I guess that the estimated state has the same low pass filter, effectively, that we use to low pass the feedback signal in SUSPOS. I wonder if there is an advantage to the state estimation or not. Doesn't the algorithm also need to know about the expected seismic noise transmission from the ground to the optic?

 The shame:

There is no situation in which it is OK to install a mount like this. Steve had installed this flaky and shaky mount to optimize the beam size on the OL QPD.

Everyone in the lab should know better. Putting in something like this is just like sabotage - it creates extra noise in our interferometer in a sneaky way and just makes locking harder. All mounts for anything useful (including QPDs) must have highly rigid mounts. 

Use the example from the PSL relayout: use the 3/4" steel mounts and the wide aluminum bases from Newport. No more art projects using home made mounting crap, Steve.

 Absolutely hokey. What are our requirements for this RFPD? What are the power levels and SNR that we want (I seem to remember that its for 22 as well as 110 MHz)? Perhaps we can test an aLIGO one if Rich has one sitting around, or if the aLIGO idea is to use a broadband PD I guess we can just keep using what we have.

 Since we upgraded the CDS system, I guess our ADC ranges have gone up but we never did anything to the OLs to match the ADC ranges. From Liz's daily summary page of the OL, I see this:

So we need a factor of 5-10 increase in the electronics gain (why isn't the BS SUM on there?). This might be accomplished in the head, but for the ones with whitening boards, might be better to do there.

(** add to Jamie's list of long term tasks **)

 VENT NOW and FIX ALIGNMENT!

Too bad - I thought it would at least give a little damping. Since we want the viscous-like energy loss to be ~49x larger, we need to have the field modulation in the damper (not dumper) increase by ~7.

  We have to change the sample rate and AA filter for the mic channels before going too far with the circuit design.

  That's no good - we need BLRMS channels for many PEM channels, not just two. And the channel names should have the same name as they had in the past so that we can look at long term BLRMS trends.

I suggest:

1. Have a separate model for Mics and Magnetometers. This model should run at 32 kHz and not have low frequency poles and zeros. Still would have acoustic frequency BLRMS.
2. Have a low frequency (f_sample = 2 kHz) model for seis an acc. Seismometers run out of poop by 100 Hz, but we want to have the ACC signal up to 800 Hz since we do have optical mount resonances up to there.
3. Never remove or rename the BLRMS channels - this makes it too hard to keep long term trends.
4. Do a simple noise analysis to make sure we are matching the noise of the preamps to the noise / range of the ADCs.
5. Immediately stop using bench supplies for the power. Use ONLY fused, power lines from the 1U rack supplies.

 Maybe we have already discarded this idea, but why not do the alignment without the MC?

Just lock the green beam on the Yarm and then use the transmitted beam through the ITMY to line up the PRC and the PZTs? I think our estimate is that since the differential index of refraction from 532 to 1064 nm is less than 0.01, using the green should be OK. We can do the same with the Xarm and then do a final check using the MC beam.

In this way, all of the initial alignment can be done with green and require no laser Goggles (close the shutter on the PSL NPRO face).

  But these jumps in the OSEMs are all at the level of 10-20 microns. Seems like that wouldn't be enough to account for anything; 20 microns / (pend length) ~ 50-60 microradians.

 I vote against it. We don't know about the grease inside the screw bushings - scans are not everything if adjusting the screw loosens up the grease. If we need more pick off mirrors lets just make some of the kind that we already use inside for the 2" optics.

  That's good, but I request two things:

1) Check that the REFL beam is coming from the HR surface and not the AR surface. The real REFL beam should have as much power as the Faraday output. And where does the AR surface reflection go?

2) Use frame grabber to get as many images of the spot positions on the mirrors as is reasonable. Don't endanger bumping the tables again, but take what images can be gotten by remote camera views.

The way to usually do image subtraction is to:

1) Turn off the room lights.

2) Take 500 images with no beam.

3) Use Mean averaging to get a reference image.

4) Same with the beam on.

5) Subtract the two averaged images. If that doesn't work, I guess its best to just take an image of the green beam on the mirrors using the new DSLR.

