before my tendency to try to scale and generalize this problem brings me to a full stop I will make small but quick progress.

First thing is to calculate the noise budget for a simple Michelson. The involved optics are:

• ITMX
• ITMY
• BS
• LO1
• LO2
• AS1
• AS4

all sensed with OSEMs and OpLevs only.

Things to fetch:

1. OSEM sensing noise. Where do I get the null stream (AKA butterfly mode)?

2. Oplev noise, look at the SUM channel (or this elog)

3. Actuation TF. Latest elog.

4. Coil driver noise. Going to take the HP supply curve from this elog.

5. Seismic noise + Seismic stack TF. Or maybe just take displacement noise from gwinc.

6. Laser noise. Still need to search.

7. DAC noise. Still need to search.

[Paco, JC, Anchal]

We balanced the IMC table back again to point that got us 50% of nominal transmission from IMC. Then we tweaked the steering mirror for injection to IMC to get up to 90% of nominal transmission. Finally, we used WFS servo loop to get to the 100% nominal transmission from IMC. However, we found that the WFS loop has been compromised now. It eventually misaligns IMC if left running for a few minutes. This needs to be investigated and fixed.

Next steps:

• Align X-arm cavity and regain flashing.
• Fix the Oplev path for ITMX.
• Tune POX11 phase angle to get an error signal with which we can lock the cavity.
• Finish AS beam path setup.

[Yuta, Tega]

We aligned the BS, ITMY, and ETMY PIT and YAW to get the flashing on X-arm whilst also keeping the flashing of Y-arm. From attachment 1, it is clear that POXDC photodiode is not receiveing any light, so our next task is to work on POX alignment.

[Yuta, Tega]

We needed to sort out the POXDC signal so we could work on X-arm alignment. Given that POXDC channel value was approx 6 compared to POYDC value of approx. 180, we decided to open the ITMX chamber to see if we could improve the situation. We worked on the alignment of POX beam but could not improve the DC level which suggests that this was already optimized for.  As an aside, we also noticed some stray IR beam from the BS chamber, just above the POX beam which we cold not identify.

Next we moved on to the POP beam alignment, where we noticed that the beam level on LO1 and POP_SM4 was a bit on the high side. Basically, the beam was completely missing the 1" POP_SM4 mirror and was close to the top edge of LO1. So we changed TT2 pitch value from 0.0143 to -0.2357 in order to move the beam position on POP_SM4 mirror. This changed the input alignment, so we compensated using PR2 (0.0 -> 49.0) and PR3 (-5976.560 -> -5689.800). This did not get back the alignment as anticipated, so we moved ITMY pitch from 0.9297 to 0.9107. All of these alignment changes moved the POP beam down by approx 1/5 of an inch from outside the mirro to the edge of POP_SM4 mirror, where about half of the beam is clipped.

Next Steps:

We need to repeat these aligment procedures with say 1.5 time the change in TT2 pitch to center the beam on POP_SM4 mirror.

[Anchal, JC]

We first aligned the single arm cavity resonance for both arms to get maximum flashing. As we opened the chamber, I found that the POP beam was mostly hitting the POP_SM4 mirror but was clipping about 2 mm on the top edge.

I used TT2-PR3 to lower the injection beam angle and moved pairs of ITMY-ETMY, and ITMX-ETMX to recover as much flashing as I could in the both arms. Then, I moved PR2 in pitch from 49 to 71 to maximize the arm flashing again. After these steps, the POP beam was clearly within the POP_SM4 mirror but still in the upper half of the optic and there was maybe just a mm of clearance from the top edge. I decided to raise POP_SM4 mirror by 0.14" spacer. Now the beam is still in upper half of the mirror but has a good clearance from the edge.

The POP beam is coming outside in the in-air table at as a rising beam in the nominal path near the center of the window. This beam needs to be directed to the POP camera and RFPD on the far-side of the table.

Next steps:

• In-air table work: Setup POP camera and RFPD.
• In ITMX chamber, rotate ITMX Oplev mirror to clear the oplev beam off POP_SM5. Change oplev beam path outside accordingly.
• Install green transmission from X-arm steering mirrors in BS chamber.
• Install 4 steering mirrors in ITMY chamber at the two outputs of BHD BS to direct the beam outside.
• Figure out POX11 rotation angle and get XARM locking as well.

[Yuta, Tega]

In order to setup POP camera and RFPD on the ITMX table, we decided to first work on the IMC and X/Y-arm alignment.

IMC alignment:

We zeroed IMC WFS outputs and aligned IMC manually to get IMC transmission of 1200 and reflection of 0.35.