 With Picos, we lose the ability to dither the input beam as well as align the beam with the IFO locked. And the active TT will still have hysteresis, but also actuators. Once in vacuum, I'm not sure how we adjust them - what's the error signal for PR2/PR3 ?

If the interferometer is aligned, why not just pump down now? I'm not sure that we have evidence of TT hysteresis issues once people stop touching them.

 Mounts:

1. No more mounts using the 1" dia. pedestal / fork technology.
2. No more mounts using the 1/2" post / post holder technology. Both of these are loose, weak, and cause noise.
3. All steerable mirror mounts which carry the important sensing beams should use steel mounts (e.g. Polaris from Thorlabs). Aluminum mirror mounts are not to be used.
4. The mounts must be mounted to a 3/4" steel post (these are the custom ones we used in the PSL; Steve should get some more of them made).
5. The post is then mounted on an aluminum base (The BA2 or BA3 (2" x 3" aluminum) from Thorlabs is OK. The 1" x 3" ones are not). These must be fastened to the table using 2 screws, each with a SS washer.

For the loop diagnosis, its best to use the method of "IN1/IN2", rather than manipulate the close loop gain. In this way, you can directly plot the swept sine measurement from DTT as the open loop gain.

Also, for reporting calibration, we should all try to record the current settings better. Anything that may change the loop gain should be recorded along with the Bode plot and the DATA must be posted to the elog - no more of just posting plots.

We need to know, e.g.

1. what is the power in the arms?
2. are the LSC whitening filters on?
3. are the SUS dewhitening filters on?
4. What normalization is being used in the LSC?
5. What digital filters are on in the X/YARM loop filter bank?

Resistance is feudal.

An error this evening on rossa: dataviewer not working due to some font errors:

controls@rossa:~ 0$ dataviewer
Connecting.... done
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning:
    Name: FilterText
    Class: XmTextField
    Character '\52' not supported in font.  Discarded.

Warning:
    Name: FilterText
    Class: XmTextField
    Character '\56' not supported in font.  Discarded.

Warning:
    Name: FilterText
    Class: XmTextField
    Character '\170' not supported in font.  Discarded.

Warning:

etc.............

This is how to post PDF:

From DTT, print the plot as a postscript file.

Then use ps2pdf to make a archival PDF version (the flag is the key!). Example:

ps2pdf -dPDFX /home/controls/Desktop/darm.ps

 Whoever was working around the BS chamber at 11 AM on Friday should admit it now and take the punishment.

For those of you who like to do work on the interferometer without reporting it in the elog because you think that what you did doesn't affect anything, this is your example of how our time can be wasted by such laziness.

  If you can't find the PMC sidebands in the transmission, its because the SNR is too small.

It may be a better idea to look at the PMC error signal, since the DC signal there is suppressed by the demodulation.

NDS2 is not designed for non DQ channels - it gets data from the frames, not through NDS1.

For getting the non-DQ stuff, I would just continue using our NDS1 compatible NDS mex files (this is what is used in mDV).

  Don't try to re-invent the mic mount: just copy the LIGO mic mount for the first version.

 This looks like a good performance tuning for these. It would be good if you can codify this procedure in the wiki so that even unexperienced people can tune up the system after reboots or vacuum work.

Is it possible to have some python scripts automatically measure and set the phases and matrices? If so, can we also run them iteratively so that after the second run we can confirm that they have converged? Then the script can output a short report of numbers telling us how well the system is now tuned.

I suppose that there is also a similar system possible to align the arms in a continuous way; i.e. low level drives and very low bandwidth. Also something fast / slow for the the DRMI.

 Some explanation of how you define power buildup please. Also some plots showing the evidence.

 Looking at the PEM BLRMS, I noticed that the GUR1Z channel had a much reduced microseism compared to the GUR1X. Looking at the BLRMS screens everything seems ON, although its a mess (too many filters in the banks, etc. - clean this up, PEM people).

 Looking at the Z channel in DTT, I see that the Z spectra looks double high pass filtered below ~1 Hz.     Needs some attention in the daytime.

From Den and Ayaka's elog entry from Nov 29, its clear that this problem is there at that time. It seems that the seismometer was not even hooked up before then. Perhaps Tara returned the seismometer around Thanksgiving and then someone here hooked it up but neglected to log this work? If so, please make an elog now describing the installation of this sensor at the 40m and log any future work which takes place at the 40m lab even if you think it is inconsequential.

This is NOT calibrated. Its sort of calibrated in the 500-1000 Hz area, but does not correctly use the loop TF or the cavity pole.

As for the noise, remember that the whole point of changing the AS whitening gain was to turn on the whitening filter AFTER locking. With the WF OFF, there's no way that you can surpass the ADC noise limit.

I have updated the Seismic Striptool display which is plotted on the wall in the control room. Please take a look and make comments. We should finalize it and not change it anymore.

By having an unchanging display, we can get used to small changes in the seismic environment which disrupt our locking.

1. y-scale is now linear; the log-scale was suppressing the factor of 2-3 variations which are important to us.
2. Just as the rainbow does, the colors now go from red to purple to represent the noise from 0.1 - 30 Hz: the red traces are 0.1-0.3 Hz, the green/yellow traces are 0.3-3 Hz, and the blue/purple traces are 3-30 Hz.
3. This is just showing GUR1. Let's try to keep this seismometer working so that we can have some long term record of the seismicity here. This means don't click off the buttons, disconnect the sensor, reboot the machine, etc. When you do do these things, elog them.

Just in case we want to retrofit the Tip/Tils with Beryllium Copper wire, here are links to a few sources which have a supply of the right composition and temper:

http://www.lfa-wire.com/Tempered-Alloy-25_C17200.htm

http://www.alloywire.com/beryllium_copper_CB_101.html

http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/products/electronics/berylliumcopper/wire/index.html

http://www.goodfellow.com/E/Copper-Beryllium-Wire.html

I don't think its worth it to do something to modify them unless we get a real reduction in the hysteresis - need a benchtop test setup ASAP.

Be Prepared

http://xkcd.com/936/

 Needs

Today I found 3 power cables in the orange Pomona cable tray, put in so that the cables were damaged and therefore dangerous.

Please think about what you are doing before doing it. Damaging these things because your are in a hurry or frustrated will just waste our time and damage our interferometer.

For reference, we only use the thick blue Pomona racks for power cables. We use the orange and black ones for thinner cables. Pay attention and keep the cables organized.

Cable Rack Selection

You have to correct this transimpedance ratio by correcting for the different levels of DC photocurrent in the two devices.

For the dark noise, you must always include a trace showing the noise of the measurements device (i.e. the analyzer noise must be less than the dark PD noise) with the same input attenuation setting.

1. Front Panel switch supplies power, but does not light up - its unsafe as is. Needs new switch.
2. Output has current limiting (which is nice) and schematic inside the box (which is very nice).
3. Output voltage is not filtered or regulated ? LM7812 / 7912 would do the trick - or pick a PS with 18V outputs to reg down to 15 V.
4. Box needs rubber feet.
5. Overall B-

Also, we still need to get a 32GB SD card for the new camera. It only has an 8GB one.

 That seems like easily enough range; as long as we can put the TT into the middle of their range to start with we should be OK.

We should consider instrumenting the leakage transmission through all TT with a bare QPD on a stick. We can then use those sensors to monitor the spot positions within the input mirrors as well as the PRC / SRC.

Why would we use such a bad optic in our recycling cavity? Is 1.5% the spec for these mirrors? Is this the requirement that Kiwamu calculated somehow? Did anyone confirm this measurement?

I can't believe that we'll have low noise performance in a RC where we dump so much power.

During our 'Women in Physics' tours today, we were reminded that there are several bench power supplies being used as permanent inside.

Some are being used to power PZTs, AOMs, VCOs, RFPDs, etc. On Wednesday, after the meeting, we will all go inside and remove one and replace it with a fused, professional wiring to the rack power supplies. The temporary ones must be removed.

After sshing into several machines and doing 'sudo shutdown -r now', some of them came back and ran their processes.

After hitting the reset button on the RFM switch, their diagnostic lights came back. After restarting the Dolphin task on fb:

"sudo /etc/init.d/dis_networkmgr restart"

the Dolphin diagnostic lights came up green on the FE status screen.

iscex still wouldn't come up. The awgtpman tasks on there keep trying to start but then stop due to not finding ADCs.