Y-arm alignment:

We used the new video game tool that moves the pairs of mirrors - PR3 & ETMY, ITMY & ETMY - in common and differential modes. This brought the Y-arm flashing to 0.8. Note that we used the _OFFSET bias values for PR3 & ETMY alignment instead of the _COMM bias values.

X-arm alignment:

We repeated the same procedure of moving the pairs of mirrors - BS & ETMX, ITMX & ETMX - in common and differential modes but manually this time. This brought the X-arm flashing to ~1.0.

I have made a Simulink diagram to use in the MICH modeling (attachment) for the homodyne angle detection scheme. The model will be used for each optic separately and the noises will be combined in quadrature.

I gathered some more bits of info to fill the Simulink boxes. This is what I have so far:

[Yuta, Anchal]

We investigated why WFS loop wasn't working. It seemed like WFS1 PIT error signal has a huge offset which would push the loop to misalign all optics' PIT. So we did the following steps:

• Cover the WFS with Aluminium foils. Run Sitemap>IOO>C1_IOO_WFS_MASTER>!Actions>Correct WFS DC offsets.
• Then center the WFS beams on the QPDS while looking at C1:IOO-WFS1/2_PIT/YAW_DC channels.
• Then Switch off WFS loop, Switch off Autolocker, toggler the PSL Shutter so that IMC unlocks and does not catch lock back, and tehn run Sitemap>IOO>C1_IOO_WFS_MASTER>!Actions>Correct WFS RF offsets.
• The above script found significant changes required in WFS1 RF offsets. After this, we opened the shutter and WFS loops were working fine.

As I went to correct the ITMX Oplev mirrors, I found that both mirrors were placed in very different positions than the design position. Part of the reason I think was to preserve outside oplev path, and party because a counterweight was in ITMXOL1 position. I had to do following steps to correct this:

• I noted down level meter readings of the table before making any changes.
• I removed the counter weight from near the center of the table.
• I placed the Oplev mirrors in the nominal positions.
• I placed the counter weight near previous position.
• I moved a edge hanging counter weight to get back the level meter to its previous state coarsely.
• Then I used dataviewer to find the previous OSEM PD monitor values and changed ITMX PIT and YAW to come closer to those PD values. And voila, I regained the flashing on Xarm. I nudged the ITMX pit and yaw bit more to maximize it.
• I then went back to aligning the Oplevs properly.
• Then I adjusted the POP mirrors to get the beam back through center of window. This was very tricky and took a lot of time.
• Now the beam is going through near center and the oplev beams are far away enough from POP_SM5.
• On the outside table, I noted the POP beam and the oplev beam. I corrected the pit of the returning beam to get the oplev beam at nominal height on outside table.

ITMX Sat Amp is flaky

[Anchal, Paco]

During the above work, i must have kicked the cable between the vacuum flange and the satellite amplifier box for ITMX. This disconnected all the OSEMs and Coils. We tried several things to debug this and finally found that nudging the connections on Sat Amp box brought the OSEMs and coils back online. Note that the connector was not partially out or in a state that obviously showed disconnection of the pins. I'm glad we are putting in new electronics soon for the vertex optics as well.

Next steps:

• I showed Tega the returning oplev beam and the POP beam coming out of the ITMX chamber.
• The Oplev beam paths need to be adjusted.
  • The ongoing beam steering mirror is blocking the returning beam, so the ongoing path needs to be changed.
  • First setup two irises to save ingoing path.
  • Then make space for the returning beam by changing the steering mirror positions.
  • Then recover the ingoing path to the center of irises.
  • Steer the returning beam to the QPD.
  • Then maximize the flashing on XARM and center the oplev to save this position.
• POP beam needs to be directed to previous setup on far side of table.
  • The POP beam is coming out at the rising angle.
  • This is good for us if we do bit unconventional stuff and transfer the beam to other side of table at an elevated height. Given how close all the beams are coming out of the viewport, I think this is the best solution in terms of saving time.
  • Get the beam down to the old setup which was camera and photodiodes all aligned.

[Paco, Tega]

Started work on the relocating the green transmission optics, cameras and PDs. Before removing the any of the optics, we checked and confirmed that the PDs and Cams are indeed connected to the GRN TRX/Y medm channels. Then added labels to the cables before moving them.

Plumbing:

• Moved all power and signal cables for the PDs and cameras from PSL table to BS table. See attachment #1

Relocated Optics & PDs & Cameras:

• TRX and TRY cameras
• TRX and TRY PDs
• 1 BS, 2 lens for PDs and a steering mirror, see Atachement #2

[Don, Koji]

Don is working on finalizing the BHD Platform design. All the components on the BHD platform are almost populated and aligned.