Then power cycled the IO Chassis for EX and then awtpman log files changed, but still no green lights. Then tried a soft reboot on fb and now its not booting correctly.

Hardware lights are on, but I can't telnet into it. Tried power cycling it once or twice, but no luck.

Probably Jamie will have to hook up a keyboard and monitor to it, to find out why its not booting.

P.S. The snapshot scripts in the yellow button don't work and the MEDM screen itself is missing the time/date string on the top.

  I have two questions:

1) Are we sure that the T measurement is not being compromised by some systematic? i.e. some leakage is making the apparent T appear too high.

2) IF the T is really so high, how should we decide whether or not to use this one rather than the G&H? Is the 532 nm property more important than the high recycling gain?

 Gouy not Guoy:

http://www.rp-photonics.com/gouy_phase_shift.html

pronounced Goo-eee, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

 Very exciting result, if true. I suppose we should try to reconfirm this result by doing another phase map of PRM03.

Is it possible that PR2 is not flat? How would we test to see if the tip-tilt frame screw gives it a curvature? Perhaps we can check with COMSOL.

  Getting closer, but need to use the real measured AR reflectivity values, not the 1500 ppm guess. These should be measured at the correct angles and pol, using an NPRO.

 I would guess that either flipping PR2 or PR3 would give nearly the same effect (g = 0.9) and that flipping both makes it even more stable (smaller g). But what we really need is to see the cavity scan / HOM resonance plot to compare the cases.

The difference of 0.5% in mode-matching is not a strong motivation to make a choice, but sensitivity to accidental HOM resonance of either the carrier or f1 or f2 sidebands would be. Should also check for 2*f2 and 2*f1 resonances since our modulation depth may be as high as 0.3. Accidental 2f resonance may disturb the 3f error signals.

 Use the trick I suggested:

Focus the beam so that the beam size at the detector is smaller than the beam separation. Use math to calculate the beam size and choose the lens size and position. You should be able to achieve a waist size of < 0.1 mm for the reflected beam.

 I will check out the AS55 situation tomorrow. Just put it on my desk.

MC Autolocker was disabled - I enabled it.

For the F2P.py, you should look at how we did this with the script written 8 years ago in csh. There we stored the initial values in a file (so they don't get blow away if someone does CTRL-C). Your python script should have a trap for SIGINT so that it dies gracefully by restoring the initial values. In order to have the smooth value adjustment, you must first set the TRAMP field for all the coil gains to 2 and then switch. Make sure that the lockin ignores the first few seconds of data after making this switch or else it will be hugely biased by this transient.

For the PRM OL use as a F2A reference, you also have to take into account that the OL beam is hitting the PRM surface at non-normal incidence. IF it is a large angle, there will be a systematic error in the setting of the F2Y values.

Please confirm the SRM OL beam is not too bad and also find where the mis-aligned SRM puts its beam. WE want to be sure that there is not too much unwanted scattering from SRM into the PRFPMI.

 Is the beam going towards the OMC going to cause backscatter because of uncontrolled OMC or can we park that beam somewhere dark?

This plot shows the trend of the OL during the past several hours of roughing pumping.

The big steps at the start of the pump down is NOT due to the pumping, but is instead the "recentering" that Yuta did. Looks like he was unable to find zero on the ETMY.

Some of the rest of the drift is probably just the usual diurnal variation, but there does seem to be some relation to the pumping trend. I guess that the shift of ~0.3 in the ITMX and ITMY pitch is real and pressure related.

We need to figure out how to put the OL calibration factor into the SUS-OL screens.

According to Google, you can add a line in the crontab to backup the crontab by having the cronback.py script be in the scripts/ directory. It needs to save multiple copies, or else when someone makes the file size zero it will just write a zero size file onto the old backup.

  This looks pretty good already. Not sure if we can even measure anything reasonable below 0.1 Hz without a lot of thermal shielding.

The 10-20 kHz oscillation may just be the loop shape of the opamp. I think you saw similar effects when using the AD743 with high impedance for the OSEM testing.