Don is still working on the table legs so that we can detach the legs when we need to float the table in the future.
The BHD BS mount will have a third picomotor so that we can steer 3 dof with the mount while the remaining dof needs to be provided by the OMC.
The BHD BS position is going to be adjusted so that the incident and trans beams have sufficient clearance.
The OMC legs (kinematic mounts) need more work so that we can adjust their positions for initial setup while they can be the reference for the reproducible placement of the OMCs.
The OMCs are rigidly held with the legs. For the damping of the 1-kHz body bode, which has a relatively high Q, there will be a dissipative element touching the glass breadboard.

I quickly ran the FEA model to check the resonant freqs of the BHD platform.
The boundary conditions were:

• The platform was not loaded
• FIxed constraints were given to the five legs

Don has optimized the cut-out size for the OMCs to increase the rigidity of the plate. Also, the ribbed grid is made at the bottom side.

The lowest mode is at 168Hz. Because there is no leg around, it seems reasonable to have this kind of mode as the fundamental mode.
The other mode lined up at 291Hz, 394Hz, 402Hz, ...
The mode freqs will be lower once the platform is loaded. But as the unloaded platform mode, these mode freqs sound pretty good numbers.

[JC, Tega]

Tega and I cleaned up the BS OPLEV Table and took out a couple of mirrors and an extra PD. The PD which was removed is "IP-POS - X/Y  Reversed". In addition to this, the cable is zip-tied to the others located on the outside of the table in case this is required later on. 

Next, we placed the cameras and mirrors for the green beam into their postions. A beam splitter and 4 mirrors were relocated from PSL table and placed onto the BS Oplev table to complete this. I will upload the picture of the newly updated photo with arrows of the beam routes.

Followed the steps below to complete the ITMX optlev installation. The ITMX optlev return beam now reaches its QPD without being blocked by the input steering mirror.

Although, I centered the ITMX optlev readout, this was not done when the XARM flashing is maximized bcos the IMC chamber was being worked on, so this should be done later when the IR beam is back.

[Yuta, Paco]

We installed GRX_SM1, GRX_SM2, and finished aligning the GRY_SM1, and GRY_SM2 steering mirrors in the BS and IMC Chambers. GRY_SM1 was slightly misplaced (by ~ 2 inches), so we had to move it slightly. Luckily this didn't grossly misaligned the IMC, and we could recover quickly by touching MC1 & MC3 pitch, and MC1 slight yaw.

Then, Yuta installed GRX_SM1, and GRX_SM2 by repurposing two 45 AOI P-Pol GR transmission mirrors on the flowbench. Because one of the weights on the BSC was in the way of GRX_SM2, it was shifted it before installation. This probably shifted the balancing of the whole table. The GRY beam is still not lock-able to the YARM, so as a proxy for GRY transmission beam we used the slight GRX reflection from the BS, and noted slight clipping through PR3 (in transmission). This should probably be checked with GTRY.

We believe this is the last installation operation of this vent.

We made sure the WFS feedback loop is working, and realigned the arm cavities to be flashing.

[Yuta, Tega]

We finally managed to steer the AS beam from ITMY chamber, through BS and IMC chambers, to the in-air AP table.

We moved the AS5 mirror north to its nominal position and we also moved the ASL lens on BS chamber back to its nominal position. Attached photos are taken after today's alignment work.

I successfully steered out the two output beams from BHD BS to ITMY table today. This required significant changes on the table, but I was able to bring back the table to balance coarsely and then recover YARM flashing with fine tuning of ITMY.

• The counterweights were kept at the North end of the table which was in way of one of the output beams of BHD.
• So I saved the level meter positions in my head and removed those counterweights.
• I also needed to remove the cable post for ITMY and SRM that was in the center of the table.
• I installed a new cable post which is just for SRM and is behind AS2. ITMY's cable post is next to it on the other edge of the table. This is to ensure that BHD board can come in later without disturbing existing layout.
• I got 3 Y1-45P and 1 Y1-0 mirror. The Y1-0 mirror was not installed on a mount, so I removed an older optic which was unlabeled and put this on it's mount.
• Note that I noticed that some light (significant enough to be visible on my card) is leaking out of the 45P mirrors. We need to make sure we aren't loosing too much power due to this.
• Both beams are steered through the center of the window, they are separating outside and not clipping on any of the existing optics outside. (See attachment 1, the red beam in the center is the ITMY oplev input beam and the two IR beams are the outputs from BHD BS).
• Also note that I didn't find any LO beam while doing this work. I only used AS beam to align the path.
• I centered the ITMY oplev at the end.

Next steps:

• LO path needs to be tuned up and cleared off again. We need to match the beams on BHD BS as well.
• Setup steering mirrors and photodiodes on the outside table on ITMY.